Pvt Lee Lemon, reporting for duty.
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âIt isnât clear why exactly there is this imbalance in a non-physical competitionâ
Exactly. But as rational adults we KNOW it isnât just because they have vaginas. Yet thatâs the sole determining factor in creating these separate competitions.
Youâre artificially skewing the data by first separating the sexes and then looking at the aggregate results of each group. What if we separated players by hair color and then found that players with black hair were, on the whole, superior competitors. Would anyone suggest creating separate tournaments for lighter haired competitors to make for more balanced matches?
It seems to me that the existing rankings in a non-physical sport/competition like chess or video games already handle the problem of balanced matches. The worst players donât have to face the top-ranked players. And Judit Polgar presumably doesnât have to compete against low ranking players, be they male or female. Using arbitrary categories like sex or hair color are unnecessary.
Pop quiz: In the world of competitive synchronized swimming, what percentage of competitors are male? ⌠anyone? Follow up question: Do you care? At the end of the day Iâm not that interested in how many women play chess or video games and how they rank. Creating segregated competitions is like solving a problem that doesnât really exist. Make the competitions open to all and then let the best players rise to the top.
Even then. I have friends who would come up male on a DNA test who are female (Not sure what their genitals look like because it turns out itâs none of my business). Iâm not sure if you are aware that the supposed first same-sex wedding in the US was in Texas because their stupid laws about trans women (sheâs legally a man!) trumped their stupid laws about marriage (no lesbians allowed!).
There was a good discussion of this point on the last post about a Sarkeesian video (though itâs a real slog to find it). Sure, you can shoot lots of people in these games, but it isnât as if the world is without rules, and those rules create a certain environment.
For example, are you allowed to shoot the gun shop owner and take all the guns? Maybe you can in some, but the ones Iâve seen you have to pay for the guns because the accumulation of money is a game mechanic and they didnât want you to circumvent it. But when you pay money to a sex worker for a health refill you can use violence to recoup your costs. Thatâs a decision on the part of the designers to let you abuse sex workers in a way that you canât abuse a guy who sells t-shirts.
I donât think these games are the pinnacle of sexism in our culture, but it isnât simply a matter of âyou can do whatever you want so of course you can be sexist.â No game is actually totally freeform. Instead there are options for abusing women in a sexual context that are not there for abusing men and women in some other contexts (that gun store owner might be a woman, I donât know). (And of course, there are no men you can buy sex from)
I hope none of this comes across as aggressive. I just want to point out that there really is deeply embedded sexism in addition to the blatant, unrepentant sexism.
In [Crime Simulator][1] you can kill Johns but not the sushi waiter.
[1]: https://4651d046bfd282672c6abdea59b53cf20b7cb2fd-www.googledrive.com/host/0B-OuwNlJcAtPN1V4WUNfVW1JbFU/cs.html
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Since nobodyâs really said it yet:
Supposedly itâs an international gaming tournament
And itâs only open to Finnish males.
I meanâŚWTF
What is this, the Finnish World Series?
Maybe thatâs why theyâre segregating; fear that no man can win. 
The event highlighted was the Finnish qualifier. The winners of this go on to the international finals, but it is the organiser of the finals who set the categories.
This is nothing new, Chess is still gender specific. Iâm sure, however, that if a computer can challenge the champion, a human woman would be permitted, so why isnât there anyone that can compete?
But even in that case there arenât any reasonable people complaining about the world chess championship being a coed tournament. If a woman is good enough, she can still earn a shot at proving herself the best overall chess player in the world.
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Chess has a seperate women-only tournament, but the âmainâ tournament is mixed, hence female Grandmaster Susan Polgar
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Thereâs an update.
And just as I expected, âthe IESF tournaments will have an âopen for allâ category, which were previously the men-only events for Hearthstone, Dota 2, and Ultra Street Fighter IV. The IESF tournaments also had women-only events for StarCraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 â those will remain as they are.â
Will the outrage about the discrimination continue about the womenâs only tournaments? Somehow I doubt it. Remind me again why itâs acceptable to have a womenâs only esports tournament, but a menâs only one is discrimination?
Well for a start, there are now no categories of games which one arbitrary group of people can enter and the others canât. Taken from the horseâs mouth, All players can now play in the competitions for each of the games on offer.
Added to this, as others in this thread have pointed out but you seem to have ignored, having some womenâs only tourneys promotes gaming to women in a way they may never have thought about before. the people running this consider there to be a lack of women in pro gaming and feel that by having a competition highlighting women players, they can perhaps encourage more women to take up the sport. Perhaps they have sponsorship agreements in place saying that they must encourage more women to play or some such, I donât know.
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If a tournament organizer decided to run a main tournament that anyone could compete in with a big cash prize and a smaller, side âmen onlyâ tournament with worse prizes and coverage I would be tempted to defend that against claims of sexism based on the parallel youâve constructed.
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No, I wasnât aware. Frankly Iâd be amused if I wasnât already horrified.
Hanlonâs razor serves us well here. It looks like the original chain of stupid decisions was âeSports need to be recognized as sports like an othersâ > âinternational sport require that the sexes be separatedâ > âif international eSports are to be considered international sports abiding by all the conventions of such sports, then the IeSF is required to separate the sexesâ. As with many bad decisions, the reasoning is sound. Itâs the original premise thatâs out of touch with reality.
Imagine the jeering and teasing if the muscle-bound barbarian avatar of a top-tier game-jock got beaten by a girl.
Granted, that girlâs avatar is an Amazonian killing machine, but stillâŚ
Itâs a kind of sloppy comparison, but here goes:
Athletes with physical disabilities (i.e. Oscar Pistorius) can compete in the Olympic Games, but athletes without physical disabilities canât compete in the Paralympic Games. Does this discriminate against able-bodied people?
Obviously being a woman isnât the same as having a disability but it does carry certain social disadvantages that men donât have to deal with, especially in the video gaming community. Thatâs what makes a âwomenâs onlyâ side tournament somewhat different than a âmenâs onlyâ side tournament.
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Maybe male gamers should show up in drag as a protest.
The statement they made was a bit confusing. They said:
The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were.
When I saw just that part, it sounded like that meant there was going to be a female-only Tekken Tag Tournament 2 competition since that game was initially female-only. Thankfully they do include this soon after:
TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2
- Players of all genders can participate in the event.
If they had actually left Tekken as a female-only tournament, people should have been just as angry about it.
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This is only part of the reason my avatar is a mod girl.
Hereâs the part I donât understandâŚ
why Tekken??
