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Collin Pihl
Mr. Price
AP English, Period 5
7 December, 2015
Sexism in the Gaming Community
Even though society is taking giant progressive leaps and bounds as of late, there is one
major subculture that has avoided this necessary transition. Gaming has been popular since the
early 1970s and 1980s. Its fair to say that modern society has vastly improved from the days of
blatant sexism in the workforce and the overall demeaning of womens addition to our
civilization, other than bearing children and working as secretaries. It has been evident for a
substantial amount of time that one facet of our modern day culture has done the complete
opposite. Video games were a unisex concept. For example, earlier games like Pong had no bias
as to what gender they were tailored for. There was no female line or male line hitting a male or
female dot across the screen. Kids of any gender could openly enjoy this brand new medium of
entertainment and creativity. Then major corporations, like Nintendo, realized that they could
capitalize on become more specialized in making in more enjoyable for one gender because they
would only have to tailor to one set of interests. This effectively caused gaming to become a boy
only club. It alienated women and removed gaming from the perceived list of acceptable things
for women to engage in. Down the road, this created the problems of women being harassed on a
regular basis, the exploitation and inequality in the gaming community, and negative stereotypes
being perpetuated about gamer girls and gender roles.
A large population of women that play video games and openly communicate with the
gaming community get harassed on multiple different levels. One popular way that women are

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harassed is through in-game communications. One survey said, 63% of women polled report
being harassed while gaming (Nunneley 1). The main way that they are harassed is through
online messaging and in- game communications. Most players use mics to talk to one another
during these play sessions. This ability is paramount to the functionality of some competitive
team games because of the level of teamwork required to play them successfully. But this doesn't
mean that mics are used for their intended purpose. Women gamers receive a torrent of hateful
and slanderous comments via this mode of communication. Women reported being called
[various derogatory names for women] and others reported they were threatened with sexual
assault, or asked for sexual favors (Nunneley 1). The company that rates the games content for
maturity level had to put the well-known phrase to gamers, Online Interactions Not Rated by
the ESRB. This is obviously to make sure they arent sued based on the actions that they are
fully aware are happening online. This kind of behavior would never have been demonstrated if
it were out in public, but because people are safely hidden behind their screens they feel that all
common decency goes out the window. One could also argue that this poll is anonymous and
doesnt give enough information about what happens for sure.
Many women have openly talked about their experiences with sexism in gaming, despite
the fact that it doesnt seem to be recognized enough. Alyssa Reaves, a female student from
Buckingham Charter Magnet High School, was interviewed and questioned about her specific
experiences as a female gamer. Alyssa has been playing video games for a significant portion of
her life and commonly plays games in competitive environments where this tends to happen. She
said, When I first started playing video games, I didnt want to use a mic because I was too
afraid of being yelled at (Reaves 1). This tends to be a common idea among female gamers,
some women feeling the need to quit because of the constant harassment. 35.8% of women

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reported having quit playing temporarily because of sexism, and 9.6%reported that they quit
playing a certain game permanently because of harassment (Nunneley 1). In Counter Strike:
Global Offensive, Alyssa spoke of some complications during her time with the game, regarding
some of her fellow players. She spoke of a few serious incidents where people said things like,
Where do you live? [and] grotesque comments about sexual positions (Reaves 1). One gamer,
once finding out she was a girl, decided to ruin her experience as and make the game all but
unplayable. Even though he was playing on the same side as her, the player killed her repeatedly,
used profane and highly offensive language towards her, and would encourage others in the
game to do the same. Also he told the other side where she was at all times. Some gamers bring
up the people who exploit this problem as a reason to fight against progress.
Some people do exploit this problem in gaming for their own personal gain that only hurt
the cause that they claim to stand for. Some male gamers use this as ammunition against
progressivism in gaming. A prime example of this was Anita Sarkeesian. Although she is indeed
a feminist, Sarkeesian was a journalist that claimed to fight for womens right in video games.
She talked about how, gender roles may not be as clear-cut as those TV ads want you to think
(Abraham 8). Despite this, she does exponentially more harm than good. The New York Times
claimed that, Anita Sarkeesian, a cultural critic, has for months received death and rape threats
from opponents of her recent work challenging the stereotypes of women in video games
(Schulten 1). These claims arent actually true. Sarkeesian is disliked by most because of her
incessant inability to tell the truth about games that she is reviewing. Gamers get mad when they
see their beloved games being used as weapons against them when most of the evidence of
sexism she puts in her reviews is nearly to one hundred percent incorrect. This creates incidents
like, The day before [Sarkeesian was supposed to speak] members of the university

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administration received an email warning that a shooting massacre would be carried out at the
event (Schulten 1). This is the opposite of what the gaming community needs to be informed of.
This is obviously not the general population of gamers acting kindly about how this problem
should be addressed. People that drum up attention like this give people the ability to have a
confirmation bias about girls in video games. It makes girls look unintelligent and contributes to
the perpetuation of stereotypes. These stereotypes overshadow the opinions of women that are
trying to help progress by gaming in a non-exothermic way. Jennifer Hepler was a writer at the
game company Bioware who worked on games like Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old
Republic. IN the documentary GTFO, Hepler said that she as accused of, putting the gay in
Bioware and pushing the homosexual agenda (Sun-Higginson 1). This was all because she had
written in the ability to have same-sex romances in the game. Things like this lead to the
enforcement of further stereotyping.
There are harmful stereotypes about gamer girls that exist in the gaming community.
The stereotypical gamer girl is a fat, lonely, unattractive that lives in their parents basement.
This has stemmed from the broken logic that because they are girls that play games, they have to
have a tomboy-esque appearance and that they crave attention. The fact is that, 90% of teen
girls play games... (Nunneley 1). Women are no longer the minority in gaming. Some studies
even suggest that women make up more of the population then guys do. This large population of
women is bound to have women that live up to the stereotypes. This is why male gamers have an
easier time satisfying their confirmation biases. During Alyssa Reaves experience she noticed
something saying, If one hundred girls play video games and ninety nine of them are good and
one is bad, they will assume that all girls are bad (Reaves 1). Uniformed male gamers that hold
onto their prejudices will use these solitary cases as ammunition and continue the stigma of

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gamer girls. This has gotten to a level that some girls arent comfortable with even attending
conventions. Conventions are supposed to be a place of community, where gamers can flock
together to enjoy events associated with things they love. There was a need to segregate the
conventions for some people because it was too much. During the convention Geek Girl Con,
there is a panel about supporting women in gaming (Sun-Higginson 1). The panel addresses
how women feel about what is happening in the gaming world and their experiences in
multiplayer environments. In addition to this the stereotype, there is another common one.
Girls just wanting attention and that being their reason for playing video games is a
common stereotype that other gamers use to discredit them. Specifically, the stereotype is that,
girls dont actually like the games they play, and that they just like the attention from the guys
in the games, or the slut with a controller stereotype (Reaves 1). Just because of the immense
amount of girl gamers there are, one can extrapolate that not every single girl is just seeking the
attentions and affections of random guys on the internet. Although no one can say for sure that
no one does this, its improbable to think that it would incite mass cheating for those females in
relationships. Although, ..some women admitted to having used their gender to acquire items
[10%] 13% of males have lied about their gender for the same reason (Nunneley 1). This
means that in fact, males are more likely to try to get attention for being female then actual
female gamers. Despite this, male gamers continue to think of women in the egocentric way of
wanting their attention. This could be due to the overall sexualization of women in gaming. One
expert says, Boys are being socialized to be more violent and girls to be more sexual (Berg
281). Females have this stereotype because they are almost expected to be sexual or they are
prudes or lying about their feelings. When in truth this it is the guys that are the ones more
commonly living up to this.

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Some of the many problems that come with sexism in gaming are the continuous hazing
of women, the exploitation and inequality in the community, and the reinforcement of
stereotypes about female gamers. This problem shouldnt be as prominent as it is. Sexism isnt
completely eradicated in society, but this is something that is somewhat unrecognized by
society. This is even despite the fact that it is a large facet or media, especially for the younger
generations. The younger generations should be evolving to be more progressive, but in this
sense, they are going completely backwards. Gaming is frozen in time and refuses to evolve as a
subculture, while the rest of society moves forward. It is impossible to completely remove the all
preconceived notions from a large group of people, but it should at least be addressed more often
and in an objective and factual manner.

Works Cited
Abraham, George. Boy v. Girl? Minneapolis, Minnesota: Free Spirit, 2002. Print.
Berg, Barbara J. Sexism in America. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hills Books, 2009. Print.
GTFO. Dir. Shannon Sun-Higginson. Perf. Leigh Alexander. 2015.
Nunneley, Stephany. Study 63% of women polled report being harassed while gaming
online. 18 Septmeber 2012. 2 December 2015.
<https://www.vg247.com/2012/09/08/study-80-of-gamers-believe-sexism-is-rampant-inthe-gaming-community/>.

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Reaves, Alyssa. Personal Interview Collin Pihl. 2 Decemeber 2015.
Schulten, Katherine. How Sexist Is the Gaming World? 17 October 2014. 3 December
2015. <http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/how-sexist-is-the-gaming-world/?
_r=0>.