Being Gendered Correctly

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

In a game that's still more heavily populated by male players, calling an unknown person "he" is more often than not going to be a correct assumption. Please don't take it as anything hurtful

I'm a male playing as a female character. I strongly believe in making my real life gender clear. I want to receive help for quests because people genuinely want to help, not because some sicko might think he'll have a chance if he keeps lavishing me with attention.

[Grifstar]

I always call people by people by their character's gender unless they state otherwise or I know them personally. That way even if I am wrong it's still at least somewhat correct going by an avatar perceptive. As mentioned above there is plenty of other ways to assume (in my case it's female characters wearing only coliseum that I assume are always male), but there's still never really knowing.

But yeah, girl gamer too. I've been called a guy plenty of times. It's never really bothered me that much, although at the same time it does get a little annoying and/or depressing that that's usually the first idea that comes up (unless I am playing one of my guy alts at the time, then whatever). Correcting is kinda a little pointless too when odds are I'm never ever going to run into the same people on DF again.

[Fensfield]

People calling female characters 'he' gets up my nose and all -.-

And stuff the assumed fact that the likelihood is the player on the other side of the character's a boy. Calling them 'he' is still rude and stupid. The entity you're interacting with has chosen to appear female. Unless they start doing things invoke the real world that's all should matter and making assumptions on their player's 'real' gender is in a similar vein declaring, "Hey! Hey guess what! It's not real." at random, regular intervals.

It's even worse when people do it on the forums, seeing as here you don't even have the excuse of being unable to review and/or edit your message for reflex errors. .. Although reflexively addressing what appears to be female as male is already pretty weird, in my book >.>

[Keikun]

I would say 90% of the female chars on ANY online game are actually guys, there's a thread about why we choose female over male chars btw.
Also, whats the problem? Im a guy and whenever they call me a she in a party im like whatever, there's no need to "hey wait a sec, im a guy!" I dont see any problem here unless you want free items.

[Massterchef]

People can find anything to complain about.

[Kimmy_Dee]

It's inconsequential to enjoying the game for you. It is not for me. People assuming I'm a guy is something I already have to worry about in the real world, I don't need it in the video game as well, and every time I get called 'he' despite all my attempts to present as female without drawing attention to myself, it's a reminder of all the fear and bullshit I have to deal with in the real world. I dunno about you, but being constantly reminded of shitty real world stuff does not make for an enjoyable gaming experience for me.

[Spot]

Your feelings are your responsibility. Not the entirety of the gaming community.

[Fensfield]

It's inconsequential to enjoying the game for you. It is not for me. ... I dunno about you, but being constantly reminded of shitty real world stuff does not make for an enjoyable gaming experience for me.

Aaand exactly.

I'm not sure at what point it happened but somewhere along the line people seem to have just forgotten that it's fundamentally rude to rub the real world in people's online experience's without permission (however good or bad 'RL' may be) - at the very least in any format that includes the term Role-Playing.

I don't care if you (obviously not addressing Kimmy) find these things inconsequential, it's fairly near empirical that invoking the real world without permission compromises the worth of the experience for other people. In some cases a little, in some cases a lot, but either way it's certainly not contributing anything positive. Assuming that it doesn't or simply not caring is, in my opinion, unarguably rude, and I think everyone would be enjoying matters a lot more if the prevailing atmosphere were that you don't do things to compromise the potential depth of the experience for other people, even if you don't yourself care to 'get into it'.

I mean for me, personally? It's about equivalent to going to a reading or lecture only to have the jerk in the next seat yawn theatrically at every other pronoun.

[Mcshiggs]

It's inconsequential to enjoying the game for you. It is not for me. People assuming I'm a guy is something I already have to worry about in the real world, I don't need it in the video game as well, and every time I get called 'he' despite all my attempts to present as female without drawing attention to myself, it's a reminder of all the fear and bullshit I have to deal with in the real world. I dunno about you, but being constantly reminded of shitty real world stuff does not make for an enjoyable gaming experience for me.

This is you bringing your hangups into the game. If people wanted to harm you or cause you emotional trauma, I am sure they would come up with more than calling you "he" when male pronouns have been used as gender neutral in the English language for a long time. All men are created equal, Age of man, One giant leap for mankind.

Part of an online game is online interactions, if it's not enjoyable for you there are options. You could find a group of like minded people, there is a pretty big post on LGBT friendly linkshells and free companies. You could ignore this kind of stuff, since people aren't being malicious when they do, but I doubt you will pick this one since because of this thread. Another option is to stop playing, not saying you should, but if it bothers you this much, then why put yourself through it, I learned early on that fire is hot, so I don't stick my hand in fire then complain that it burns. I understand that you may want to change the world, but understand that I'm not going to treat you special just because you are a trans woman, you don't like being treated differently in the real world, so why do you want me to treat you differently in game, wouldn't that just remind you of all that fear and stuff you have to deal with in the real world?

I'm not saying for it to be "policy". I'm asking those that I can to stop assuming everyone is a guy. It's a pretty simple request and all I see are excuses for people who don't want to change their behavior.

This is the thing, many people aren't assuming you are male, he can be and quite often is used as a generic. So maybe the problem is you are assuming that others are assuming you are a guy, and if you want others to change their behavior, then I should be able to ask you to change yours and stop assuming you know what I am assuming, and you should be fine with that.

[Massterchef]

People assuming I'm a guy is something I already have to worry about in the real world, I don't need it in the video game as well

Difference being, in the real world people have a clear view of the person behind the monitor. However in an MMO no one can accurately know your gender based on name/gender of character, and they shouldn't be expected to know. My character name is female,character gender is female, and guess what? I'm a guy.