Four males and one female win E-Sports Women's tournament.

[SpicyMoth]

Apologies in advance, I imagine not many MNer's are that big into gaming so I have no idea if anyone will even care that much about this as it's such small fry compared to more common topics here, but I thought it worth bringing up anyway.

In late August, Riot Games announced a week long LCS Game Changers event. The event is to "feature the best female players in League of Legends. The best female players in the League of Legends scene will be scouted by professional and amateur teams in a bid to create a professional esports ecosystem that is diverse and inclusive."

Here's a Twitter/X video interviewing some of those who were scouted.
https://x.com/LCSOfficial/status/1705635639113257249?s=20

Attached in a picture below are the winners of the tournament, the Astrocats Team.

This is just life now. It's everywhere, and I am tired.
Those who know, know - The female experience gaming is quite enough to deal with on it's own without all this gender woo stuff taking centre stage to belittle and demean us just that tiny bit more 🙄

Quick jump in to say I think may have got the numbers confused slightly reading my title back - Woops >.<
There's more males in the interview video than in the winners image, I think that's why. Still a male majority by a fairly long shot though!

I notice LCSofficial have turned comments off....I wonder why...fucking disgraceful

Haven't done that much gaming over the last few years but this doesn't surprise me one bit, I'm sorry to say.

If you look at this description of the project then it only defines participants as being “women or marginalised genders”.

https://lolesports.com/article/lcs-game-changers-returns-with-expanded-opportunities/blt34b9355e38771431

Which currently seems to mean anyone at all - so absolutely opens it up to males with womanly feelz.

Seems like it hasn’t been well received or well supported - little wonder they turned off replies on X / Twitter.

The problem with lumping together 'women' and 'marginalised genders' is that there is a very large number of women and a very small number of 'marginalised genders' in general, though somehow it is the latter who get the attention now.

The other problem I think I see is that the 'marginalised genders' are not that rare in gaming while 'vulva people' are.

I see this lumping-together phenomenon cropping up everywhere with women. Women are not expected to deserve anything of their own.

Worth noting that this little niche of the gaming world is one of the vectors in the growing social contagion of transgenderism amongst autistic, teenage boys and young adult males (a new and different cohort to the childhood transition natal boys, eg Jazz Jennings).

So not just annoying and unfair to (actual) female gamers, but also a negative influence on vulnerable male teenagers.

So basically there are 5 people and 4 of them are male, like every top LoL player.

But this is somehow special.

Because, er, marginalised gender.

A typical marginalised gender is "not good enough male", we've seen this marginalised gender in a lot of women's competitions.

I care and I'm really sad. The removal of opportunities for women in favour of men with a female gender identity is why I'm on this board. If this keeps going, it'll be the Victorian era again, men out, women at home.

I suppose at least with 'women and marginalised genders' they are acknowledging that not all of the contestants are women.

I expect those males see themselves as women rather than a marginalised gender.

And the wording suggests that women aren’t a marginalised gender, which is bollox.

I think gender is a harmful social construct but I accept its existence.

By saying "women and marginalised genders" to me that reads as women are not a marginalised gender? And actually by letting men invade all this stuff meant for women by including "marginalised genders" all that is done is further marginalise the woman gender.

Also gaming is predominantly male. So if we are following gender ideology why are women even there? They shouldn't have time with all the beauty routines housework and childcare that we all just love so much because of our 'gender identity'. Better to just call the category marginalised genders and be done with it

I'm not convinced that there's even one woman in the group.

Whelp, might get my first deletion for this, but there you go.

I know very little about gaming. Is this an online multiplayer game where female players experience in-game misogyny due to being clocked as female by other players? Like the Valorant experiment where male pro players used voice changers so other players thought them female gamerant.com/valorant-misogyny-sexism/#:~:text=Male%20Valorant%20pros%20took%20part,women%20playing%20in%20the%20servers.

If so, what disadvantage are the transwomen and people with 'marginalised genders' with male voices supposedly experiencing?

It’s amazing how such a tiny marginalised minority can achieve such overwhelming success.

I've not played League Of Legends specifically myself, but one of my friends does and I'm pretty sure she's said it has an in game voice chat like a lot of other games.

It's funny you brought up the voice changer aspect of it though, throughout my entire life gaming I've only ever really come across the usual "Girls are bad at video games" rhetoric and just general leering - honestly not even that often, but in the the last 3 or so years there's been an absolutely MASSIVE increase in people piping up and saying something if I ever use voice chat. And it's escalated.

Whereas now it's all of that regular stuff plus accusations of using a voice changer and flat out being a man. Or if not that, then accusations that you simply must be trans for some reason.
All with the same undertone that actual females are bad at gaming.
I've genuinely lost count of the times I've had those accusations hurled at me for daring to communicate that we're being flanked :')

That's not even touching on the massive increase of "trans women" being present in games and the effect it can have depending on their behaviour.
(I don't want to get this comment removed by MN, so I want to preface this by saying this is my anecdotal experience, and by no means am I trying to generalise at all, I hope to dear god that not all trans women gamers are like this, but the ones I've come into contact with certainly have been.)
I can only assume it's overcompensating or because they feel insecure or something, but of literally EVERY time I've had a trans person on my team in one of my games, and they clock that I'm an actual female?
It's like a switch goes off, and the "girly voice" is dialled up to eleven and they talk over me constantly when I'm trying to communicate what's going on in game.
They start making excruciatingly sexual comments and OTT flirting with the obvious men in the team, almost making it like a competition of who's the most woman or something by getting a bigger reaction from the men - Possibly just for attention? I don't even know but it always elicits a huge eye roll when it happens.
Like clockwork, the team then derails.
The men see the attention seeking behaviour as a green light to just go absolutely hog wild with the sexual comments and foul jokes to the point everyone's so distracted and just taking the piss that we just outright lose.
I can deal with in in Quick Play modes, but in Competitive it's SO frustrating.
There's only so many times I can listen to a male doing impression of hentai in an attempt to try and come across "womanly".
Oh, and god forbid you're having a bad game - If you're a woman having a bad game and there's a trans woman acting like the above on your team - you've basically poured kerosene on top of an already lit fire at that point.

That's appalling @SpicyMoth. I struggle to see which bit of that is fun. I'd say it might be an argument for a voice changer but then why on earth should you have to? No wonder women don't play. I game a bit but nothing with voice interaction and that has put me right off.

And yes, I care about this competition and it's bloody awful.

As women, we are often seen as not good enough, deficient as not up to the male standard. So no issues with lumping us together, eh! Gosh. Yes, I also care about the competition.

I am sorry you’re being sexually harassed online @SpicyMoth . Can you not say something simple, like, ‘Can we concentrate on the game. We are all losing concentration with these dirty jokes.’

Just like when three men with very rare DSD affecting only a tiny minority of the worlds population managed to rise above the hate and win all three medals in the womens 800 m at the Rio Olympic Games thus beating the female representatives of 50% of the worlds population. Are we seeing Darwinian theory in live time action? Are tiny marginalised minorities the way forward for human evolution?

Bahh! I'm used to it by this point I think ahaha, not that that's an excuse!

From my experience the most common reaction to calling out the behaviour, even in a gentle way with something like "Can we group up and go as a team?" just tends to amp it up even further because you've basically let them know it's bothering you.

They don't realise that they're not the only person to have done/said those things that day, I think that's the issue.
Or maybe they do and they just don't care because it's a laugh for them.

Whenever this topic is ever brought up in gaming communities, they always make it about what's being said, or slurs, or the harassment itself - Some will say it's just words, other's will say words are violence.

I don't think words are violence, but I also don't think men are actually listening to the complaints women have either.
They hear harassment they think "oh you don't like shit talking".
AFAIK the issue isn't with "just words" or with "shit talking".
If it was just words I can't imagine many women would complain honestly... I went to an all girls school, girls aren't afraid to shit talk one another lol.

This real issues are that people stop paying attention to what's going on.
They'll go AFK and literally stand still because they're too busy trying to come up with something "funny".
Not realising that the entire team has been staggered when they all died from laughing at how hilarious they are, and proceeding to do the exact same thing again whilst complaining about not being healed. All despite the fact you're waiting to respawn and they'd have heard you say that if they hadn't hentai moaned over everything you say.

Even at the most basic level, hearing is super important in gaming. Especially if you get used to each character's specific sound effects etc.
The words are the least of it imo, the bigger issue is that it essentially amounts to gameplay sabotage as a whole.

Err, "inclusivity" is just an excuse for some boys who aren't good enough to get in the male team to pretend to be a "minority" gender and get in teams that are there for females (which they are not).

Yeah, I won't be clicking that link tyvm - Seems shady to me.

^ found the Spammer.

Why do women even have our own category in something that shouldn't be influenced by physical sex at all? Are we worse at video games? Seems unlikely.