In the Land of Trees and Rivers

On harassment and female characters

rashkah:

sahnin:

thevressclan:

lanuria:

or ‘Am I the only one that hasn’t dealt with this ever?; an essay.

So, I saw this post on my dashboard today and read through the comments. I know a few of my friends have said they strictly only play male characters or have maybe one or two female characters, but they seldom play them because of harassment. 

And that really makes me sad because I really enjoy seeing some good female characters and, most importantly, I know these people WANT to play those characters, but don’t feel they can play them in a safe environment. 

Which really sucks.

Then I got to thinking about my experiences in both WoW and SWTOR. I tend to usually play the ‘athletic female with a red ponytail‘ for most of my female characters, but they aren’t ugly, I don’t think. I mean, Lanuria was a hottie in makeup

And Gevi can be quite the looker as well

but I don’t recall ever getting any type of whispers from anyone during my time leveling. (Of course, I’m not counting my time on Darkspear where I was a ~*~forum troll~*~ or whispers about RPL, those are things I brought upon myself in a sense and didn’t come from my choice of character.)

I stand around on the Fleet with my characters, even on Tython and starter zones. I think I’ve actually had more whispers to Obisen than any of my female character, which I’m sure Obisen would hate to hear. :P

So, I’m curious about this for some odd reason. Is there a reason I don’t get these whispers? Do my friends have this happen to them all the time? What is being said that makes my awesome, strong, amazing friends feel so harassed they can’t play the games they want, how they want? What do these people say? Why? HOW? 

And how come I can’t get these fucks to whisper me so I can tell them to knock it the hell off?

I play some female tauren and trolls, and I do have a couple female SWTOR characters. I just don’t play them often enough to have had to deal with stuff like this. I don’t think it’s about looks, though. Luck and maybe reputation (as I DO have a reputation on WrA, both from my time with The Loyal Few and the fact that I have a tendency to tell people what to do with themselves if they start acting like idiots…I have zero patience). Mostly luck, I think. My women all look good, I think, but I haven’t been on them enough to run into this kinda stuff.

I’ll give you an example of the sort of shit I’ve put up with in the past.  This is an extreme example, because for me it was seriously out of the blue.  The guy in these images was a friend, and we sometimes flirted.  I think he mistook my gregariousness in Vent and in game for being sexual.  

My jaw dropped and I had no idea how to handle this.  The guy was my guild’s main tank.  (This was right around the start of the Burning Crusade expac.)  Main tank meant you did not complain when you were treated poorly because main tank is MAIN TANK.  

This conversation went from ‘Hi, how ya doing’ to sexual in like 2 seconds.  I was so stunned, I seriously didn’t even know how to reply.  Because he informed me he was horny and then… yeah just see the screenshot.  (Blacked out his name, and some personal rl information about me.)

Woooow.
You know, I’ve gotten harrassed far more on non-RP servers than I’ve ever been in any of the RP ones I’ve been on. Alas I have no screenshots because I always pulled the “I have a penis, please go away” card and it always worked.

This one time in Jaedenar when I came back to WoW in BC, I rolled a female draenei shaman. I can’t tell you how many people stuck to me like fucking flies to a bright light and I never said a word on vent or flirted with anyone. There was this guy in particular that got ahold of my e-mail and sent me a picture of his dick.
- I handled it by emailing back a picture of a black porn actor’s wang. It was hilariously awkward for them.

In terms of harrassment for playing female characters, the only I’ve gotten was recently, sitting on my rogue, this guy started complimenting my MRP, then he continued on to talk about butts, I like butts, so I entertained it, then he mentioned something about “It would be nice if yours were like that too.” to which I replied with “lol I’m a dude” this was two weeks ago, not a single word from this person.

Most of the harrasment I get is for playing character that aren’t sexually appealing, like Gida’tar, who happens to be a very rare androgynous twi’lek woman. As far as anyone knows she’s not sexually attracted to anything, and that makes people angry???? I don’t know. People are weird. I get more complaints about “Why aren’t ur characters fuckable” than anything else, really.

This post is super relevant to my interests because this has happened to me a LOT. By nature, when I get comfortable with the people I like and the people I love, I like to teasingly flirt with them. Enter my characters. I like to set a strong stance for my characters’ sexuality right from the get-go. Whether they are very sexual or completely non-sexual, I play them how I see them in my head and one of them just happened to be a little more sexual than the others.

So, -apparently- this gave this one guy the go-ahead to start harassing me not only RP-wise, but outside of RP as well. I made it clear to him from the start that I wasn’t interested and that I myself had a boyfriend. This guy’s character had been bluntly staring at my character’s boobs for the past hour and I was getting pretty sick of it, so…I decided to leave.

I’m really sorry that I didn’t screencap all of this, but in no short terms he says “I thought we could ERP these two! You ERP on everyone else, why not with me?” Needless to say, I was kind of pissed off. I said “Excuse me, but these two just met. Even if she were vaguely interested in him, she’s still not the one to jump in bed with someone she just met, so. No.”

The real kicker? THE REAL KICKER. He goes on to say “But her boobs are hanging out, that’s got to be some kind of an invitation!” I just. I couldn’t even -fathom- the thought process behind something like that. Then. Ohoho, then. “I thought you liked me. I’ve dreamed of fucking you, you know.” This all coming from a person who I’d barely known for a fucking -week.- A person I told right off the bat that I -was not- interested in because I had a boyfriend. I tried to be nice to him just like all my other friends, to make him feel welcome in our guild and I suddenly felt like I shouldn’t have done so. It was hurtful and confusing and honestly made me reconsider how to act around people, who I’m already kind of bad around to begin with.

I thought he got the clue after a while of me basically ripping into him about all the frankly really nasty crap he’d been saying. The next day? He starts calling me all these pet names. Starts emote kissing me, asking if it’s ‘okay’ and that he’s so lonely for me. I was so uncomfortable and frustrated that I got tears in my eyes. Then, he says “You know, I hope your boyfriend is treating you right. I could treat you right, you know.” I cannot -begin- to tell you how much I just wanted to sit there and cry. But, I just kind of sucked it up and said ‘No. And you know what? You need to lay the fuck off. I told you once already and you should’ve been respectful of that.’

He was the absolute worst one. I’ve gotten stupid ERP requests a lot on my female characters (along with my male ones, but those are a lot less frequent.) That’s pretty much the reason I don’t walk-up RP anymore. But, just. Wow. I’m sorry for -everyone- this happens to. It shouldn’t happen, it really shouldn’t, but apparently people get pretty damn bold when they’re not face to face with someone. Yeesh.

I just realized…

I hit my 1,000th post. uvu 24 followers, 1,000 posts and hopefully many more to come. Uguuu, I love you all.~

josephthrallin:

casual reminder that you’d let vol’jin fuck the shit out of you

(via peptobismarck)

I don’t care what anyone says…

I friggin’ love Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That is all. Nnnngh, makes me wanna’ write.