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A Boy's Game?


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I had originally posted this in the Livejournal geocaching community a while ago and finally decided to cross-post here.

 

Is geocaching male by default?

 

We geocache as a family and use a team name. We geocache as a family because I wanted to geocache. I keep track of cache announcements, plan the find routes, maintain the hides and manage the correspondence. Our team name is our Groundspeak account username so it's also our Waymarking username. I'm the only waymarker in the family.

 

What does a geocacher comment for one of our hides?

"...and met the owner's wife..."

 

:anibad:

 

So, is geocaching male by default?

 

I'm not asking if there are women who geocache. Obviously, there are. I'm one of them. I'm talking more about the social expectation or perception of geocaching by geocachers. The assumption that a woman is the wife of the geocacher instead of a geocacher.

 

- Elle

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i think when it started it was predominantly male.

 

there are more women out there than you think, though. many women will post in a gender-ambiguous way and people tend to assume male.

 

if i had to guess at this point, i'd estimate that roughly a third of cachers are women.

 

speaking of being somebody's wife: the picture in my profile says "flashco". crashco and i are frequent partners in crime, and most people assume that where "mrs. crashco" is mentioned that i am her. this is not unique to our geocaching life; just tonight someone at the race venue made that assumption. happily mrs. crashco (who does exist, contrary to popular perception) has a sense of humor about it.

 

we explain that i'm sort of his auxilliary wife: all the snarky comments and none of the domestic assistance. we're close enough friends that when we're in trouble she lines us both up to yell at us.

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I had originally posted this in the Livejournal geocaching community a while ago and finally decided to cross-post here.

 

Is geocaching male by default?

 

We geocache as a family and use a team name. We geocache as a family because I wanted to geocache. I keep track of cache announcements, plan the find routes, maintain the hides and manage the correspondence. Our team name is our Groundspeak account username so it's also our Waymarking username. I'm the only waymarker in the family.

 

What does a geocacher comment for one of our hides?

"...and met the owner's wife..."

 

:anibad:

 

So, is geocaching male by default?

 

I'm not asking if there are women who geocache. Obviously, there are. I'm one of them. I'm talking more about the social expectation or perception of geocaching by geocachers. The assumption that a woman is the wife of the geocacher instead of a geocacher.

 

- Elle

 

I've never been a woman so it makes it very difficult to understand a post like this. Sorry.

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I think you just ran into someone with the assumption that the "owner/leader" would be the man (per fox-and-hound, "chauvinism is an even older game").

It happens, but I can't say as I encounter it any more in geocaching than in life. The president of the Florida Geocaching Association is a woman, as is your local reviewer... I think both the image and reality of geocaching is inclusive of gender and age

Edited by Isonzo Karst
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HH, I've seen your many posts on wm.com, and I've also assumed you were male. But it wasn't chauvinism -- it was Harrison Ford as your avatar! Isn't that strange? It's a pretty safe bet you aren't actually Indiana Jones, yet I assigned you a gender based on that picture. That's funny.

 

No, I've never thought BlueDeuce was a duck. But I do think that if usernames and avatars are gender-neutral, I'll tend to assume "male". And it's probably more a computer-based-prejudice rather than a geocaching one.

 

Quick -- what am I, and why do you think so?

Edited by Dinoprophet
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What does a geocacher comment for one of our hides?

"...and met the owner's wife..."

 

Interesting observation. I hide probably 75 percent of my caches while out with my wife and though they are listed under my account, when my wife is there for the hide they are listed as "Hidden By: BrianSnat and Skigirl".

 

Yet the logs will mostly thank me for the caches and rarely mention Skigirl and I've heard my caches referred to as "BrianSnat caches", not "BrianSnat and Skigirl caches"

 

And just last weekend Skigirl and I were hiking past one of our caches when we saw a geocacher standing over it. The cache was hidden as "BrianSnat and Skigirl" and Skigirl in fact chose the hiding place. The two of us had a nice discussion with the cacher, who was someone we had never met, yet when he logged his find it said "I met the owner at the cache".

 

I guess many outdoor activities are male dominated so the assumption is that geocaching is a male sport and if there is a female involved, she is just going along for the ride.

Edited by briansnat
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Good catch on the male avatar....

 

Quick -- what am I, and why do you think so?

 

You're a goofy male dinosaur (male because a female dinosaur wouldn't be wearing a bow tie - but then I guess it's not a bow tie, but a bow......)

Well, that's just my Vlasic stork costume. I suppose if I were female, it'd be "prophetess". Then again, the name refers to the avatar and not to me, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Now I don't know what to think.

 

I'd better stop this before I get confused.

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I wouldn't say it is male "by default." But I do think that because there are more men in the game than women and because of general assumptions people make, there tends to be an assumption that the man on a team is the one who is really into it etc. Also, there can be the assumption that any given cacher is male.

 

Way back, someone on these forums, who I will allow to remain nameless unless he wants to speak up, thought I was a male named Carl Eenp! :anibad: To be fair, I had a gender neutral, or perhaps even masculine appearing avatar at that time.

 

I also review under the name Electric Mouse and on many occassions have recieved email beginning with "Mr. Mouse."

Edited by carleenp
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I have to agree with JerseyGirl - when I first started caching, my wife went with me and she was the one who was finding the caches. She's not much of an outdoors person but she goes with me in "safe" areas when she can. She's tied up with school right now so it's hard for her to get out but she does enjoy it. I suppose it's like anything else in this world the boys get the toys and they don't always play and share well with the opposite sex. Is this one of those "hunter-gatherer" things?

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HH, I've seen your many posts on wm.com, and I've also assumed you were male. But it wasn't chauvinism -- it was Harrison Ford as your avatar! Isn't that strange? It's a pretty safe bet you aren't actually Indiana Jones, yet I assigned you a gender based on that picture. That's funny.

 

No, I've never thought BlueDeuce was a duck. But I do think that if usernames and avatars are gender-neutral, I'll tend to assume "male". And it's probably more a computer-based-prejudice rather than a geocaching one.

 

Quick -- what am I, and why do you think so?

 

Indiana Jones is my dream job... archeology, travel, history, twarting nazis... :anibad:

 

But this is why I sign "- Elle"

 

Thank you for being honest, by the way. I don't think a lot of people can admit that something about themselves is wrong. And I think you've got a great point about it having a lot to do with the computer/internet.

 

- Elle

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Does it really matter the gender of the hider/finder? Not as far as I am concerned. Anyway we have lots of female cachers in this area.

 

I can understand why one might associate a name with a gender, but if BlueDolphin had not been taken (and never logged in again), that is who I would be, but I went with my alter ego Pink since that one was available. I just chalk it up to admitting that I have multiple personalities (PinkDolphin caches, BlueDolphin dives, and CatOlphin causes trouble)

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I am a lady and I geocache with my boyfriend.

 

I plan the route, log them under my name and do everything and he tags along for the ride. He does sometimes find them before I do.

 

I didn't realize it was predominately male, mostly because I've never met another geocacher.

 

But now that you've mentioned it, I'm going to be more aware of it.

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I would say I see more woman at geocaching events. When I think about the people who geocache it's not gender I think about. I see just as many woman hosting geocache training as I do men. I guess I never would have thought of geocachin' as a boy's game since I see just as much activity from the ladies.

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...

 

And just last weekend Skigirl and I were hiking past one of our caches when we saw a geocacher standing over it. The cache was hidden as "BrianSnat and Skigirl" and Skigirl in fact chose the hiding place. The two of us had a nice discussion with the cacher, who was someone we had never met, yet when he logged his find it said "I met the owner at the cache".

 

...

 

 

Maybe they were talking about her.

 

:anibad:

 

 

michelle

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Yes, geocaching is masculine.

The feminine spelling is geocachinge.

 

:anibad::blink:

 

I think wimseyguy is closest to the answer the OP was looking for... we tend to assign gender to things.

 

There's nothing on earth more masculine than an aircraft carrier, yet we speak of it as female - 'She's a massive fighting machine'.

 

We think of fish as male - 'He really gave me a fight' though most of us couldn't tell a him fish from a her.

 

Our car? Female. 'She's a real beauty'

 

Animals of indistinguishable (from a distance) nature depend on the animal - a hippo in a pond... 'He's a brute', but a cat in a windowsill? 'She's so cute!'

 

So, if that is indeed the context, what is geocaching?

 

Do you think of a geocache as a he or a she or a gender-neutral it?

 

When you see Signal the Frog do you think male or female? I think of him as male.

 

If you see a hiker coming down the trail at a distance do you first think "I wonder if he's caching?" That would be my assumption, even though we have dozens of female cachers in the AGA.

 

So for me I guess that makes geocaching male.

Edited by TheAlabamaRambler
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...

 

I guess many outdoor activities are male dominated so the assumption is that geocaching is a male sport and if there is a female involved, she is just going along for the ride.

 

To some extent I think that assumption is purveyed here on The Internets as well. How many times have we all read a thread about how 'the wife' doesn't like how much time 'he' spends geocaching? We end up with 99% of the posts from disgruntled men who know exactly what you're talking about and 1% from the women who experience the same thing with their husbands

 

Locally, our geo-population leans heavily toward the male-end of the spectrum. It's a veritable Good Ol' Boys Club out here in the Wild Wild West, and sometimes they try to run it like one. <grumble> We do have our husband-wife teams, some who log separately, but most who log together, and 9x out of 10, the male partner of that team IS the 'true' geocacher of the group and she is just along for the ride or maybe not along for the ride, but certainly doesn't participate to the extent he does.

 

Fortunately, Backwater, USA is not representative of the whole!

 

And, hey, you know what they say when you assume, right?

 

Just don't do it.

 

 

michelle

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Do you think of a geocache as a he or a she or a gender-neutral it?

 

"It". I have always said "It", although I will talk to it and cuss it out if I can't find it. But they don't answer me back, yet.

 

If you see a hiker coming down the trail at a distance do you think "I wonder if he's caching?"

 

I wonder if anybody of all ages is caching and then I wonder who they could be. When I'm caching with my daughter, I don't suspect anybody has to wonder. She's a chatterbox who talks about geocaching constantly while we're geocaching. There's no stealth with her. :anibad:

 

I don't think anybody looks at me and thinks "Geocacher" when I'm out on the trail alone... not because I'm a woman but because I carry a big camera and camera bag.

 

I think this is a good question and wonder what others think.

 

- Elle

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Yes, geocaching is masculine.

The feminine spelling is geocachinge.

 

 

:P:anibad:

 

And the mascot is name Signalette wearing a skirt and has a big bow on the top of her head!

:blink:

 

- Elle

 

Signal is a she didn't you know that?

 

I'm really surprised how polite this thread has played out. This thread is far more cordial than the Geocaching : A Caucasian Sport?, Geocaching : A Caucasion Sport? thread.

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Do you think of a geocache as a he or a she or a gender-neutral it?

Neutral. I rarely if ever apply gender to objects. I wonder if that's why I have a hard time remembering noun genders in German.

 

When you see Signal the Frog do you think male or female? I think of him as male.

Male, to the point that :anibad: looks weird to me, like he's wearing makeup. However, I can't swear that my take on Signal's gender hasn't been subliminally formed by others calling him "he".

If you see a hiker coming down the trail at a distance do you first think "I wonder if he's caching?" That would be my assumption, even though we have dozens of female cachers in the AGA.

Doesn't that say more about what you think of hikers than cachers?

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Yeah, it's always been that way.

 

"OLGA! Get my SUPPER woman! I'm POWERFUL hongry after rustling up all those geocaches!"

 

"Coming right up dear! You want me to sew up those briar-torn britches where you last hunted down

that dreadful travel bug?"

 

"NAW! Naw I don't want you messing with my lucky pants! Just get them vittles on the table so I can get right back out before GeoKid beats me to that prime spot down by the dump!"

 

"Yes dear."

 

:wub::wub::wub:

 

Geocaching may or MAY NOT be this way at your house!! :wub:

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Signal is a she didn't you know that?

 

Well, Signal is a cartoon character and is therefore without sex and gender. So, using the male pronoun would be grammatically correct...

 

(are you buying this?)

 

I'm really surprised how polite this thread has played out. This thread is far more cordial than the Geocaching : A Caucasian Sport?, Geocaching : A Caucasion Sport? thread.

 

:wub:

 

I have no words for that post.

 

:wub:

 

This post isn't about whether or not women cache or if they're in the majority. The actual reality is besides the point. We know women cache. No debate there. It's the perception of geocaching by geocachers that may assume a male default or even a male dominance of the sport, regardless of whether it's true or not. It's more of a sociological discussion than trying to dig up impossible statistics.

 

- Elle

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Yeah, it's always been that way.

 

"OLGA! Get my SUPPER woman! I'm POWERFUL hongry after rustling up all those geocaches!"

 

"Coming right up dear! You want me to sew up those briar-torn britches where you last hunted down

that dreadful travel bug?"

 

"NAW! Naw I don't want you messing with my lucky pants! Just get them vittles on the table so I can get right back out before GeoKid beats me to that prime spot down by the dump!"

 

"Yes dear."

 

:wub::wub::wub:

 

Geocaching may or MAY NOT be this way at your house!! B)

 

Hahahahahaha! :wub:

 

- Elle

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"A boy's game?"

 

... whatever.

 

Until I saw the title of this thread, the thought of associating a gender with Geocaching never entered my mind.

 

Right...

Because your username being ...The Girl and your byline being "Premium Female Member" has no inclusion of gender at all.

:wub:

 

- Elle

Your question was

So, is geocaching male by default?

Followed by the comment

I'm talking more about the social expectation or perception of geocaching by geocachers.

 

I was commenting on my "social expectation or perception of geocaching", or lack thereof.

 

My gender / username has nothing to do with whether I associate a gender with Geocaching. It identifies *me*, not the activity or discussion in which I am participating. As for my forum title, It originated as a play on someone else's forum title and again, it identifies *me*.

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Signal is a she didn't you know that?

 

Well, Signal is a cartoon character and is therefore without sex and gender. So, using the male pronoun would be grammatically correct...

 

- Elle

Maybe you should read up on the history a little...

 

:wub:

 

I was stirring the pot criminal. I remember this thread Is Signal A Boy Or A Girl?, I need to know . . . I'm confused

Oh, you had it right, but I wouldn't expect any less! :wub:

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I think one of the reasons for this misconception is that so many couples use a team name, so the woman's finds and hides are not recognized separately. In some teams I know it is the woman who actually makes most of the finds and places most of the caches...
Totally agree as with some teams it's the female of the couple who wears the dominant geocaching pants :wub: Paddler Found is actually the one who introduced me to the game, a move I think she sometimes regrets - PF=1 hide, iMPG=+250 hides.

 

I guess a quick answer would be to see if someone could do a breakdown of active geocachers by gender, but I think it's pretty evenly split with the main difference being that in most cases it's the male who takes the bushwhacking, stream wading, palmetto slicing direct path to the cache while the female uses common sense, follows the intended pathway and also bleeds less while signing the log :wub:

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I guess a quick answer would be to see if someone could do a breakdown of active geocachers by gender, but I think it's pretty evenly split with the main difference being that in most cases it's the male who takes the bushwhacking, stream wading, palmetto slicing direct path to the cache while the female uses common sense, follows the intended pathway and also bleeds less while signing the log :wub:

 

Be careful with your generalizations there. The shortest distance is always a straight line, no matter what's between me and the cache. :wub:

 

 

 

michelle

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Be careful with your generalizations there. The shortest distance is always a straight line, no matter what's between me and the cache. :wub:
You may notice the strategic use of the term "in most cases" as I know some geocachers of the female persuasion that would leave me in their dust in their quest for the find... and they have :wub: But in "most" cases (from what I have seen) the female of the geocaching species tends to let the male wander off the leash as to not get needlessly pulled into the brush themselves.... :wub:

 

I think the term "Nerd" is usually taken to be male, even if not always true.
So then what would a female nerd be? Trying to remember if there were females involves in thje revenge of said nerds :wub: Edited by infiniteMPG
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I haven't looked at your profile, but with a forum avatar of a male picture and the title History Nerd, I would assume the account holder to be male. I think the term "Nerd" is usually taken to be male, even if not always true.

 

Okay. I accept that, even though I sign every post with "Elle". But, hey, maybe there are guys named Elle. Who knows. But I am a huge history nerd.

 

I guess we could talk about whether geekitude and other nerdisms are default male. :wub:

 

- Elle

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Geocaching with a woman is a lot like fishing: B)

 

"Here, Baby Doll....let me thread that old GPS hook with the wiggling, squishy coords!"

 

"Ohhhh Thank Kewwwww! You are sooooo strong! And they are soooooooo ICKY!" :wub:

 

"That's whut I'm here for, Doll Face! Now, just take this over there....read that romance novel and I will call you when I need something." :wub:

 

"Ohhhhhhh, Thank Kewwww! You are so considerate! And big and strong!" :wub:

 

"Yeah, it's just the way us HE-MEN cachers ARE! We don't want you worrying your pretty little heads about FTF, logging etiquette, decimal coords and such. We like to look out for our women folk!" B)

 

"Ohhhhhhh, Thank Kewwww! You are so helpful! Do you want me to make a big pot roast dinner with all the trimmings for you tonight? With maybe a "special" I-love-you dessert?" :wub:

 

"Well, we will see about that. I MIGHT let you. But you gotta stop yammering so much! You are throwing my coords off and scaring the satellite signals!" B)

 

"Yes Dear."

 

This example of a geocaching household may or may not be typical of the average geocaching family! B)

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Geocaching with a woman is a lot like fishing: B)

 

"Here, Baby Doll....let me thread that old GPS hook with the wiggling, squishy coords!"

 

"Ohhhh Thank Kewwwww! You are sooooo strong! And they are soooooooo ICKY!" :wub:

 

"That's whut I'm here for, Doll Face! Now, just take this over there....read that romance novel and I will call you when I need something." :wub:

 

"Ohhhhhhh, Thank Kewwww! You are so considerate! And big and strong!" :wub:

 

"Yeah, it's just the way us HE-MEN cachers ARE! We don't want you worrying your pretty little heads about FTF, logging etiquette, decimal coords and such. We like to look out for our women folk!" B)

 

"Ohhhhhhh, Thank Kewwww! You are so helpful! Do you want me to make a big pot roast dinner with all the trimmings for you tonight? With maybe a "special" I-love-you dessert?" :wub:

 

"Well, we will see about that. I MIGHT let you. But you gotta stop yammering so much! You are throwing my coords off and scaring the satellite signals!" B)

 

"Yes Dear."

 

This example of a geocaching household may or may not be typical of the average geocaching family! B)

 

Those examples would most likely get you clobbered by the women I cache with! B)

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This example of a geocaching household may or may not be typical of the average geocaching family! :wub:

Nope, not in our house.

 

When we start to head to the cache, my eight year old son asks if "such and such" is the cache we're doing and then calls it up in his GPS, zooming off down the trail with our black lab at his side.

 

My wife & I tag along behind, arriving to ground zero a short while later. "Dad, I already found it," he quietly says and then sits down and giggles as we wander around aimlessly.

 

"Can I see the GPS?" my wife asks a minute later. "We're at ground zero," I reply in a stern tone, almost questioning why she wants to see it since we can't get much closer than 4 feet away. "Just let me see it," she says. "Okay, fine..." I say as I hand it off to her.

 

She looks down at it, looks around, looks back down at it and says, "I'm good."

 

I look around, trying to see what she saw but find nothing. Finally, after a 5 minutes of waiting, they get bored and show me where it is...

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I haven't looked at your profile, but with a forum avatar of a male picture and the title History Nerd, I would assume the account holder to be male. I think the term "Nerd" is usually taken to be male, even if not always true.

 

Okay. I accept that, even though I sign every post with "Elle". But, hey, maybe there are guys named Elle. Who knows. But I am a huge history nerd.

 

I guess we could talk about whether geekitude and other nerdisms are default male. :wub:

 

- Elle

We could, but it would have to be discussed in the Geek/Nerd forums, as it would be off topic in the GeoCaching Forums.

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