Member Discussions

Anyone agree? Anyone feel that it is easier for a male character to suceed in a MUD than a woman? Or vice versa?

Usually in the godwar type muds, female characters get help from other players more often.

No doubt due to marriage or xsocials :P

How do you mean due to marriage? How does this help female characters succeed? Does the same opportunity not exist for the male characters? Or do you mean that male characters help female characters with a view to marrying them?

I am sorry about all the questions. I'd hoped to be able to offer more of an opinion, but I'm not really sure what I think yet!

Well in the majority of GW muds ive played, there are roughly 3
times more male players than female, so women are rare!

I guess its the same reason you would mainly talk to the
opposite sex within a chat room, except you can't get help with
exp'in and quest points in a chat room.

If the question is in regards to IC sexism and the setting is AD&D Fantasy - I would have to say definitely. Feudalism was the general theme of the times and women in most instances even in noble society were considered property. In that setting definite 'sexism' existed and typically the women that got out from under the bane of sexism the most were usually prostitutes, because a male client expected something a little baudy or taboo from them.

Mm, I agree partially. It really depends on the setting.

My pet peeve: Why does Medieval always mean medieval europe? *grin* In medieval Japan, ladies were able to own and inherit property vs essentially "being" property as was often sadly the case in Europe. And this is only one example of looking to a different culture for a different norm.

So as for the question of MUDs being sexist: Ideally, it would depend on the culture the MUD is trying to portray. If they are portraying a sexist culture, I would expect some in character sexism. If not, then no.

As for the out of character emphasis, again I think it depends on the MUD. MUDs where men are scarce, men are likely to have the advantage as women will be looking for, yes, marriage. Same situation in a MUD where women are scarce - they'll be treated exceptionally well as the overabundant men will be looking for mates.

As for MUDding as a whole... I believe it is not sexist per se, but definitely seems to attract more males than females.

If that helps.

-Mithaine

I disagree. While medieval Europe was very sexist, AD&D-type fantasy MUDs tend not to include this in their medieval-Europe-esque settings. The same goes for racism and a lot of "caste" issues.

To be honest, I would have to say that this depends on the MUD. Now, I have played some really great MUDs...and I will say, in one MUD I was once told I couldn't have a particualar weapon skill, because I was female. To me this is wrong - because as long as I had a valid IC reason for having that skill, an IC way of having learnt it, then I do not believe that is a problem.
On the other hand, A MUD I have recently discovered has offered the least amount of sexism in its views than the others I have played - there are some very powerful female characters, and I find no reason to think that it would be any easier for a male character to suceed than a female one.

Anyway...thats my twopenneth for the day!

It depends on the MUD. Also, depends on the age-range of the people playing the mud. Even, though it is roleplay, people still bring their immaturity into the game. Usually female characters get more help in games, but then they have to put up with all the sexual harassment which comes with the extra help. Not always happens, but, male characters tend to help fem characters, thinking they will get something in return. (Sorta like, going on a date with a guy and he buys dinner, thinking he'll get 'some' that night.)

Absolutely not. RP MUDs are not sexist. The players on a given MUD may be sexist, the admins on a given MUD may be sexist, the society behind a given MUD may be sexist, but there's nothing inherently sexist about the medium. I don't know if you'll find this answer useful, but if you don't, you might wish to rephrase your question.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. I will have to assume you are talking about the sex of the actual character not the sex of the person playing, otherwise this is even a more riddiculous post then I thought.


How would that even work? Does the coder put in little checks to see if your character is female and then screw you if you are? Even if such a thing were true on a particular mud you are making a blanket statement about them.

I would say if anything it is a million times EASIER for a women character character to succeed in a mud. All it takes is a little wink wink, nudge nudge, a few extra hugs and giggles and you have most guys within range giving you whatever you want.

As far as any game mechanics go making it harder for a women then a man that is just riddiculous(as a blanket statement, but may be true about 1 or 2 muds).

_-Menser-_

(Comment added by RuinsOfFey on Tue Aug 31 9:49:18 2004)

Also, since i have noticed some people saying the women have to deal with the guys hitting on them i will have to say this is true to some extent but on the muds i have played i have more often then not seen the women initiating the flirtatious actions first inorder to get something. This isnt saything there isnt the occasional guy who acts like a jerk, but more often then not i see women using the fact they are women to maniuplate the situation.

Well you brought up AD&D so here ya go.

1)AD&D is not setup specfically for a feudalistic society. It is setup so you can have whatever you want. Ad&D covers a broad range of themes not just a single one, so the idea that its must be sexist since feudalism is one of them is riddiculous. Its is so riddiculous that i think i will rank it the second most riddiculous thing i have heard today.


2)Drow. Nuff said.


The Drow thing was the only thing I really needed to say to put out your argument of the AD&D is slated for sexism, but the first is a good point as well so i figured i should include it. The drow thing helps to further back that argument up as well.


_-menser-_

> Anyone agree? Anyone feel that it is easier for a male character to suceed in a MUD than a woman? Or vice versa?

I think this is mostly crazy talk. Most MUDs have absolutely no real coded distinction between male and female characters. There are no stat adjustments, aptitudes for specific skills, or anything else of the sort. It's a purely cosmetic bit that can be toggled at game creation. The actual physical ramifactions belong in a can of worms that few people want to open.

As for the entire psychological element, that is independent of the actual MUD, and cuts both ways. When you consider that the bulk of the MUD population consists of desperate people who can't get laid even if they tried with both hands, this should not come as a surprise. Besides, they're all really men anyway.

http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20040326.html

nuff said.

My favorite archetype to RP being the flirtatious rogue, most of my RP foils during my years of MUDing have -- naturally -- been flirtatious women. A couple of those women have turned out to be mentally disturbed emotional leeches, but far more have shown themselves to be charming and intelligent ladies who turned into great friends, OOC as well as IC. Having been confidant to so many flirts, let me just say that the real jerk is not the man who hits on a woman, but the man who can only relate to women in the Madonna/whore stereotypes.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting you, but you make it sound as if every woman who flirts is prostituting herself. Yes, flirtation is manipulative behavior. So is smiling. So is not smiling. So is yelling or whispering or publicly griping about manipulative flirts.

Every time you interact with another person, you are being manipulative. You have your own personal goals and desires to be sated, and if you can, you will try to steer the interaction toward that fulfillment without ever having given it a moment's conscious thought.

The test of a person's character is not if he manipulates, but how and why he manipulates -- whether he's a parasite or a symbiote. Is he out to 'win' at all costs, or does he have the brains to develop long-term allies through the art of compromise?

Personally, I find flirtation to be one of the most benign forms of manipulation available. Like any other form of manipulation, it can (and frequently does) get mis-used and abused. Yet at it's core, flirtation is the art of making another person feel sexy and desirable. When it's sincere, flirtation itself is a gift. It only becomes a scourge when it comes tangled up with lies and empty promises.

Yet so many men are too insecure to ever accept such a gift without attaching all manner of strings. A woman who doesn't flirt at all gets labeled frigid. A woman who flirts before she's ready to jump into bed with a man gets labeled a tease. A woman who flirts, jumps into a bed with a man, then refuses to devote heart and body exclusively to him, gets labeled a whore. A woman who flirts with a man, then devotes herself to him, quickly becomes routine and boring compared to that flirty sex goddess over at the next table who's stirring up intoxicating feelings all fresh and new.

I don't know how many times I've seen a woman hounded into accepting a MUD marriage proposal, only to have the guy either disappear or turn around and start using the same character to sleep around the next week. Come on, guys! Is it that hard to keep one bad-boy alt on tap?

So pardon me when I say this about my own sex, but it isn't 'the occasional guy who acts like a jerk' when it comes to dealing with women. It's most of us, constantly pressuring women to live up to two mutually exclusive ideals, and throwing horrible tantrums when the women fail.

If you're a guy who feels habitually betrayed by women, stop and think about how you treat them and what you expect from them, because the one unshakable constant in the equation isn't them -- it's you.

Thus endeth the rant.

My favorite archetype to RP being the flirtatious rogue, ad infinitum (almost)>

Breed *Applauds Loud and Long*

Wow, how little of a life, or how bored do you have to be to dig up a post from almost 2 months ago. And please do me a favor and lay off teh crack, i do think you did entirley to much before you posted this.

>>Perhaps I'm misinterpreting you, but you make
>>it sound as if every woman who flirts is
>>prostituting herself
Yup, i think its the crack messing with your head. I said nothing of the sort, i simply said that as opposed to the what the original question implied (Are muds sexist twords women) that it was actualyl much easier for women to get something if tehy wanted by simply flirting with a bunch of the lame 13 year old boys who are on.

>>Every time you interact with another person
ok and......whats your point? what does this have to do with my post, or the original topic.

>>The test of a person's character is not if he manipulates
Once again....How does this relate to my post, or the original?

>>It only becomes a scourge when it comes tangled
>>up with lies and empty promises.
Um yeah...when did i say flirting is or becomes a scourge? Oh wait thats right, its the crack. Come on man, were you really this bored you had to write a whole rant that was completly meaningless?

>>Yet so many men are too insecure
Blah Blah, nother paragraph with no point or correlation to the original or mine.

>> don't know how many times
Blah blah blah, once again pointless and unrelated and way off subject, but ill comment anyways cause its something that has always annoyed me. Im going to make alot of you mad now. For all you idiot sitting in your moms basement trying to hook up with some chick in a MUD. STOP! Its LAME! Disconnect the computer and dont touch it again till a REAL girl REALLY(not typing on the internet) touches you. For you women who do it, its just as lame, follow the same instructions as men. STOP. Disconnect until a REAL women(or man if you insist) touches you. You are never going to meet a real person and realyl make out and have real intercourse sitting on the computer. For those of you pestering women to marry them in a game, and then cheating on them, please relise you are the ultimate looser cause not only can you not get a girl in real life most likely, but the girl you could get in cyber space, you jsut cheated on making you a jackwad. Yes it can be ok to marry people in game, as long as you have a real life and your not subsituting the game for your real life.

>>So pardon me when I say......Its most of us....
Please keep your observation to include only yourself. You dont know most, half, or even a quarter of the Male mudding community on any level to make a statment with such broad reachs as that.


>>If you're a guy who feels habitually betrayed
Once again completly unrelated and off subject, buti guess it makes sense in the mind of a crack head.



So here is the conclusion i have come to from your post.

You are one of the following
1)A hateful female mudder who has married in game and had her in game husband cheat on here and now has a sour outlook on all men in the mudding community. (Please see my directions on getting a life above)

2) A gay male spurned by your gay male in game life partner who had the same thing happen as above. (Please see my directions on getting a life above)

3) A super lame dude who smokes to much crack trying to start a rant way after the whole subject was dead and due to crack induced retardedness couldnt even keep most of it pertaining to something I or the orignal poster had said.

(Please stop smoking crack and use what little of your brain is left and actually read and think on what people wrote before you go off on some rant that doesnt even make sense)


Sorry if this comes off as a little mean, but i think you needed it after reading your post through. Dont take super personal offense to this and kill yourself, this is just my personality, i see something dumb(your post) and i make sure to make the person aware of it.

This way in the future they have a refrence to go bye so you can say 'oh yeah that post was rated as dumb, and the one im typing now is very similiar perhaps i should rethink posting this' and then i dont have to deal with another dumb post. I figure by doing this i am providing a free public service to all of you people out there who obviously find to much effort is involved in thinking so you should be grateful.


Please dont wast my time and others anymore by posting a response to this thread unless it is meaningful and has something to do with what i ACTUALYL said in my original post or what the original poster said.

I think this is mostly crazy talk.

Yes. It twas Focault postmodernist psychobabble. The OP wouldn't know sexism if it slapped them upside the head.

Wow, how little of a life, or how bored do you have to be to dig up a post from almost 2 months ago.

What's your excuse for posting on it when it was 6 months old. No life? On crack? ;-)

Once i responded, the last post once months old anymore and was in direct response to MY post.

Thank you very much Mr smarty pants.

(Comment added by RuinsOfFey on Sat Oct 23 11:34:10 2004)

Ahh, and after rereading what you said and relising you were talkign abotu my original post. My post wasnt on a 6 month old thread, the most recent post had been prior the same day. Thank you once again.

Ahh, and after rereading what you said and relising you were talkign abotu my original post.

Yes. BTW, are you dyslexic or retarded?

Short Answer: The muds aren't sexist, the players are.

Long Answer: As an imm on a mud where the documentation states that men and women are equal in all way, including strength and endurance, we see that often the players revert to real world stereotypes. Some sociology student should probably study this, it's both distressing and fascinating.

It's probably because such equality is unlikely, physiologically, to exist in a gendered species--the knowledge of which is axiomatically built into the subconscious cognitive patterns of all humans; along with the superimposed cultural imprint on the superego this is likely to cause an id-level conflict the result of which is reverting to the bioprogrammed behavioural cognicism and thereby repress the conflict, possibly causing neurological damage--even permanent, in which case this would make exceptional study material from a Jungian pragmaticism point of view.

Or maybe they just don't read the documentation.

.

Woot for Carl Jung!

Or perhaps you were not very clear about which post you were talking about, and it was only after rereading it and noticing the dates on all the post that i relsied which you were refering to.

Im not really sure what your problem is Tyche or why you are even continuing to post in here since you apparently dont have nothing constructive to add on the subject of the original post and neither mine nor the post which I responded to had anything to do with you or asked you to interject. But since you have, and you seem to be attempting to aggitate or provoke me, im going to ask nicely to 'please stop being a poo head and trying to aggitate or provoke me' and not post any farther so neither you or I waste anymore time of peopel trying to make a constructive post here or thinking they are going to be reasing a constructive post. If you have a personal problem with me sorry, but please take it up elsewhere.

Thank you

_-Menser-_


PS: This and the other related post are perfect examples of posts that I would use a no rotate feature (as i suggested before) so as not to waste space on the fron page with a post like this. So someone should put it in!