MYTH: More girls aren’t gamers because they’re just not into gaming.
FACT: More girls aren’t gamers because they often feel unwelcome by the gaming community.
Thanks, NPR, for reminding folks that lack of female participation in the video game community isn’t due to brain differences or some shit, but is greatly attributed to—ummm, hello—Sexual harassment!… Miranda Pakozdi, a regular competitive gamer, entered the Cross Assault video game tournament. During the six-day fighting competition, her team’s coach badgered her with questions about her boyfriend and her bra size, and trained the tournament’s Web camera on parts of her body. “Eventually,” says O’Leary, “she found this so difficult to deal with that she committed kind of virtual suicide and forfeited the tournament by walking straight into a competing player so she’d be killed off.”it’s difficult at times to want to play online games where voice chat is encouraged when the second you speak the reaction is
- “who let the little kid on the server?”
- tired sexist jokes
- immediate call vote to mute me
and this is the TF2 PC gaming community, which to my knowledge is one of the nicer ones.
(via zarggg)
