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

[esotericas 1560]

Thanks for feeding my rep/comment farm guys 🫡 it's been good.

 

In all seriousness, thank you again to those of you who have provided their own honest opinions and experiences! It's been really interesting to see that my own experience hasn't been universal. I wasn't expecting it to be, but I honestly hadn't expected to be in what seems to be a minority.

 

Here are a few observations I've made based on these comments:

- People who play entirely or almost entirely female characters tend to feel ostracized or left out in some way (especially non-men playing women)

- People who play characters of both genders generally feel more accepted & welcomed on female characters (especially non-women playing women)

- People who play entirely or almost entirely male characters generally haven't observed or experienced any differing treatment (especially non-women playing men)

 

RE Alasdair & Galina being kid personas: I do understand that people don't always like rping with kids. I tend to start my personas as children because I RP to tell stories, and IMO childhood is super fundamental to, like.. the makeup of a person. You can't escape your childhood. That said, I totally get that loads of people don't like talking to them or rping with them, or have had bad experiences, and I know that that's true going into playing those characters. I implicitly filtered this into my expectations when going on these Tours, but I realize I didn't state it outright. 

 

I wonder if some aspect of escapism is what causes the differing feelings of acceptance? At least in my reading of these comments and the responses I've gotten in DMs, a fair amount of the people (like Squak, and some folks I've spoken to 1on1) who feel more welcome on their female characters are not women themselves.  Maybe getting to be someone else makes the experience of RPing more immersive, and therefore better in some way? I don't know.

 

I think the points about the niche-ification and niche-ness of groups are super fair. That wasn't something I'd considered going into this, and I totally should have. The playerbases for Lemon Hill and Adria are obviously different, as are the rp-styles and locations. In my head I considered them similar because the people I ended up rping with at Lemon Hill were largely also people I rp'ed with in Adria- which isn't terribly surprising, considering the personas broke off from Adria in order to found Lemon Hill. Also, of course, people will tend to RP with people that they already know. The levels of interaction from strangers remained starkly different, though, seasoned players and noobs alike.

 

I think my intention remains true, and I plan to follow through on this myself, as I've been doing all of today, reading people's comments. Just.. think about this stuff a bit. I know I'm guilty of, to Squak's point, judging characters based on their surface and choosing which ones to interact with based on my assumptions about them. Some of that is necessary, and some of that isn't. Everyone needs to work on that, me included. I plan to! 

 

Anyways, this will be my last comment. Thank you guys for sharing :) 

[esotericas 1560]

36 minutes ago, Crevel said:

I am personally uncomfortable with interacting with child characters in general, so I don't do it most of the time. It's also why I usually start playing my characters properly around the 16-year mark. A lot of the time, I see children characters and it makes me feel disgusted that there's probably a 20+ year old or even a 30+ year old behind the computer screen trying to pretend to be a child. LOTC is used for escapism, and that's what they choose to be? There are players out there who choose to play almost strictly children. It also doesn't help that some people play their children characters obnoxiously. I've seen so many child characters around the age of 5-7 get into arguments with adult characters and use complex words that those children shouldn't reasonably know. Same with child characters that are played only to be gremlins, as if that hasn't been done a thousand times before. 

 

Since this is a thread about roleplay gender observations, my own observation is that those particular obnoxious child characters tend to be girls. Child characters that are boys, from my own experience, tend to be more focused on roleplay development that gives them easier accessibility to paths like knighthood, church acolytes, and other generally militaristic roles that have systems in place that give child characters the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with a niche at a young age. I'm sure that there are definitely girl characters that exist for similar purposes, but from my observations it seems like most of the time they weren't created with that goal in mind.

 

(I lied this is my last comment)

 

I find this SUPER interesting, because I really agree, and I wasn't expecting to! My main, Manon, spends a lot of time with children. She is a teacher, and one who specifically mostly teaches children. I like to interact with characters a few times before deciding whether to teach them, just to be sure I know whether I like the rp, and whether Manon likes the kid. As of right now, two of Manon's students are girls, and four are boys, and I think it's for the reasons you talk about here, though I can't say for sure. I also find "gremlin" personas really annoying, and I really dislike the people who play kids that act either like babies or like miniature adults. More on that later. 

 

I wonder, though, if this is the fault of the players or the fault of the, for lack of a better word, "system"? As I observed on Galina, I just... feel like I have less opportunities on her. I'm not a military person, I don't PVP and I don't CRP if I can avoid it. The list of things left to do feels much shorter, and I feel less welcome in the spaces that do present other opportunities. (For example: I might be less inclined to join the church, given it's almost entirely men. Or I might be less inclined to get into politics, which are also almost entirely male-dominated. What does Galina have in common with these people? Not much! The lack of women in those spheres is enough to give me second thoughts about joining them. What if that's because they treat women badly? I don't want her to be treated badly... and so on.) It's definitely somewhat of a self-fulfilling cycle, where female children are given less opportunities, so their players turn towards other niches of kid rp, and then the stereotype forms that that's just 'how female child personas are,' and so people are less inclined to present them with opportunities, and then people are less likely to play female characters with those sorts of aspirations... blah blah blah, you get the point. Do I have less female students because less women want to do nerd RP? Do I have less female students because I am somehow biased against their RP? Do I have less female students because women don't feel welcome in nerd RP circles, and so don't bother to try? I really don't know.

 

About adults playing children being "weird:" that's one of those things that I will never begrudge someone for disliking and avoiding. Never. Some things just aren't fun for people, and that's cool! I do think, however, as someone who does do kid rp, there's a lot more to it than being an immature chaos gremlin, at least for me. Like I said in my previous comment, I do kid rp for, basically, the backstory. A lot of my focus on LOTC is in developing specific, unique characters, and playing through their childhood is really fundamental in developing them this way. After a conversation with a friend of mine, I realized not everyone looks at kid rp the way I do. So here's how I look at it. At least consider this, for those of you who do rp children and for those of you who might someday rp with them: 

 

People are people from the moment they are born. Children are, yes, generally less knowledgeable than adults. They are less informed about the world, and about how to be a person, and about things like "God" or "Kings" or "vocabulary." But they are still people. People, for example, generally do not get more or less smart over time, they only lose or gain knowledge. I have been as smart as I will ever be since I was a baby, but I will gather knowledge as my life goes on. Identifying the difference between intelligence and knowledge can go a long way in making a child persona not feel like a baby, a mini-adult, or a caricature. The way I look at a persona's "age" (in terms of how I rp them) is less about numbers, and more about the knowledge they have gained, their experiences, and thus the innocence they have lost. This takes different forms, and is why I am so passionate about playing personas as children! This early knowledge and these early experiences can be totally fundamental to shaping a person, if you let them. At least for me, it's not about "pretending to be a child" it's about telling the beginning of a story (arguably the most important part!) Looking at a child persona as.. just a kid, I think, is pretty harmful to their depth of character, especially when it's your own persona. It makes them feel flat, but they're not! They're people, just.. inexperienced ones. 

 

So.. anyways, that was long-winded. I totally agree that grown adults playing kid-babies, kid-adults, and chaos gremlins are primarily annoying, and also slightly weird. I do feel that, like.. it's okay to think things are weird? Just because I'm not comfortable with something doesn't mean it's hurting anyone. I can always leave. So I think that's something to keep in mind, too. But I understand that it does color one's perception of rping children, and that people will be less inclined to rp with kids going into things. I don't want to seem like I'm telling people to rp with kids, or rp kids. But I do want to remind folks to give people a chance, before deciding their rp isn't for you. And I do also want to remind people to consider not just the surface level, in situations like this! "I rp with female kids less than male kids because more female kids are annoying" is a pretty shallow view, and it ignores a lot of the complexities at play. Again, not to say you should rp with people you don't want to. But.. just think about why. Seeking to understand things is really fundamental to improving them.

 

Anyways, I'm actually done now. Peace out yall.

[Hunnic 348]

5 hours ago, Carson said:

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

I must ask... how does this comment contribute to the conversation at hand? 
While I am very sorry to hear this happened to you- I can't really connect your post to anything esotericas pointed out.

[𝙻𝚞𝚟 XO 3066]

Strange coincidence that I’m stumbling onto this as just moments ago I was talking about the playerbase and it’s “ism”s. Now, I would like to preface, before I go into my perspective, that I identify as a trans-woman very publicly on the server and most of the player base has always known this since I joined back in 2015.

 

This server is CERTAINLY ratioed when it comes to male versus female players and that comes with the territory of video games, and roleplay ones more specifically. There is a respectable populace of female players though, and part of that has to do with the medium we’re playing on Minecraft. However, it’s no secret that most communities, settlements, and even staff teams are (and for the most part always have been with few exceptions) primarily led by men. I have done an occasional holiday in human noble roleplay, but I am a magic roleplayer so that is the setting where my IC perspective is going to be coming from primarily. 

 

I have noticed that with all of my mage characters, primarily in the Voidal and Dark Arts spaces, that were traditionally “feminine” in nature were treated VERY differently than those that were more neutral or even slightly masculine because of their desires to be treated with respect by their peers. Now, my character Kypris is an exception as I did purposely play her overtly sexual and in your face - she was meant to be irritating and make those around her uncomfortable for the sake of picking fights and flexing her combat prowess. I am not referring to my time there as I already know first hand how women like that are treated by society. 

 

With my Frost Witch, I noticed a very different reception from both IC and OOCly. I purposely avoided any and all romance RP on her, I made sure to rarely have her in dress skins or anything “revealing”, and I made sure to have a major part of her personality be built off her desire to use the time granted by her immortality to learn and experience everything she possibly could about the world. I made sure to roleplay her emotions as rather cold and she was generally rather closed off. This was the character I was HANDED Dark Magics on left and right. I was the owner of two active charters. I was invited to significant roleplay events. I was given ST/ET oversight and green lights to push my magic abilities to their limits with rare hesitation. No OOC scheming, no 5 minute magic deals, or anything like that. Her dedication and presence was generally taken seriously which led to IC rewards - despite the server’s highly encouraged vilification of me. Another thing I think is worth noting during this time is my pulled back OOC presence during this time. I was significantly less active publicly in discord, the forums, and any other non-IC LoTC mediums. Everyone was still aware of who I was, because the OOC bullshit was still happening without me engaging.

 

Now I joined at the age of 15, or so, and the hate towards me back then from almost exclusively slightly older men was ridiculous. Having people sending things to my house, calling my mother’s job, accidentally sending a threat to my brother’s school instead of mine, finding my social media and spreading my pictures (before I really began my medical and social transition, and i was not proudly exposing my appearance. nowadays I often have my selfies as my forum picture) , and just blatant transphobia publicly on forums or discords. We’re not here to discuss all of that and my role isn’t relevant because NONE OF THOSE THINGS ABOVE should have been allowed to happen here - they did, relentlessly for years. Similar things have happened to other trans players, and even cis-women. I have never seen something like that happen to a male player, even with similar OOC public opinion who hadn’t done something universally and morally detestable. 

 

I was going to go in about my time experiencing this type of behavior outside of roleplay, but decided against it as this post primarily used IC as the basis for their observations. I think we all know that there is a discussion to be had their though. For all the men on this post coming up with the saddest of excuses and saying anything, BUT acknowledgment of the blatant misogyny on this server you’re probably part of the problem. 

[DahStalker 2858]

@yopplwasupxxxvalid response. Having grown up on a server full of men with different perspectives compared to this one, it is refreshing to see an older gentleman who is able to set healthy personal boundaries. While there is no problem with people who are older roleplaying with younger people, I've always found it awkward roleplaying with people who have considerable age gaps from my own age, and have noticed majority of players who play females now a days in the humanity player base to be much younger compared to my age spare few.

[Toffee 1128]

It's been really interesting to read everyone's responses! I have a few thoughts that have been brewing for a while but this was the spark to make me actually put it into words.

 

Focusing mainly on human characters but with some overlap into elves, what are the possible avenues for a character to go down from a young age?

• Military — knighthood, joining the military, becoming a squire/ward, generally learning fighting and weapons stuff
• Politics — tutoring on politics and history, wardship to a political figure, joining the government, getting council positions
• Law — learning law IRP from a practitioner, getting involved in writing the laws of a nation, practicing law in character
• Courts — wardship to a royal or court figure, getting involved in palace events, skinning, fashion posts
• History — researching history IRP, writing about historical events
• Medical — learning healing IRP, becoming a medic, collecting herbs, learning alchemy
• Magic — being taught or self-teaching magic, studying the arcane, some overlap with alchemy
• Smithing — learning how to smith, making items, selling items

There are plenty of others but these are just some examples. Back in 2018 when I first joined, some of these (mainly politics and law) felt EXTREMELY difficult to get involved in on a female persona/as a woman OOC. Although elves had women in power, it was still an uphill battle to be treated seriously and as competent as male counterparts.

 

That has now changed with most nations having equal rights of inheritance, there have been plenty of female rulers, there are so many women involved in politics... so why does the server still feel hostile towards women and LGBTQ+ people? I realised that although a lot of barriers have been brought down so that women can get easily involved in all areas of the server, it's frequently the case that players are only taken seriously when they do a specific type of roleplay and do that roleplay in a specific way. That specific way is GENERALLY masculine. Saying generally because this isn't true in every case, just making some general observations.

 

1 hour ago, Crevel said:

Child characters that are boys, from my own experience, tend to be more focused on roleplay development that gives them easier accessibility to paths like knighthood, church acolytes, and other generally militaristic roles that have systems in place that give child characters the opportunity to ingratiate themselves with a niche at a young age.

 

What do these roleplay development routes have in common? They are traditionally masculine paths that have systems in place which have been in place for years on the server and that are afforded a lot of respect. Sure, women can also get involved in these paths, but what about people who don't enjoy these niches? What are the more feminine niches they have? I would say court RP and clinic RP.

 

What is the problem with that? The problem is that the "palace egirl" stereotype that @squakhawk mentioned is definitely still rife. The elven version of this is "egirl clinic RPers". What this means is that more traditionally feminine niches of RP are 1) not taken as seriously as masculine routes so do not have as stable systems to progress through the ranks, 2) women who want to be taken seriously distance themselves from these niches of RP to not be "tainted" by it, which means that there is limited overlap between more "serious" niches like politics and the courts.

 

My opinion of why this stereotype developed is because back in the day it was very difficult for women to get into positions of power, so the only options they had was the race for consort or to grab power where possible (such as being the leader of the clinic). This lead to infighting and OOC toxicity because there was such a small sliver of power to go around, meanwhile male players and characters had all of the other options discussed above. This has thankfully changed a lot, but I still see the race for queen consort incinerate playerbases from the inside out, and I still see certain feminine types of RP derided because these stereotypes persist.

 

Thanks for coming to my ted talk, happy to discuss these thoughts further or have my mind changed.

[Shorsand 1745]

i cant have enough of an invested outlook to have a proper opinion on gender treatment based on the OP anecdotes. i speak from male privilege tho i do acknowledge simply because of what the core components of this community are there will likely be always more misogyny than not and we should endeavor to fix it.

 

however the real issue that we need to put an end to is roleplaying as children. evil.

[Mister_Gavin 288]

I'm scared of talking to women.

[TeawithFrisket 2636]

I was always assuming the reason they were ignoring me irply was for Oocly not wanting to rp with me. Which regularly is the case. 

 

no matter the gender to be fair

[rukio 8910]

It's just not that deep dawg

[SlitheryC1 486]

...You guys get people to approach you and interact with you without doing anything?

 

Damn

[Wizry 358]

2 minutes ago, SlitheryC1 said:

...You guys get people to approach you and interact with you without doing anything?

 

Damn

It's tough out here man.


Nevertheless, I'd draw the conclusion from your Alasdair and Galina words where both were treated differently is less due to gender and more the culture of the RP in those respective places. Alasdair was in Adria in Almaris and Adria was a relatively newcomer-friendly place due to it being on a main road and having a constant influx of new-players to come and talk to. This leads to more opportunities being offered at the forefront since they wanted this new player to stay around. Adria was also a more 'adventurer' and 'commoner' type of RP - which may explain the various differences.

Galina was in Whitespire, the capital of Aaun. Admittedly, I don't know much about Whitespire, but from location-wise, it is not in the same position as Adria was last map, where it had that constant influx of new players - but instead a rather settled base of players with their own cliques and groups to interact with. Then in Lemon-Hill, despite it having somewhat the same geographic location, is a more monasterial type of roleplay since it is a settlement made by, predominantly, the clergy.

[Smmer 1145]

11 hours ago, Mister_Gavin said:

I'm scared of talking to women.

 

The fjord launch into a wood chipper is fast approaching 

 

[chaotikal 2236]

Ewww, girls? Girls like boys and thats GAYYYYYYYY, im here chilling wi ma dudes

[SortedJarhead 811]

interesting.

 

worth noting correlation =/= causation 

 

from google:

 

"ice cream sales and violent crime rates are closely correlated, but they are not causally linked with each other. Instead, hot temperatures, a third variable, affects both variables separately. Failing to account for third variables can lead research biases to creep into your work."

 

i agree there are gender issues on lotc, but your experience does include many other variables including playerbase interacted with, location, etc.

 

we need a social scientist in here ASAP