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I just intend to drop a few thoughts and not write a paper on this topic, therefore my experiences are not intended to be representative, or lead to major changes, nor do I have an SJW agenda. I also never streamed and never will. I dont think I am a "cliche gamer girl". I was baffled by this experience, so I wanted to share it.
"How do girls experience communication with other players in online games?" is a question that has been raised a lot, especially in recent years, e.g. in Sexual Harrasment in Video Games (wikipedia).
As someone that has played several games as a female (including WoW and CS) I must say I received a lot less harrassment and "bad" feedback than I expected. In fact, I was confronted with even less derogatory comments than my male teammates (since it seems to be kinda "normal" among them, but its pretty ungentleman like to call a girl a fucking faggot if she misaims. doesnt mean there was no criticism if I screwed up, it was just more rational and helpful in my case).
However, I DID receive some negative or rather unusual comments (like: show pics, pls fuck me, post boobs, I love you, please marry me etc. pp.) that differed from what the usual male experience is but I dont really saw it as problematic, and, as far as I can tell, most other girls I met didnt really complain about that either.
Is the difference in experience between girls and boys sexism in this context (assuming its a team you do fit in to and that respects you based on what you can provide inside the game) or is it normal? Do you talk to girls in RL like you talk to your guyfriends? my male friends dont at least.
Since I played in teams with an average age of above 20 most of the time, I concluded that at least nowadays there definitely is "safe" space for females in gaming: you might get the occasional weird comment, but its not like male gaming is so much better (I mean, if you'd get a nickel for everytime someone called you a "faggot" online youd probably be pretty well off- and that goes for both genders) and if youre more as a mascot to your team, you also get the respect the males receives (at least I did). If you, on the other hand, enter a male dominated zone and apply for a spot on a team only because youre a girl even if youre fully aware that you should not belong into that skill range, you should probably not play the sexism card for being treated what you are: a mascot, valued because boobs.
+ Show Spoiler +I am a post everything Tgirl: I have been living as a girl for years, and until now, my voice passed on ts, as my body in real life. according to all legal and medical definitions, I am female. I do know both sides of online gaming though
 
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I've played a lot of games and been in a lot of sports, including male-dominated, co-ed ones such as football and rugby. My experience has been, as long as you act like 'one of the guys', keep your head down, and play strongly to the 'I'm not like that' card, you'll be treated much the same. However, there's still a few problems.
I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but I won't be writing a huge piece either. Just wanna make some points about how it can be annoying to play games specifically because of your gender/sex. As you stated, you aren't speaking for everyone, but just because you or I haven't felt 'unsafe' doesn't mean other people haven't. Generally, if you prove yourself in a genderless way (i.e you play the game and no one knows you're a girl as you keep stride with them) and then say 'yeah i'm actually a girl' it becomes a 'hey cool' thing, because, well you're with friends. But fuck, get on the mic one time in an open Halo 2 game, you're gonna have a bad time.
There's also a problem with this having to appeal to them thing. What I mean is, is that if you're girly and like pink things and makeup and like being dressed up for the camera, suddenly you're an attention whore. If you don't play the game hardcore and are more of a personality, well, you aren't 'just a personality', you're an 'attention whore girl gamer using her boobs to advance'. Maximumblack joins a team? Entertainer. Livinpink joins a team? Girl gamer shows off her boobs, gets ahead. You know?
And then there's this whole thing of 'being better' because I'm a 'serious gamer' and I need to 'uphold the good image of what a girl who plays video games can do'. I can't have fun with my female co-caster by naming our cast '2 girls 1 zotac cup' because 'zomg appealing to girl gamer thing' and/or 'we thought you were better than this!!' Fuck me for having fun, right?
Perhaps I'm getting too personal with my examples, and maybe it only pertains to popular women. But I've been on your side of things, playing WoW with the guys and feeling like one of the guys, even when they try and be a little more respectful cuz girl, and I wouldn't be so confident in saying there is definitely always a safe space. All it takes is one bad time of meeting strangers with voice chat on and suddenly it's a lot harder to ever be open about who you are behind the pixels.
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In my experience, trolls always try to hit on the weakest point of their victim. Putting yourself out there in the "open" area of gaming can go bad for males as well. the flames differ in words, but not in the results: Eizher youre strong enough to ingore it or youre not. I am also of the opinion that silver ranked female cs go streamers are in fact attention whores. especially if they get higher ratings than global elite players. They just exploit the fact theyre feminine. This, of course, does not apply to casters or girls that reach a level above bot strength.
(just a thought: what would happen when Id start a TGirl casting group? I am pretty sure it would get a lot more nasty)
Maybe I am weird but years ago when I was presenting (cis)male, I was flamed and hated a lot more than now, and those flames got to me more than nowadays. It might be the change I experienced myself in the last years. but I do think that for a girl, that just enjoys to play video games without intending to reach the spotlight, the gaming scene has improved largely in the past few years. The "there are no girls on the internet" dogma seems to kind of have died.
Your mentioned title, 2 girls one zotac cup, I find hilariously funny and I think you should just ignore the haters in this case. I also dont think that is attentionwhoring. though I am not a fan of playing the sexism card all the time. that only comes back to bite us in the end. I DO want to be threated slightly differently as a girl, namely how people in a healthy society respond to a normal female friend. I dont want to be screamed at and have big arguments of who has the larger di- I mean, HS rate. ANd I even enjoy the friendly banter between the guys when they want me on their bombspots (for my aim, not my looks, since I never give out pictures online).
There are probably still problems in the caster scene as you pointed out, and I dont want to deny that I since I never tried it myself, but I also think theres still a female-caster-bonus-points set in place. this is good for bad female casters, but very bad for the good ones, since on first glance, its hard to see the difference (assuming youre just browsing the list on twitch). I am very impressed by how scarlett floats above the whole debate though and I think thats kind of the ideal way to play it. be good and have the confidence. you might get haters but youll still succeed.
Of course, this is largely colored by my personal experience that influenced my view of feminity a whole lot.
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Not too many creative people out there you know..
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Well i'm sure girl gamers like Tarra Babcock having a guy malaxing her boobs on stream while playing Heartstone don't help caster's female condition...
My Wife is a gamer. She plays like 5hours a day and more week-end. When she started playing i was kind of worried on SC2 or CS that she would get harassed a lot. It happens two time in a year or something. It's more male player that try to hit on her than disrepect.
I remember on Bnet in BW time where i was playing with a friend all the guys were like : "show pics not girl, show boob etc..". Mentality evolved quite a lot i believe. There's style the occasional douchebag that will say stuff like that even in RL. You know the guy that yell "dat ass suck my dick" from afar laughing with all their douchebags friends.
And you have girl that are still level 10 in WoW after 2month of game because she basicly go in WoW for the guild channel whining about guy being mean to her on the guild forum after she posted her picture where she only wear a transparent bra. Those girls are like the douchebags males.
But nowadays i find that the mentality evolved. Gaming is no more a "male thing" (even if there's more male players today). Mentality evolved but you will still see the douchebag. And it goes for all people
- You're Gay ? : "Faggot"
- You're Girl ? : "Boobs size ?"
- You're Guy ? : "I fucked your mom !"
- You're White : "Fucking racist"
- You're Black : "Nigger"
Yeah... it will stay because you have no risk doing that behind a computer. Do that in the street and you may have problems.
But hey. Happens on the street too. difference is. You have real fist there 
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On July 04 2014 12:12 viiv951002 wrote:
--Nuked--
ok??
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
Please don't quote ad bots, you just give them more links on the site :p
On topic: I grew up playing games with girls so I'm fairly used to the whole thing.
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On July 03 2014 04:14 Onekobold wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2014 03:37 ZombieGrub wrote: I can't have fun with my female co-caster by naming our cast '2 girls 1 zotac cup' because 'zomg appealing to girl gamer thing' and/or 'we thought you were better than this!!' wtf that's hilarious though
Did anyone stop you from doing that? There's a massive range of people on teh interwebs so you're going to get a massive range of responses. For every person that thinks destiny is hilarious there's someone who thinks he's a fucking joke because he's a popular streamer and gets more viewers than players who are a lot better than him.
Ultimately it's up to you to decide if criticism is accurate or not, the more outspoken people in one direction or the other tend to be the opposite ends of the bell curve and what matters is the majority (that is if you're trying to be popular, if you're not who cares)
You're never going to face zero criticism whatever you do that has any amount of exposure. If you get people saying a streamer is an attention whore or whatever it's probably something to do with the fact that they themselves were watching the stream when they only felt like they were watching it because omg teh gurlz. (obviously just a hypothesis here)
In that case its pretty much a personal problem they're dealing with and just redirecting it.
I think most streamers and personalities in general have to develop thick skins, I can think of TB as an example of someone who receives quite a lot of hate but the only reason I notice is because he can't help to reply to some of these guys.
(As a sidenote I think it's also counterproductive, people who don't like him see him being a douchebag, and I personally like his stuff, and I see it as rather petty and egotistical to reply to a random criticism, I'd prefer to see him rise above it and continue to do what he is already great at.)
I think there's a lot of truth to the Louie CK "Being white" set. It's not that people don't try to hurt your feelings if you're a generic white male gamer, it's more like you're not sensitive about anything so you just don't care. And even if you did, the only thing you can do about it is withdraw yourself from the environment, change yourself, or try to change the world. Thing is, you can't change the world. You can preach to the converted. You can't try to convince the negative people because they already don't respect you, the only thing you can do to make that happen is to prove yourself in whatever arena that they respect, and that comes back to change yourself.
As for "I believe the silver CS go female streamers are attention whores". Hell I'd probably stream too if I were getting 1k or whatever viewers.I know a lot of people would for sure. It mimics the experience of playing with people watching you in an arcade or something, and if you can make money on it too fantastic.
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On July 03 2014 21:15 FFW_Rude wrote:Well i'm sure girl gamers like Tarra Babcock having a guy malaxing her boobs on stream while playing Heartstone don't help caster's female condition... My Wife is a gamer. She plays like 5hours a day and more week-end. When she started playing i was kind of worried on SC2 or CS that she would get harassed a lot. It happens two time in a year or something. It's more male player that try to hit on her than disrepect. I remember on Bnet in BW time where i was playing with a friend all the guys were like : "show pics not girl, show boob etc..". Mentality evolved quite a lot i believe. There's style the occasional douchebag that will say stuff like that even in RL. You know the guy that yell "dat ass suck my dick" from afar laughing with all their douchebags friends. And you have girl that are still level 10 in WoW after 2month of game because she basicly go in WoW for the guild channel whining about guy being mean to her on the guild forum after she posted her picture where she only wear a transparent bra. Those girls are like the douchebags males. But nowadays i find that the mentality evolved. Gaming is no more a "male thing" (even if there's more male players today). Mentality evolved but you will still see the douchebag. And it goes for all people - You're Gay ? : "Faggot" - You're Girl ? : "Boobs size ?" - You're Guy ? : "I fucked your mom !" - You're White : "Fucking racist" - You're Black : "Nigger" Yeah... it will stay because you have no risk doing that behind a computer. Do that in the street and you may have problems. But hey. Happens on the street too. difference is. You have real fist there
Totally agree with you, male or female, you will get shit on the internet, just slurs will change a bit.
You are not being insulted for being a women, you are being insulted because you are confronted with a douche.
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You are not supposed to work so hard to be lovable, you show love to yourself by working hard through life, to achieve your goals, to get the toys you want, whether they are cars, suits, plane tickets around the world, or whatever it might be. Doing things to be lovable to others, is approval seeking behaviour, you should only be doing things for yourself, not others. Try to live life like no one else cares what you do because, in reality, nobody cares what you do.
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Norway28701 Posts
gotta second that if you named your cast 2 girls 1 zotac cup I'd find that extremely witty and it'd probably make me tune in
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EPT
