He For She

If you are looking for the UN women campaign, you can find that here, I just thought the title was apt, given the subject I am writing about.

I often get referred to as "he" or "him" in games, mostly because a large majority of people who play Dota 2 are males, and it just seems easier to naturally assume the other people on your team are probably male. If you look at the results of the demographic survey from /r/Dota2, Looking at the first image, 95.8% of respondents identify as male, versus 3% who identify as female. With stats like those, I can't really blame people for responding the way that they do.

There are some funny side benefits to be assumed to be male by default. Last night, redbeanpork (male) and I went to play Dota 2. None of our other friends were online, so we just queued for a game and got one fairly quickly. 5 minutes into our game, a couple of the NZ crew joined our Mumble channel:

Me: Sorry guys, we just joined a game!
C: Oh, I see how it is!
<O joins the channel>
O: So are we gonna play some Dota, boys?!
C: No, redbeanpork and Fodder are having gay sex.

O: Er.... so which one of them is not the gender that they actually are?

All of the typical gay insults just fly on by:

Angry Gamer: Won't don't you go and suck some cock instead of sucking at this game?
Me: Porque no los dos?

Note: I don't actually like that insinuating that someone is gay (or that you slept with their mother) seems to be the go-to insult for online gaming, but I don't think getting all riled up about it is the answer. Similar to how people often tell children to ignore bullies, or act like they are unphased by what they are doing, this is my approach to online idiots. I'd love to hear how others approach it.

To be honest, sometimes I would prefer to just be referred to as a "he". In our developer team meetings, it's always, "The boys... and Anna." I know that they are just being specific, because it seems a common character trait among developers is the need to be correct, so it's not a huge bug bear or anything. Again, I feel like I can never really say anything, because if I do, I might be setting feminism back a few decades. "Hurr durr, all women like to be assumed to be male - see this blog post?!" Urgh, please don't link this post as an example, I am just stating my specific preference, and not the preference of every woman in the world. Also, it's not that I always want to be referred to as a male, I just don't feel the need to be singled out when I am the only female in a group of males. I'm fine with everyone just saying "the boys". Again, this is my personal preference.

Overall, I am really not that fussed either way, I don't even know why I wrote about this, but I am almost at 100 posts, and I think I'm starting to get all writed out.