I pretty much agree with Cammera. it's really all about leadership roles and being able to manage people in your group.

Although it does get pretty sad if the said Leadership is sorta biased just simply because the harassing party happens to be good friends of theirs, which have happened. Then the leaders is pretty much stuck between two hard places. on one hand, they don't want to tolerate harassment of female players but at the same time they also don't want to **** off the guys who they became such good friends with. I've seen it happen before.

Guys tend to have this group mentality, and so they will tend to side with other guys, even if they don't always agree 100% with what is happening.

They tend to think: "Well, most of the time they seem to be decent guys to me. I just can't imagine them being actual creeps who sees women as nothing but objects. After all, I've never seen that side of them. I just kind of want to think that maybe those women are blowing it out of portion. plus, I don't want to lose those guys as friends... so I'll side with them."

Because after all, those harassers are not a**holes 24/7, and they tend to have two sides to them... the side that they show to other male players.. .and the super-sexist side they show to females.

doesn't excuse the complicity they show regarding this topic, but it does explain a lot of why many guys tend to remain silent while their fellow gamers continuously harass the females.

people sit behind their computer screens and become keyboard warriors, they can do what they like when they like and never meet the real person on the other end. that means harassing women in game disgusting filthy messages filled with sexual innuendo.

the problem is not that nerds struggle to see women or girls as more then sex objects and such because there are women who are really good at beating their male compatriats. i just think your smacking the wrong bush when you should realize that there tends to be a minority of rotten people who like to use any excuse to get an advantage, including harassment and being behind a keyboard and screen as a coward, there are no consequences to this act.

I don't know what you guys are talkin `bout, but I saw there were womens posting in here. Someone make me a sammich!! :p

Star Trek fans in the 1960s are not the same nerd culture as WoW players in 2012. Nerd culture isn't really that kind of consistent demographic.

Women in Refrigerators is a great place to start to really get an idea of misogyny in pop culture.



It's pretty sad the state that sexism is in today. I feel like our overall culture's regressed a lot.

*hands hort_wort a sandwich in the spirit of equality*

I am not that pessimistic. I think we're just so much more concious to sexism that we notice all the places where it's still around. It's a shame it's still there and seeing how we all (including myself) may be contributing to it even more so.

We geeks and nerds like to think of ourselves as something better, but that's probably something every self-selected group says about itself, and it's wrong in all cases.

I see what you're saying. I guess I'm just reacting to this topic in light of recent news events (ala the Rush Limbaugh thing) and just thinking about how overall that's really depressing you know? But I really don't want this thread to veer into that aspect of the topic.

Yet TOS was nothing but sexism which then made sexism a reoccuring theme in Star Trek haha.

While it's true that there has almost always been a "sexy" side to Star Trek, you have to remember what era it started in. Back in the '60s it was nothing for women to wear short skirts like they did on Star Trek. Just about every other show from that time period also had women wearing them. That was the style back then and that was what the Great Bird of the Galaxy went with.

As Star Trek moved along with TNG and DS9, it starting a move towards a more military look. Some have pointed out that Troi wore lowcut uniforms but she varied her's up now and then and towards the end of the series she always (mostly) wore the standard uni.

The thing I liked about Star Trek is that it doesn't make you feel that the women were being 'leered' at. They had jobs to do and they did them well. Although Kirk did seem to be a 'womanizer', he never felt that they were beneath him or else why would he have a female 4th in command?

^ also remember in the pilot 'The Cage", Captain Pike had a Female First Officer. One that was confident and strong willed, i don't know if it was CBS or some other party who made the change but also the rest of the crew were wearing standard uniforms. it was only later that they decided to sex it up.

Is there sexism in this game? Ok, let me ask you this...

Change your uniform to the unzipped variant. Compare the guy costume to the girl costume. How come the guy isn't showing bare skin around his neck? What's that turtleneck thing he's wearing?

You know what, maybe it's just one thing. I need a drink. Lets go down to Drozana and have a Nerve Tonic. Nice... isn't it? Makes you want to dance. What's this? Your guy character is only doing a standard off the Emote stock dance while your Orion Slave Girl is doing the bum swirl? Why can't your guy do a bum swirl? Oh yeah... it'd look ridiculous on a guy... maybe a Chippendale dance? No?

So you can't get your sexy groove on like the ladies. That's ok. Lets hit the beach. I see that Orion Slave Girls can wear bikini's. Surely we guys have ways to show off some skin.... we don't? And only the Orion males can show off their six pack/gorilla chest/beer gut/etc?

Hmph... this game's sexist alright. *L*

So yeah, it's sexist. STO is sexist in its own way. It's made to appeal to male gamers, whom are frankly quite sexist. I totally agree that this demographic, and geeks in general, are a real sexist bunch that make even the most hairy chested jock stereotype look very enlightened.

Sexist behavior among geeks in general should be made aware and perhaps curbed. Not saying you're not allowed to enjoy a bum swirl or an Orion in a metal bikini. We like these things! Physical beauty is a good thing and should be appreciated. Just... don't make women feel uncomfortable by being a creep about it.

And know where to draw the line. An occasional flirt is fun. Going overboard is creepy as hell. Letting it lead to more destructive tendencies are a warning sign that must be dealt with.

Personally, I don't worry too much about guys staring at sexy women. I even say they should be complimented, providing it's not tasteless and that you don't expect anything out of them (they're not our chattal after all).

I think sexism in gamer culture gets really sick and really destructive when you subject your female characters through the most sick, violent and unmentionable acts... just to get some edginess, or something for the backstory, to get a reaction out of the audience, or just to give the female character an excuse to act nuts/angry/violent themselves, etc. That's the sexism that gets me disgusted. Staring at an Orion in a bikini... so what? Stuffing a woman in a fridge is the ultimate form of sexism. It's truly shocking.

Luckily, I pondered this as a writer whenever I wanted to add tragedy to a character's life, and I came up with a solution.

'Would I do this to my main male character'?

For the rest of you... ponder this before you decide to have your edgy female character go through unspeakable acts of domination and violence.

"Would you have Superman go through it?"

Of course not. He's Superman. Nobody would beat him within an inch of his life, have unspeakable acts done to him, and then stuff his body in a fridge. That would be wrong.

So I say to you this... if it's wrong for Superman... what makes it right to do it to a female character of yours?

The same can apply to this game. The girls get bikinis. Why can't the guys have speedos? Why does the girl have the option to leave her turtleneck at home and the guy doesn't? Why can't he have a sexy dance? So in MMO's in general, I'd still stick to that rule, and encourage any game programmer to follow it. 'Would I do the same to a guy?'. If you don't the guts to make it truly equal, then don't do it.

So either don't be afraid to subject your male characters through the same nonsense... or don't do it at all. When you make characters, you can't afford to have sacred cows. In RPing with many players on the net, I see this so often that I roll my eyes and just wonder why we geeks are so ahead of the curve on everything else BUT gender relations.