International Exclusionary Sports Federation: The Hearthstone Incident

Hell has officially frozen over. I am going to write a blog post that could be seen as defending a position akin to the feminist one, though only just barely.

So for those of you that don't know, there is an organization known as the International e-Sports Federation dedicated to video game tournaments designed to promote competitive gaming as a legitimate sport. For 6 years now it has held an annual tournament with games of varying genres such as fighters, shooters, mobas and the like.

This year's tournament is going to include Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft the digital CCG, or collectible card game. This particular game, along with DOTA 2 and Ultra Street Fighter 4, will prohibit female players from playing the game. That's right, women are banned from playing those games competitively.

Now, before I get into what's wrong about this, there's a bit of background information that needs to be presented.

First, men are being prohibited from playing some games as well. Those being Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. The exclusionary tactics are across the board, but of course only the women's exclusion is being the focus of news online, you can even check out IGN's article on it and you'll see no mention of the fact that men can't play either of those 2 games. Read that here.

http://in.ign.com/en/news/4...

The second thing is that undue anger is being hurled at the Finnish qualifier tournament for this practice, when in fact it's been a standing practice of the IeSF since inception.

I know you must be asking, if you're a rational thinking person and not someone who will just jump on to the hate bandwagon, "well surely they must have a legitimate reason for this right?"

Wrong. They don't. They have a flimsy excuse of a reason.

In that IGN article I linked you'll see the 2 main reasons they give as to why this is a standing practice. I will post them here, as well as my thoughts on why they are wrong.

Reason 1: Promoting Female Players - "We know that e-Sports is largely dominated by male players and female players are actually a portion of the overall player base. By hosting a female-only competition, we strive to promote female gaming on a global scale."

The first reason is B.S. Pure, unfiltered bull crap. You aren't promoting female players by creating a female only competition, you're promoting segregation. The one thing that gaming had was its all inclusive nature by default. Being a gamer didn't require anything more than owning the game and the necessary hardware or accessories to play the game. Your sex wasn't a determinant to your ability to play any game, nor is it a determinant of skill. Trying to promote female gaming is in fact merely promoting the idea that male and female gamers are separate and should continue to be. That's wrong on any level you look at it.

This will also create an attitude that one sex isn't good enough to play with the other. A female winning in a female only competition will be seen as "she's pretty good, for a girl" and a clear sex based judgment structure will be born.

Personally speaking, I think it does more for female players to allow them to compete WITH male gamers for 2 main reasons. 1. It shows that competitive gaming is something anyone can do with any game regardless of their sex, race, or any other minute detail that doesn't matter to being able to play the game, thereby promoting unity among gamers. 2. If a female gamer makes it far in the tournament, or even wins it, imagine what that would do for the idea that women aren't as good at games as men are. That idea would begin to fade completely and more women would actually want to compete. As it stands now, this practice risks the alienation of female gamers because they must feel like they aren't being taken seriously and that too is wrong on any level you look at it.

Reason 2: International Standards - "IeSF is very close to get(ting) e-Sports recognized as a true sports (sport) like it should be. Part of that efforts (effort) is to comply with the international sports regulations. For example, chess is also divided into male/female leagues."

Where to begin with this farce of a reason?

Well let's start with Oxford Dictionary's definition of "Sport"

http://www.oxforddictionari...

Sport:- Noun - An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

By definition, playing video games is excluded as being a sport, as is chess. There is no physical exertion in simply moving your fingers. The only possible level of exertion that could be implied is mental exertion, and that isn't considered in the definition of what is a sport.

But let's look at why this definition provides another reason as to why splitting the leagues is wrong.

In games of actual, physical sport, the leagues were divided to compensate for physicality and aggression. Men, biologically, are typically larger and stronger than women. Men also have higher testosterone levels, which is a contributing factor in aggression. This means that male sports typically involve a lot more physical contact than female sports do. Due to laws based in gender to protect women, and prevent lawsuits, the separation of the sexes into their own leagues was a necessity.

I'm sure there are plenty of women out there that can keep up with any man in a full game of football, or wrestling, or any other sport. But for every 1 woman willing to do so, and being able to, 10 are complaining about issues that would prevent her from doing so. Things such as how much contact is involved being inappropriate for a woman, how men are evil and vile creatures just looking to cop a feel, etc.. The evils of the Social Justice cause creates exclusionary laws all on its own.

But seeing as how these games possess no instance of physical contact, no reliance on aggression, and are an arena of purely non-physical skill, then there is literally no reason to separate men from women in these competitions. No man, nor woman, can be "mentally aggressive" to the point that it actually harms the person they are competing against. These are arenas of mental skill, where everyone is biologically as capable as everyone else, barring any disabilities.

What exactly could happen to a female gamer if she played against a male gamer? She wouldn't be tackled into a coma. She wouldn't be inappropriately, yet accidentally, fondled. So what is the big deal?

Is the IeSF trying to make a statement that men and women have different mental capabilities along with physical capabilities, and that women are mentally inferior to men when it comes to playing Hearthstone, USF4, or DOTA 2? Are they trying to say that men are mentally inferior to women when playing Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2?

We can clearly see that their reasoning is specious at best, absolute utter shite at worst.

That's the problem with e-Sports though. They are trying to be classified as a traditional sport when they aren't. What should happen is that a new standard for what is a sport should be created that separates physical sports from mental sports instead of grouping them all together. That way, draconian regulations such as these cease to be an issue and yet e-Sports, chess, hell even Poker could be considered a legitimate sport.

Just because you can compete at something, doesn't mean it's a sport. And just because there are necessary regulations in physical sports designed to cover everyone's behind, doesn't mean segregation is the answer in non-physical sports.

Hopefully the IeSF comes to its senses on this, but considering they claim to be following international regulations created by a larger authority, expect that the IeSF will continue to be segregational in their regulations until they are either boycotted in a massive way, or someone forces new rules for mental sports that are unique to them and aren't shared with physical sports.

Either way, this kind of attitude will just provide more fuel for the SJW/Feminist whine parade fire and annoy the rest of us for eons to come.

**UPDATE** The IeSF has partially reversed their position on the segregation and has changed the male only event to "Open For All" yet kept the female only event female only. Their reasoning is still garbage and was already covered in my blog so I won't repeat myself.

You can read about the change here.

http://ie-sf.com/bbs/board....