Tropes vs Women in Gaming & the Female Gaming Experience

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Intention of thread
This thread is intended to provide a place to have an adult discussion of negative stereotypes of women in gaming, and women's experience in gaming. Including Anita Sarkeesian's tropes vs. women videos, sexist and threatening text/voice chat, and personal interaction with male gamers.

This is NOT a place to nitpick Anita's videos, or the wording used by anyone to express their point.
Discussion of how anti-female tropes effect male players is appropriate, but this is not a place to discuss other common tropes.

I have spoken with Certis to ensure that long tangents will not be tollorated.

Please respect the views and experiences of the women here.

Anita Sarkeesian's videos can be found on her site with full transcripts here:
http://www.feministfrequency.com/201...
http://www.feministfrequency.com/201...

The latest vid does not appear to be up with a transcript yet but can be seen on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqYL...

I would like to open this up by inviting our female gamers to share some of their experiences in gaming, and thoughts on the female gaming experience.

What tropes do you find most irritating or demeaning?
What could video game manufacturers do to fix some of the problems they have?
What about face to face interaction (cons etc.)? How are your experiences there?
What else do you want to talk about that I am totally missing?

IMAGE(http://www.mariowiki.com/images/3/32/Bombetteportrait.PNG)

I'd like to personally invite the ladies into this thread. Get in here! I have cookies!

What about face to face interaction (cons etc.)? How are your experiences there?

I use a professional badge at cons so that luckily prevents some of the problems women usually face in those places (just here looking for attention, here with your boyfriend). But even that isn't perfect as I've had my professional status questioned a few times... as if I couldn't possibly have one for some reason. "Professional? Heh, so what do YOU do?"

At events that are strictly full of pros, sometimes the atmosphere can feel like this: "What the... Who the hell let you in here?"

Rare occurrences but they happen.

I have opinions, links, and images that I'd like to share, later. Not enough time & resources at the moment to share while training into work on my phone. Glad to see this here. Thanks!

Yes! I found the last two or three threads dealing with these topics in the last few days, and they were already locked. Hopefully, I'll be able to chyme in this time. I'm interested in female perspective, but I'm a bit more interested in female outside of the USA perspective. While Dudebros exist everywhere, I feel the overabundance of them reside within the US.

Violet, you mentioned in previous threads that you are Latina, residing in the USA, yes? I'd like to hear more about that particular aspect of the vitriol you catch when gaming. Is it only slurs about your gender? Or also about your race? Or a combination?

I'm not in the game industry and I've never been to a con or other event, so obviously nothing to add here. I will say that when I've been out wearing, say, a Portal t-shirt, the teenage boys at the grocery store checkout think it's awesome and talk about how much they love the game. Likewise, when I mention games in the classes I teach (e.g. Civ, Skyrim has come up, etc.) the response has been positive. I can guarantee you that a student will talk to me about Rome: Total War at some point in every class I teach (I teach Roman history and I work on the Roman army, so it's definitely topical). As I mentioned before, I don't play any multiplayer games except with people I already know, and I only post in places I trust, such as this site. So generally my interactions are positive. But gaming culture in general is still a male domain. Here's a quote from the Women in Refrigerators site that expresses it well, even though it's about comic book culture:

"Because, obviously, how women are treated in comics stories is ultimately part of many larger issues. But just focusing on comics - if most major women characters are eventually cannon fodder of one type or another, how does that affect the female readers? Do they give up?

Combine this trend with the bad girl comics and you have a very weird, slightly hostile environment for women down at the friendly comics shoppe. No, I'm not against cheesecake or sexual content in comics, but when that content is strictly for boys and the women are just bizarre centerfolds with fangs and big hair ... well, it starts to smell like a guy's locker room. Or worse. Let's face it ... some comics readers smell pretty bad to start with."

(Gail Simone's reaction to her respondents)

As for what kinds of tropes I dislike, the DiD is definitely one. I don't have enough opportunities to play as a capable woman who's not just a sex kitten. While I think I probably play games for many of the same reasons that men do, that is, to feel powerful, in general that's translated into powerful=masculine and weak=feminine. One of the things I really liked about the Mass Effect series is not just the ability to play a female Shephard, but to have a fairly wide choice of effective and interesting female squadmates.

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play. But because gaming and comic book culture are alike in fostering man-child kinds of behavior (meaning loud and immature), their voice seems to dominate. That determines how gaming culture is perceived by the outside world as well. Still, I saw in several places people say they wanted to be able to play as Clementine, and hoped that she would come back in the next season of The Walking Dead. She was definitely much more on the ball than Duck (poor Duck!), and as someone whose father taught her to fish and play baseball as a little girl, I thought it was fantastic to see Lee given the opportunity to teach her survival skills.

It's really not just gaming culture, is it? There's a lot more "pink is for girls!" now than when I was a child in the '70's. It makes me really angry to see the heroine of Brave turned into a more typically feminine princess by Disney, when this was really far from how she was portrayed in the movie itself. My 3 year old son loves Dora the Explorer. I want him to be able to look up to her. But the marketers deliberately made her a lot more girly and pink and introduced Diego for the boys to idealize. Why did they have to do that? Why can't boys and girls both look up to Dora? Why do they want boys and girls to have to fit into these little boxes of what they think masculine and feminine to be? The message sent, as I see it, is, "you aren't a real boy if you like Dora" and vice versa for Diego. Yuck.

Let me know what you think.

concentric wrote:

It's really not just gaming culture, is it? There's a lot more "pink is for girls!" now than when I was a child in the '70's.

Well I proudly dress my 18 month old son in pink and when anyone asks I just tell them I'm raising him gay so he gets more rights. Down with the pink hegemony.

concentric wrote:

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play.

Yes, we would. Or at least I would.

I could then derail a bit about Bioware's party-mates, who you mentioned, but it's off-topic. I just want it registered that I could do it!

Maq wrote:
concentric wrote:

It's really not just gaming culture, is it? There's a lot more "pink is for girls!" now than when I was a child in the '70's.

Well I proudly dress my 18 month old son in pink and when anyone asks I just tell them I'm raising him gay so he gets more rights. Down with the pink hegemony.

We've got a bright pink sippy cup at home. My husband often gives it to my son so he has something to drink when we're out. Does he do this deliberately, or is he just a little clueless? With my husband, it can be hard to tell. Still! Nobody's said anything about it, but then again we're in Iowa, so people are super-polite generally.

concentric wrote:
Maq wrote:
concentric wrote:

It's really not just gaming culture, is it? There's a lot more "pink is for girls!" now than when I was a child in the '70's.

Well I proudly dress my 18 month old son in pink and when anyone asks I just tell them I'm raising him gay so he gets more rights. Down with the pink hegemony.

We've got a bright pink sippy cup at home. My husband often gives it to my son so he has something to drink when we're out. Does he do this deliberately, or is he just a little clueless? With my husband, it can be hard to tell. Still! Nobody's said anything about it, but then again we're in Iowa, so people are super-polite generally.

Hrm, my lad has a bright pink sippy cup as well, hadn't really thought about it. I live in the land of the ice and snow though, where people are far more right-on about this sort of thing.

What tropes do you find most irritating or demeaning?

I find the women in fridges trope not irritating or demeaning, but genuinely unnerving. It actually prevented me from playing Dishonoured past a certain point due to

Spoiler:

the death of the Empress in the first five minutes acting as such a transparent plot device. It didn't help that the only other women encountered in the first two hours were either prostitutes or maids, going about their dusting.

I imagine some folks would say people with that mindset are being too sensitive about it, but when there are so many other great games out there that don't rely on the trope, I feel pretty great about popping that disk out and seeing how much dust I can cultivate on it.

That Anita found so many examples of it was a little shocking to watch. I knew it was common, but she found examples I'd never seen before in all my time spent playing games. It's a pretty ghastly message to see when cut together like that, that there are so many women in these stories that deserve/need to die in order for the story to progress, in order for another character to feel like they've accomplished something.

Gross.

Kite wrote:

What tropes do you find most irritating or demeaning?

I find the women in fridges trope not irritating or demeaning, but genuinely unnerving. It actually prevented me from playing Dishonoured past a certain point due to

Spoiler:

the death of the Empress in the first five minutes acting as such a transparent plot device. It didn't help that the only other women encountered in the first two hours were either prostitutes or maids, going about their dusting.

I imagine some folks would say people with that mindset are being too sensitive about it, but when there are so many other great games out there that don't rely on the trope, I feel pretty great about popping that disk out and seeing how much dust I can cultivate on it.

That Anita found so many examples of it was a little shocking to watch. I knew it was common, but she found examples I'd never seen before in all my time spent playing games. It's a pretty ghastly message to see when cut together like that, that there are so many women in these stories that deserve/need to die in order for the story to progress, in order for another character to feel like they've accomplished something.

Gross.

I definitely respect and understand your reaction, though in my case my reaction was different. I wonder how much the game would have been changed

Spoiler:

if it had been an Emperor (i.e. male) who was assassinated? Or would this have suggested that Corvo was (sarcastic shudder) gay?

If so, that's an interesting comment on what the DiD trope connotes.

I chose not to play the Tomb Raider games prior to the reboot because I hated that she killed so many animals. This also kept me from playing Quake.

About 10 years ago, or so, I came across an article in Guns and Ammo written by Ted Nugent that was a passionate and cutting indictment of hunting and shooting sports as being a boy's club. I have never been able to find it online, so trust me that it was real and not a cocaine fueled haze. His main point was that unless the shooting sports could open arms, not denegrate women, and decry the men who wanted to shun women; then the hobby would continue to shrink.

I think the same argument applies to games, with similar results. The image is that video-games are for frat-boys who like to get girls drunk and feel them up in the bathroom. That is repellant to women, and to men who do not want to be looked at as drunken fratboys who do nasty things to women when they pass out.

Interestingly, video-game sales have been severely declining. Looking at what are routinely top selling games-the fratboy thing(Halo, Call of Duty, etc).

What has been growing? The quirky, fun, more inclusive, every-person games. I think there is a reason that the biggest thing going is World of Warcraft, that it appeals to women, and people of most ages. Is it perfect? No, there has been a bit of elven thong armor-but they have done well getting away from that recently. But Blizzard has a decent little history of powerful female characters in Starcraft and in Warcraft.

WoW is the ultimate argument against the little college Twits who took their freshman economics class-the biggest damn paid game in the business is not alienating women.

concentric wrote:

Let me know what you think.

I thought what you wrote was great.

concentric wrote:

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play.

I could not agree more. I'm bored by the characters that mostly populate games male and female alike, it is one component of why I almost never play games for the story or characters.

concentric wrote:

It's really not just gaming culture, is it? There's a lot more "pink is for girls!" now than when I was a child in the '70's. It makes me really angry to see the heroine of Brave turned into a more typically feminine princess by Disney, when this was really far from how she was portrayed in the movie itself. My 3 year old son loves Dora the Explorer. I want him to be able to look up to her. But the marketers deliberately made her a lot more girly and pink and introduced Diego for the boys to idealize. Why did they have to do that? Why can't boys and girls both look up to Dora? Why do they want boys and girls to have to fit into these little boxes of what they think masculine and feminine to be? The message sent, as I see it, is, "you aren't a real boy if you like Dora" and vice versa for Diego. Yuck.

The reason I think Dora works is that she's young enough that her gender isn't really an issue. She's just a little kid in shorts and a t-shirt. The older Dora they introduced is a lot more girly--she ditches her practical clothes for flats and a dress, for example--but that Dora never really gained traction with the kids. In my house Diego is more popular with the girls and boy anyway, because he rescues animals. But again, his gender is irrelevant in terms of how my kids view him. He just more closely fits the type of roleplay they enjoy. That said, my oldest loves the Winx club because they're fairies with magic powers that fight for good. But the Winx characters are all practically naked, and it doesn't help that the refrain in the main theme song sounds like "we are bulimics!" (the actual word is "believix", which was badly chosen). So the Winx club has pretty much been banned in our house despite the fact that at it's core it's about girls doing heroic stuff.

Regarding comics, one thing that really bugs me is the diminutive "girl" that's commonly used for female superheroes. My 5 year old daughter, who is really into Star Wars and superheroes, knows all the females as Batwoman, Superwoman, etc. Save the "girl" bit for the Teen Titans or other superheroes who are actually young. It's been really hard finding action/adventure media suitable for kids that has an even treatment of both male and female protagonists. For games, the biggest hit I've found so far is Costume Quest, and it's both nice that the main character is female and that her gender doesn't actually matter.

It's not quite gender related, but one thing I've always loved is the the lesbian couple in The Longest Journey. At the start of the game, April goes downstairs and sees her female landlord on the couch, and if you choose to talk to her you eventually discover that she's in a relationship with a much older woman. But it's just a random detail. I feel like that event makes it very obvious that TLJ was not made in the US, because if it were the relationship would either not be present or it would be thrown in your face as evidence of the studio's edginess or whatever. What I really want in games is for a diverse set of characters and stories just presented without bias. BioWare has actually been surprisingly good in this respect, and I hope the trend continues.

concentric wrote:

I chose not to play the Tomb Raider games prior to the reboot because I hated that she killed so many animals. This also kept me from playing Quake.

It's a bit off-topic, but it really bugs me that many games have wolves as an enemy. We have a sled dog and it really doesn't sit well with me to have to kill animals that look like my pet. I wasn't terribly happy when the first aggressor I encountered in the Tomb Raider reboot, and one you're actually forced to kill, is a wolf.

Kite wrote:

That Anita found so many examples of it was a little shocking to watch. I knew it was common, but she found examples I'd never seen before in all my time spent playing games. It's a pretty ghastly message to see when cut together like that, that there are so many women in these stories that deserve/need to die in order for the story to progress, in order for another character to feel like they've accomplished something.

I thought the videos (and her other ones) do a good job of finding tons of examples and getting my mind thinking. It's easy to overlook a trope when you just see it every so often, but when tens of games have the same "wife is murdered, daughter is kidnapped" theme, it makes the idea stand out.

She goes a little into the "and this is an issue because", but I think she stays mostly in the realm of giving an intro to the tropes as things to think about and decide how you feel about.

I think it would be great if people had a good understanding of all these tropes and creators were encouraged to either use them responsibly as shortcuts or to find new plot devices. I think enjoying media is more fun when you understand a little bit about how the gears are turning.

Also, thanks for the various feedback above!

DanB wrote:
concentric wrote:

Let me know what you think.

I thought what you wrote was great.

concentric wrote:

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play.

I could not agree more. I'm bored by the characters that mostly populate games male and female alike, it is one component of why I almost never play games for the story or characters.

Yup. The reason I enjoyed Catharine so much was that the main character, Vincent, was so non-typical. Far from being the muscle-bound hero, he was a skinny, craven man-child, while the two Catharines were the characters with the power, albeit one of them because she was a nymphomaniac, so you know, a few points knocked off there for that.

concentric wrote:

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play.

Yes please. You have a lot of other great things to say in your post but like others this definitely sticks out for me. I want more interesting female characters, and better developed characters in all popular media.

Kite wrote:

I find the women in fridges trope not irritating or demeaning, but genuinely unnerving. It actually prevented me from playing Dishonoured past a certain point...

I agree I find the thinking behind the DiR trope particularly creepy.

KingGorilla wrote:

What has been growing? The quirky, fun, more inclusive, every-person games.

This is a great point for all the people who seem to think negative stereotypes of women are a requirement to make money.

complexmath wrote:

It's not quite gender related, but one thing I've always loved is the the lesbian couple in The Longest Journey. At the start of the game, April goes downstairs and sees her female landlord on the couch, and if you choose to talk to her you eventually discover that she's in a relationship with a much older woman. But it's just a random detail. I feel like that event makes it very obvious that TLJ was not made in the US, because if it were the relationship would either not be present or it would be thrown in your face as evidence of the studio's edginess or whatever.

I think this is related because like the gender of major characters what was important was that this one aspect of being gay didn't define their entire character.
Female characters should not be defined by being female. They should be a character who's traits include being female. Not just a female, and not a mask thrown on a male character. An independently developed female character.

realityhack wrote:
concentric wrote:

Personally, I think that a lot of men would like to have similar options. Outside the expected teenage boy audience, many gamers would really appreciate having more interesting characters, male or female, to play.

Yes please. You have a lot of other great things to say in your post but like others this definitely sticks out for me. I want more interesting female characters, and better developed characters in all popular media.

In a presentation I saw recently, I learned that while gaming is more diverse than it ever has been (average age is over 35, 50% of gamers are females, etc) the demographics change significantly when you start correcting for how much money they spend. I'm probably getting the numbers wrong, but the presentation said that 70+% of money spent on games comes from 13-26 year old men. I'm not saying that in any way justifies all of the juvenile/sexist BS in gaming, but it does explain why we perceive that there's this strong interest in more diverse games but we're not actually seeing it reflected in the AAA market.

I tend to not encourage people to vote with their wallets, because I think it tends to minimize certain things and shift the responsibility to the wrong parties, but I can't see another conclusion from that kind of data.

Also, that means "The quirky, fun, more inclusive, every-person games" aren't really growing that much.

SixteenBlue, Some of that cash difference is certainly demographic differences, but some of it is also likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make AAA titles aimed at a given market, that is where the big bucks will come from.

As for the quirky, fun games. I think they are growing along with the diversification of the market, they just tend to be a lot cheaper (or even free) than the big titles.
In fact if we ask ourselves what games all those people who make up well over half the market and spend less than thirty percent of the dollars are playing I bet you come up with a lot of those $10 or free quirky games.

It doesn't mean they are taking over total dollar wise though so they may not be on marketers radar.

realityhack wrote:

SixteenBlue, Some of that cash difference is certainly demographic differences, but some of it is also likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make AAA titles aimed at a given market, that is where the big bucks will come from.

True, to a degree, but when people talk about examples of games that break out of the mold, they tend to not be smash hits.

realityhack wrote:

As for the quirky, fun games. I think they are growing along with the diversification of the market, they just tend to be a lot cheaper (or even free) than the big titles.
In fact if we ask ourselves what games all those people who make up well over half the market and spend less than thirty percent of the dollars are playing I bet you come up with a lot of those $10 or free quirky games.

True, I should've specified they're not growing in terms of dollars in the market. They are definitely growing in quantity.

I think there is a huge difference between what's true for the individual and what's true for the group in terms of what games are available and influential. They are two very different concerns.

There are more games than ever and more people are playing than ever. That means that for the individual, there is a wealth of experiences, stories, characters, etc to enjoy. I think this is great for everyone and mostly what people mean when they say that these "quirky" games (although it's sad they have to be called that) are big now.

The one type of money makers, the AAA console shooters are still bigger than ever and make up a huge amount of sales compared to all of these smaller games and they probably have much wider influence (but perhaps a more shallow influence) than more diverse thoughtful games.

Since the internet isn't going anywhere, I think the splitting of the markets for media is just going to get more and more pronounced, but it also becomes easier and easier for people to find what they like.

I think more than anything (even education on being more understanding), this niche world and ease of access will lead to a world of more accepting people in 30 years once the 50 year old's grew up with the internet. We don't need to decide what one thing is "the best" for it to be available, so why make such a big deal about it. Enjoy what you like and support the people big or small that are doing it!

sixteenblue and pandaeskimo I think you both have very good points.
I think one thing I sometimes forget is that 'quirky' or whatever games seldom have storylines as that is expensive. They tend to be angry birds, minecraft, draw something, etc. that have no real gendered characters at all.

The games that are a problem are the AAA titles (mostly the non-sports ones) that have these tropes in them. And as sales for that level of game has gone down I think they are doubling down on extreme interpretations on tropes like pushing the DiR

Of course another issue I was hoping that some of the women here might be willing to talk about is that as more and more games (small or not) integrate chat features (text or voice) the kind of bile being spewed at any player who has the audacity to appear female.
I think that is where we see the extreme sexism in some of those smaller games, but I would like to hear what people have to say about their own experiences.

PandaEskimo wrote:

Since the internet isn't going anywhere, I think the splitting of the markets for media is just going to get more and more pronounced, but it also becomes easier and easier for people to find what they like.

...so why make such a big deal about it. Enjoy what you like and support the people big or small that are doing it!

I feel like that is a bit along the lines of saying that you found a decent group of friends so you can ignore general sexism in the society. To some degree of course I agree. Support good stuff. But despite youtube, Hollywood isn't going anywhere. Most of your AAA games are going to come from the same large sources for money reasons. So I can't quite go with not making a big deal out of it. IMO it IS a big deal, because even if you are not the direct consumer it reenforces negative cultural stereotypes, and then people act partly based on those.

Where does Portal stand in all of this? Female antagonist, female avatar for the player. Female antagonist employs mild violence to thwart protagonist. Generally no violence at all. Puzzle based. Interesting stuff could arise from this.

realityhack wrote:

Of course another issue I was hoping that some of the women here might be willing to talk about is that as more and more games (small or not) integrate chat features (text or voice) the kind of bile being spewed at any player who has the audacity to appear female.

Back in my MMO days I played games that had chat features and voice communication and met lovely, lovely people, but it's not something I seek out at this stage. There are undoubtedly games and specific servers with welcoming communities, and a part of me feels like I'm missing out for not giving them a chance (Uncharted and Red Dead multiplayer, you look so good!), but my threshold for being spoken down by well meaning players or picked on by scoundrels is paper thin. I'm done with way too intimate private messages and casual horribleness. I love me some Nathan Drake, but I'll gladly miss out on multiplayer content if it means I can avoid that scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJUx...
"women are not here to be celebrated" - she and I are very different feminists. Ultimately I think her suggestions would destroy art.
While I think it's unfortunate that Manic Pixie Dream Girl is always, ya know, a girl, the opposite is hard to do, MPDG's usually do some incredibly inappropriate things socially that a guy is simply supposed to overlook while I know that if a guy were to do the same, security would be called, more than once, followed by a possible restraining order. Just look at who the writers are, first of all they are writers, so they probably are moody, angsty, depressed, etc. and they are straight, male, and white. And look at what they did! They wrote wish fulfillment fantasies. It seems little different from romance novels and movies.

She wants women to be written as "fully-realized, complete" individuals. Fully-realized, complete human beings, from a storytelling perspective, are boring as sh*t. Characters that complement one another's personalities! It's just terrible isn't it? Then we wouldn't have things like Fritz and Brenda's relationship on The Closer, or, to come closer to MPDG for women, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and for this one it goes back and forth between the genders, Think Like A Man.

RolandofGilead wrote:

Wow...Ok, so I want to collect my thoughts before I post, and also, I'd like to ask the women in this thread, if you agree with:

"For centuries, directors, writers, artists, etc, have cited women to be the inspiration for their [rolls eyes]brilliant[rolls eyes] masterpieces...I swear if I hear one more story like this, I'm gonna scream...or puke, or both..."

"Women are not here for men's inspiration, or celebration, or whatever else. We are musicians, artists, writers, with our own brilliant and creative endeavors."

"Let me remind you that women are not here for your inspiration, celebration, or to coax you of your troubles."

"How about you stop using us as your muse, and start writing us as real people."

Before I dive deep into each one of these, I'd like to first say that I don't think there are absolutes. I strongly believe in grey areas, but before I fully disclose, GWJ women, do you agree with the above statements? If so, completely or to a certain degree?

I want someone who lives in Austin to comment on that one.

kexx wrote:

Violet, you mentioned in previous threads that you are Latina, residing in the USA, yes? I'd like to hear more about that particular aspect of the vitriol you catch when gaming. Is it only slurs about your gender? Or also about your race? Or a combination?

A major setback about being a minority is trying to enjoy things that others in a certain culture may view as "for white people." I've been accused of "acting white" more than a number of times for the many hobbies I engage in. Video games, music, movies, the way I speak, what I read... You name it, I've been berated for it. What I do, that's not what we do. Who I am, that's not who we are. I've been "misunderstood" for a long time by family and peers.

Mystic Violet wrote:
kexx wrote:

Violet, you mentioned in previous threads that you are Latina, residing in the USA, yes? I'd like to hear more about that particular aspect of the vitriol you catch when gaming. Is it only slurs about your gender? Or also about your race? Or a combination?

A major setback about being a minority is trying to enjoy things that others in a certain culture may view as "for white people." I've been accused of "acting white" more than a number of times for the many hobbies I engage in. Video games, music, movies, the way I speak, what I read... You name it, I've been berated for it. What I do, that's not what we do. Who I am, that's not who we are. I've been "misunderstood" for a long time by family and peers.

Ditto. It's a big reason why I moved 3k miles away and try to have as little contact with my family as possible. Not fun being ostracized growing up your entire life.

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