Infanticide and Gaming (an educational rant)
I really should be doing other things with my time, but I figured I just have to make my point more clear.
To do so, we need to discuss one of the most violent and unspeakable crimes of all- killing your own children.
Now, with the recent events of the Andrea Yates case, there has been a huge focus on this crime. Interestingly, killing your own children is one of only two crimes that women commit as often as men. The other is shoplifting.
However, even though both genders kill their children at an equal rate, there are plenty of difference in their behavior.
From a recent article on MSNBC:
a study by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shows that fathers are far more violent. And mothers frequently dispose of the corpses in what researchers call a “womblike” fashion. Bodies are swaddled, submerged in water, or wrapped in plastic. Moreover, the NCMEC study showed that while the victims of maternal killings are almost always found either in or close to the home, fathers will, on average, dispose of the bodies hundreds of miles away. All these behaviors suggest that women associate these murders with themselves, their homes, and their bodies
Read the whole article here:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/723203.asp?0si=-
My point, even when killing their own children, women are more caring, nurturing, and concious of social relationships than men are. By contrast, men are still more violent.
Now lets talk about domestic violence. Although it is true that some women do attack their s.o. (often with knives or other weapons), the vast majority of domestic abusers are male.
If women are just as likely to be violent as men, why is there such a discrepency in instances of physical abuse?
If women are just as prone to violence as men, why are there hundreds of organizations around the world dedicated to eliminating violence AGAINST women. A simiple search of "violence and women" on Google reveals :
http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1772e.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawo/
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawo/laws/vawa/vawa.htm
http://www.wave-network.org/
http://www.now.org/issues/violence/http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
http://www.jhuccp.org/pr/l11edsum.stm
And that's not even all the ones from the first page. Every one of those sites discuss how to stop men's violence against women, because women are victimized the world over by the violence of men.
By contrast, a search of "men and violence" reveals:
http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/
http://www.menovercomingviolence.org/
http://www.silcom.com/~paladin/madv/
Interestingly, every one of these sites discusses how to stop men's violence against women, too!!
Hmm....
There seems to be an association between men and violence in our world.....
Here's a few other intesting tidbit about women and violence:
Studies from WHO indicate that between 16% and 52% of women world-wide are physically assaulted by an intimate partner at least once in their lives.
Read more here:
http://www.ippf.org/resource/gbv/ma98/1.htm
Interestingly, the WHO doesn't even address how many men are attacked by their wives. How many do you suppose there are, in Egypt, China, India, who abuse their husbands and boy friends??
Am I clear so far???
Now, how does this relate to gaming?
To understand that, we need to see gaming as *entertainment.*
Once we do that, we can see that it is not surprising that few girls game.
Few girls watch pro-wrestling too. Few girls watch TnT. Few girls play rugby. Few girls fight in boxing matches. Few girls beat their husbands. Few girls read Conan.
Why???
For the same reason that they bury their children close to the home after murdering them. Gender based psychology.
Now, you can say that that psychology is the result of social constructs and gender bias. And to a large degree it is, but not completely. You can not ignore the inescapable fact that men and women are different on a biological level.
How different??
well, among other things, men have much higher levels of testosterone. And as we all know, testosterone increases violent behavior! In fact, a 1997 study conducted by Georgia State University shows that women who commit violent crimes have high levels of testosterone.
The researchers found that testosterone levels were related both to the violence of the women's crimes and to the aggressive dominance of their behavior in prison. This finding was further supported by assessing how an inmate's age corresponded to her behavior and testosterone levels.
Read the whole article here:
http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/3a046.htm
I really can't believe that I have to go through all this to prove that women, ON AVERAGE, are less inclined to violence than men, and therefore less inclined to take up a violent hobby.
Now, if we did a blood test of all female hach-n-slash gamers, I am guessing we'd find that many of them have "high" levels of testosterone. Why???
Because they like to kick people's teeth in.
Now, there are probably plenty of girls who game, and are hack-n-slash players, who do not have high levels of testosterone. How can that be??
Because behavior is the result of many factors. Perhaps through socialization, she has learned to like a violent hobby. perhaps she comes from a violent background, and can easily relate. But it doesn't matter because we are not intersted in the exceptions to the rule.
The biological rule is: Women have lower levels of testosterone, which, among other things (both external and internal) cause them to be less inclined to violence. You can't argue with science.
That rule leads to all sorts of social roles, and gender norms that, today, we say are oppressing women. And indeed, many of our modern social conventions do keep women in a "social role."
But, for one thing, that goes both ways. Men are also constrained by social roles. For another, it is reinforced both by men and women in such an entrenched way that it is an inescapable reality. But after you strip away all the social roles, the cultural norms, the learned behavior, the conforming and obedience, you are left with biological impulses that are the root cause of behavior.
If you don't like it when I say "women are less inclined to violence than men." Then you are simply living in a politically correct dreamland of gender neutral hermaphrodites.
The fact is that men are the more violent and aggressive gender, and have been since we all lived in caves. It is forthat reason, more than any other, that gaming ( a violent hobby) appeals more to men.
All other factors such as artwork, social unease (1 girl and 5 guys at the table
), gender roles, "geekiness" and all else that keeps women from the gaming table, can be traced back to our innate, violent impulses (or lack thereof).
And it is for that reason that I belive women will never be 50% of the d20 industry. If We are evr to approch numbers like that, we will need a greater focus on role-playing, and less of a focus of combat.
That was an eye opener for me.
I can write up something more cogent.
)my statements are purely my story, not necessarily anyone else's. Eeryone has a different reason why they game, or don't game whether male or female.
