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Do ANY females/girl gamers play KSP?


sedativechunk

Are you a female kerbonaut?  

301 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you a female kerbonaut?

    • Yes
      22
    • No
      275


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I'm pretty sure that's a record! :D
This is a thread about women who play KSP, not women within KSP. The latter subject is what causes hypergolic reactions. If the somewhat inflammatory OP were changed I would actually expect it to never be locked.
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Yes, girls play KSP.

yes, i'm one of them.

No, a shared interest in KSP is not really enough to base a close friendship or other personal relationship on.

This is actually quite accurate. Part of the reason women do not reveal themselves is because they face harassment from men for being a women; sometimes in the forms of unwanted sexual attraction.

I generally play female characters on MMOs and if you don't "dress male" you will find people will assume you're a girl simply because of playing a female character; and more so you'll have prepubescent kids talking about how they love you. I recall a conversation I had with one of them who wanted to marry me "in game," well, after playing with me for 5 min he brought it up. I told him that it really was an odd thing to ask a person you barely know, but he talked about how all his other friends were marrying people (in game) and he felt left out.

Edited by Fel
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First, respect to all members of the KSP community. You all rock: males, females, non-genders, super-genders, cross-genders, and socks.

OP's observation is that there are few or no female KSP players. While the way in which this is presented may strike nerves, there's an interesting discussion to be had about demographics, social trends, and the visibility of gender populations on the forum.

Unfortunately, there is no accurate count of male vs. female players for us to analyze statistically. This poll will not give accurate information due to inherent biases:

-the forum is a specific subset of the KSP community and not representative of all players

-the nature of the poll calls on a class of people to identify themselves publicly which is uncomfortable

-A stigma exists surrounding gender issues that affects males and females from participating (people avoiding the thread entirely will not be counted)

While I don't feel that gender makes any difference at an individual level (it's just one piece of a larger puzzle that makes up someone's personality), I do believe that a community built from a mixture of genders (and other classifiers) is friendlier, more welcoming, and provokes more interesting discussion.

So, regardless of it's dryness, try not to take this thread as shining a harsh spotlight on a minority, and instead try to see it as an invitation to bring more people of different types into the community. Peace!

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The way to true equality is to stop focusing on gender entirely and simply see each other as people. Dragging gender into everything is counter productive.
No. This kind od argument is counterproductive. What you say would work wonders, if only we lived in a world where gender differences don't matter, and all the problems exist only in the minds of the people bringing the subject up. But that's not the case, and it never was. Gender inequality is very real, and it's as old as history. Saying that people shouldn't focus on gender is a way of saying that we should just accept the world as it is, while it's blatantly unequal. It's great for you, if you're a white heterosexual male, not so great for everybody else.

I will only make a small note on this:

Hate begets more Hate. A black person CAN be racist, and it needs no special prefix to downplay the word. In the same manner of Romeo and Juliet we have a situation where two groups (Extremist Blacks and Extremist Whites) have grown to hate each other, and have caught everyone else in the middle. Romeo of Dark wants to be with Juliet of Light, but have "cultural tensions" due certain groups making it worse for everyone else.

There are several blacks who express the need to punish whites for the actions of their ancestors. I am not misrepresenting the people I am referring to, and I know MOST blacks are NOT extremists; but this creates tensions because pointing out how a minority (or even an 'underrepresented majority') can be just as wrong as the system they're fighting is something we tend to ignore.

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is a dangerous an interesting question.

I am male and I usually think everybody that I know in Internet is a male until ... basically always, sometimes I meet persons that I meet first on internet, and if see that they are women, I don't change the way to talk with them, differentiate a person by its gender is stupid.

As physics professor I will say that 15-20% of the persons that play this game are female and the rest male, because that is the usual interest that I found in space travel with my students.

And if there 5% of the people that answer saying that they are female is because the rest will maintain its anonymity...

Probably the men don't see how the females are treated by men in some occasions... but in a game like this... some women could start to hate the game if some male players starts to refer them as a woman (with condescending attitude or trying to flirt with them...).

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I will only make a small note on this:

Hate begets more Hate. A black person CAN be racist, and it needs no special prefix to downplay the word. In the same manner of Romeo and Juliet we have a situation where two groups (Extremist Blacks and Extremist Whites) have grown to hate each other, and have caught everyone else in the middle. Romeo of Dark wants to be with Juliet of Light, but have "cultural tensions" due certain groups making it worse for everyone else.

There are several blacks who express the need to punish whites for the actions of their ancestors. I am not misrepresenting the people I am referring to, and I know MOST blacks are NOT extremists; but this creates tensions because pointing out how a minority (or even an 'underrepresented majority') can be just as wrong as the system they're fighting is something we tend to ignore.

Poor analogy. Romeo and Juliet were from rival families, both with roughly the same power. There was no social inequality. They could just hold hands, sing a song, and everything would be fine. Gender, race and many other kind of issues aren't like that - even if all the 'minorities' forgave past grievances, the world would still be full of injustice towards them. And fighting against injustice isn't the same as hate - just don't expect people who have suffered through history, and still suffer, to just enjoy the situation. Even hate against injustice isn't the same thing as hating someone else just because their reasonable demands for justice would mean the loss of a few privileges.

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And again. This thread is not about race. It's also not a place for us to solve the world's problems of inequality. We simply aren't going to come to a consensus of that magnitude on a forum about a space video game.

Asking people personal information is one thing. And if they are so inclined, they might share. Please avoid sweeping statements about any one particular group of people. In fact, we had a thread of nearly identical topic not all that long ago, and these threads always go down the same track.

Just because there aren't that many people "of type XXX" on a forum, doesn't mean we need to sit around and talk about them as if they are mythical creations. It's okay if women aren't interested in KSP, and it's great if they are. And I'd rather convert that perception to "It's okay if someone isn't interested in KSP, and it's great if they are."

We don't need to "call people to the carpet" just to prove they are here and justify themselves. You should encourage ALL people to get into math and science, and virtually every other subject.

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Surely answering the poll is anonymous? I don't see how it would reveal a players gender?

Unless I'm missing something entirely.

The poll initially was set as public, somewhere along the line it was made anonymous.

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asking this question on a video game message board is like asking this question at the urinals. you're not sampling the most neutral demographic.

but like many have said here, yes, we know women who play KSP.

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As it currently stands, KSP has a 4% female fanbase....

Are you referring to the current poll results? People have already given several reasons why you're not going to get good data out of a poll, or an OP, like this one.

I'm a bit embarrassed, but not really surprised, that it was made.

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This is off topic but a thread like this not turning into a flame war or walls of text filled with hate is an indication of what a great community KSP has.

As for me, after reading this thread it made me realize I just assume the people in game forums are male unless there is some indication otherwise.

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It's offensive to assume there are no women playing KSP because of some irrational belief that they are just "not into science" or something like that. Of course there are women who play, maybe they just don't show up often or have better things to do.

Although another certainly possible but horrible reason that there are few women on here is the simple fact that there are people in today's society trying to suppress women from doing things like being engineers and scientists and pilots (no pun intended), and try to drive them towards more "womanly" things, or rather, those things that society deems more suitable for women. Even when they are children, they may be expected to do things like that. For example, rather than working on some carpentry project, they might be encouraged to help out with cooking or cleaning. It's terrible, but it's sadly true.

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And by interesting you mean completely and utterly expected....

We've already had jokes about how gender identity is totally like claiming you're an air conditioner, we've had redacted posts questioning women's intelligence...and then we have the OP itself.

Folks, KSP is supposed to be a welcoming community. Let's bloody act like it.

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And by interesting you mean completely and utterly expected....

We've already had jokes about how gender identity is totally like claiming you're an air conditioner, we've had redacted posts questioning women's intelligence...and then we have the OP itself.

Folks, KSP is supposed to be a welcoming community. Let's bloody act like it.

I am actually impressed by the KSP community. I have seen threads like this turn into post after post of hateful and degrading statements on the first page on a lot of forums. The fact that this thread has only some people doing the I identify as ______ statements and only one posters comment had to be edited reflects highly on the community as a whole.

I do question the motive of why the OP created this thread.

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And by interesting you mean completely and utterly expected....

We've already had jokes about how gender identity is totally like claiming you're an air conditioner, we've had redacted posts questioning women's intelligence...and then we have the OP itself.

Folks, KSP is supposed to be a welcoming community. Let's bloody act like it.

Generally I find the KSP community to be the most welcoming there is. :) Pretty much everyone is pleasant most of the time with the odd exception.

I didn't expect the identify as jokes to appear here though....

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Generally I find the KSP community to be the most welcoming there is. :) Pretty much everyone is pleasant most of the time with the odd exception.

I didn't expect the identify as jokes to appear here though....

I think it's rather nice too. It's a nice change of pace from military and political forums.

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I'm just gonna say this before it happens.

If you want this thread to stay un locked keep it on topic as due to people not listening to me and Red Iron Crown telling everyone 5 times to keep the thread on topic it got Locke and it would be really great to see how many females/women/girls play KSP.

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