The Toxic Social Environment for Womxn called Video Games

           Online video games can be a toxic environment for individuals who are not identified as cis-males due to sexual harassment, sex-stereotypes, and hate-speech. This can lead to a toxic environment that keep womxn away from such a popular and common playing culture. Online video games seemed to dominated with male culture and non-inclusive to other identities in the spectrum. Even now, as the female presence has increased within the online gaming world, there this still a perception that gaming is solemnly a men’s activity (Shaw, per.2). Online video games aren’t just a place for an individual to play in; it is a social environment where you get to interact with other players. About 60% of gamers play with others either in person or online (Entertainment Software Association). So, as this social world develops, how can women have an equitable presence in video games?

            The absent presence of women has been noticed in the gaming world since the early 2000s. At that time the virtual world was developing quickly and was changing the social environment. Computer Science and Engineering was booming but one remark is that womxn were not in that picture. Most of the reasoning behind women being absent in these careers is due to who was encouraged to use computers in the early 2000s. As Alexander, a blogger on the gender gap of computer science illustrates, parents and teachers would encourage male children to interact with computer more than their female counterparts (4). The stereotype of technology and video games being strictly a male field is what really push womxn out of the picture when it came the development of new technology. As Alexander addresses, females had a presence within the social environment but had an absence within the design and creation of new technology, which includes video games (4). But, if these are the major factors to create a video game how are womxn accurately represented in video games if there wasn’t enough to keep their male counterparts accountable when it came representing them. A loophole was created of womxn not being able to have a voice from the moment they are young when it comes to video games since, they aren’t encouraged to interact with computers. As Norris, a scholar from the Department of Psychology in Claremont Graduate University, supports it is due to womxn being underrepresented in video or computer games they will also continue to also be underrepresented in the computer science and engineering fields (714). It is evident as to why women had such a hard time to have an equal representation within video games at the time. Technology now plays a major role within our time period, but this underlining problem has indeed increased in our time instead of diminishing.

            A large portion of the popular games in the early 2000s had no representation of women that didn’t have either a sex-stereotype or sexual violence towards women. According to Norris, at the time women were either dressed in pink, a damsel in distress or even just there as a sex object (718). The portrayals that women have within this time were quite unbearable, misogynist even. One example that is popularly known is Princess Peach, seen in Figure 1, a female character from the popular Super Mario Bros. game that was developed by Nintendo.

Figure 1: An image grab of Princess Peach from article “Thank You Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Game, Getting Kidnapped Again.”

Princess Peach is famously known to be the literal damsel in distress who is kidnapped by the evil villain, Bowser, and it is up to the main character Mario to save her from the clutches of Bowser by traveling through difficult worlds. Princess Peach has no other role other than screaming for help in the beginning, as seen in the picture provided, and then kissing Mario in the ending for saving her life. In the early 2000s this was the typical representation and standardized the stereotype that womxn are the ones who need rescuing or in more literal terms womxn are not meant for video games the way heroic men are. Now in the 2010s the problem of gender extremes has definitely been challenged since the 2000s. Even now, with more womxn entering the computer science fields and trying to get more representation for womxn in this virtual social environment there are definitely still problems that create unwelcoming environments to womxn. In specifics, there is even a sense of violence within these games specifically a sense of violent pornography (Norris, 718). The audience for violent video games seems to be directly targeting men and advertised for men specifically and according to research violent games tend to be rejected by women when males are more accepting (Fox, per.1). Analyzing video games there is a definite representation of violence towards womxn and misogynistic values embedded within them. Grand Theft Auto V is one of the many examples that have this problem. Even before the game even started you can tell by the way they advertise. As seen in Figure 2, this was an advertisement that was shown on huge billboards in the most popular cities around the US. This is a womxn that has…

Figure 2: A Sexual Figure to Advertise the Video Game Grand Theft Auto, A Screen Shot from TEDx Talk “Sexism in gaming.”

…an emphasized large bust which illiterates that she isn’t being advertised as a womxn but rather a sexual object. The womxn in Figure 2 is the only thing in the advertisement but in the actual video game this character doesn’t even exist. The only womxn in the video game have no narrative and are only there to be used by men whether it is to get beaten, have sexual interactions with men or men profit from them. Womxn in this video game are not seen as humans but rather an object men can have in the game. In the TEDx Talk Video Paul Verhoeven, the speaker, talks about the reasons why Grand Theft Auto V is sexist: the game consists of 3 main characters that are all male, the depiction of women in the game are only housewives or prostitutes, and the game quests are aggressively abusive towards womxn (Verhoeven, 8:25 mins-10:15 mins.). Even as time passed by womxn in video games like Princess Peach still do not have a narrative or are made humane, rather they are objects used by men within the game.

            Of course these environments aren’t always seen to be toxic to womxn when it comes to every opinion in this virtual world. People say that womxn have the same presence men have in the virtual world. Supporting that claim is a research, that identifies the percentage of womxn gamers to men gamers is basically equal now (Paaßen, per.1). Even if the number of people playing is equal from men to womxn players, it is still an unwelcoming social environment for womxn. As I emphasized before, video games are a social environment, many players play with multiple players. With these multiple players you can have conversations with microphones or send each other messages through group chats with the games. Many of these chats are ominous, or your name isn’t exposed into the world; players can only see others usernames, age and sometimes gender. Womxn don’t only witness sexual harassment and misogyny from the video games but they actually experience sexual harassment while playing games with other players. As seen in Figure 3, this is one of the numerous examples seen in a website called “You Play Video Games? So are you… Fat, Ugly or Slutty” this is a website where womxn put up different situations when they gaming where a man was either misogynistic or sexually harassing them. Figure 3 is specific a situation where…

Figure 3: A blog post from “You play video games? So are you… Fat, Ugly or  Slutty,” a screen shot of a message that contains sexual harassment

… a male gamer was sexually harassing a girl player at random. The gamer explains that she was playing Borderlands 2 with her boyfriend and friends when all of a sudden she received this message (Agriculture). This message is one among many attacks womxn receive while playing video games. Men in video games believe it is okay to send womxn these messages on the game message boards. According to research people who are exposed to video games become more tolerant and accepting to sexual harassment and rape culture (Dill, per.1). Which leads to having to very strong notion that shows how womxn are vulnerable to men who are attacking them, and they have never met or will ever meet these men in the real world. There is also evidence in these posts where men don’t believe that womxn are capable of being able to receive high ranks within video games. In Figure 4 you can see how a male gamer does not believe his group member can receive a high rank just because she is a womxn. He also claims she is cheating by assuming she is letting her boyfriend play for her.

Figure 4: A screen shot that shows misogynistic comments from the article “Where To Report Sexist Gamer Dudes”

This very common misogynistic attack can also put womxn in a defenseless position of not feeling good enough to be a gamer even if she has received better ranks than the male players who are constantly attacking them. There is never a sense of equity with womxn and men when it comes to video games because men don’t seem to see womxn as actual gamers.

            This toxic community can stimulate anxiety, sadness, self-doubt and stress for many womxn within this virtual community. An article in the Cut reports that indeed cyberharassment leads to withdrawal, depressive symptoms and damages mental womxn’s mental health (Singal, par.4). These connotations can be hard to deal with and many women decide to either avoid it all together or fake their identity. In the early 2000s research showed that womxn pretend to be men in order to not experience unpleasant interactions online (Norris, 715). Even now, it is easier for womxn to act like men all together to avoid being harassed in online video games. Womxn shouldn’t have to hide who they are in this social environment. In a personal perspective a female gamer told the editor of the webpage Stuff that pretending to be a male is more fun, people are more competitive and go hard on you, whereas gaming as a female, people tend to go easy on you and are more judgmental (Williams, par.3). This is so much easier for womxn gamers so they don’t have to deal with it completely, since the video games are general ominous it does not matter what gender you are. Where it gets difficult is when games requires or needs a microphone audio to communicate. As the female gamer explains that once the players heard her voice was feminine they became nicer especially to her and one player even became a stalker who found her social media and home address (Williams, per.5). So avoiding the problem and acting as a male isn’t the best option womxn have due to the microphones. This is why generally womxn avoid playing those specific games all together. There is no easy solution to the problem but inclusivity is definitely the first step.

            With the world changing so quickly into a dominant virtual social society there is a need for inclusivity for all kinds of communities within online gaming. Even if finding equitable rights is still something society is struggling to accomplish in the real world, there is still a need for it in the virtual world too. Womxn should not have to deal with being harassed or stereotyped for just being a womxn. Men need to be more demanding to the video game producers to have more inclusive communities and story plots when it comes to gaming. Men can start by demanding a female character in the game with an actual backstory and human traits. Even if there are already many pushes from womxn for this topic there needs to be a bigger push from the men specifically within the gaming world so the producers listen. The initial problem of womxn stereotypes creates such a boundary for womxn to pursue computer science or video gaming degrees. If womxn had more leading roles within the creations of these games maybe there would be a bigger interest for women to actually play these games, Or even having gender neutral games that sympathize with all kinds of identities. A problem that is more evident now is the need for more games that are inclusive to the LGBTQ+ folk who don’t fit within the sex extreme boxes. There needs to be a sense of understanding for all the identities human beings carry to have a games that provide variety of characters from gender identity to race identities. With the virtual world being so creative, there is space for these solutions to happen but their needs to be a leading cause for it to actually happen. Inclusivity is definitely the solution to many of these problems, but getting people out of these comfortable and stereotypical boxes might be the most difficult challenges of them all. But it is possible by breaking ones box and inspiring others to do the same.