What's our gender split on MCB?

[gabe]

Perhaps posting this as a poll so that people can simply mark which gender they are would get you the results you're looking for. Much easier to check a box than try and get the representative sample of MCB population to post if they're a girl/boy/other.

[SignOfZeta]

On this forum I know of one lady member, a mutual acquaintance of ours, who was at the Monster Game with us. (This year I hope everyone comes back so we can play mahjong.) In the past we have played with others. In general there is decent female representation at Hell Survivors, probably partially due to the multi-generational family business aspect.

I think the main reason you won’t find a lot of lady paintballers is because it’s such a Gear Acquisition Syndrome based game. More than any hobby I can name there is a higher turnover rate of gear for pretty much no reason and few rules or classification that would prevent it. What I mean by this is: when you decide you like baseball you don’t have to spend $700 a year on a bat. You may not even own a bat, the team does, and they’re all identical because of the rules. Paintball would be a much better game if everyone just used rentals. No joke. In this scenario you’d probably see more lady players.

When I think it of women I’ve known who were really good at driving a car fast or photography or painting or anything like that, the ones that come to my mind are invariably WAY less interested in buying crap and instead more interested in results. They would probably not have a 100 posts on this forum for every day or the year they actually played...like me. They usually won’t buy the tripod for the new camera until they encounter shots they can’t take without it and if that day doesn’t come they’ll never buy a tripod. MCB members will have four unused tripods in the closet, three broken, before they’ve even taken the first shot!

As for the overwhelming gender positivity stuff...I’m about as pro-female as one gets but at the same time I don’t really like this conversation very much. There are large swathes of society that think paintball is a very stupid very large waste of money and if more of them are ladies than dudes it doesn’t mean someone has to do something about it. I’m a auto mechanic by trade, more or less, and while there are for sure lady mechanics I have never personally met one in a shop, a dealership, or in the OEM world. The pudding proof is that they would rather do something else and that’s fine with me. There are loads of things I don’t want to do also. I have no interest in “growing the sport” if it means courting the disinterested. I also find talking about gender like this off-putting, even creepy. My ideology is extremely left but I just do not give a crap if someone is a man or or women or anything in between unless they are being persecuted because of it. It’s not because I’m anti/pro any specific cause, its a simple case of “We believe you, now what?” The only struggle my brain recognizes is universality. If we’ve read the same books or whatever, we’ll get along. If we shoot each other in the face once or twice we’ll have common ground.

[somethingbenign]

My wife plays and, while how good she is or not is irrelevant to this conversation, she enjoys it. She enjoys it a lot actually. No matter how much she enjoys it she won't join a forum for anything. It just isn't in her. She does the occasional facebook group but she would much rather be in a local in-person group or read books than be apart of a forum for information. She actually enjoys a good bit of the stuff she reads over my shoulder but forming a reply and engaging with strangers online just isn't in her. Anecdotal evidence but take it how you will.

[Magmoormaster]

I'm sure y'all will be shocked that I have a dissenting opinion.

I think the main barrier to more women entering the hobby is in fact negative experiences based on gender. Not saying that people are explicitly sexist, but I have definitely seen a lot of implicitly sexist or misogynist behavior towards most of the women I've seen try to get into the hobby. A lot of it comes just from guys trying to treat them the "one of the guys." That usually involves some ribbing that they take more personally, or mildly sexist jokes made in their presence. Or it's the opposite, people acting like "oh wow it's great that you're a girl and you're playing paintball!!" and treating them as special because of it. It's a tough needle to thread. I think the "ally" thing in OP is less a "BS progressive PC" thing and more just understanding that it's not as simple as just not being blatantly sexist, and advocating for women when the little, seemingly not sexist stuff happens.

All that, of course, before the simple fact that there are blatantly sexist players in the sport that are for sure turning women off from playing.

There's a girl on my team who no longer plays, and while there are a lot of reasons she no longer plays, a lot of it had to do with the fact that the rest of the team (and I'm probably guilty of it myself) treated her like "one of the guys." I know there were several moments when her feelings got hurt and she left early because she was teased the same way the male players teased each other.

As for the board, I knew of a few women on the old board, but I think most/all I knew went inactive before the server change.

As a whole, I think there are still problems within the hobby (that mirror problems in society) that can/need to be fixed, but I do agree with the general consensus that paintball will never reach a 50/50 gender split.

[MrKittyCatMeowFace]

If you created a poll on the forum you would get a lot more responses.

Your post was blank for me so hopefully it will show in my reply. Looks like you may need to change your font type. Welcome to mcb

[glaman5266]

Eh, depends on the color scheme you're running. Remember- "dark" is not the default color scheme.

[Ironnerd]

Just an FYI, the ladies do a pretty good job of taking care of themselves. They have a "Women of Paintball" Facebook group with 213 members.

[Jonnydread]

AG paintball is doing a ladies day, I hope they have a lot of success. I could see that being a great way to try out paintball in a minimally intimidating setting for women.

[Ironnerd]

Agreed. More Ladies days!!!

[sniper97]

Not that I consider paintball an extreme sport, I think men are drawn to extreme sports, rarely see a female player. My college girlfriend tried it once, yrs ago, did not like getting hit. Some of the field paint is pretty hard. Move all rentals to Emeks and shoot 3 or 4 star paint, problem solved.

[ChoSanJuan]

Not that I consider paintball an extreme sport, I think men are drawn to extreme sports, rarely see a female player. My college girlfriend tried it once, yrs ago, did not like getting hit. Some of the field paint is pretty hard. Move all rentals to Emeks and shoot 3 or 4 star paint, problem solved.

Interesting... our local field (while not a 50/50 split) has quite a higher percentage of female players. Rentals and walk-ons. Tournaments are a crap shoot though. It's always Mkeeks bringing up the ratio at an almost 100% attendance rate but from there, sometimes it just her.