Okay, then, I will rant about something that pissed me off this week that I noticed and this is a good place to do it.

I was playing SWTOR (Star Wars the Old Republic) and I was running on Shayder, a male character. Now I am a female player, I often run on my main, Rosiet, who is a female character. Whenever I play with Rosiet, most often people are nice, cordial, polite, they are careful how they speak to me. Sometimes, I encounter a jackass or two, but after over 4 years playing online, it's bound to happen.

Lately, I've been playing a lot with my male characters, and man oh man, the way people talk. They were rude, bitchy, swore at me. On Rosiet, people never, NEVER cuss at me.

Do these people think it's okay to talk aggressively and be passive aggressive to men?

They see a male character and automatically assume the person behind the character is of the same gender. So then what? It's okay to be mean and rude to men? This is sexist! Seriously. If it's not okay to speak in a manner that would be upsetting when speaking to a woman, why the heck is it okay to speak in upsetting manner if the person is a guy? Double standards people. I will speak out against sexism against men when I see it, and this is one example.

Just because these people think I'm a guy, they think it's okay to swear at me, talk down at me. It's ridiculous! And what's worse, is that, on some other characters, if the topic came up and I mentioned I was a female player behind that male character, their tone would change. How is that even fair? How is that equality?

Of course, say that to any feminist, who is SUPPOSED to promote equality of the sexes, but NO, they won't see a problem with it. I see a problem with it though, and I'm not even a guy! I don't want to HAVE to tell people "I'M A WOMAN!" for them to speak to me with respect. I want people to speak to me with respect. PERIOD! (No, I do not have it right now.) And that's another issue, if you piss a woman off, players will conclude that she has her period. Having or not having our periods do not give people the right to disrespect us or to justify us demanding some common decency.

Men deserve to have the same respect and common decency, okay. If I were a dude playing, why should I tolerate people speaking to me with disregard? Why do people think it's okay to be this way towards men or to make excuses for women reacting. Why can't people just respect me, the player, regardless of who I am behind each of my characters?

Granted there are some nice people, but it happens way too often, and this week it happened one too many times, that people were aggressive and disrespectful in their tone when I was running a MALE character.

And I'm the kind of chick that says momma jokes and stuff. I don't mind silliness. I just want respect, no matter which character I'm on, and I would like to think that men would get the same level of respect as women. I don't want the fact that I'm a woman to be a weapon for DESERVING respect. EVERYONE, INCLUDING MEN DESERVE RESPECT! How do people not see how this is sexist against men, this whole attitude thing?

Anyway, it appalls me to think that many people will view this as justifiable and disregard it and think it's okay for men to be disrespected. It's NOT. That's SEXISM. I don't care who is behind the character speaking to me, men or women, both should respect each other. You know, I have never been faced with sexism against women in SWTOR, not that I can remember right now. But I clearly see sexism against men. Not cool.

Anyway, this was my rant. I don't tend to swear, so it's fairly clean, unlike my mind :p

Thanks, I needed to get this off my chest.