It’s kind of hard to believe that in the 21st century blatant sexism could still be as prevalent as it is.
Recently someone finally noticed/cared that Facebook’s “L337Sp34k” option changes “female” to “sandwich maker”. This is a language option created and offered by Facebook itself (since 2008), not user-created content. A billion dollar corporation used a blatantly sexist internet meme, and didn’t think anything of it.
Just this year Capcom had a champion Tekken player talk on their “Cross Over” show about how “sexual harassment is a part of the fighting game community”. Capcom later issued an apology.
I knew this was a topic worth discussion, unfortunately I felt ill-equipped to tackle the subject since I’d never experienced it myself. Being a man, my online gaming experiences have never been punctuated with sexist remarks, inappropriate propositions and genitalia pics hitting my inbox.
This is something only women have to deal with; women aren’t concerned with gender, don’t act sexist online and don’t much care if you’re a guy or a girl, as long as you came to game. Or do they? I decided to head into a female-dominated online gaming community and see if I could get some first-hand experience in sexist treatment.
Venturing into the great unknown of female gaming, I thought the best place to start would be asking our mighty overlord: Google. Going to the top listed site, I was somewhat stunned by a plethora of pink and cartoon figures – isn’t this exactly the kind of stereotypical crap girl gamers hated?
Things quickly became worse. The games on offer were – and I wish I was kidding – “Fashion Fabulous Dress Up”, “Wedding Cake Design”, “Sweet Kisses in the Park” and “Sara’s Cooking Class”. Every single “game” was related to fashion, make-up, cooking or boys. It felt like an advertising campaign taken out of an episode of Mad Men.
This had to be a mistake. I went back to my Google search results and literally every site was more of the same. Well, I had to at least give it a shot. First things first, register a nickname. I needed to clearly communicate I was male, without sounding like a weirdo or jumping every time the doorbell rang in case it was the To Catch A Predator film crew.
I went for the cool, innocuous, “CoolGuy884”; that was bound to get me an inbox full of harassment. Amazingly, that was taken. I’m not sure how to feel about that, but I don’t think it’s anything good. I grudgingly went with “CoolGuy994” instead.
The first game I played involved putting various creams on a woman’s face and then washing them off. I cannot describe how insufferably boring this was. I would rather play Big Rigs on a Macbook than lay another cucumber slice on that idiotic moon face. In order to get my sweet nickname out there I posted a comment about how totally awesome the game is before making a hasty getaway.
The next top Google hit had me trying to seduce my “hot babysitter”. With a yo-yo. This game was so vapid I actually wondered if any of these games/websites are even created by females, or just creepy men whose market research consisted of skimming through the Twilight novels for the sex bits.
At this point it had become apparent that there was no such thing as a real gaming environment for girls, or any kind of decent female-marketed game, so I was forced to turn elsewhere.
The next port of call was to find a gaming community just for girls, which was more successful – I quickly found a pretty active forum-based community. I decided to be more direct with the nickname this time, and cleverly went with “NotAGirl”, then added my trademark “994” for good measure.
I opened up proceedings with a thread proclaiming that I wasn’t a girl (in case my clever choice of nickname was overlooked), and that I was interested to hear their thoughts on the total bundle of flash-game crap that was to be found spread across the internet. I figured this would kill two birds with one stone – open me up for a tidal wave of inappropriate inbox messages, and get a genuine female perspective on “Sweet Kisses in the Park”. I decided to let my two aliases simmer untouched for a couple of days, and come back later to an inbox stuffed with sexual harassment.
Nothing. Not a single picture of someone’s genitals. Not even a thinly-veiled creep message. Nothing at all. As for the thread, I got a lot of reasonable, well-thought out responses, and not one person even made mention of my gender. Here’s the very first reply:
“They all suck. Sexist undertones aside, they’re either not fun or not challenging. But they’re all free, silly flash games anyway.”
In the same forum however, there was a thread several pages long in which several female gamers shared stories of how they’ve been abused and harassed online. Here’s an excerpt from that particular thread:
“Personally, I would never play xbox live. Ever. I’ve listened in over my friends conversations on there before and it makes me sick sometimes just how bigoted people are online.”
It should be noted that there were one or two other threads floating around, started by guys, who say they “like to play with girl gamers”. I’m sure that’s true of some people out there, but it was patently obvious that these were a bunch of creepos whose genital pic approach on Xbox Live hadn’t been working out, and were taking their “game” to the next level.
All jokes aside, as males we can be very dismissive of this issue. On the very forum I’m talking about, one or two males were lurking around (which seems odd, but I wasn’t in a position to judge), saying stupid and ignorant things about the sexist crap girls who game deal with daily. Here’s a real gem: “My issue is with this whole ‘girl gamer’ culture. Why is it needed? Why don’t women just let their actions speak for themselves by buying and playing video games? Why do they need special websites like this one?”
Here’s another. One girl said, “It’s just nice to have girl friends to play games with. What’s not to get?” To which another guy responded, “Everything. I don’t understand that mentality. Do you have a phobia of men or something?”. Even when gamer girls form their own, private groups, nasty boys show up to kick sand in their faces.
The problem is these sentiments are widely echoed throughout the gaming community. The joke of it is that gamers are really good at forming exclusive groups themselves. Xbox, PC and PS3 players do it. RTS players and Fighting game players form closed groups. So do those who play Battlefield and those who play Call of Duty. These groups are formed out of preference and difference of opinion, whereas girl gamer groups are formed out of necessity.
If you think it’s stupid that girl gamers identify with each other and form groups, you fail to realize that you’re the one who made them do it. Maybe you’re polite and respectful to girls online, a true gentleman – but if you do that while screaming at your other teammate that he’s a noob who should be shot at dawn, you’re at fault too.
For every guy aggressively trolling a girl online, there’s always the white knight who tries to defend her. For 95% of male gamers, it’s impossible not to treat a girl differently, and the girls are sick of it. That’s why they form their own groups, or don’t play games at all. Even those with the best intentions are at fault here.
I set out to try and get an inkling of an understanding of what these girls experience but I can’t, nor will I ever be able to – and neither will you. As males in the gaming community, we can’t understand what girls trying to game deal with daily. It’s okay to try and understand, it’s okay to want to – it’s not okay to think we do.
Sexism in gaming, and elsewhere, is a real issue, one that needs to be dealt with – and the first step in doing that is to admit to ourselves and others, as male gamers, that we know absolutely nothing about it.
Related Articles
God of War director responds to allegations of sexism
Armour expert calls female boob armour a “design flaw”
Techland apologises for “feminist whore” code found in Dead Island
Jade Raymond recommends we give our “teenage medium a kick in the balls”
Forum discussion
Join the conversation