THE LONELY CHILD: A Handful of Observations About LOTC's Gender Bias

[esotericas 1554]

A HANDFUL OF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LOTC’S GENDER BIAS

 

OVER THE COURSE OF the past year, I have now played two human personas as children. It is one of my longtime traditions that, whenever I feel ‘stuck’ with the story of a persona, I’ll take them on a ‘Grand Tour,’ where I do my best to visit every other nation on the continent with that persona, until one of them clicks. I am now doing this for the second time this year, on my current child persona Galina. I noticed, however, that the experience of this Grand Tour was completely different to my previous one, on my last persona Alasdair. 

 

Some differences between the two, for full clarity. These do not explain away all of my experiences, but they are important to note:

 

Alasdair was male, Galina is female. 

Alasdair was twelve on his Grand Tour. Galina is nine. 

Alasdair was much shyer, and never spoke unless spoken to first. Galina is very energetic and outgoing, and frequently starts conversations.

Both personas were dressed well, and did not appear akin to orphans or anything similar. See skins below.

 

Spoiler

 

Alasdair aged 12, Galina aged 9

 

Alasdair’s Grand Tour experience was remarkable: I wandered into Adria as my first stop on the Tour, sat down, and people almost immediately began RPing with me. He was invited to spar with another child, offered food, and generally ‘taken in,’ all by players who were complete strangers to me. His shyness was accepted, and people still spoke to him even when he didn’t speak first. The same day he arrived, he had not only been offered a wardship under the Duke, but also invited to join the local Knight’s order, and given a place to stay without him needing to ask for one.

 

My experience on Galina has been vastly different. She began her tour in Whitespire, during high activity hours; nobody spoke to her without her speaking first, I had to instigate almost every RP encounter she had, save for one. That one was instigated by a friend, and thus can’t really be counted, since they already knew me. Besides that one conversation, however, every one of Galina’s interactions had to be started by me. She was passed off from one person to another, and was generally deemed too young to be travelling alone. After a series of these handoffs, Galina ended up in Lemon Hill, where she was given to a member of the monastery there to watch. She was offered a place to stay only after she stated she wished to remain in Lemon Hill, and was.. generally left to spectate affairs. Again, she was ignored unless I instigated RP. Lemon Hill has a distinctly more adult population than Adria did when Alasdair arrived, which was then home to quite a few children his age, so some level of this lack of inclusion no doubt comes from her lack of peers, but the difference was definitely noticeable. Alongside being ignored, Galina was treated as generally “fragile.” She was advised repeatedly not to travel alone, and every adult she met insisted that she be accompanied wherever she went. Some of this can be ascribed to her age, of course, but even as a nine-year-old, Alasdair was generally presumed to be competent, and to not need protecting.

 

While playing Alasdair I was assumed to be male OOCly. People defaulted to male pronouns, and spoke to me like I was a man. While playing Galina, I experienced the opposite. I’m fairly neutral on how people refer to me, but these biases are clearly still present OOCly, as well as IRP. I was swiftly welcomed into Adria both OOC and IRP, and yet it took me at least a few hours of wandering and “handoffs” before Galina received any sort of welcome anywhere. Nobody yet has even asked her name. When I was perceived as male OOCly, I was frequently invited to things; people commented on my skins, asked my opinions on their writing pieces, and invited me to join VCs and game nights. That has been significantly less the case in my history of playing female personas, and thus of being perceived as female.

 

This isn’t some big formal research project, and I don’t have massive concrete conclusions to draw from this. These observations also can only really speak on the biases within the population of Heartlands RPers, but I do still think it’s worth sitting down and considering how you interact with people, especially strangers, and consider what draws you to interact with them. Misogyny is still totally rampant on LOTC, especially in the subtler, harder-to-identify ways. I have spent most of my three years on this server feeling unsure of my position in the nations I RP in, and wondering if I belong, but that anxiety has only ever arisen when I play female characters. Again, I don't have a big huge conclusion to make here, I'm too tired for that. But think about it, at least.

 

TL;DR. Consciously think about your own biases, whatever they might be. Also make an active effort to make your women feel welcome. They need it.

 

Also, I wish to say: I mean NO ill-will towards any of the people I have RP’ed with on Galina, they have all still been very welcoming and friendly. I just wanted to put my experience out there, to hopefully give people who don’t play characters of both genders an understanding as to what the other group’s experience is, and ideally to encourage people to really examine their own treatment of others.

 

– ESO

[Phoebe202 638]

Totally agree. When I brought this up in the past and recounted my own experiences with this, people told me I was being melodramatic and/or crazy, which I feel is quite telling as well.

[teeylin 998]

This is a large part of why I don't like playing female personas anymore. It can get so frustrating to deal with, especially after seeing a direct comparison like this.

[Cheese 2307]

Y’know, I haven’t noticed this until you said that. But as someone who has only played female personas on this server, I absolutely agree. During my times as Ilaria and Liridona, it was near impossible to find people wanting to interact with me first. Maybe that also has something to do with lotc’s cliqueyness (that’s not a word but whatever), but I’m not sure. Anyway, fantastic post, I whole heartedly agree

[Jihnyny 2572]

@Cheesei might be mistaken, as your name holds 'cheese' in it. But was it not you who had a female character thats whole personality was 'wh*re' and 'sl*t' pasted all over their bio? 

Majority of the server are dudes, and dudes like sticking around with dudes, i think thats the monke brain reason for ppl not going up to rping with female personas (even if the person might be a dude IRL). I personally would not think into it much though.

 

[esotericas 1554]

8 minutes ago, Jihnyny said:

@Cheesei might be mistaken, as your name holds 'cheese' in it. But was it not you who had a female character thats whole personality was 'wh*re' and 'sl*t' pasted all over their bio? 

Majority of the server are dudes, and dudes like sticking around with dudes, i think thats the monke brain reason for ppl not going up to rping with female personas (even if the person might be a dude IRL). I personally would not think into it much though.

 

 

A) One tasteless persona is not enough to totally discount their experience RPing women, especially considering they didn't even mention said persona. 

B) That may be so! I don't have any information on the gender stats of LOTC, so I won't comment re: proportions, but it's still people's responsibility to make folks feel welcomed. Calling it the "monke brain" reason takes responsibility away from the players, when it is very much still up to them.

[Boknice275 1186]

Are you sure the results of your experiment indicate 'gender bias'? Could the upsetting variable be that few people - myself included - enjoy interacting with child characters? Child/family RP is a niche that not everyone's character goals are suited for. Another thing to consider: you did not attempt your experiment at the same location, same time, with the same playergroup. You went to two very different locations (with arguably different playergroups) and different character concepts. It makes sense that you received a different result due to selection, not necessarily gender bias or discriminatory thoughts.

 

Much of LOTC's playerbase is here for one reason: to escape the pressures of reality through immersion in a high fantasy context. The digital medium is a barrier to actually understanding *who* other players are unless you take the time to speak to them on Discord for a significant amount of time. Even in that instance, you will likely not know the full extent of their values. If "gender bias" does exist and it is difficult to detect inrl, wouldn't it be even more hard to discern through a screen, separated by pixels and avatars who have no bearing on our true selves?

 

I certainly do not want you to feel like others dislike you because you're a female. Anyone who truly has those mentalities already has significant character flaws that do not reflect on you as a person. But it isn't the best idea to presume this disdain when the evidence of it is murky.

 

 

[Jihnyny 2572]

5 minutes ago, esotericas said:

 

A) One tasteless persona is not enough to totally discount their experience RPing women, especially considering they didn't even mention said persona. 

B) That may be so! I don't have any information on the gender stats of LOTC, so I won't comment re: proportions, but it's still people's responsibility to make folks feel welcomed. Calling it the "monke brain" reason takes responsibility away from the players, when it is very much still up to them.

@esotericasthe comment about their '*****' persona was to suggest that being the reason for people not wishing to interact with their female personas.
I personally rped with that persona and it was incredibly disturbing

[esotericas 1554]

1 minute ago, Boknice275 said:

Are you sure the results of your experiment indicate 'gender bias'? Could the upsetting variable be that few people - myself included - enjoy interacting with child characters? Child/family RP is a niche that not everyone's character goals are suited for. Another thing to consider: you did not attempt your experiment at the same location, same time, with the same playergroup. You went to two very different locations (with arguably different playergroups) and different character concepts. It makes sense that you received a different result due to selection, not necessarily gender bias or discriminatory thoughts.

 

Much of LOTC's playerbase is here for one reason: to escape the pressures of reality through immersion in a high fantasy context. The digital medium is a barrier to actually understanding *who* other players are unless you take the time to speak to them on Discord for a significant amount of time. Even in that instance, you will likely not know the full extent of their values. If "gender bias" does exist and it is difficult to detect inrl, wouldn't it be even more hard to discern through a screen, separated by pixels and avatars who have no bearing on our true selves?

 

I certainly do not want you to feel like others dislike you because you're a female. Anyone who truly has those mentalities already has significant character flaws that do not reflect on you as a person. But it isn't the best idea to presume this disdain when the evidence of it is murky.

All of this is super fair. I didn't go into this intending to do an experiment. If I had, I would have done all of what you suggested re: consistency. I just happened to do this same thing again, and noticed that it felt very different this time around. And I specifically agree about interacting with child personas; if I had been intending to do this scientifically, I would have had them be the same age. But I know I, and at least a fair amount of others, would still consider 12 a "child," and thus label rping with them as "child rp." 

 

I never, however, said anything about family RP! Neither Galina nor Alasdair are geared towards family RP, and I was never seeking that on either of them. So I think there you're sort of misrepresenting me. 

 

In regards to gender bias being harder to perceive through a screen, I pretty firmly disagree. I think emotion is harder to perceive, but people's beliefs and biases almost always come through in their writing, even in subtle ways. I'm also not looking at specific individuals here, I'm considering more the general experience in a community I had, which makes it a lot harder to get to know every single person OOCly. 

 

Lastly, I'm not a woman, and "a female" is grammatically incorrect! That's only used when referring to animals. 

 

I really appreciate the thoughtful response, and I'm totally not going into this expecting people to agree with me. I just wanted to start a conversation here.

[warlord of filth 7714]

girls have cooties

 

[Kholibrii 978]

I do believe that LOTC still has a lot of issues with misogyny and that it could be part of this, but I believe a large part of the problem lies in many players' dislike toward other players who don't conform to their expectations at both an OOC or RP level.

 

Using the example of Alasdair and Galina, you note that people seemed to be more welcoming to the young and adventuring Al, while most seemed to ignore or take little interest in Galina. This isn't necessarily just because the character is a woman, but rather that players have an expectation that the young boy should be more adventurous while the girl should be better protected and less adventurous,  as such, they encourage one and discourage the other. I'd personally argue that this is a form of misogyny, but when you look at other examples it becomes clear that it's larger than that. Imagine instead of Alasdair and Galina, you have two characters, Bob, a more "traditionally masculine" boy, and Robert, a more "effeminate" boy. I'd argue that you'd see a similar outcome, with Bob being more accepted by the overall LOTC player base, while Robert would likely experience a similar disinterest to Galina because he is not conforming to the expectations of how a male character should behave.

 

This extends to OOC interactions as well, where people will likely shun you if you aren't conforming to their idea of what you should do, say, and think. Gender Identity, Race, Sexual Orientation, etc all play a role in this and it's not something you can simply call "Misogynistic" or "Homophobic" because it is ALL of it at the same time. I could say so much more about my personal experience on the topic, but I think this post is already getting long enough and I have one more thing I want to touch on.

 

THIS ISSUE IS A LOT WORSE IN SOME PLACES THAN OTHERS!! Since 2021, when the push for equal inheritance happened in human nations(<3 @Ivoreyy Rosemoor Bill), most human communities have put a lot of effort into making sure people of all identities feel safe and welcomed within their nation. Overall this has had an amazing impact on the server and you will find a lot more welcoming nations than you did a few years ago, but there are still places lagging behind. Some smaller communities still allow, or even support, differing levels of OOC and RP discrimination and that's where you will feel the effect of all of this a lot heavier. It's pretty easy to figure out which communities aren't putting energy into making sure people feel safe, so I'm not going to call anyone out, I'll allow everyone to analyze that themselves. Note: This final comment IS NOT meant to be targeted at any specific nation/community and shouldn't be correlated with any specific communities mentioned in @esotericas's post or mine

[Carson 936]

I literally pretended to be a dude for a few years (hence my forum name being Carson still) to get perverts off my back

 

now that im an adult, nobody really cares enough to try to groom me. but I'm not really a human player anyway

[Gaja 289]

i remember rping with you in adria! was fun smile

[Frostdrop1 871]

While it's important to be aware of gender bias, I also think examining something like LOTC for this kind of experience is rather strange. Playing on LOTC I don't expect to be treated as an equal irply in any given situation between the variety of races, beliefs and cultural practices. I also don't really want to always be treated as an equal - I want a fantasy realm with culture and culture does include the concept of gender bias and gender roles, and how your character interacts with those concepts is important and can greatly lend to your character's arc. In other words, I'm entirely okay with discrimination in a roleplay setting because I am not my character and I find those kinds of conflicts far more interesting and much less grating than some petty argument or getting hounded over one or two actions a character has done. 

I've also regularly played male and female characters in various rp communities - being assumed a male or a female is not exclusive to LOTC it's a logical extension of the information we do have because humans innately like patterns and we extend what knowledge we know naturally. It's not really particularly relevant to LOTC nor is it true bias imo, it's just a matter of ease and convenience of communication - if you play a male, expect to be assumed male. If you play a female, expect to be assumed female. If you don't want those assumptions to persist, politely correct someone.

Moreover, as someone has pointed out this isn't a very good comparison. It's heavily skewed and offers a flawed, anecdotal experience which focuses its language on highlighting the negatives when it seems quite clear that although you were passed around on your very young female persona the community was going out of its way to ensure you had someone to rp with. Overall, I think coming at any fantasy realm with the idea that because I experienced [x] in roleplay therefore [y] is true OOCly is a dangerous and unhealthy mindset which should be looked at cautiously. There are times when this is appropriate, and there are times when it is not. from reading this, to me, it sounds like a time where it is not appropriate.

[Bonito 2263]

It's important to give context to these places you visited. Adria was a different place in Almaris. It was on a highly active road and there was an effort to bring noobs and strangers into their community. Many nations this map don't even open their gates. Why talk to the random who might disrupt the perfectly safe and curated roleplay experience?

 

I'd say most of this is an observation on the state of roleplay more than gender bias (but its there). A lot of players simply wait to be emoted at, or log on just to legitimize decisions made on discord. To give my own observations, several times this map I've walked up to strangers and emoted at them only for them to parkour away or give some excuse in ooc as to why they weren't going to respond (roleplaying on a roleplay server????).

 

Also want to mention that it is medieval fantasy. What does a wizard have in common with a child? People will generally engage with the unique qualities of a character. The brave knight is going to want to save the little princess, not discuss strategy or recruit them for the military, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. It gives people the chance to change or challenge beliefs, generating interactions, good and bad! The issue is when biases spill outside the game.

 

Your observation on ooc treatment are the most interesting to me. The first women characters I ever played came around because I wanted to get attacked less (it worked) but I also ended up getting invited to a lot more roleplay, friend groups, and the first magics I would ever learn. A few years later, and you've had a very different experience. I don't really have an answer for why we were treated so differently, but my theory is the growing tribalism on here.