Gender ratio

[AphraelAmarantha]

Only maybe four people in game know that I'm female and out of those four only one of them is also female. I generally don't talk about my gender and I actually try to hide it. I usually get from randoms are pets or the occasional nice character comments.

On a side note, in a different game a few years ago someone tried to uhm get me to erp with them in whispers, it was quite gross. I had to immediately blacklist them. I don't take that kind of thing very well x_x. Some other random wanted to do weird things with me regarding feet in this game so I just told them I don't know anything about that and logged out on them. I don't trust people so now if people even give a hint of being weird around me I just run away in game or just log out.

[Antonio_Xul]

I'm a male who always plays male characters, but I've met many female players in game and that's that I don't socialize a lot and play a lone wolf type of way. That being said when I do meet a female player, I won't change my way of behavior because of that. I'll treat them with respect and will still throw a crude joke here and there just because that's who I am. I'm married, so I'm not looking for a girlfriend. I treat them like normal and not hit on them. What I do notice is that the female player tends to be married most of the time.

Every female I have met does play a female character. Only 1 had tried out a male catboy, but returned to female shortly.

As far as harassment goes, I do feel that that happens. I remember that when my wife 1st started in this game, she was immediately swamped with tells from joining their FCs to other stuff like they would gladly help her around in detail. She has a very female name and her PSN name that shows up when her character screen comes up is very feminine as well, so it is easy to tell that my wife was a real life female. When I create character, they are all male and I never get this reaction of bombardment of tells. Also, harassment isn't only a female only thing as when I was playing one of my male Highlander alts, I was being sexually harassed by a male Lalafell. It got uncomfortable quickly. I just logged off.

[Amariel34]

This is very off-topic, but I have to know where that gif came from in your sig, OP. I don't remember it from Advent Children. Is it from a game or something? Or was it completely fan-made? It just looks hilarious. xD

[Vidu]

Well, I'm not sure how an official SE census could show their male/female ratio - the article itself claims that its unsure how they got that 7/3 ratio. Not that I doubt that, but I'd be surprised if they had any solid numbers on that... I dont recall entering my gender somewhere?


That being said: I am female - and started out on a male character. A friend of mine had convinced me to play the game but he had also told me about people hitting on his female highlander, something that I wanted to avoid. I'd never played an online game before and I wanted to play this first one in peace, not with people hitting on me or my character. I had no intention of actively hidding my gender though and if I got comfortable around people and they'd asked, I'd tell them.
After two years and being fed up with male elezen not getting decent long hair, I switched to a female Roegadyn - for the long hair and because she pretty much looks like as if she could beat someone up who acts like a jerk.

I've never experienced outright harrassment in the game towards me because of my gender, but the random odd situation happend, sometimes leaving me more or less uncomfortable - sometimes amused...
(One of my favorite stories happend back in ARR when we had to pug a tank for our Coil-static - for T3 everyone who could would switch to tank, to just run through and the best tank-armor most of the non-main-tanks had was the stuff from Crystal Tower. My pug-co-tank made a comment about how gay that looked and that real men would never wear it. I switched to the WoL-armor aswell, informed him that I'm infact not a man at all and proceeded with the raid... while he stood there for a minute and then replied "I hate it when a girl plays almost as good as I do" Pretty sure I sucked back then, but still did better than he did...)

Most of the times I had the pleasure to run into groups who didnt even noticed - or rather: didnt care.
And seriously: Why would they? Personally I dont care about someone elses gender - if I like someone, I like a person not a gender. Both males and females can be jerks - and I had plenty of "girly" glamourtalk with guys (infact they often care more than I do). There are several females in my FC - some married, some in relationships, some playing with their partner, some without... some single, some homosexual - and I dont see why any of that really matters when it comes to playing this game together. Thats also the reason why I dont inform everyone that I'm actually female, because it shouldnt matter. It doesnt make me "special" and announcing it would remind me a bit of this vegan-meme-stereotype where vegans have to rub it into everyones face that they're vegan xD
Infact for the first two months of playing together one of my now best friends (also female) thought I was a guy and it didnt make a difference.

[Tridus]

Well, I'm not sure how an official SE census could show their male/female ratio - the article itself claims that its unsure how they got that 7/3 ratio. Not that I doubt that, but I'd be surprised if they had any solid numbers on that... I dont recall entering my gender somewhere?

I ended up checking, and there actuallly is a place for it when you create a SE account. I don't recall entering it either, but apparently I did at some point because it's listed there.

[Vidu]

I ended up checking, and there actuallly is a place for it when you create a SE account. I don't recall entering it either, but apparently I did at some point because it's listed there.

Huh, you're right! I checked aswell and I most have indeed entered that information at some point too... it just has been over 4 years since then.
Strikes me a bit weird that they were asking for it (or not, from a marketing perspective, I guess)

[RinaVrinn]

IRL female here. I started FFXIV on a male character back in Dec 2014. Met a bunch of great people (mostly males), but as soon as people found out I was a girl, I was very heavily questioned as to why I had a male character instead of a female because y'know, I was a female. Meanwhile, this was said by guys who played female characters but y'know, girls can't enjoy their male characters as much as guys like their female ones! (Which is very... hypocritical thinking) The peer pressure was real. Eventually, I did switch to a female character and played one extensively until this year. I always race-changed and glamour was always a struggle. Eventually, I decided to go back to my male character because I got a bit tired of always being targeted due to being an irl female with a 'cute' female character. People treat you very differently, in my experience, if you have a male or female character as an IRL female. I guess that's because a lot of people associate the character on the screen as the 'person' rather than their IRL gender I suppose. I've since decided to stick with my male because FFXIV is a more pleasant experience with my male character rather than female. And I also don't really correct people if they call me a 'he' since that's the most likely gender of a player, so there might be some other IRL females who do the same. I'll only correct them if it's a person from my FC. So in reality, you could've met a few more girls than you think due to them simply not correcting you.

At the end of the day it only really matters if you're interested in pursuing a more romantic relationship with someone rather than purely friendship.

[Miksu]

I don't understand why people care so much about whether someone's a man or a woman, and even further than that, think that they have a shot at getting it ''on'' with them. Coincidentally I don't spend my time playing the game trying to hit it off with some rando girl who's five countries over. And making fun of a girl playing a game is pretty lazy humor, so, nah.

All around, pretty damn weird behavior.

[Hierro]

in my FC, we're actually lacking guys. There's just so many girls who want to RP.

[Lunaxia]

7:3 is still quite low to me, though perhaps I'm just naive when it comes to MMOs. It sounds about right for the experience I've had, though.

I think it's easy to say "why does gender matter?" when you're a guy in a predominantly male subculture, but were the roles reversed, after a while you'd start to miss the company of male friends. Though a lot of players are decent about it, there's no question you get treated differently, be it through awkward jokes, uncomfortable flirting, unwanted attention (despite firmly saying you're not interested) and even not being taken seriously, and it does get very frustrating. I really understand why girls play male characters, and have often considered it myself, but it's still not easy to hide because I use VC.

I've thought before about joining more relaxed, RP-oriented servers where the population seems higher, but it seems to be concentrated on US datacentres and I'm pretty settled here now.

snip

It is actually from Advent Children!