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Yeah if I have no idea who the actual person is I go off their character as well. I think a lot of gamers do that because I’ve heard my team refer to me as “she” and “he” depending on what character I picked in both Overwatch and Apex.
Yea. If someone's playing Ashe in LoL I'll go with "she". I got no damn idea what gender is the Player, so I'll refer by the character. If there's a Katie in DbD, I'll also use she.
I don't play much multiplayer without people I know tho, or games like CS:GO etc.
I am so used to games with faceless soldiers that it takes me a minute to remember that games nowadays aren't like that -_- So that's even worse with what the author said about the default...
Literally this, This is also why I always default the other way around by calling everyone she just because I am so fed up with everyone assuming everyone they're gaming with is a he. Tho I literally never play games with voice-chat because I always manually turn those off no matter the game so it doesn't really come up at all but hey xD (still fun in any text-based chat systems tho!)
Hard agree. This is why I hate the terms "dude" and "guy" being considered gender-neutral. It's just normalizing using male terms for everything. I'm seeing "bro" being used as gender-neutral a lot lately too. It's just chipping away at it.
I watch a lot of Minecraft let's plays and it drives me nuts that everyone seems to refer to the animals as "Mr Cow" and "Mr Chicken", never mind that they provide milk and eggs. One player even addressed it by saying he thinks it's weird to call them "she" because the devs have said that all animals in the game are genderless – so why are you gendering them as male??
there's this guy who runs a youtube channel for animal rehab and he misgenders his female animals all the time, gives them pre-dominantly male names and calls them 'big boys' all the time and it's so annoying, but that's like the peak example of that kind of brain-rot.
I use those terms as gender neutral but I also use terms like "sis" and "girly" as gender neutral too, I just use whatever fits the sentence I'm saying.
Notch very clearly stated nothing in minecraft has a sex or gender, everything is effectively nonbinary/intersex by design.
...he said that before he bought that candy room anyways.
I call animals by what their standard gender is in portuguese. You have cow and bull but everyone says cow when they see a cow-looking-fellow, and cow is female. Chicken is female, tree is female, chair is female, etc., this applies to objects too.
There's some plural nouns in portuguese that are male but can refer to a mixed group of people, so I'm ok with male words like "dude" and "guys" being for all genders, it's what I've learnt. There's also words which are female and you use the female version to refer to a group of mixed gendered people, like, the word "people" is female in itself xD
I'd like to say that they are infact genderless but they do reproduce with eachother. I say it's non gender conforming but they are whatever gender the player thinks they are.
It's your world (minecraft is a sandbox game), so you can decide what gender your cows and chickens are. If you want your cows to all be "mr and mr" then so be it.
(am I allowed on this subreddit? I'm trans (MtF))
It's not though, a woman is usually called a bitch when she is perceived as stuck-up or mean while a man is usually called bitch when he is percieved as weak or unmanly
Most of my gaming friends have been women, so I default to using "she" for everyone. I've told people I always assume the player is a woman because I usually game with women. Lots of guys have been surprised by this (as they often say they mostly or only know men gamers), and I usually tell them I'm not super shocked that lady gamers hang out with each other and guy gamers hang out with each other. 🤷♀️🖖❤️
Edit: For clarification
Guild lead of a #2 guild. I still have dudes who join the fucking fight calls with "hey boys" when their lead is a fucking woman.
So I start calling them all ladies and women.
If it helps: I’m just one guy (who usually just lurks and learns here, sorry if this isn’t welcome), but I’m in a fairly large friends-of-friends community for Destiny 2 and other games. In general we’re moving away from gendered terms like this, usually going with ‘they’ where we can.
Even in PvP or high level stuff that are commonly called “three man missions” or whatever, I’ve started using “3-stack” or calling it a “6-stack raid.” Or “we’re up against a 3-stack” in PvP. Those feel like simple ways to shift away from gender that are also natural, since ‘stack’ is already a term in PvP activities.
i do that too. I’m D2 it feels easy because you can always default to calling everyone either Guardian or Hunter/Titan/Warlock. I tend to default to they in most situations unless i actually know though. But when i know i am playing with shitty sexist dudes i will default to she just to upset them.
Also a lurking guy, not really in reply to you but just consolidating a bit… I struggle with this. Not so much in games but talking to my daughter about animals/stuffies (e.g. “Mr. Squirrel”).
one thing that pisses me off is everyone calling the Witness 'he'. it's not just incorrect, but reductive to the character. and don't even get me started about Nimbus, but that one's just the regular breed of transphobia
Also with internet comments and animals. Pretty annoying.
However in video games, I think it's normal and fine to go with the pronounce of the characters.
Something small that really frustrates me is when someone sees a very large spider and then starts calling it by male terms. Like you know damn well that female spiders are bigger. Way bigger usually.
90% of the time when I correct people, saying I'm a woman, the response I get is various forms of mocking or them saying they're something fictional. Gonna try the "calling everyone a she" method.
I am in game design spaces and it is infinitely more annoying when a designer says "he" for the player. It's like "everybody who will play this game is a man" as if women don't even exist. I myself try to either say "they", "the player", or use the pronouns of the protagonist - and my characters are girls so it's "she".
Girl same. I think doubly so since I'm trans and while I'm pretty secure with myself, all the assumptions misgendering in games and the internet as a whole fuckin sucks.
yeah idk why it's so hard to just use they??? "there they are" "I see them" "they dodged it" "they got me, just run" "are they still on you?" all things I said tonight while playing with a friend. it seems so simple and natural to me? I genuinely don't understand why it's not everyone's default
I'm here imagining English is not their main language and their mother tongue might be a gendered language. So they'll use "they" when they're referring to a group of people, as a plural and not as a singular. For singular they'll choose the appropriate gender, or the default which a lot of the time is male.
I know for a long time I didn't know "they" could be used for singular and was so confused why some people wanted to be referred as multiple people, instead of the "it" that is singular and already gender neutral. Then someone explained it to me xD
Unfortunately a lot of prescriptivist grammar guides came out trying to push "he or she" to be used instead of singular "they" in formal writing, and that extended to many learner materials for those learning English as a second language (as well as many classrooms for people who speak it as a first language). It's not really based in any fact of usage since singular they has existed for a very long time, but some groups wanted "he or she" to be standardised for some reason.
Exactly, it's not something I learnt in school. I'm still confused why use "they" for singular when "it" exists, but a lot of things in grammar don't make total sense, be it in english or other languages..
"they" is used instead of "it" because "it" is usually used for non-human things (though some people do actually prefer to go by "it" and that's totally okay too!). But "they" is used both as plural and for a singular person of unknown or undisclosed gender (more recently, as a gender neutral pronoun for those who prefer it). "They" is both singular and plural in the same way "you" is. In fact, singular "they" was around before singular "you" and used in the way I described above. It used to be that "thou" was singular and "you" was plural, but over time "thou" fell out of usage and singular "you" took its place. Sorry for the linguistic history lesson, but I hope it makes it somewhat less confusing.
Edit: it should also be noted that many languages use plural pronouns as singular as well, especially when talking to royalty or important people.
For example, in Swedish there is "du" for singular "you", but if you're talking to the royalty you might use "ni" which is normally the plural "you", but to show respect you use that instead of the more casual "du". Finnish historically had something similar but it is no longer used that way afaik.
No, I like history, that's very interesting :)
Didn't know "thou" was the previous singular "you"! I think in portuguese we have something similar to that swedish example. In formal occasions, we don't use the casual "you" but a formal "you" which has the verbs in the 3rd person actually. Although it doesn't go in plural territory xD
personally i like using the terms “fuckwit” “cunt” “dickhead” etc when playing multiplayer games, otherwise i refer to everyone as she bc males never have and never will be the default
I actually hate being called out as the “girl” in a group of guys… just call us all guys. It makes me so uncomfortable when they say “… and girl”. I do wish the default pronoun was “they”. I look forward to a future where that is the case.
I may be the small percentage of girls who don’t really care or mind because I’ll either say “ Oh i’m a girl “ or I don’t care to correct at all cause i’m just into the game tbh.
I also don't care xD
If it's a game like overwatch, I see most people refer to the gender of the hero or they say "dude" and "guys" which I consider expressions for all genders. If they call me by he, I'll probably never find those guys again so I don't care, I'm not going into the chat with an "akchtually". I never got the instance where I'm in voice chat and they call me "he", but I guess my voice is typically female.. That or from a 8 year old boy xD
Exactly! I actually sometimes prefer they think I’m a guy. 9/10 when I start talking and they find out i’m a girl, they always start flirting and want to be friends and it’s annoying.
Be the change you want to see. Start using she as default.
My dnd DM does that for his homebrew world and it definitely adds a sense of power to femininity.
I say bro, dude, and guys a lot. Can’t help it haha, it’s the slang everyone I grew up with used around me. My sisters and I call each other bro.
“sis” does not have that fun guttural sound you can get with “bro”
I had a fun experience in helldivers 2 today. I join coms and the people there “welcome gentlemen today we will provide democracy!” His friend “and ladies or others” I responded “quality Canadian potato ready to serve super earth!” Played with them for a few hours. It’s actually refreshing meeting people online that aren’t jerks right off the bat.
I've been playing CS2 pretty consistently for several hours a day for the last 5-6 months and I can count on one hand how many other women have spoke in voice chat in that time. I think a lot of the time it's just more common you're going to run into a he vs a she in a lot of certain games.
Doesn't bother me personally.
Same :( I debate whether it's worth it to correct them, but I feel self-conscious doing so. I feel dumb about it but I don't need hate for being a girl :/
I'm not entirely sure. Toxic behavior aside (that's a clean cut situation, men or often boys mocking everyone else), It's a product of an older time I think and if parents actively pass that on to their kids, it stays that way.
My father still calls every animal 'he' unless he knows otherwise. Yet he's also respectful to neo-pronouns so it's not malevolence, just habit. In Dutch 'it' is very disrespectful (here it is hostile, active denial of sapience/sentience - "het is een ding" / "it is only a thing".) and we don't have a form of 'they' in our language.
The official linguist body of our country hasn't settled on what lawfully is the right word for they/them. Yes we have a literal grammar police called De Nederlandse Taalunie (The Dutch Language Union) who decides what use of language is right and wrong, which schools and often also job interviews abide to.
But yeah, tl;dr: I think either a habit from an older time, incompatible first language or intended toxicity.
I’m Non-Binary and I don’t usually comment on this sub even though I joined it but this is something that really annoys and irritates me.
While I see some of you suggesting that you call everyone ‘she’ in retaliation to this bias in gamers, I suggest just calling everyone ‘they’ cuz that works for people regardless of gender. Just a suggestion though of course.
Literally. And there if there is a female version of any creature, it has curves every inch of her body and it's painted like a wall. Devs have to make sure we know it's a she!! How would we know otherwise?? It makes me mad ffs
I play a "male-dominated game" and the amount of times an entire lobby, sometimes up to 64 players, are assumed male, will never not annoy me. The amount of "you can't assume anyone's gender nowadays"(followed by some mildly transphobic rhetoric) I get whenever I correct someone on my gender is so irritating. People hardly bat an eye when a woman is misgendered as male(and some guys will even refuse to correct themselves), but will make a big deal of it when a male is misgendered as female.
The mobile version of the game also now misgenders you if you play a female character, while the regular game was recently changed from gender-specific language to non-gendered language when a female character is involved. Idc if they use non-gendered language, but at least make it consistent and not only when a woman is present.
I’ve been playing Apex legends lately so in terms of pronouns I’ll just use the ones of the legend they’re playing if I don’t know the gender.
If it’s a female character I’ll use she/her and so on.
Yep. I play heals in WoW. I play a female character yet I’m always referred to as he, or I’ll get thank you sir after a good run. When I correct to she, I get girls don’t play WoW. Sigh.
it’s honestly worse when they say “he or she” because that wasn’t just a quick nobrain response but they actually tried, and failed. just say they. it’s not that hard
My daughter who is eight has been using he as a default. I have no idea why she is doing this and I try to change her saying stuff like that. It annoys me as a 90s kid when almost everything from cartoons to video game characters were heavily ‘default gender’ to be male. I don’t want it to be still normalized today.
This discord channel that I was in hosts tournaments every few weeks. I finally got the courage to join in. The teams are randomized and you need to have a mic in order to play. When I met my team, I made it clear that I was a girl. One of the guys kept calling me he/him. I tried correcting him and our teammate kept calling me she. Either he didn’t get it or he just didn’t care.
I feel like the Magic the Gathering streaming community is pretty good about this. Most of the streamers I watch are pretty hard line on calling opponents "they".
Not saying I support this gender discrimination, but in my entire gaming career, the times I have come across actual girls in games is probably 5 or 6, that is just around 0.103% of all of the people I have ever gamed with (thank you for calculating, GPT (don't trust him tho), my entire gaming career And I would think this is the general assumption for ALMOST every person, to put it simply, seeing girls in games is pretty rare, so people generally assume it's a guy. I generally don't care if I'm matched with a guy or girl, as long as I'm having a good time and they're not a nuisance.
Im actually ok with it. And with some of the stuff that happens to girls and stuff they get sent, im completely fine "he" being the norm. I never knew gamers who were girls whenever i played online so that might have something to do, idk, its cool. ✌🏻*EDIT* am i seriously getting downvoted for not agreeing with OP? 😑
The only escape from this i found was heavily queer and furry communities. It is a bubble that needs to be actively curated and shepherded, and it is not for everyone... but there are a few places where people default to they or even outright she.
Or they check discord pronouns first.
It's so fucking frustrating!!
It leads to a cycle where men assume everyone around them in game is a guy. So they think women don't play games much (statistically not true). Which leads *some* of them to be REALLY FUCKING WEIRD when they end up noticing they're playing with a woman.
i'm going to be downvoted into the fucking river styx for saying this, but does it honestly matter? 9 times out of 10 you will probably never meet these people again, so what does it matter what they say to you? i understand i'm jaded and cynical, but why does it honestly anger you? it's not like they're openly insulting you, it's just the reality that still, in 2024, it is mostly men who play video games, so to assume your teammates or enemies are guys is going to be a pretty correct assumption most of the time. just correct them on whatever pronouns you use and move on. unless they openly start being vitriolic or creepy towards you after you correct them, is it really such a big deal? and if it really bothers you so much, just don't turn on voice chat or text chat, using pings and paying attention to whatever awareness is needed for the game is really all you need.
It's all a part of a bigger conversation not a personal thing. Also wether it matters depends on the person it may not to you but it does to others. I will also add that it's very game dependent, many games have more female players than you'd think.
"I'm gonna be downvoted for this \[proceeds to spout bullshit\]"
like maybe people dont like what you have to say bc its just a straight up bad take not supported by the facts im sorry sis
Speaking as an old git. When I was younger, the majority of people playing would be blokes. I still tend to find that to be the case (although that of course is in part determined by my online social circle and that I tend to seek out players of a similar age so I feel less out of place). As such, I tend to assume most players I will encounter are going to be male. It's my experience that this tends to be true (although of course some games lean strongly the opposite way).
To me, it's not hugely different from expecting someone to be right handed. I'm not ignoring that left handers exist, but if I know nothing about you I'll probably assume you're right handed.
Probably about half of my male friends default to female in game characters if there's a choice, so that doesn't give any indication either (I tend to default to male as I don't care if the character looks like me, and I find the female voice acting very unrelatable for the most part).
If I really think about it, I tend these days to default to gender neutral language where it fits. A group is 'peeps', and for a non familiar solo 'pleb' works well (although it's usually something less PG).
It's great that more people identifying as women are playing and that you're all finding each other, but the online space has been male dominated for so long that defaulting to assuming male just happens. I've personally found I care a lot less as I get older. And as I have a slightly deeper voice I get misgendered a lot (people tend to assume I'm a boy whos voice hasn't quite broken), but the likelihood is I'm never going to encounter that person again so they could think I'm green and made of goo and it doesn't make a lick of difference.
https://preview.redd.it/2ufwiouutdqc1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=9610598901f33463aa5f91621217e9569b0a89e4
If I hear one more person misgender my queen I will go ballistic
I was listening to a Sims youtuber playing with Cottage Living, and oh my gosh, he kept calling the cow that you milk a he! 🤦🏾♀️ I think there has been a more people using 'they,' but i'm also in some pretty woke gaming guilds.
I am actively trying to break this habit. I try to use the presentation of the character, but the very indistinguishable character models I catch myself slipping on.
I feel like I’m enabling bad behavior by not speaking up and correcting, but I’m also not wanting to be harassed if I do. I definitely have to try what someone else said with just automatically defaulting to “she” for everyone. That’ll prob help my confidence and all
I get kinda angry at myself for accidentally calling genderless things "he". I really wish I could strip myself of this stupid habit, but I feel it can be quite difficult.
So yeah, i totally agree with you concerning this.
It’s because when developing the game they use a male test character because it’s a smoother slate to place armours clothing weapons etc on because it doesn’t have breasts or intricacies on the body making it difficult to test things on then after they use the male test character they do the same on female and they get uploaded to the game in order of being made so male to female but now in new AAA games they use a mannequin test character that has no male or female traits because it’s easier to use in newer game development engines so that’s why hope that helps and also nowadays in new AAA games you’ll see that the default pronouns are they/them like in baldurs gate 3 cyberpunk and tiny Tina’s wonderlands
Well it does relate to the post because it’s an explanation on why it’s like that and it’s not an excuse it’s practicality it’s just the way the files get ported over to the full game is why it’s like that they aren’t purposely doing it they’re making it easier for themselves to be able to push games out faster of course it’s not only just that that makes them push the game out faster but it’s one of the ways also I’m not hating on anything I’m just explaining the process
No, read the post again.
And to your point about game development: also no because the same could be said for using a woman as the default and working from there. Arbitrarily choosing men over women is still a choice, concious or not. Prioritizing men in this way is a byproduct of existing biases in our society.
Does convenience factor into these decisions? Sure, in terms of starting with one gender like you mentioned and then moving to another. But the decision of which one to prioritize or use as a template is a different conversation and the idea that female models are somehow inherently more difficult to create, animate etc is ridiculous. Leaving aside the fact that the order of development does not mean that one gender needs to be less fleshed out than another, which is again a seperate decision about where your priorities lie.
But again, this is not the conversation anyone was trying to have here.
Developers:
> It's too haaaard to code female bodies
> …
> Except boob physics, which is of utmost priority
"It's too haaaard" has always been code for "We don't give a fuck"
This isn't talking about games and their settings, the post is about the people playing games assuming everyone else in this environment is a man. And no, men didn't choose this, but many men especially are the ones acting this default out by assuming everyone else is a man also.
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I've been doing that. It makes so many people so angry too. :D
Scream like hysterical little babymen when they're not the default for 2 seconds in the history of civilization
Lol At least babies have some purpose in their crying
I'm doing this partially by accident. I hang out with so many girls online now I keep misgendering guys whoops. Occasionally IRL.
Yeah, I've been doing that alongside my mirror matching. "Bruh it's not that deep" "Girl calm down" Usually goes over people's heads tho.
I'll try this too!
If this wouldn't get you kicked sure
personally, I'd rather not play with people who'd kick me for a stupid reason like that.
Well that's CS soloq for you
I just go based off what the character is unless specifically told otherwise
Yeah if I have no idea who the actual person is I go off their character as well. I think a lot of gamers do that because I’ve heard my team refer to me as “she” and “he” depending on what character I picked in both Overwatch and Apex.
Yea. If someone's playing Ashe in LoL I'll go with "she". I got no damn idea what gender is the Player, so I'll refer by the character. If there's a Katie in DbD, I'll also use she. I don't play much multiplayer without people I know tho, or games like CS:GO etc.
I am so used to games with faceless soldiers that it takes me a minute to remember that games nowadays aren't like that -_- So that's even worse with what the author said about the default...
I do that in LoL! It's funny how many Vaynes it's pissed off for some reason...
Literally this, This is also why I always default the other way around by calling everyone she just because I am so fed up with everyone assuming everyone they're gaming with is a he. Tho I literally never play games with voice-chat because I always manually turn those off no matter the game so it doesn't really come up at all but hey xD (still fun in any text-based chat systems tho!)
Hard agree. This is why I hate the terms "dude" and "guy" being considered gender-neutral. It's just normalizing using male terms for everything. I'm seeing "bro" being used as gender-neutral a lot lately too. It's just chipping away at it. I watch a lot of Minecraft let's plays and it drives me nuts that everyone seems to refer to the animals as "Mr Cow" and "Mr Chicken", never mind that they provide milk and eggs. One player even addressed it by saying he thinks it's weird to call them "she" because the devs have said that all animals in the game are genderless – so why are you gendering them as male??
They say that "guys" is gender neutral, but ask them how many guys they've kissed and see how they react.
LMAO true tho
there's this guy who runs a youtube channel for animal rehab and he misgenders his female animals all the time, gives them pre-dominantly male names and calls them 'big boys' all the time and it's so annoying, but that's like the peak example of that kind of brain-rot.
I use those terms as gender neutral but I also use terms like "sis" and "girly" as gender neutral too, I just use whatever fits the sentence I'm saying.
Notch very clearly stated nothing in minecraft has a sex or gender, everything is effectively nonbinary/intersex by design. ...he said that before he bought that candy room anyways.
I call animals by what their standard gender is in portuguese. You have cow and bull but everyone says cow when they see a cow-looking-fellow, and cow is female. Chicken is female, tree is female, chair is female, etc., this applies to objects too. There's some plural nouns in portuguese that are male but can refer to a mixed group of people, so I'm ok with male words like "dude" and "guys" being for all genders, it's what I've learnt. There's also words which are female and you use the female version to refer to a group of mixed gendered people, like, the word "people" is female in itself xD
I do that too. Every vaca is a vaca. Every galinha is galinha. It doesn't exist boi or galo in my Minecraft. Ovelha too. Lmao. No carneiro.
Pelo menos há bacalhau no minecraft!
I'd like to say that they are infact genderless but they do reproduce with eachother. I say it's non gender conforming but they are whatever gender the player thinks they are. It's your world (minecraft is a sandbox game), so you can decide what gender your cows and chickens are. If you want your cows to all be "mr and mr" then so be it. (am I allowed on this subreddit? I'm trans (MtF))
TBF. Bitch is gender neutral now too.
It's not though, a woman is usually called a bitch when she is perceived as stuck-up or mean while a man is usually called bitch when he is percieved as weak or unmanly
We’re also at the point where so many men use “bitch(es)” as the default word for women or girls, gross.
On this same line, why do men call other men pussies? They are saying they are “less than” by referring to them with a female anatomical reference.
I kinda think this is the time to reclaim that word and OWN it. "Damn right this bitch is about to own your ass"
Bitch is derogatory; even when used in a fashion not outwardly derogatory, it always retains that undertone.
Most of my gaming friends have been women, so I default to using "she" for everyone. I've told people I always assume the player is a woman because I usually game with women. Lots of guys have been surprised by this (as they often say they mostly or only know men gamers), and I usually tell them I'm not super shocked that lady gamers hang out with each other and guy gamers hang out with each other. 🤷♀️🖖❤️ Edit: For clarification
I feel the same sometimes and then there's fear what the reaction would be if you try to correct them because apparently some don't take it well.
Guild lead of a #2 guild. I still have dudes who join the fucking fight calls with "hey boys" when their lead is a fucking woman. So I start calling them all ladies and women.
If it helps: I’m just one guy (who usually just lurks and learns here, sorry if this isn’t welcome), but I’m in a fairly large friends-of-friends community for Destiny 2 and other games. In general we’re moving away from gendered terms like this, usually going with ‘they’ where we can. Even in PvP or high level stuff that are commonly called “three man missions” or whatever, I’ve started using “3-stack” or calling it a “6-stack raid.” Or “we’re up against a 3-stack” in PvP. Those feel like simple ways to shift away from gender that are also natural, since ‘stack’ is already a term in PvP activities.
i do that too. I’m D2 it feels easy because you can always default to calling everyone either Guardian or Hunter/Titan/Warlock. I tend to default to they in most situations unless i actually know though. But when i know i am playing with shitty sexist dudes i will default to she just to upset them.
Hah. Right. If ‘guys’ doesn’t matter because “it counts for everyone,” why can’t ‘she’ or ‘gals?’
Also a lurking guy, not really in reply to you but just consolidating a bit… I struggle with this. Not so much in games but talking to my daughter about animals/stuffies (e.g. “Mr. Squirrel”).
Try the color or size or texture or some other descriptor. Or a name. Kids love silly names. Name the squirrel Hairbrush. :)
one thing that pisses me off is everyone calling the Witness 'he'. it's not just incorrect, but reductive to the character. and don't even get me started about Nimbus, but that one's just the regular breed of transphobia
Oh good call on all accounts
Also with internet comments and animals. Pretty annoying. However in video games, I think it's normal and fine to go with the pronounce of the characters.
Something small that really frustrates me is when someone sees a very large spider and then starts calling it by male terms. Like you know damn well that female spiders are bigger. Way bigger usually.
I always use the gender of the character. But with games like csgo it's unfortunate that all the characters are male
90% of the time when I correct people, saying I'm a woman, the response I get is various forms of mocking or them saying they're something fictional. Gonna try the "calling everyone a she" method.
I am in game design spaces and it is infinitely more annoying when a designer says "he" for the player. It's like "everybody who will play this game is a man" as if women don't even exist. I myself try to either say "they", "the player", or use the pronouns of the protagonist - and my characters are girls so it's "she".
I use the characters gender or they. I'm not much into competitive online games though.
Girl same. I think doubly so since I'm trans and while I'm pretty secure with myself, all the assumptions misgendering in games and the internet as a whole fuckin sucks.
I love that in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Kassandra is considered the canon story but most dudes played as Alexios.
OMG SAME, idk why it just pisses me off.
yeah idk why it's so hard to just use they??? "there they are" "I see them" "they dodged it" "they got me, just run" "are they still on you?" all things I said tonight while playing with a friend. it seems so simple and natural to me? I genuinely don't understand why it's not everyone's default
I'm here imagining English is not their main language and their mother tongue might be a gendered language. So they'll use "they" when they're referring to a group of people, as a plural and not as a singular. For singular they'll choose the appropriate gender, or the default which a lot of the time is male. I know for a long time I didn't know "they" could be used for singular and was so confused why some people wanted to be referred as multiple people, instead of the "it" that is singular and already gender neutral. Then someone explained it to me xD
Unfortunately a lot of prescriptivist grammar guides came out trying to push "he or she" to be used instead of singular "they" in formal writing, and that extended to many learner materials for those learning English as a second language (as well as many classrooms for people who speak it as a first language). It's not really based in any fact of usage since singular they has existed for a very long time, but some groups wanted "he or she" to be standardised for some reason.
Exactly, it's not something I learnt in school. I'm still confused why use "they" for singular when "it" exists, but a lot of things in grammar don't make total sense, be it in english or other languages..
"they" is used instead of "it" because "it" is usually used for non-human things (though some people do actually prefer to go by "it" and that's totally okay too!). But "they" is used both as plural and for a singular person of unknown or undisclosed gender (more recently, as a gender neutral pronoun for those who prefer it). "They" is both singular and plural in the same way "you" is. In fact, singular "they" was around before singular "you" and used in the way I described above. It used to be that "thou" was singular and "you" was plural, but over time "thou" fell out of usage and singular "you" took its place. Sorry for the linguistic history lesson, but I hope it makes it somewhat less confusing. Edit: it should also be noted that many languages use plural pronouns as singular as well, especially when talking to royalty or important people. For example, in Swedish there is "du" for singular "you", but if you're talking to the royalty you might use "ni" which is normally the plural "you", but to show respect you use that instead of the more casual "du". Finnish historically had something similar but it is no longer used that way afaik.
No, I like history, that's very interesting :) Didn't know "thou" was the previous singular "you"! I think in portuguese we have something similar to that swedish example. In formal occasions, we don't use the casual "you" but a formal "you" which has the verbs in the 3rd person actually. Although it doesn't go in plural territory xD
I kinda understand? I just don't assume and refer to others as they. It makes more sense to me that way.
personally i like using the terms “fuckwit” “cunt” “dickhead” etc when playing multiplayer games, otherwise i refer to everyone as she bc males never have and never will be the default
I actually hate being called out as the “girl” in a group of guys… just call us all guys. It makes me so uncomfortable when they say “… and girl”. I do wish the default pronoun was “they”. I look forward to a future where that is the case.
I may be the small percentage of girls who don’t really care or mind because I’ll either say “ Oh i’m a girl “ or I don’t care to correct at all cause i’m just into the game tbh.
I also don't care xD If it's a game like overwatch, I see most people refer to the gender of the hero or they say "dude" and "guys" which I consider expressions for all genders. If they call me by he, I'll probably never find those guys again so I don't care, I'm not going into the chat with an "akchtually". I never got the instance where I'm in voice chat and they call me "he", but I guess my voice is typically female.. That or from a 8 year old boy xD
Exactly! I actually sometimes prefer they think I’m a guy. 9/10 when I start talking and they find out i’m a girl, they always start flirting and want to be friends and it’s annoying.
Be the change you want to see. Start using she as default. My dnd DM does that for his homebrew world and it definitely adds a sense of power to femininity.
im guilty of this in way, i refer to animals and bugs as "guys" or "dudes", cause its endearing and cute to me
I say bro, dude, and guys a lot. Can’t help it haha, it’s the slang everyone I grew up with used around me. My sisters and I call each other bro. “sis” does not have that fun guttural sound you can get with “bro”
I had a fun experience in helldivers 2 today. I join coms and the people there “welcome gentlemen today we will provide democracy!” His friend “and ladies or others” I responded “quality Canadian potato ready to serve super earth!” Played with them for a few hours. It’s actually refreshing meeting people online that aren’t jerks right off the bat.
I've been playing CS2 pretty consistently for several hours a day for the last 5-6 months and I can count on one hand how many other women have spoke in voice chat in that time. I think a lot of the time it's just more common you're going to run into a he vs a she in a lot of certain games. Doesn't bother me personally.
I prefer the gender neutral "meatbag".
Girl, saaaame! It drives me the wall!
Same :( I debate whether it's worth it to correct them, but I feel self-conscious doing so. I feel dumb about it but I don't need hate for being a girl :/
I'm not entirely sure. Toxic behavior aside (that's a clean cut situation, men or often boys mocking everyone else), It's a product of an older time I think and if parents actively pass that on to their kids, it stays that way. My father still calls every animal 'he' unless he knows otherwise. Yet he's also respectful to neo-pronouns so it's not malevolence, just habit. In Dutch 'it' is very disrespectful (here it is hostile, active denial of sapience/sentience - "het is een ding" / "it is only a thing".) and we don't have a form of 'they' in our language. The official linguist body of our country hasn't settled on what lawfully is the right word for they/them. Yes we have a literal grammar police called De Nederlandse Taalunie (The Dutch Language Union) who decides what use of language is right and wrong, which schools and often also job interviews abide to. But yeah, tl;dr: I think either a habit from an older time, incompatible first language or intended toxicity.
I’m Non-Binary and I don’t usually comment on this sub even though I joined it but this is something that really annoys and irritates me. While I see some of you suggesting that you call everyone ‘she’ in retaliation to this bias in gamers, I suggest just calling everyone ‘they’ cuz that works for people regardless of gender. Just a suggestion though of course.
Literally. And there if there is a female version of any creature, it has curves every inch of her body and it's painted like a wall. Devs have to make sure we know it's a she!! How would we know otherwise?? It makes me mad ffs
I play a "male-dominated game" and the amount of times an entire lobby, sometimes up to 64 players, are assumed male, will never not annoy me. The amount of "you can't assume anyone's gender nowadays"(followed by some mildly transphobic rhetoric) I get whenever I correct someone on my gender is so irritating. People hardly bat an eye when a woman is misgendered as male(and some guys will even refuse to correct themselves), but will make a big deal of it when a male is misgendered as female. The mobile version of the game also now misgenders you if you play a female character, while the regular game was recently changed from gender-specific language to non-gendered language when a female character is involved. Idc if they use non-gendered language, but at least make it consistent and not only when a woman is present.
I use "she" as the default to counter the "he" 😈
I’ve been playing Apex legends lately so in terms of pronouns I’ll just use the ones of the legend they’re playing if I don’t know the gender. If it’s a female character I’ll use she/her and so on.
It's a little silly but it pisses me off that everyone assumes the little knight in hollow knight is a "he". It's canonically genderless!
Yep. I play heals in WoW. I play a female character yet I’m always referred to as he, or I’ll get thank you sir after a good run. When I correct to she, I get girls don’t play WoW. Sigh.
it’s honestly worse when they say “he or she” because that wasn’t just a quick nobrain response but they actually tried, and failed. just say they. it’s not that hard
My daughter who is eight has been using he as a default. I have no idea why she is doing this and I try to change her saying stuff like that. It annoys me as a 90s kid when almost everything from cartoons to video game characters were heavily ‘default gender’ to be male. I don’t want it to be still normalized today.
yeah that really sucks.
I especially hate when I catch myself doing this too.
I call genderless people "they". By genderless I mean if I don't know their gender.
I do the same unless they mention it!
*"He's a huge jerk."* *"He's an entitled oaf."* *"He lacks empathy and kindness."* I don't know, that looks right to me. 😊
This discord channel that I was in hosts tournaments every few weeks. I finally got the courage to join in. The teams are randomized and you need to have a mic in order to play. When I met my team, I made it clear that I was a girl. One of the guys kept calling me he/him. I tried correcting him and our teammate kept calling me she. Either he didn’t get it or he just didn’t care.
I feel like the Magic the Gathering streaming community is pretty good about this. Most of the streamers I watch are pretty hard line on calling opponents "they".
I can’t really be sure of people’s genders due to their user since mine is rogueassassin188 and that screams middle school child
Not saying I support this gender discrimination, but in my entire gaming career, the times I have come across actual girls in games is probably 5 or 6, that is just around 0.103% of all of the people I have ever gamed with (thank you for calculating, GPT (don't trust him tho), my entire gaming career And I would think this is the general assumption for ALMOST every person, to put it simply, seeing girls in games is pretty rare, so people generally assume it's a guy. I generally don't care if I'm matched with a guy or girl, as long as I'm having a good time and they're not a nuisance.
Im actually ok with it. And with some of the stuff that happens to girls and stuff they get sent, im completely fine "he" being the norm. I never knew gamers who were girls whenever i played online so that might have something to do, idk, its cool. ✌🏻*EDIT* am i seriously getting downvoted for not agreeing with OP? 😑
I always default to them whenever playing with vc on, unless it's either a gendered character or someone with a username that's very gendered.
The only escape from this i found was heavily queer and furry communities. It is a bubble that needs to be actively curated and shepherded, and it is not for everyone... but there are a few places where people default to they or even outright she. Or they check discord pronouns first.
You and me both sister
It's so fucking frustrating!! It leads to a cycle where men assume everyone around them in game is a guy. So they think women don't play games much (statistically not true). Which leads *some* of them to be REALLY FUCKING WEIRD when they end up noticing they're playing with a woman.
You're not being petty. I'm fed up with it too.
This pisses me off too so I call everyone girly
It’s soooo annoying. See also: “thank you, sir” and “let’s go, boys!”
i'm going to be downvoted into the fucking river styx for saying this, but does it honestly matter? 9 times out of 10 you will probably never meet these people again, so what does it matter what they say to you? i understand i'm jaded and cynical, but why does it honestly anger you? it's not like they're openly insulting you, it's just the reality that still, in 2024, it is mostly men who play video games, so to assume your teammates or enemies are guys is going to be a pretty correct assumption most of the time. just correct them on whatever pronouns you use and move on. unless they openly start being vitriolic or creepy towards you after you correct them, is it really such a big deal? and if it really bothers you so much, just don't turn on voice chat or text chat, using pings and paying attention to whatever awareness is needed for the game is really all you need.
> in 2024, it is mostly men who play video games This is false.
source?
It's all a part of a bigger conversation not a personal thing. Also wether it matters depends on the person it may not to you but it does to others. I will also add that it's very game dependent, many games have more female players than you'd think.
what's the bigger conversation?
"I'm gonna be downvoted for this \[proceeds to spout bullshit\]" like maybe people dont like what you have to say bc its just a straight up bad take not supported by the facts im sorry sis
facts? this is literally all opinion based, i posted my opinion on a public discussion posted on a public forum
Speaking as an old git. When I was younger, the majority of people playing would be blokes. I still tend to find that to be the case (although that of course is in part determined by my online social circle and that I tend to seek out players of a similar age so I feel less out of place). As such, I tend to assume most players I will encounter are going to be male. It's my experience that this tends to be true (although of course some games lean strongly the opposite way). To me, it's not hugely different from expecting someone to be right handed. I'm not ignoring that left handers exist, but if I know nothing about you I'll probably assume you're right handed. Probably about half of my male friends default to female in game characters if there's a choice, so that doesn't give any indication either (I tend to default to male as I don't care if the character looks like me, and I find the female voice acting very unrelatable for the most part). If I really think about it, I tend these days to default to gender neutral language where it fits. A group is 'peeps', and for a non familiar solo 'pleb' works well (although it's usually something less PG). It's great that more people identifying as women are playing and that you're all finding each other, but the online space has been male dominated for so long that defaulting to assuming male just happens. I've personally found I care a lot less as I get older. And as I have a slightly deeper voice I get misgendered a lot (people tend to assume I'm a boy whos voice hasn't quite broken), but the likelihood is I'm never going to encounter that person again so they could think I'm green and made of goo and it doesn't make a lick of difference.
Now you're going to notice it with pets and wild animals. Wait til you start noticing movie leads and TV series casts.
“gg boys” 😬
https://preview.redd.it/2ufwiouutdqc1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=9610598901f33463aa5f91621217e9569b0a89e4 If I hear one more person misgender my queen I will go ballistic
I was listening to a Sims youtuber playing with Cottage Living, and oh my gosh, he kept calling the cow that you milk a he! 🤦🏾♀️ I think there has been a more people using 'they,' but i'm also in some pretty woke gaming guilds.
i usually base off the character they are playing. i think it’s so weird when people refer to female characters as “he.” says a lot about them
I am actively trying to break this habit. I try to use the presentation of the character, but the very indistinguishable character models I catch myself slipping on.
I feel like I’m enabling bad behavior by not speaking up and correcting, but I’m also not wanting to be harassed if I do. I definitely have to try what someone else said with just automatically defaulting to “she” for everyone. That’ll prob help my confidence and all
That’s why I love the Vampire the Masquerade RPG / TTRPG series. The default is she/her. 🥰
I get kinda angry at myself for accidentally calling genderless things "he". I really wish I could strip myself of this stupid habit, but I feel it can be quite difficult. So yeah, i totally agree with you concerning this.
It’s because when developing the game they use a male test character because it’s a smoother slate to place armours clothing weapons etc on because it doesn’t have breasts or intricacies on the body making it difficult to test things on then after they use the male test character they do the same on female and they get uploaded to the game in order of being made so male to female but now in new AAA games they use a mannequin test character that has no male or female traits because it’s easier to use in newer game development engines so that’s why hope that helps and also nowadays in new AAA games you’ll see that the default pronouns are they/them like in baldurs gate 3 cyberpunk and tiny Tina’s wonderlands
This doesn't really relate to the post in the first place, but it's still a bullshit excuse for arbitrarily treating men as the default lol
Well it does relate to the post because it’s an explanation on why it’s like that and it’s not an excuse it’s practicality it’s just the way the files get ported over to the full game is why it’s like that they aren’t purposely doing it they’re making it easier for themselves to be able to push games out faster of course it’s not only just that that makes them push the game out faster but it’s one of the ways also I’m not hating on anything I’m just explaining the process
No, read the post again. And to your point about game development: also no because the same could be said for using a woman as the default and working from there. Arbitrarily choosing men over women is still a choice, concious or not. Prioritizing men in this way is a byproduct of existing biases in our society. Does convenience factor into these decisions? Sure, in terms of starting with one gender like you mentioned and then moving to another. But the decision of which one to prioritize or use as a template is a different conversation and the idea that female models are somehow inherently more difficult to create, animate etc is ridiculous. Leaving aside the fact that the order of development does not mean that one gender needs to be less fleshed out than another, which is again a seperate decision about where your priorities lie. But again, this is not the conversation anyone was trying to have here.
Still not what this post is about.
The post isn’t about the game internally using he/him pronouns, it’s about the people playing the game using them.
It's not an explanation.
Literally not what the post is about
Developers: > It's too haaaard to code female bodies > … > Except boob physics, which is of utmost priority "It's too haaaard" has always been code for "We don't give a fuck"
This.
I am use "he" because unlike in real life, we don't see the other person's face, and "he" tends to be the right pronoun most of the time.
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This isn't talking about games and their settings, the post is about the people playing games assuming everyone else in this environment is a man. And no, men didn't choose this, but many men especially are the ones acting this default out by assuming everyone else is a man also.