The World According to Xak (WARNING)

Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not read if you are still in the reverie and sheer nectar-colored joy that is Pandaria. You have been warned.

Editor's Note:
I am dead serious. I am posting this against my better judgment. In the name of fairness, however, I am the one who suggested the topic in passing conversation. I may lose you all as friends, or you may question my sanity, but in reading this treatise, he does make some interesting points. One cannot completely remove human interactions in this very human realm. We all know couples who have met and married, who have broken up, who have caused issues in one way or another because of their own gender reflections.

So--this is my first, and maybe my last--guest blogger, Xak. He is a smart, smart young man. And maybe I'll get some interesting searches like Tome does.

Women of WoW Are Slutty Insecure Nymphos

Since a majority of this will be written from atop my high horse, I think it's important to begin with a bit of exposé to build a touch of credibility.  In life, I have a mix of positive and negative qualities.  I go to the gym enough to be in good shape, but not enough that I am in danger of having my abs put on billboards to sell underwear.  I have enough money to be secure but not enough to impress anyone.  I am smart but I have a hard time not being a condescending dick about it.  So on and so forth.  This leads to mixed results with regards to hitting on women.  Some of them look at the pros/cons and decide that their personal weighing of the various qualities leads them to saying "yes" to questions like "want to get a drink later?" while others say things like "no".  However, one of the things in the "pro" column is my voice, it's dead sexy.  When I get on vent, the only quality that women get to "see" is the sexy voice.  This leads to a considerably higher success rate with regards to getting positive attention from women.  I love this.  I know it happens, I exploit it to the fullest and I don't give a damn what it says about my character or lack thereof.

So... I get it, I'm not saying that I'm above it, or it solely affects women.  However, the circumstances that surround the average WoWite male and the average WoWite female are different and this particular heap of cerebral discharge is regarding the fairer sex.
After doing a pug raid recently, a friend asked me about a girl I had encountered during the raid, I replied, "she sounded like a textbook fatty."  He retorted with, "hey now, there's nothing wrong with being fat."  (In the interest of sidebars, this guy is something like 98 lbs soaking wet with a brick in each hand.)  I came back with, "no, there is nothing inherently wrong with being fat (assuming you don't mind assuming the health risks I suppose) but girls who are fat or even just fear that people might think she is fat, tend to exhibit similar pathologies, particularly where WoWites are concerned."  All he had for that one was, "good point." (For a bit of context, the friend is going to school to be a head doctor, so he knew what I was talking about without me having to do any in-depth explaining, since I assume a majority of people who read this will not be head doctors...)
An overwhelming majority (let's conservatively put it around 95%) of the women I have encountered in my WoW experiences have had very little confidence (funny enough, men seem to divide into "not confident" and "supremely confident for no good reason" but that's a completely different post.)  Maybe it is because they are fat.  Maybe it is because someone told them that they are fat.  Maybe they are uncomfortable with some other aspect of their body.  Maybe they have had terrible luck with asshat menfolk.  Maybe it was the classic "daddy doesn't love me enough."  (Because I cannot get enough of parenthetical statements, I am fairly confident that if a man locked his daughter into a room and stared directly at her for 18 years, some women would still feel they had received inadequate attention but I digress once again.)  The reasons are many and varied but the result is the same.  These women take their low-self image into WoWland and discover a type of male attention they have never before encountered.  Watching the results of this new attention is a fantastic spectator sport for me.*

Every woman reacts differently; that being said, by painting with a broad enough brush, I can more or less classify a majority of my encounters in 3.5 categories.

Internet Slut: These girls love the attention and go out of their way to act out fantasies that they would never had the stomach for in reality.  Being overtly sexual over VOIP, teasing, throwing their femininity around like a bull in a china shop, etc.  We've all seen them, if we haven't been in a guild that's been broken up by one, we've heard of someone who has.  I love joining a pug with one of these girls in it, they are grand fun in small doses.  I would never invite one into my real raid, they rapidly become tedious.

Recluse/Man Pretender:  Some women cannot handle the newfound attention.  Some are victims of creepy stalker assholes.  I am certain other causation exists but the result is that they either hide their femininity or pretend to be a man.  They are typical extremely reticent to talk over VOIP, often play male toons, shy away from discussions that even obliquely touch on sexuality, etc.

Guilty pleasure/Well adjusted: (Obviously, I have to start out with the admission that I put myself in the man version of this category.  So I think I am reasonably well adjusted, sue me.)  Some of these women attach a lot of shame to how much pleasure they get out of the male attention.  They feel guilty when they discover they like being the only woman in the raid, afraid that it displays unkind things regarding their character.  It is also worth noting, these women are often married and have a difficult time reconciling the enjoyment of male attention and the Hallmark notion that love shuts off biology.  Even unmarried women often struggle to reconcile the notion that male attention is good with the cultural assumption that any woman who gets a lot of male attention is a filthy harlot.  The reason I gave this 1.5 categories is because this can really cover a wide continuum between the shameful feelings and well adjusted enjoyment of the bonus attention; enough that I could imagine an argument for a separate category but not so much that I felt it warranted a solid fourth.

Which brings me to the real fun bit, what the hell is the point of all this blather anyway?  Well, firstly, a friend asked me to write this and it sounded like fun, so what the hell right?  But moreover, there is a public service announcement to be had here.  The obvious one is for the girls.  You do not need to be the biggest internet slut ever to enjoy these attentions, you will get a boost in the attention department in the short-run but you will shoot yourself in the foot in the long run.  You also do not need to veer to the other extreme, plenty of women enjoy the game without hiding their gender or fighting off creepo stalkers twenty-four/seven.  You do not even need to be ashamed of enjoying the attention, as long as you recognize it for what it is and enjoy it as such.

That is all well and good of course but it is also a bit of a red herring.  The real public service announcement is for men.  However, this one requires a bit of context to really fully appreciate it.  There was a time when I was younger that I could not imagine being insulted by being hit on.  I am a pretty open minded fellow in general, it never bothered me when women I found unattractive hit on me, to the contrary, I found it flattering.  I was even flattered when gay men hit on me.  I am as straight as they come but I was happy to take their approaches as flattery as well.  I could never understand it when women talked about being creeped out by a guy hitting on them.  Then I was in a porn store one night when a man approached me.  It is very hard to capture the exact feeling for someone who has not been there, but this man veritably oozed slimy.  He made some kind of crude pass at me and it was immediately crystal clear what women had been talking about all those years, this guy was (and I think I have showcased my vocabulary enough here that you can trust me when I say, there is simply no other way to adequately express this) fucking creepy as hell.

At the end of the day, the point is, "do not be that guy."  Have some empathy.  Understand that even if a woman is acting like the biggest internet hooker in the known universe, she is most likely struggling to explore how men react to her.  Even if she is pretending to be a man, she is (likely) not a transvestite, just afraid.  If you lack the life experience to empathize, make a female toon and pretend to be a chick for a week.  Take all the sleazy, creepy, unpleasant come-ons you get and build yourself a damn filter.
--Xak, Smarty-Pants Extraordinaire, Esq.

Postscript: I'm too tired for a rebuttal tonight, but rest assured, there will be one.