Guy In Real Life
World of Whorecraft (read the comments for dramaz)
Sucks To Be Female (kinda serious with good comments)
Gaming Gender Wars, Revisited
(H) Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It’s A Girl on the Internets (actual post is really naive, read the comments)
When we joined a PUG to down Grandfather, the group realised that there was no /roll function, so they didn't know how to assign the loot. I jokingly said I wanted it for my companion (it was a belt with Cunning and Bounty Hunters need Aim), some people took me seriously, and someone said "he was a good healer". MrMan5.5 corrected that person and said, "You mean SHE was a good healer." I got angry at him, because I didn't want the entire operation group knowing my gender, especially when people were discussing distributing loot, but he said it doesn't really matter. (Olek ended up getting the belt though - they had to use an external random number generator to decide.)
I've even gone so far as to tell the people who know me in real life not to mention my gender, although I missed one person, who I sent a text to tell the guild leader that our power went out, and he ended up revealing it to the guild. Not that it really mattered in the end, as I have become a semi-operation leader, and need to talk a lot on Vent anyway (though nobody has called me a 13 year old boy yet, which is good!).
I was wandering around Dromund Kaas questing when the following conversation occured:
(Apologies for the size and my fail cut+paste skills)
I can't really tell if that was an actual female, or a troll. It sounds a lot like a troll, but you would think that if someone were trying to troll people in general chat by being a female, they wouldn't be so bad at it. Which is what leads me to believe that she's a female (unless that is what he wanted me to think).
Dromund Kaas is the new Barrens and you have to wonder why someone would be whoring themselves out there. It's the second zone that people hit (not counting the fleet which is a "city"), and so is full of people between levels 10 and 16. Some of them are alts, but even then, most of them are unlikely to have masses of credits, or are able to powerlevel "her" through anything.
My guess is that she moved on after nobody took the bait and tried again on another planet. I was tempted to whisper her to ask if she was really a female to find out what she was trying to get out of the whole thing, but I didn't want to get reported for harassment.
Strange as it sounds, that whole conversation gave me hope. I think MrMan5.5 is right, and that it doesn't really matter anymore if people know that you are a girl, as long as you aren't trying to cause drama. Plus, it seems the male gamer population is so jaded and suspicious anyway, that even if you did say that you're a girl, they'll probably think you must be 30-year-old, male basement dweller with no life, multiplied by a factor of 10 for every piece of Rakata gear you have.
I think Diver really hit on something though, and I have to admit, part of the reason (I mean in the past, when I was still single) I don't want to chat up male players to get stuff is because it would give them the impression that I looked like this:
When the reality was more like this:
(Not that the stereotype is true, I know a lot of female gamers of various sizes.)
I thought what if one of them was "the one" and I had led them to believe something that wasn't true. Then if they ever met me, they would be super disappointed and that would overshadow everything that had happened between us. Though I get the feeling Jaqx wasn't looking for "the one" in General chat - unless that is her method of searching, to which all I can say is good luck to her. =/
