In this section of my portfolio you can see the process of my Historical Conversation Project. The first item is my HCP Prospectus, where I write a few paragraphs as a sort of pitch of what my topic will be. This is basically my first "shitty" rough draft where I just put my ideas on paper. 

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. Which leads to negative implications that keep women 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 woman presence has increased within the online gaming word there this still a perception that gaming is solemnly a men’s activity (Shaw 2012). Video games have been known to be a boy thing from the moment it was developed. But there isn’t just the game genre that is male dominated but as well as level of skill usually is a sense of masculinity. If women play there is a stereotype that women are not good at video games because again, it is a boy thing. But 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, 2014). So as this social world develops how can women have an equitable presence that men do.

            The absent presence of women has been noticed in the gaming world since 2004. The issues of sexual harassment and sex stereotypes have been shown since online video games were created due to the lack of women being in the engineering and computer science fields. Which lead to an absence of women representation in video games or extremes of femininity or masculinity stereotypes. With a report showing that back then there was no grey space of in between gender identities, women pretending to be men in order to not experience unpleasant interactions online (Norris, 2004) Another problem is that a large portion of the popular games at the time 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. This can create such an unwelcoming environment when it comes to women because there is no grey space provided for them to feel powerful or even human within these games. There is even a sense of violence within these games specifically a sense of violent pornography (Norris, 2004). The portrayals that women have within this time were quite unbearable, misogynist even. Which is evident why women had such a hard time to have an equal representation within video games at the time. Which brings it back to how women weren’t prominently present within the computer science field, which lead to such an inaccurate representation of them. There was also no place to explore the grey space because of the strong sex stereotypes that people were conditioned to in the early 2000s. Which lead to many questions of why humans have such extremes when it comes to femininity and masculinity.

            Now in the 2010s the problem of gender extremes have definitely been challenged and even diminished drastically since the 2000s. Even with women entering the computer science there is definitely still problems that create unwelcoming environment to women. Mostly when it, again is about violence. One emphasis that should be noticed is how the gaming is very much a social environment that is mostly ominous. Two or more player games that are popular have some kind of violence within them. Which leads to having to very strong combinations that make women very vulnerable mostly when the people who are attacking them, they have never met or will ever meet in the real world. Examples of video games that are toxic to women are Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto that are known to be violent and discriminatory. Violent games are usually known to be more popular within the men and according to research violent games tend to be rejected by women when males are more accepting (Fox, 2016). Game mastery and masculinity has a lot to do with why males are more accepting to violent games than women are. The mastery of a game or to complete a mission on top verifies the male’s masculinity There is praise for men for have a high ranking in these violent games. But as women come into the same world of online gaming, with the intention of game mastery there is definitive unwelcoming environment. There is even a sense of mockery that a women can even dream of receiving a high rank. Something that really makes such a toxic environment is the evident sexual harassment towards women within online gaming. According to research people who are exposed to video games become more tolerate and accepting to sexual harassment and rape culture (Dill, 2008). Which leads to the thought of why does sexual harassment become such a normalized subject within the online gaming world. If we take a look at some of the games content and also the player’s way of conversing with one another is where you find the answer. Online video games such as Grand Theft Auto has a huge sense of misogyny and sexual harassment that is basically embedded within the game. Call of Duty is a war game and even in the physical world there is a sigma that women are not meant to be at war. Which leads to the virtual world to not be accepting of women within these games.

            Of course these environments aren’t always seen to be toxic to women when it comes to every opinion in this virtual world. Some people don’t even find this place unwelcoming an d very women friendly when it comes to online gaming.