While this is true, don't forget that both individual and population differences exist.
E.g. men are more inclined to like boxing than women, but some women can also like boxing.
- 1
- 1
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
E.g. men are more inclined to like boxing than women, but some women can also like boxing.
How is this thread still going, anyway?
So, you're saying that your claims outweigh not only the experiences of my friends and aquaintances, but also the scientific method?
Edit: Your username looks familiar. Were you the poster who chirped in in one thread, in order to defend another poster who was using the word 'tranny' in reference to another (trans) poster a couple of months back (and then insisting that person was wrong to be offended,) in addition to seemingly agreeing with the poster's bigoted statements? Yeah, that person isn't on these forums anymore. Wonder why.
*sigh*
EDIT: I'm sorry for the double post.
So, you're saying that your claims outweigh not only the experiences of my friends and aquaintances, but also the scientific method?
Edit: Your username looks familiar. Were you the poster who chirped in in one thread, in order to defend another poster who was using the word 'tranny' in reference to another (trans) poster a couple of months back (and then insisting that person was wrong to be offended,) in addition to seemingly agreeing with the poster's bigoted statements? Yeah, that person isn't on these forums anymore. Wonder why.
Last edited:
The scientific method says that there are massive structural differences between male and female brains. Which is also the cause of transsexuality as trans women have brains similar to cis women and trans men have brains similar to cis men. Moreover, the scientific method also says that sex hormones also affect brains a lot. For example, both estrogen levels in women and testosterone levels in men significantly correlate with intelligence. If you don't believe me and are too lazy to look it up yourself, I can provide some easily googleable research on the topic.
As for your friends: I also know quite a few trans people and all of them experienced pretty much the same that I did on HRT: NOTHING feels the same way as before, everything changes.
Honestly, at this point I'm suspecting that you're simply a troll or something like that.
- 1
- 1
And now you're going back into the intelligence argument. Stay classy.
Dividing things into "male intelligence" and "female intelligence," as if it makes it sound less reactionary. It just so happen that male intelligence happens to be STEM fields, and female intelligence is things like "feelings" and "relationships," which doubles as a twofer as it means the men who spout this nonsense can feel justied in being borderline sociopathic. It reminds me a lot of when people claim (and was even published by scientific journals until the mid-to-late twentieth century) that people of African descent were less intelligent and more violent, but were faster and stronger, as if piling more racism onto racism makes it sound less like racism.
This thread is just repeating itself.
Last edited:
- 2
The transwomen I know definitely agree HRT changes a lot, but AFAIK they haven't experienced changes in color perception and such of course most have been transitioning under a year.
I personally do.
I don't know if massive is the right word, but there are meaningful and documented differences. I think nurture also plays a meaningful part in where people's interests lie, for example note the absurd clustering of transwomen in computer science as a percent of women in computer science/
- 4
I never mentioned colour perception, though.
Vision changed in other ways - like I have other associations with visual cues, remember faces better, etc. It's a bunch of minor changes that can be hard to notice. I mostly notice things like that because I love analysing myself and try my hardest to keep track of everything that's changing during HRT, including asking my friends on how has my behaviour changed.
- 1
Yeah, the colour perception seems like a particularly odd statement. Men will frequently have worse vision, but this due to that these defects are related to the Y chromosome, and not anything affected by HRT.
The major mental and psychological problems (particularly mood swings) tend to disappear by the first couple of months of HRT, once the endocrine system rebalances.
Ah, didn't mean to speak ill of anybody who identifies themselves by that term (or those who use it to ascribe people who identify by that term.) It's perhaps a generational thing, or it could just be part of being in different circles.
It's not exactly a slur like 'transvestite' (when used to describe trans people) is, but it's generally considered inaccurate.
Last edited:
Again: I never mentioned colour perception. I don't understand where you got that from.
I am sorry I accidentally said that, I have no idea what I was thinking.
Well part of passing as a transwoman is you need to get better at social cues, is it not?
Sorry, had written that last post before you had written your clarification.
Either way, are you insinuating that you gained an improved perception of facial recognition and visual cues due to a higher level of estrogen or a lower level of testosterone?
You could be right about the social influence notion. Still, vision is one of the things that changed the least.
As I said, the senses that changed the most are olfactory and touch. But it's hard to put the changes in words. I sometimes have sudden realisations along the lines of "oh my god %something% feels so different now" while doing mundane activities, but I don't really know how to elaborate on that.
Though, speaking of vision, I had several cases when I had trouble recognising faces that I knew very well because my visual associations to them changed a lot on HRT. An example that everyone knows is the "Serbia strong guy" - when I saw him about 4 months in on estrogen, I thought that it's the face of another person shopped to look like him simply because he seemed all different to me. I don't know, maybe this isn't something common, but I talk a lot about such things to a close friend of mine who is also MtF and she has similar experiences on HRT.
Some women can see more shades of certain colours than men. Only women can have the gene responsible for this but not all women have it(I think most don't). My memory's hazy but google it and you should find out about it.
You have thoroughly misunderstood me, which could be just as much my fault as yours. Before anything else I want to say, as clearly as I can manage, that I do not assume that men and women are inherently, exactly, the same. I have very personal experiences that run directly counter to that idea and would never support it. It's the basis of a lot of TERF garbage as well (trans-exclusive radical feminism), something I will never condone or associate with.
I have instead focused on the individual, noting that the differences in preferences between any two individual people tends to be larger than the average differences between two large demographics (like men and women). I have also noted that insular communities tend to become self-fulfilling; you are more likely to find sexism in a community that does not include women, for example, which helps ensure that the community stays that way.
Most importantly I entered this thread by proving the entire idea that women don't like to play GSGs is already known to be false. Paradox has given us the numbers: 40% of CK2 players are women. That's a staggering number that already bucks trends for PC games overall. Even if we want to assume that every last little bit of the 60-40 split is purely a result of gender preferences, 40% is a large enough number that any suggestion that "women don't like GSGs" or "mostly only guys play GSGs" is already wrong.
Of course it's almost certainly not just a result of gender preferences. The name is Crusader Kings, male gendered out the gate with "Kings," and the promotional artwork has no women featured. It was presented as a game "for men" in this manner and yet still attracted a huge number of women players, perhaps by word of mouth, or just due to the fact that GSGs are so niche anyway that factors outside of our gender identity have a much greater impact on whether or not we want to play them.
I have been hostile to your position; this is true. The reason is that your argument has been used, over and over again, to resist any sort of change to promote inclusiveness for women in traditionally male-dominated fields or areas. Women are told, by men, repeatedly, what we are or aren't interested in, and made to feel as though we aren't "real" women if we have these sorts of interests. The "proof" for this is always the same: "well, women aren't doing this now; why should we make them?"
Of course what's actually being asked for is much more benign; no one is demanding player quotas or the like. Instead it's representation in marketing and products that's more equitable, a reduction of sexist behavior in communities, that sort of thing. And yet that is resisted by people who want the status-quo and insist that the status-quo is natural and biologically determined. Yet every time those walls are knocked down, we see the numbers of women involved in the field, hobby, or what have you increase.
Maybe it'll never reach 50-50 participation. That's okay. What's not okay are walls that exaggerate the division, that keep people out of things for bad reasons.
You suggest that sexism is not a problem. Yet, 40% of CK2 players are women; do you think 40% of the CK2 forum-goers are women? Did you see the post from the woman employed at Paradox who remarked about feeling unsafe posting in this very thread? Did you not see the posts going back for pages where men are dictating how women are and why they're not here? Did you see the posts not merely insinuating, but outright declaring, that women are bad at logic and so wouldn't want to play a strategy game that requires its use?
I'm rather baffled at what it is you're trying to achieve in this thread. Are you just defending the nature side of nature-vs-nurture? There's little need; both are known to have a large impact in who and how we are. Are you trying to defend Paradox from accusations of sexism from radical feminist attackers? Don't worry, Paradox is on the Good List. Are you still trying to insist that women don't like to play GSGs? We already know that's false; there's no need to speculate or theorize about it.
Are you trying to defend the community? I sincerely hope not. There is no community that has figured everything out and got it all right. This one's not particularly close, as this thread's content proves.
On a final note, you seem to be pretty hostile to the idea that it's a bad thing to make judgments based on traditional gender roles. This is as straightforward a thing as it gets; please see here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sexism?s=t
Last edited:
- 6
- 1
I wanted to point out that I have always found it odd that members of our community (and others) like to highlight weird characteristics that have nothing to do with gaming. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that should be important around here is what games you like. Hell, who even knows who someone is on the forum, aside from Paradox employees and forum staff. For all I know, you could be a 17th Century wizard with penchant for dried frog or perhaps a 16 year old Vulcan who is using a subspace carrier wave to access Earth's Internet. The important thing is that you are here, I'm here, and others are here, and we enjoy this as a hobby.
And yet, your statements and others (plus my own observations) indicate that this isn't the case when it comes to gender and sex. There's a very odd exclusion to be found in the rhetoric of certain folks. It can be hard to see it if you aren't paying attention (or seeing it directed at you first hand), but there's a feeling from some gamers that communities like this should be a place where they can get away from those "pesky females" or "pushy broads" and just do something related to being a guy. For a long time, I thought it was just related to the whole belching and farting thing ("We want to engage in cliched male behavior without being told to stop by women who think it is uncouth.") But I've come to realize that for some guys, its more fundamental than that. For some people, it seems like part of the attraction to the hobby and community is that it's a place of refuge from femaleness (however the person in question defines it), and that having women around makes it suddenly uncomfortable.
Some of it may be related to older folks who come from the board gaming culture of the 1970s (Avalon Hill, anyone?), who see this kind of activity in a certain light. For these folks, gaming is something a man did away from his (putative) nagging wife. It's not that different from grabbing some beer and watching the game away from home. But there aren't that many of us dinosaurs around the forum. (Also, just because I understand it, it doesn't mean I condone that particular line of behavior or reasoning.) For others, I wonder if it's because the individuals in question feel like they can't express themselves around women in the same way, and feel that women are intruding. If that is the case, I suspect that the feelings of intrusion are rooted in the annoyance at being called out on insulting and misogynistic behavior. After all, if no women are around, they can't bitch about your denigrating comments, can they?
I also have sneaking suspicions that some folks have been educated in such a way that ignores key contributions of women throughout history. These folks may see any content aimed at woman (community or game content) as shameless pandering, even though there are politically and intellectually important women in every historical period for which there is a Paradox game. But if you don't know that, it seems like Paradox is just throwing stupid pandering content at a demographic to drum up sales. And let's all be honest with ourselves: there are plenty of places and times in the world where even educated people might not know about these historical figures, or not know that their contributions have been played down.
There may also be some men who fear that aiming promotional materials at women will result in pink tutus and glitter in Hearts of Iron 4. This is obviously because they fall into the same stupid trap in thinking that all human beings with more than X estrogen in play think pink ponies and glitter are awesome. In fact, aiming promotion materials at women has been nothing of the sort. Those weren't rainbow and glitter and ballet dancing women. All the women talked about in that discussion were doing awesome WWII things like killing tanks around Kursk, bombing Germans around Stalingrad, running covert ops in occupied France, fighting Franco in Spain, and even resisting the Japanese in Shanghai.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure what disappoints me more: the fact that otherwise intelligent folks can't seem to get past stupid cliches and stereotypes about 50% of the population of the planet, or the fact that we're talking about a hobby and some people are threatened by inclusionary practices. If someone held enormous political power that was based on women keeping their place, I could understand (from a realpolitik standpoint) not wanting to upset the status quo. If I was a dictator of this sort, you can bet I wouldn't put up with including women in anything. Political power is way too important. But in a hobby like gaming? The worst thing that can happen is that... more women play and contribute to the community. Oh no, women will start playing MP! Get my smelling salts, I need a lie down.
- 4
Well put.
It's just that many people can have a hard time understanding that, while women can be naturally inclined to like something less than men, that is in no way or form a reason to create additional barriers for the entry of women into the subject. Nature certainly can explain 60-40 or maybe even 70-30 divides in some cases, but nature can't explain 98-2 divides like on the PDX subreddit.
- 3