I’ve had a variety of reactions when people hear me speak on Ventrilo. Most people will quickly start to refer to me as “she” instead of “he”. Not all the guys I meet care one way or another, in fact there are quite a few happy couples playing WoW. But it’s always funny to see how a new group will react. I was the only girl on Vent during one raid, and all the guys there were under the impression I was self-conscious. Ok, I am a little bit, however they clearly treated me differently. And it isn’t as though I was trying for that either. It was all a misunderstanding.  And it isn’t as though they shouldn’t have been nice to me. It’s that they were calling other people out, making fun, and generally being mean-spirited to everyone. Then making every effort to NOT treat me that way. If I made a mistake, it was mentioned in a roundabout manner without naming me. In short, they were treating me with the respect they SHOULD have given everyone else. The raid leaders in particular. The leadership often sets the tone, and so it was there. I won’t involve myself with that group again.

I also join many raids where the topic of discussion is wide open and varies into subjects of varying depths of bizarre. The raid leaders tolerate or outright encourage the topics. One night before entering the instance the raid was discussing boobs, for them a pretty mild topic. Someone called for a ready check and said “hit yes if you like boobs”. That truly happened and has become a running joke, along with many other absurd “ready checks”. There’s the “hit no if you’re in vent” ready check. There’s the “I don’t know why I did a ready check” ready check. And the ever popular “Hit yes to kick the raid leader out of raid” ready check. Our raid leaders really are, after all, quite incorrigible.

These raids are about having fun, though we do get serious and focused from time to time. Often times the colorful content of the chat, and my responses, encourage the guys to flirt. Usually playful teasing, which is all fine and well for me. The boob check ended with me staving off several requests for pics, the one rare moment where I started to get a bit annoyed with it. Teasing is all fun and everything afterall – but I have no intention of encouraging any of the guys TOO much. It is interesting to be that rare.. single female gamer that speaks. I have heard some girls say they stopped speaking in Vent because of too much flirting. I don’t think I could do that. I am WAY too outspoken.

~ by lily on September 14, 2009.

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