Despite the number of “gurl gamers just want attention” comments, it’s pretty common knowledge that a great number of gamers who are female hide their true gender when it’s possible to. This week on Saucy Saturdays, I want to explore the reasons why women choose to keep their gender hidden, why and how men (and sometimes other women) encourage them to, and the implications it has for the construction of gaming communities.
In my first installment of Saucy Saturdays, I mentioned that according to research by PhD student Julie Prescott at the University of Liverpool, and reviewed by Gamasutra, 42 percent of all game players are women. Furthermore, according to the Entertainment Software Association, “Women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).” So if women are so prevalent in the gaming community, why is it still so common to sling derogatory remarks at people simply because of their gender?
You might think that it’s not really so common; that women blow discrimination out of proportion. But the website Fat, Ugly, or Slutty essentially disproves this. It’s like Engrish, except instead of funny mistranslations, it’s offensive messages sent to women over Xbox Live, forums, Steam, PlayStation Network, WoW chat and just about everywhere else. It’s not just smack talk, it’s stuff like: “what yo pussy like?” (April 23, 2011), “INBOX ME UR BOOBS” (December 26, 2011), “ill be at your house 2nite to dominate yor cooter… sleep with 1 eye open” (February 13, 2012). FUoS is staffed by three ladies and a gentleman. They post their own experiences with the offensively ignorant and take submissions from the public as well. Their mission statement, as written on their About page, is, “If having these messages posted online makes someone think twice about writing and sending a detailed description of their genitals, great! And if not? We’ll all have another submission to laugh at.”
It’s not really always fun and games, though. It’s nice if a lady can let insults and lewd comments glance right off, but it’s not always the case. Lesley from Two Whole Cakes, notes: “It makes social gaming difficult for those of us who don’t want to flirt — we just want to play motherfucking games, and we want to be treated like real three-dimensional humans, not like vaginas with thumbs.” She also writes, “Once TeamSpeak became the norm, I fell away from MMOs because I was so tired of dealing with the harassment and assorted bullshit. My voice gave my gender away immediately, which meant I could no longer ‘pass’ as male.” I also know that many women, myself included, find it extremely distracting and disheartening when an entire group (guild or server) turns against you because of your gender and begins slinging comments like, “Make me a sandwich,” and “Tits or GTFO” ad nauseum. Or worse, blame everything you do on your gender. Make MVP? You must be ugly and don’t have a boyfriend. Get dominated by a player? You suck because you’re a girl, get back in the kitchen.
But it’s not just in-game where the discrimination against women occurs. The idea that women don’t play video games, that if they do then it’s okay to make fun of them because it’s a boys’ club, is so pervasive that ladies experience this backlash in life as well. A thread posted on Reddit last month shows that it’s pretty typical to be met with sexism even when those doing it aren’t hiding behind anonymity. One user notes her experience working retail at a gaming store:
“I walked over to these two men arguing, hoping to help them out. They were arguing about two PS3 racing games not really my area of expertise nevertheless I was willing to help. They noticed my name badge and the first one opened his mouth to say, ‘Which of these is best? Wait, why the fuck am I asking you anyway, you obviously don’t know shit about videogames. Girl.’”
Another user recounts her experience at a national Warhammer 40K tournament, where her opponent for second-round qualifiers asked her, “Do you know how to play this game? Like, you’ve read the rulebook and stuff?” And then remarked, “Oh, is it your army, or your boyfriend’s? I suppose he helped you in the last tournament.” Another user had a similar experience when she overheard coworkers talking about Dragon Age: Origins and a difficult quest: “Excited (I LOVED the game at the time), I joined the conversation and shared some tips. They stared at me, and the oldest one said, ‘But you’re a girl. How do you know the game, from your husband?’” This partially disproves the theory that all of this happens because of the online disinhibition affect, or John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Either way, it’s not just men dissing ladies and encouraging them to keep their gender hidden. In an interview with Chicago Now’s Gamesmith, pro gamer Rachel Kirtley expressed her opinion on other girl gamers:
“Most girls do it for attention. When girls pretend to know about sports and cheer for football and have no idea what’s going on. It’s the same thing in gaming. They play it but they have no idea what they’re doing.”
Saying that about female gamers just perpetuates the stereotypes that other gamers believe. They use the idea that all female gamers are “gurl/grrl gamers” looking for attention, that by revealing their gender they are just looking for attention.
Valerie Lapomme, of Sexy Nerd Girl, put it best in her “A manifesto for female identifying gamers (or more simply ‘gamer girls’)” blog post:
“It disturbs me that so many people have the opinion that it would be better to be silent and accept the status quo, then to campaign for positive change. Women especially were angry about this message. There were a lot of people who said: “just deal with the abusive comments, and stop drawing attention to female gamers.” I’m happy for some people who don’t have a problem with being harassed, but not everyone is like that. Some people would rather that negative attitudes changed, and that women could play and be themselves without having to worry about having their XBL inboxes bombarded with sexist remarks and come-ons.”
She also compiled this beautiful video of women of all ages, backgrounds, playing ability, and levels of online visibility:
Gamers of both genders need to understand that if we really want to have a gaming community, some amount of respect and welcoming needs to happen. Women need to stop being afraid to reveal their gender, to not be afraid to show the visibility of femininity in games, and men need to be more accepting and realize that there are, in fact, girls on the Internet and they’re not going to show you their boobs no matter how many times you ask. Maybe gaming used to be a strictly white, heterosexual, male hobby, but things have changed. It’s 2012 and being misogynistic is anachronistic. And for those of you who have lost sight of what the word “misogyny” means, sociologist Allan G. Johnson put it in this way:
“…misogyny is a cultural attitude of hatred for females because they are female… Misogyny … is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.”
Everyone who plays online games get’s insults thrown at them. People pick the easiest thing to harass or make fun of you for. My advice is, grow up, and stop being so insulted by things that shouldn’t be insulting. I wouldn’t be offended by some one saying “AHAHAHA You’re a guy, what do you know about cooking?” <- Think it sounds stupid? To me that's what half the insults girls cry about sound to me. Get over it, and take the shit talking everyone takes online.
Your example makes no sense. Maybe if you’d made yourself a nice meal and sat down to eat it, then someone looked over your shoulder and made that comment, it would be a better analogy. And maybe, just maybe, since you’d spent your time doing something you wanted to do without making a fuss about it to anyone, you’d be a little more annoyed by the insult. Everyone gets insults to the effect of “ur a fag”, which are generally generic and impersonal. When a girl gets insulted and harassed based on the fact that she’s female, it is personal, since it’s particular to her being a girl.
Hey Ryan! I’m pretty sure you’re one of the twats that this article is talking about. Maybe you should grow up a bit.
Hey Craig, and although what Ryan said may not have been equipped with the best examples but he never said he gave any of that shit talk. And whilst obviously all personal insults can get to people, if you’re online as some random anon with other anons, insults are really to be expected. I personally am ginger, and my gamer tag is Jinge, so sure i get some shit for it but i don’t let it get to me, i generally outplay them, i’d kill them whilst they type shit and just win the game. If you cant handle insults, online games aren’t for you, be thick skinned a bit or play single player imo.
You sir, are probably the type of idiot that gets banned on my servers on a regular basis….. We don’t tolerate racism or sexism…. everyone is an equal f@g Nub
Gender can be more easily and quickly identifiable than any other trait; having an exploitable trait like being gay, overweight, and ugly can be used against you, but people can easily hide those kinds of things without sacrificing at times crucial media like in-game chatting. However, being a female, can easily be identified like the author mentioned when playing in game. Hence, most people don’t need to deal with comments targeting a personal trait because douchebag gamers don’t know about them, yet females most often do. So your argument that “everyone deals with the same thing” is invalid. But even if this was true, you’re acting like people are obligated to deal with “bitch go make me a sandwich” when they’re trying to have fun. Yes people can be assholes online with little consequences, but at least don’t put sexism in games off as something that everyone experiences; it’s not, and you probably haven’t experienced such.
Comments like these is what allows the sexism to continue and spread throughout communities. No, it’s not okay to discriminate, in whatever place or media. I honestly think that articles like these informs people, and makes people think twice about posting that sexist comment or message because they think it’s funny.
No Ryan, it’d be much more like someone finding out your mum was dead, then proceeding to make your mum jokes, followed by “oh wait, shes dead!” for 20 minutes. There’s a large difference between generic ‘shut up idiot’ type insults and ones that specifically attack who you are. Being straight, white and hetero it’s quite difficult to imagine how a personal characteristic can be attacked and actually make you feel shitty. Try being more empathetic.
Yeah great post, basically just a complete rehash of the reddit one -_-
Regardless if its in the virtual world of gaming or not EVERYONE gets insulted. Particuarly in the virtual world, insulting one another is pretty much a hobby. The more people you piss off the more fun things are. People just need to toughen up and understand that people will be people and by this i mean that there will always be someone who finds a way to piss you off, just toughen up and get used to it. Does it not matter than Male gamers get told things like “Fat pigs” “Slobs” “Lazy cunts” “Pimply freaks” “Fat ass” “Low life” “Never get a girlfriend” “Your going to die alone” etc etc? We Male gamers take just as much shit as everyone else. Sure sometimes its hurting or not, you just shrug it off and play the damn games. Why is everyone jumping on the women ban-wagon when its not just women who are being verbally insaulted etc? Theres plenty of Black affrican gamers who take flak, i don’t see an article about them….
TLDR: Life gives you lemons, you toughen the fuck up and deal with it. because we all have to take the dam lemons.
Black players might get called nigger every now and then, and have their race thrown at them, but if it turns into something that a person is doing constantly, you better believe that either another player will tell that person to back off, or that player will get reported and subsequently banned. This isn’t the case for women. Nobody cares about sexism, one guy can be saying shit like “All women need to get fucked and have their heads cut off, they’re all bitches” and RARELY does anybody do or say anything. The girl has to contact a mod herself to get the person kicked, and if anybody finds out she did it, then suddenly she’s a whiny little girl who needs to leave if she can’t handle trash talk.You don’t single one person out to talk trash to for an hour. Talking trash also has the connotation of involving someone’s ability, of competition. Insulting a woman for being a woman for the entirety of a game, even if she’s on your team, even if she’s MVP, has nothing to do with competition or ability.
Really? You posted the Gamer girl manifesto then proceed to admire it? What a joke. That’s the most hypcocritical argument and defeats the purpose of equality amongst gamers, they have further dug the trenches in their bullshit feminist agenda and seperating the sexes rather than unifying. If you ask me men and women are just as bad as each other. But as a stereotypical male I’ll have to say women are self-centered and attention-whoring as based on that video you linked. I guess if I said ANYTHING offensive about girl gamers it would be considered sexism instead of criticism so the only *right* choice of words is praise them for their injustice.
Really do abhore this feminist agenda, whilst a man in any other scenario would need to man up and deal with it, a women can turn on the crocodile tears and white knights will come to their rescue. I’ve read tons of interviews in my time, notably from wow.com when I was active in WoW where they interviewed a girl gamer and she stated it was great because people would give her attention. That’s right, attension. Women in real life adore attention, it’s in their fucking genetic make-up what would make it different in-game? Ugly girls want attension too sometimes and they find it online, good for them – I don’t blame females for looking for attension but don’t start crying when it backfires.
The amount of drama and heartbreak females have caused in guilds (online communities) from as far back as 2001 in my personal experience have caused havoc in our communities and that’s me as a passive onlooker.
The day I see females actively defending fat, ugly, disabled men AND women then I’ll join their feminist cause. Until then I will never have sympathy for them.
“The day I see females actively defending fat, ugly, disabled men AND women then I’ll join their feminist cause.”
Sorry, are you completely blind to every single non-profit raising money for disabilities? I’m pretty sure 100% of them have female staff. Even the ones for shit like prostate cancer. Fat and ugly is subjective, but I’m pretty sure every anti-bully campaign ever launched has a pretty good mix of men and women. As for the guilds, maybe if you guys didn’t give them so much power, either by putting them on a pedestal or hating them to the point of obsession, things like that wouldn’t matter. Most of the time the guild is divided between people who want to defend her and people who want her gone, but you’re all treating her like something rare. She’s just a girl, get over it. That’s the whole point of this article. Just treat her like another human being, not like a vagina with thumbs. If your guild leader is too blind and dumb and puts what she says ahead of what his guild wants, then it’s probably good your guild disbands, because he’s a bad leader.
Dude you sound like the biggest douchebag in the world
The problem with articles like these are two-fold. One is that the audience you are trying to address isn’t ever going to read this or empathize with it. And two, as others have eluded to, you are attempting to change western male behavior on a massive scale. As Adam said, everyone gets insulted online. It’s not just a small group of closet racist/homophobic/sexist people doing it, it’s a very large group of young males. They specifically target people with this stuff knowing it will bother them. Growing a thicker skin is necessary for women to enter the gaming world, as unless you can change the behavior of the vast majority of young males, being the target of insults of inevitable for anyone.
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TEASING AND DISCRIMINATING IDIOT. DISCRIMINATING IS WHEN ONE IS RESTRICTED AND UNFAIRLY TREATED BECAUSE OF THEIR PERSONAL QUALITY! LIKE YOU SAID AN OVERWEIGHT PERSON MIGHT BE TEASED BUT THEY WOULDN’T BE GIVEN UNEQUAL TREATMENT OR REJECTION FROM THE GAMING COMMUNITY. FEMALES GET REJECTIONS, EXCLUSION, AND UNFAIR TREATMENT; THE AUTHOR PROVIDED FIRST HANDED ACCOUNTS……..
lol @ comments posted by straight white dudes telling everyone to stop being offended
Death, taxes, and privileged dudes getting mad about someone telling them to be nice to other human beings.
The author is trying to emphasize an effort to get rid of such sexism in gaming; why do you guys have to speak out against that? Don’t fucking criticize good-hearted efforts, saying that it’s naive or helpless or even worse that sex discrimination must be accepted–it just makes you sound like a scumbag.
Above comment wasn’t directed towards you nutinmuch
Question to all the women…
Umad?
Dear lord… if you are straight, heterosexual, cisgendered, caucasian and male, and you make comments like “people deal with this all the time.” or “life gives you lemons” or “walk it off” you are completely ignorant of the fact that western society caters to you in every single way that can be conceived. Feminist movements, the civil rights movements, LGBT advocacy, all of these groups are set up to address grossly antagonistic treatments of individuals on a categorical basis. 25+% of men have not had to deal with a sexual encounter they didn’t want. 25+% of women have… and so if you happen to be in that group that has, and suffer from PTSD, when someone takes the time to write you a message that says “I’m going to rape you while you sleep, keep one eye open.” It triggers a straight up panic attack, the equivalent of which would be pointing an unloaded gun at a veteran with PTSD.
Just think about things for a second and realize that everything you said is going to be heard by another person, not some farcical stereotypical antagonist.
I fully expect trolling responses: carry on.
What is more likely to happen, you can change other peoples behavior or the way you handle other peoples behavior can change? I understand where you and the author are coming from, but it is not realistic to suddenly expect every asshole on the planet to not be an asshole.
I don’t think we want things to happen suddenly. But if how people reacted to my article is any indication, a great number of people are extremely hostile to being called out on it, much less reconsidering their behavior. In your opinion, what is the best way to handle it?
This is some patronising crap. If you want to argue that trolling is ruining everything for everyone then fine, but can we please stop this “men are bullying women, protect the women” nonsense? The issue clearly isn’t gender when it’s both men and women doing it to both genders (if you ask me the “lol you have a small penis” comments are more personal than the “lol you belong in the kitchen” ones). In my experience with being a woman (I have a vagina and everything) and spending lots of time on the internet; if anything women have it better thanks to being over-protected in most situations. Maybe it’s not great everywhere (xbox live voice chat does sound like a pain) but in some online games (e.g. WOW) it can even be much more beneficial.
I tend to use male avatars but that’s because I prefer them, not because I’m scared of harassment (I’ve never lied about my gender if it’s come up). I dislike that this article ignores the experience of women who haven’t had a bad time apart from Kirtley’s comment, which is quickly dismissed as encouraging stereotypes (ironically ignoring that “WOMEN NEED PROTECTION FROM MEN” is also a stereotype). People need protection from people, sure, but a woman being harassed online has more in common with a man being harassed online than a woman NOT being harassed online. The harassed men shouldn’t be ignored any more than the women not being harassed should be dumped in with those who are.
I’d rather be trolled than treated like I NEED special treatment just because of my second X chromosome. I’m not saying you should troll, or even that you should be fine with it when people do, but please don’t assume women are in GREATER need of help than men.