When you mix young males with the internet the result is not going to be good for any girl that enters the arena. It's a shame, but fact. It's probably worse in a game like this that has a higher male player base than female... more likely to find that "I'm 13, horney and never even seen a girl" player.

You can simulate the same thing in real life.... just place a large group young male's on a desserted island for six months. After which add one female... I wouldn't want to be that female.



I feel your pain. Once in the real world I had some crazy witchcraft women cast spells on me to fall in love with her. Either magic isn't real or she was crap at it because it never worked. I do however have these unnatural feelings toward farm animals... (j/k)

I propose we organise an International Transvetite Racing Day, where we all race under female pseudonyms. I will be Susie Uzi.

For god's sake, Kev, go to bed!

Quote from BrandonAGr :

There is a block messages button for a reason, stop drawing attention to yourself and you wouldn't have a problem. People are ****s to other people all the time, why do you deserve special consideration? Not that I want to come off as rude, but it seems like you are just attention whoring with this thread as much as the people who you say are stalking you.

I sort of agree with this. I wouldnt go as far as saying your attention whoring but just block messages or simply change your name.

Quote from sil3ntwar :

simply change your name.

Or maybe we should add all these hornystalkers to the banned wreckers list. That would work much better than changing playername which is not going to help anyway since A,) do you think they haven't already thought of that? they could've simply changed their name and be done with it and not post rants to a forum to find other ways to stop the stalkers (shame/flame/peer pressure etc). B,) blocking someone is not helping if the stalker(s) follow you on the track or follow even after you change servers C,) there's LFS username you can't change and THAT is the name they use to do the stalking.

Why should Becky be forced to change her name, just because the tosser's that exist online, why not go the whole hog and tell females not to dress like females and look sexy, and you wont get attacked walking down the streets, when it comes down to it, there are alot of annouying weird, and dam right sick people on this planet, and most of it is directed towards women, i suggest you try and stick it out Becky, or try a good team server, your more than welcome to try T7R servers, where i can assure you, your have no such problems, and there are many other good team servers out there, but also i would say that over the last few months, that the general racing standards again has dropped online all over, as we seem to be going through a period again of being overloaded by dickheads again..

The issue reminds me of this...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/17/27

So... we either need more girls playing LFS, ore more guys pretending to be girls so everybody is afraid to ask players what they really are

Some manners wouldn't hurt, either.

Quote from sil3ntwar :

just block messages or simply change your name.

That sounds an awful lot like the typical male response to any form of harrassment: (1) "That's the way boys are, ignore it and learn to live with it," (2) "Hide the fact that you're a girl."

Let me suggest the opposite: a few guys change their LFS name to something girly, and go racing online. Then come back to the forum and tell everyone how you were treated.

Any volunteers?

(What, are you afraid?)

Quote :

think that just because a female
chats with them, that they have this special type of bond or something...

Yeah that's actually quite a wierd phenomenon, sometimes I reply or say 2 or 3 things to a person online, or just be in a talkative mood someday, and later on somebody will say something and i'll hear lines like, "It's ok, Becky and I have a special bond/relationship/understanding" and i'm like ... 'huh!?'

Quote :

There is a block messages button for a reason

I didn't actually think of that last night but often when this ocurrs, as it did last night, it's not just chat i'm getting followed ingame too, and sometimes bumped (usually the bumping occurs if I continue to ignore them) - which is the worst part. Chat I can usually ignore without even pressing numpad minus... A car flitting around me asking "do you like me?" I cant ignore, which I guess is the point of doing it.

The irony is i'm not that pretty anyway, after my midlife crisis my youthful freshness has been replaced by pockmarked skin, wrinkles, and a haphazard dissinterest in makeup... I only use the number plate "Blonde" because I drive like the stereotype ...

Quote from Becky Rose :

Yeah that's actually quite a wierd phenomenon, sometimes I reply or say 2 or 3 things to a person online, or just be in a talkative mood someday, and later on somebody will say something and i'll hear lines like, "It's ok, Becky and I have a special bond/relationship/understanding" and i'm like ... 'huh!?'


I didn't actually think of that last night but often when this ocurrs, as it did last night, it's not just chat i'm getting followed ingame too, and sometimes bumped (usually the bumping occurs if I continue to ignore them) - which is the worst part. Chat I can usually ignore without even pressing numpad minus... A car flitting around me asking "do you like me?" I cant ignore, which I guess is the point of doing it.

The irony is i'm not that pretty anyway, after my midlife crisis my youthful freshness has been replaced by pockmarked skin, wrinkles, and a haphazard dissinterest in makeup... I only use the number plate "Blonde" because I drive like the stereotype ...

Becky you shouldn't have to put up with that sorta behaviour, to us you are and should be a fellow racer/competitor, when are the guys gunna realise you are not within reach physically so there is no way they could ever touch you, so any sexual hopes should be lost right up, whether you are Pretty ? well that's irrevelant. You are a woman and just like the rest you deserve our respect and co operation.

Same as we respect men for their knowledge, setups, skills why should it be different cause you are woman?

Any more crap save a replay and send to Scawen, he has the power we don't, he can email a liscened user and say look sunshine sexism just don't happen in LFS do it again and I ban you from online racing for 12 mths

I think that will stop the hassassment, I'm sure as a big girl, you can accept good natured comments and get over it, but ramming, running you off track etc is unacceptable.

I look fwd to racing against you sometime,

ShannonN

I was a little slow/blonde/ditzy when it came to saving replays of last night, but my friend said he had a few and he only missed the first race and the start of the second, I was there for 3 or 4 races, so i'll get them off him and see what they contain.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The irony is i'm not that pretty anyway, after my midlife crisis my youthful freshness has been replaced by pockmarked skin, wrinkles, and a haphazard dissinterest in makeup... I only use the number plate "Blonde" because I drive like the stereotype ...

This gives me an idea
Use google images to find a photo of a very unattractive girl/woman (something like this: http://wowktv.com/images/030305053506_woods_toni3.jpg ; hope it's not actually you, hehe ), put it on your website, so the address is something like www.beckyrose.com/me.jpg and give the link to the stalkers

Alot of the rpoblem is that ppl generally dont beleive its an actual real live female playing there game of choice, so the next step is to wonder wether your actually female or some sixty year old guy sitting in his underpants pretending to be a woman..

I feel for you and thinks utterly unacceptable for this shit to happen to anyone, i race alot on on the Annabelles Racing Club server and to be honest i never really questioned her sex (she is female as far as i know). Not to mention shes so much faster than most guys at any of the tracks we play on.

Personally keep telling then to phark off and then procede to beat them on the track

There's always going to be this element; sucky but true. Like has been said repeatedly, send the replays to the devs - I'm sure they will at least issue a warning if the behaviour is as bad as you say.

Other than that, I'd suggest a less 'girly' screen-name. 'Becky Rose' with the numberplate 'Blonde', of course you're gonna attract oversexed 13-year olds.

yeah, it's kinda sad that girls get this in online gaming world.
I don't know why most servers keeps voting off. I reckon last admin that
leaves server can turn it on 'till another admin comes on .
Anyway, I recommend you hang out on dsrc servers, very good people are
on those servers (and tiny can watch over you ).

hope you'll find more peacefull races aside from league racing

Simple fact - there are idiots out there who have little/no ambition therefore they strive to stalk the next thing which is a little bit different.

Still, it's disturbing and annoying when it happens. I remember one time my old boss (BRT/ not Belgium Racing Team guys d/w ;] ) impersonated as me and another of my teammates at [tsr.] and went about on a wrecking spree. It wasn't nice to be hurled accusations but in the end it all came out good and the little tosser got what he deserved.

Anyway, Becky, it's good to see that you're strong despite all of this and that truly is a commendable character trait. Look forward to seeing you on track.

Unfortunately, there are many dorks out there, that can't be controlled. I fear they won't be impressed much by any threats. And if really one of them will be banned from all servers due to the wreckers barricade, I fear that there will be already two more guys asking you for a/s/l, Becky.

It's a pretty hopeless situation and I really have no clue what would be a good (and realistic) solution to the problem.

The really bad thing is, that this stupid behaviour of some people keeps the even rare femaly community away from LFS. I really would like to see more women racing with us (just to compete with them).

So Becky, be tough and dont give up. I'm sure that most of us will be more polite to you on track, as you can see in this thread.

Cheers, in fact now is probably a good time to say that most of you are good guys and this sort of extreme situation is thankfully quite rare, but sadly not nearly rare enough.

On this particular ocassion i've done myself no favours by not keeping the replays, my friend has sent me one which he saved (which I cant watch as i'm at work atm) but he says it doesnt show very much of it (it's probably the one I spent mostly in the pits whilst making a cuppa and waiting for the next race).

I might set LFS to auto-save replays and write a little script to clear out filenames in the default syntax every month or so.

Ive seen this happen alot with one of our team members , not so much now , if some asked if she was a girl , half our team would jump up shouting "im a layyydeeeeee" (little britain) ,would help dispell the initial disbelief that women can play games (usually with much more mature attitude) and stop some of the questions that follow.

I just hope this doesnt put you off racing LFS or just being part of the whole scene, i like to think that LFS is fresh change from most gaming communities, there is alot more respect and open mindedness then most found in here and online/racing.

Sadly it's true. Men are idiots, and teenage boys are even worse. For some reason they seem to think that following some alledged girl and bugging the hell out of her is going to get them brownie points. Makes me ashamed to admit to my Y-chromosome.

All you can do is report them to admins and try to ignore them, although I know it's not easy.

Quote from Rotary :

I feel your pain. Once in the real world I had some crazy witchcraft women cast spells on me to fall in love with her. Either magic isn't real or she was crap at it because it never worked. I do however have these unnatural feelings toward farm animals... (j/k)

About the real and the virtual world, as a matter of fact they tend to collide often. True, being anonymous and invisible could help some idiot behave badly whereas in real life he may face immediate consequences or a sense of shame, but I wouldn't underestimate or downplay online harassments. Internet can be a very dangerous place. Last year I learned an ugly lesson: the son of a friend of mine has been shot dead in the University of Bologna where he studied. He was only 22. He didn't know his murderer, he only turned him down via Internet because he wasn't interested at all. The other guy, who has serious mental health problems, travelled a few hundred miles and shot him down in public for no good reason, except for the ghosts of his mind. They never met before. Adding insult to injury, I've seen online reports in English talking about a love affair gone wrong. Pure crap. There was no relationship, there was no affair. Everything was horribly absurd, and that's the only truth.
I know this is scarcely related to what Becky Rose experienced, but that episode changed forever my point of view about Internet relationships and about their 'reality'. You can imagine how I felt having known of such a thing from online newspapers, and left me almost speechless. There's nothing you can say to a friend who has suffered such a big and senseless loss.
Internet harassment and stalking should never be downplayed, and people should never excuse or tolerate that. It gives abusers a sense of safety. The rule is, you shouldn't do on the net what you shouldn't do in real life, and gaming (or blogging, or foruming) communities shouldn't be too immature to perceive that.

Quote from wsinda :

That sounds an awful lot like the typical male response to any form of harrassment: (1) "That's the way boys are, ignore it and learn to live with it," (2) "Hide the fact that you're a girl."

Let me suggest the opposite: a few guys change their LFS name to something girly, and go racing online. Then come back to the forum and tell everyone how you were treated.

Any volunteers?

(What, are you afraid?)

That would be good, because then you could report all the stalkers that are on LFS. I'll do it!

I just skipped most of the junk written above () just to say that it is still a bit odd that women still get this kind of abuse in online games. I don't know the figures but at least 20% of people playing online games are women (must be). And maybe 1% of the total amount of players admit being female. I'm not sure but the percentage of women is probably smaller in LFS but using any kind of nick that suggests the player being female is still a risk.

Using a feminine nickname in any online game can be painful, simply because some of the younger males can't behave.

becky... u single...






























only messing...

why dont u just rename to something different..? i know u shouldnt have to tho.

^^ Did you have to prove men are morons? She said she didn't want any jokes about it, and she didn't want to change her name... Duh!