I admit that this is WAAAYYYY off topic, but I'm going to contribute to it anyway.
Some cultures looked down on those who were too involved in the material world, while celebrating those of more abstract bent.
North American society is rather the opposite of that. People who think abstract thoughts, be it by occupation or for pleasure, are widely viewed as strange and somewhat beyond the pale. This includes scientists, poets, computer programmers, mathematicians, engineers, and of course, gamers. I mean after all, you could be thinking about money, or sex, or sports, or something equally important!
Gaming is generally viewed as something that might amuse those poor soles incapable of dealing adequately with the real world. In fact on American TV, the way that they show that a secondary character is truly, completely, so nerdy that the leading characters are justified in rejecting them outright is to have them play Dungeons and Dragons.
An awful lot of the guys I know who got into gaming were already categorized as nerds before they took it up. I can think of very few who were viewed as people of social consequence and then jeopardized that status by gaming. The vast majority of nerds are guys (socially marginalized women tend to get subjected to different ghettos), and since this is the pool that most gamers here seem to come from, I think you'll continue to see most gamers here be guys. This is such a self-perpuating cycle (most gamers are nerds, therefore only nerds would want to play these games, so only nerds start playing these games....) that I doubt you'll see that change any time soon.
All of this just IMO, of course.
--Bryan (a math loving, game playing, engineer and self-admitted nerd, who also knows how to function in non-nerd society, but has yet to find a way to make those two groups meet).
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