Girl gamers sexism row: Top e-sports federation finds reverse gear The International E-Sports Federation (IESF), an organisation that promotes computer games as sport and organises tournaments around the world, has decided it will no longer operate separate contests for men and women. Instead, the outfit has abolished its male division in favour of an “Open for All” division and a “Female” …
> How do you increase diversity by removing one gender?
The same way as in physical sport. What if there were a difference between men and women? Heresy I know, but for example, what if men focus on one thing better and women multi-task better? I don't know if thats true or not, but I couldn't juggle all the tasks my wife does and she has little interest in dealing with tech. That seems to be common. If the games are produced by men (for historical reasons) and aimed at what men do best, it is possible that women wouldn't be represented at all at the top flight of an open-only arena.
Remember, this is an commercial event. Why make money only on one event, when you can make money on two?
So there is an open competition for both genders, then and exclusive one for only women? Assuming I understand this right from watching how similar exclusions are opposed are the men supposed to put together a woman hating group which is extremely vocal about woman hating but all the while claim to be fighting for equality. Get onto various talk shows and rant in ways that you would generally not be allowed to but by coming across as an oppressed minority be permitted to say almost anything. Then after protests online and in the real world for the minority of vocal idiots who claim to represent the rest the men could force a change of the rules to be more equal. As in this case by having the other genders competition cancelled while having an exclusive one all to ourselves.
Does the IESF actually think this is equality or have they had a lobotomy?
For anybody following esports, at this moment in time as an example, there is a girl from Canada -nick- Scarlett playing Startcraft 2 (one of the best paid players in the world right now). She basically destroyed everybody in the last tournament (most of them, mainly korean as it is their national sport).
So ..it can be done :-)
This just doesn't make any sense, they have a group for males and females and then a female only group but harp on about how girls don't play in these tournaments??? I assume that this is just a way around having a males only group, surprise, surprise none of the ladies ever qualify for the mixed. Aaah maybe next year...
Either one of two things are happening here,
1) Girls suck at COD so there is no point of a mixed tournament as they will never make it through but nobody is willing to admit it, I find his VERY hard to accept.
2) Girls are WAY better than boys at COD and have much faster reflex times etc, everyone on the IESF is worried there man hood might come into question so therefore, no girls!
I think everyone at the IESF needs to be sacked and put on some sort of reality course where they can hopefully drill into their heads that girls don't all stay at home baking cakes!
A day early maybe but it doesn't seem to make too much difference to the tone of the comments. Why is it that whenever there is a Reg article about anything that even touches on an attempt being made to provide female-friendly environments there is a huge outpouring of aggressive vitriol?
Rosie
Well OK, do you perceive a need for a male-friendly environment? If so, why not create one yourself.
I think (though I will admit that I haven't looked into the really looked into it - I am not a gamer) that the organisers felt there was a need to create a female-friendly environment for $reasons so they did. If the atmosphere at the competitions was anything like the one on this comment thread then I can understand why they may have felt there was a need.
Rather than discounting the $reasons, attacking the organisers and creating a more hostile environment would it not be more productive to understand the $reasons and seeing if anything can be done to address them?
Rosie
I think the issue is people often confuse Equality to treating everybody the same - this isn't what equality is about. It is about treating people in such a way that the outcome for each person can be the same. Just now in business and in gaming woman are massively underrepresented. This isn't because women aren't capable of being CEO's or world class gamers. Positive action even though it sounds terribly unequal is attempting to rebalance environments. Eventually it won't be needed but until threads like these (often littered with misogyny / racism / homophobia) no longer happen then work will need to be done to tackle the divide
It has been proven again and again that men and women behave diffentently in same-sex and mixed environments. Often it's the men who are slower to adjust
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
