Toxicity as Player #2 — An Analysis of Women in Gaming
By: Aliyadeth Griffiths
The gaming community is an ever-growing and ever-evolving community—a community that I have proudly been a part of since childhood, which still remains a significant part of my identity. Throughout the years, it has allowed me to meet new friends, learn about other worlds, and even explore new ideals while assuming the role of a character. Similarly to reading, video games have allowed me to have a safe space and a community, one that I share with many across the world. Gaming, however, also serves as a home to one of the world’s most persistent and pervasive issues: toxicity towards women and other gender minorities. While gaming first began as a leisurely activity almost exclusive to men, this community has now grown to include around forty-one percent female gamers in just recent years (Chappeta, 2022). This shift, however, is not without its consequences—as the majority of players in this still male-dominated field continue to have a nearly identical mindset than when it first began.
While the majority of gamers are familiar with instances of aggravation by other players, women and gender minorities often have to face constant, much more severe mistreatment than their male counterparts—varying from differential treatment, sexual remarks, to even death threats. As someone who has been a part of this community since childhood, playing genres which are especially male dominated—such as fighting or first-person shooter games—I wanted to understand why the overall gaming experience differs so much for women in contrast to men; exploring the root causes of the internalized misogyny within the community in an attempt to comprehend how this can eventually lead to the harassment women often have to face while playing.
In order to understand the common mindsets and behaviours from the gaming community, it is important to understand how it was first created. According to Garry Crawford (2011), author of “Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games”, gaming has been wildly popular since the beginning of the internet, due the social connections one could foster through games—especially through role playing games (or RPGs, for short). Before online gaming began, Dungeons and Dragons was an especially popular game among a nearly identical demographic, and once the internet allowed this demographic to virtually meet with others, its popularity increased at a tremendous speed.
From the creation of MUD, to Adventure, to then Zork, these games paved the way for what would become the modern gaming community. Not only were these games played mostly by men—with the standard of who could be in the community endorsed by the same group—its creation is also credited to men, since, “computer and Internet pioneers were drawn from the same demographic and located within the same locales (most notably universities) as PnP, play by mail and war gamers” (Crawford, 2011). By making a space created by men, used by men, and targeted only towards men, women were relentlessly pushed away from gaming until recent years. Now that this has begun to change, it has created resentment among some players. This discontentment has often led to the mistreatment of women and other gender minorities, as players can hide behind an online persona, easily avoiding any repercussions.
Unfortunately, the mistreatment women face during gaming cannot be so easily ignored. To further my personal understanding of how toxicity affects women within the gaming community, I interviewed two different women gamers, Sophia Stutte and Giovanna De Robertis. Not surprisingly, both of them had experienced mistreatment because of their gender, with their experiences being tremendously similar.
Sophia, for example, began by telling me that she had played video games for over six years now, providing her plenty of experience in first person shooter games. With that same experience came plenty of mistreatment, however, which she had unfortunately encountered every time they logged onto a game. She stated, “Often, if I’m alone and I feel like I can’t handle what people say about my gender in game, I will not turn on my mic and try to pick a ‘non-feminine’ role. Like if I’m playing Overwatch, and I don’t feel like dealing with harassment as a healer, I will often play a tank character instead.” When I asked Giovanna if she had also experienced this, she told me, “I rarely use my mic to play with people I don’t know well. My online username is gender-neutral, so there’s no way for people to know…But I notice that although the people I play with in SMITE don’t know my gender, a lot of insults directed at other players are gender-based. Swear words and vulgarities used are usually the ones that have to do with women or female body parts…” Giovanna also mentioned how if she were to perform poorly in game, especially when compared to the expectations of her teammates, a popular insult would be that she “plays like a girl.” With comments like these normalized within the community, much stronger insults have also become extremely common—creating a growing sense of hostility for not just women and other minorities, but for all players involved.
As I continued to speak with Sophia, she told me that she had experienced several threats of sexual harassment while in game. She stated, “I often get comments about my body—even though they can’t even see it, which I find kind of funny at times—making disgusting remarks on rape and sexual assault.” Cases of mistreatment such as this one are all too common, with women within the community often being told that they need to serve men, whether sexually or otherwise. If they do not wish to do so, harassment can escalate even further. This might also be caused due to the poor representation women have had in video games throughout the years. Female characters are often represented as a mere romantic interest for the male protagonist, with provocative clothing and sexualized poses. Their development is often not as thorough as male characters, as they continue to be created through the lens of the male gaze—representing women as an object of pleasure for the viewer and nothing else. While this has improved slightly over the years, the stigma and negative impact these characters have continue to affect women to this day.
While the modern gaming community has made more of an effort to include women in recent years, the gaming experience for this demographic continues to be toxic and aggressive, varying from microaggressions to major sexual assault threats. This environment threatens to destroy the safety, well-being, and sense of community of not just women, but all players involved. This makes the issue not only worthy of attention, but also deserving of a collaborative effort of players and developers alike, in order to finally make this space truly enjoyable for all.
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