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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Afrodyte" data-source="post: 969902" data-attributes="member: 8713">a woman's perspectiveA great deal of conversation has been about why gamers are unattractive to women.  As a woman, I'd like to offer a few of my thoughts on that.  I will be honest and say that a good deal of this could be just a bunch of hot air and me trying to rationalize something that is frankly not rational.  So take what I say with a grain of salt.  I'm just speaking of my perspective and my experience.Roleplaying is one of my favorite hobbies.  As such, a lot of the people I come into contact with share this interest or are at least familiar with it.  Only in a very few, rare cases have I even felt a twinge of attraction toward my fellow gamers.  Rather than give an extensive list of what everyone else did wrong (it varies), I'll tell you what these guys did right.  It all boils down to this: respecting me as a person who has thoughts, feelings, and experiences as valid as their own.  It's so simple, but so many people get it wrong.When I had a conversation with these guys, I never felt as though they were patronizing me or being condescending.  They never insulted my intelligence when I disagreed with them or used a difference of opinion or perspective as a means of judging me as a person.  This made me feel comfortable around them, and I found myself being less defensive, more open and trusting.Also, I always felt that with these guys, their decision to listen to me and value my thoughts and feelings were not based in how eager they were to sleep with me (which is often based on how I look).  It's a sad realization to find that most guys only find what women have to say interesting if they see them as potential sex partners.  I'm sure they don't mean to be like this, but it's how I feel, and perhaps only more positive interactions with different men would get me to believe otherwise.  With the men whom I felt attracted to, I felt as though they found me interesting, intelligent, etc. without me having to flaunt my sexual availability all the time.  Let me get this clear right now: I have a very high sex drive and a highly erotic imagination, so it's not a matter of not liking or wanting sex.  It's about thinking that somehow my sexuality is divorced from my ability to feel, think, and imagine.  As though I were a barnyard animal, more or less.  This freedom from the chains of mainstream gender roles and relations I felt when I was around them relaxed me, which made me feel comfortable to feel sexual around them.  I certainly didn't act on this urge (both were unavailable in this regard), but I did feel it, which is important.When I was around them, I got the sense that while they were aware of my femininity, they did not use this to treat me as someone I am not.  I was not "just one of the guys," even though I could socialize with them and game with them and talk to them.  I wasn't just "the gamer chick" either.  They treated me like a lady, not a flower or a hunk of meat or a disease.  Or rather, I should say they were gentlemen.  I didn't feel they were being courteous just because they found me attractive (which I'm sure they didn't, but that is not the point).  Because of this fact alone, I think my behavior and attitude towards them was much softer than I normally am around men I find overbearing, obnoxious, and disrespectful.Finally, we could talk about things besides gaming.  We usually could relate to each other as broke college students or as people who want to work in less mainstream professions.  Maybe our family lives were the same.  However, we were different enough to have things to discuss and talk about.  Our talks were not debates, but a genuine attempt to get to know what the other person was about.  It was not an intellectual version of a <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> fight.  This relieved me to no end, and it helped me see their sexually attractive qualities.So, it wasn't anything particular about how they looked or talked that made them attractive to me.  It was all in how they treated me, and I felt they treated me as their equal.  I was not a conquest or an obstacle.  I was not cast into the role of sex object, mother figure, or bitch.  In other words, I felt like I could be myself around them, and this made them sort of sexy to me.</blockquote>

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