My Experience With Sexism In Games

Despite progessive egalitarian social norms in the U.S., women, especially in gaming, are exposed to a wave of prejudice and misogyny across a range of platforms. The details of this issue are so deeply and intrinsically rooted in psychological, social, and cultural reasoning that it’s hard to make acute psychological judgment for the purposes of analysis without further research. The experiences I had that I’ve gathered in this multimodal video are just a fraction, “the tip of the iceberg”, of some of the comments and harassment that I’ve heard. Each of my negative encounters shares similarities. The harasser is always a male, (I have yet to be berated by a female on the internet), and the comment is usually about my gameplay, or if I’m using a voice changer, followed by accusations of hacking, cheating, or something of equivalence. I have witnessed video examples of other girls who have heard the same repeated comments as I have. Infamously, the hoarse question: “are you a girl?” perhaps followed by, “(oh my god) I’m playing with a girl gamer,” or a complete repudiation, “no you’re not (a girl), are you 12 or something?”

These encounters are not the case for every match that I play, although I would roughly estimate it happens every third match I play. Many, if not the majority, have enough self-decency and respect to not make any comments or questions about my gender. What causes gamers to react like this when a female joins their lobby, and if the answer to this previous question is tied to societal and cultural preconceptions, what can be done to break this cycle? Some may argue that going directly to game developers to diversify character selectiblity and ask for the omission of females specifically designed around their sexualty, clad in scanty armor, is a good starting point. But when important topics like gender representation, or just sexism in games, are confronted by journals, this elicits a hotly debated, fervent response from gaming communities that may even be followed by harassment and threats. Some may feel it is a personal attack on them, that now suddenly their favorite video game is being called sexist, and that this would apply to them as well. Discussion of sexism, sadly, has become a political topic in the U.S. that can lead to tribalistic responses where disagreement can be seen as an attack. When a change is asked for in game mechanics or visuals, this response is especially motivated, many don’t want any aspect of their game altered, especially to suit someone else's needs. When I attempt to discuss the topic of sexism in gaming with others, oftentimes I am dismissed as a “SJW”. In summary, a larger part of this response is identity. For many, gaming is more than a hobby, it is part of an identity. If you tell those people that gaming has a sexism problem, you're telling them that there is a problem with their identity, and people won’t respond well to that. What I believe is often misunderstood is that I don’t want the complete expulsion of everything that panders to a white, male, young audience. After all, we’re exposed to media with sexist elements every day. However, I want sexist elements to be recognized as sexist, so that others can at least become collectively aware. And as video games mature as a medium, they need to be held to the kind of scrutiny we hold other art forms while keeping in mind how to make women feel less scrutinized and objectified. I want to hold discussions on this topic because I don’t believe sexist writing or character designs in video games is the root cause, but a symptom of something much larger.

People have made claims that violence in video games has caused real life violence, and on the other hand, people have also claimed that video games have caused real life sexism, both are based on the cultivation theory. Both are opinion based, hotly debated theories. I believe that they are so hotly debated because, again, it may be considered a personal attack on the gamer and his/her real life tendencies. Regardless of whether the cultivation theory is true in the realm of video games, the real issue is when journalists bring up the issue of sexism in games, it isn’t an attack on the players but is rather a discussion starting point on how to make women and other misrepresented communities feel accepted.

I have mixed feelings about the gaming community as a whole. On one hand, I am grateful for the experiences and friendships I have made, however, gaming has also exposed me to the ills of society and completely altered my perception on how women are treated and viewed especially when an anonymous cover is given.