I'm pretty sure that it's GIRloveswaffles, with initials of GIR on the avatar, and I'm not positive of the gender but I thought male. But I agree if you want to stand out here, have a "girly" name. (Even if people do misread it and call you Blonde Tail sometimes.)

I try to make helpful posts on my limited knowledge, and I attempt to get to local events even though anything "local pinball" for me means driving over 2 hours. We have no local club, and there's not a single pin in the wild or any location near me. The only way I get to talk pinball is here.

I'm not ever going to complete with the guys in tournaments. I thought about it at the first pinball event I went to, then saw a literal mob of sweaty guys crowded into a roped-off area screaming, drinking, and paying lots of money to qualify over multiple tries. I've never even seen most of those machines, much less can play well enough to beat them, and I'm not jumping in the middle of a testosterone pit to get my butt handed to me (or fondled, lol.) So much respect to the girls that have tons of machines, compete in tournaments, and win against the guys.

I think most of the "normal women" in this hobby just want to chat with other people (men and women) who at least share some common ground and don't think they are crazy for putting thousands of dollars of toys in their homes. Or show off our new mods, or ask questions when we do try to fix the machines, which are crazy intimidating for newbies. I was at the Atlanta expo last weekend, and about half the people there were women and kids. Nobody was being rude or excluding anyone, people were nice and polite and playing together, and it looked like everyone had a blast. I like to think this would be true if Pinside was a real place and we could talk to each other face to face.

I don't know if anyone cares or if this is truly related to anything in this topic, but I thought I'd share a personal story related to the "smile" part of the link Rando gave.

I work at a large company where there is a cafe on site. It's a 10 minute walk just to the parking garage and I only have a 30 minute lunch, so either I get food in the cafe or I bring something from home and go eat in the cafe seating area since the microwaves are there. A few months ago, a new male employee in the cafe was working the register, and while ringing up my food told me "Smile." Ok, fine, he's being polite I guess. I smile. A couple of days later, he's working the food line and while I'm standing there waiting I hear "Hey, do you remember what I told you last time... I said smile." He's still got a smile on his face so I assume he's being friendly enough, even though it's a bit creepy as he's singled me out in a group of like 10 women.

The next week I walk through the cafe to get a drink, and he yells at me from across the cafe (about 40 feet away, with at least 20 something people around) "Hey... you'd better smile." I've been singled out again, and this time it creeps me out to the point that I don't want to be anywhere near him, so I pay and bring my lunch for awhile, avoiding the cafe completely. Then one day I'm just walking through the cafe to go sit down, and he does it again. I pretend that I don't see or hear him. It doesn't work. No smile on his face, cold eyes, cold tone in his voice.... "Hey, hey! I know you can hear me. You'd better not be ignoring me. I told you to smile, and you'd better listen." So, lunches are ruined, but what am I supposed to do about it really, because how stupid does it sound for me to report someone for telling me to smile?

The next week I'm leaving the cafe area and he sees me. I again completely ignore him, avoid all eye contact, try to make myself invisible. Yet he still yells at me across the way, this time with anger in his voice. "Hey, you'd better stop ignoring me. I'm talking to you, and you are being rude ignoring me." My husband works at the same company and was with me but a ways behind me, and walked up about that time. I looked at him with a 'don't say anything, I just want to get out of here' look, which the guy saw, and proceeded to then yell at my husband "Hey, your woman is disrepecting me. You'd better say something to her before I have to teach her a lesson in manners." I get husband and myself the heck out of there fast.

That's the day I reported him. And I was laughed at by the cafe management. Two male managers sat me down and asked exactly what the issue was, as they had instructed their employees to be friendly to people and have conversations. I tried to explain that singling me out and screaming at me from 20-40 feet away and threatening me and my husband was in no way a polite conversation. That I felt threatened, that I didn't want to eat in their cafe at all, and that I'd appreciate if they did something about it. They informed me that they'd talk to him and tell him to stop raising his voice across the cafe, and to leave me alone in particular. I told them I didn't want singling out, not to mention my name or description at all, because he'd already escalated the situation multiple times with me simply walking in that area, and I didn't need to be more of a target. They all but rolled their eyes at me.

He has stopped talking to me, but will death glare me down if I'm anywhere near him. I have to actively avoid one of the main buildings and the only source of food because of this. All because some guy decided to tell me to 'smile' and then get super weird and threatening, and I wasn't taken seriously. And since there are 6000 people here and 80%+ are women, I'd be willing to bet that I'm not the only one that's been singled out, but I know I was the only one that reported him because they were truly shocked (and thought it funny) that I was offened enough by being told to smile to report him.

Yes, he's already on FMLA, so losing jobs and money is the last thing we need. Otherwise that encounter would have ended differently.

So all of that is my fault because I tried to avoid confrontation? Yes, obviously I deserved it somehow by walking into the cafe to buy food. Do you know what would have happened if I had confronted him in the cafe in the middle of everyone? I would be that psycho feminist bitch that yelled at a poor guy who was just telling her to smile.

You know what else is rude? Yelling at people across a room and threatening them. I can guarantee you that the number one response from women is to not to respond at all, because then you give them the attention that they want. Just telling them "You are making me uncomfortable" does nothing to someone who thinks it is ok to single out and harass people. I never said it was sexual harassment, but he did refer to me as the property of my husband, as illustrated in that link.

I think a lot of what happens here is not as direct, for sure not intentional, and left up to interpretation. What one person thinks is funny and fine, another finds extreme offense at and reports wanting punishment for it. Most of the women here know they're stepping into a world full of men, and we'll play along and give you a hard time for fun, sometimes being just as crude and rude. The line between harassment and fun is a very thin one and drawn into the sand, and each person has their own levels of sensitivty and tolerance. I'm pretty darn tolerant, and I'm still here. But for example for those that think nothing ever happens here... I've personally been called a psycho bitch, crazy liberal feminist, asked if I was PMSing, told multiple times via video attack and a PM or two to "go suck a dick," and been told to post pics (especially of my chest, to prove that I'm female) because they needed pics for their spank bank. And yes, if that was done on a public page for myself or any other person then it would have been deleted quickly and modded as a personal attack.

Your brown-noser check is in the mail.