This is my first draft of my HCP in this draft my topic becomes more elaborate but the multimodality was not included yet. But, the need for them was evident within this draft.

 The Toxic 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. 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 and very women friendly when it comes to online gaming. According to research many might argue that the percentage of women gamers to men gamers are basically equal now (Paaßen, 2016). As well as many might say that the lack of women gamers might be because women generally less time playing video games than men do. But in reality men might play more but women tend to play for longer time periods, 3 hours, as men play for shorter time periods, 1 hour, (Paaßen, 2016). More prolonged hours is more beneficial when it comes to improving your skill set for the video games, which contradicts the argument. Also the reality of women playing the same amount of hours as men show the same level of game mastery within the game (Paaßen, 2016). There is also a sense of that women can show up to not play for mastery do to the low population of gamers but in reality it can just be the low turn out of women within surveys of video games. This can be misleading since the surveys aren’t portioned to what it may actually really be like. Also there is a connotation that is fought our how its said that some women are gamers rather than no women are gamers (Paaßen, 2016) are what bring the sense of acceptance within the women community itself to not be involved within the gamer society. But if there is an acceptance, shouldn’t there be a need to inspire women to join the gamer world or to make it more inclusive for women so the connotation would change to all women can be gamers.

            With the world changing so quickly into a virtually 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, I still believe there should be a fight for it too in the virtual world. Women should not have to deal with being harassed or stereotyped for just being a woman. Men need to be more demanding to the video games to have more inclusive communities and story plots when it comes to gaming. Even if there are already many pushes for this topic there needs to be a bigger push from the men within the gaming world. As well as the initial problem that creates such a boundary for women is to have more women pursue computer science or video gaming degrees. If women 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. Another big problem being 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 especially with women.