How do we deal with the inherent sexism and misogyny of gamers online?

Hello friends,

I know this is a very sombre topic for a forum like this, but as it's becoming more and more prevalent in the online gaming space how unsafe this space is for women. I think I happened to go on a twitter thread about how a woman playing Valorant online was threatened with death threats, rape threats and violence simply for existing online. At first I thought this was isolated to this one individual, but the entire thread of people online were saying the most disgusting, incel shit I've ever seen. I don't even need to repeat some of the comments, because every single one of you knows the kind of abhorrent shit people say about women online.

I thought this kind of shit ended in the 360 era, but it appears it's now worse than ever. I'm honestly disgusted to associate myself as someone that plays games anymore, and the types of discourse I see on online gaming communities has largely influenced my decision to pretty much not play games anymore, because when I see my "Peers", I'm shocked.

How do you think we need to address this sort of behaviour in the online gaming scenes?

I guess what i'd say is maybe that twitter thread you were on attracted replies from a lot of horrible people, because i've never witnessed harassment or mistreatment of women specifically in multiplayer games in the 24 years i've been playing them.

That's not to say it doesn't happen i just haven't seen it myself, twitter on the other hand is a message board for every single type of person on the planet including incels and sexists, so if the question becomes "How do we deal with sexism in general?" the answer is i don't know... hope they are 9 year olds and that some day they will grow up.

"We" can't.

On a personal level you can do things that I hope most of us already do and refuse to tolerate that behavior by reporting it whenever we see it and refusing to associate with people who engage in it. That's a bare minimum. But it is something that has to be addressed by the game/platform holders.

We all know that with modern AI tools it's easy to monitor text and voice chat for offensive behavior and punish people who engage in it, especially if it gets manually reported, but we also know that the platform holders mostly do nothing. They do nothing because a lot of heavy users engage in it and the people who don't are willing to tolerate it (i.e. they don't turn away from the games that tolerate it in significant numbers.) It's a purely financial decision for them.

Ultimately what it will take is a large-scale boycott (which gamers are willing to threaten over trivial stuff like puddle reflections but not over widespread sexist harassment, because a lot of gamers are selfish) or perhaps a class action lawsuit for companies failing to enforce their own stated guidelines, including permitting illegal actions like death and rape threats to occur on their networks (direct death and rape threats are not protected speech even in the United States, at least under most circumstances.)

This is not a gamer problem, it's an Internet problem. Look at how women are treated on Twitter and in other online spaces. We are in the midst of a heinous sexist backlash and companies tolerate it because they think it is profitable to do so. As an individual you might change one or two people's minds, especially if you are close to them, but you can't really do much about the toxic environment.

@cikame: I don't want to come off too strong, but this is a pretty tone-deaf thing to say. Every woman I've spoken to has multiple stories of harassment and sexism in online games. When you say "I haven't seen it in 24 years" you're minimizing the problem, intentionally or not. Changing the subject to sexism in society also minimizes the very real, ongoing, severe problem of sexism in multiplayer gaming specifically. Don't do that.

As to what we can do? Speak up loudly and aggressively every time it happens. Shit like this festers because it's not challenged and it becomes the norm. Look at every reply that says "this is just what online multiplayer is. Get a thicker skin." Don't accept that, and argue forcefully against that kind of attitude.

This is nothing new. Women and people of color have been harassed in online gaming since Xbox Live became a thing decades ago. It got to the point that the whole thing about the bratty white kid spewing racial nonsense has become a meme. But, of course, it's mostly adults doing it. This is why many women and people of color usually don't speak in their mics in a public online game, because as soon as they do, some bigot or creep goes in on them with most people during the session laughing and encouraging it. There have been so-called steps taken to combat this, the problem is, most of these game developers don't enforce their own rules. They claim to have zero tolerance for harassment of any kind, yet rude gamers still come go on their servers, spew a bunch of nonsense and get away with it. And reporting them doesn't work either. Sadly, you have sexist and racist who work for many of these game companies, so they claim to fight bigotry and sexism for PR, but nothing more.

So the sad answer is, it can't be dealt with, because the people who could do something about it, really won't. But they make a PR statement and act like they're doing something to fool people. And many of these online pricks know this.

@laughingman: I was just reporting what i've seen and that is harassment on twitter which is the source of the reported harassment in the op, i was just confirming it, i don't feel that suggesting it's a wider problem counts as "minimising" it, unless you take into account other issues on social media including sexism against men (man vs bear) but that's venturing off topic.

If you want to label my post as unimportant that's fine it's just a single person's experience but i can't help but be influenced by my own experiences, the only other thing i have to add is that i'm always on European servers so if there's a difference there i won't know about it.

@cikame: You're missing the point, entirely, and it almost seems intentional now. It's not about your experience, which is irrelevant. It's about the experiences of women. They almost universally, 100%, report that sexism and misogyny are rampant in multiplayer gaming. This is backed up by mountains of evidence. When you lead with "I've never seen it," you ARE minimizing the problem by implying that it can't be that bad.

You can be influenced by your own experience, but you should also listen to other people's experiences. That's the point here.

@markminik: In a topic about inherent misogyny and sexism and overall toxicity of gaming communities:

@topcyclist:Your massive walls of inane written vomit always give me a headache. from Markminik

Here I deleted my post for you, just glad people like you exist. Block me, you know you can block people you hate so much. Not sure why you feel the need to give yourself head aches, but it's a free country.

All you can do is call out the bullshit when you see it. Be a man and speak up, but you won't fix or change anybody's behavior online as long as there is still anonymity to hide behind. Stand up for the 30 seconds it takes to call it out, then block and report the shit-disturber. That's all you can do, and everything else is diminishing returns. Most of these shit-disturbers are idiotic kids being idiotic. And people should care less what some random person you don't know thinks about you too.

If you wouldn't take advice from them, why do you care about their opinion about you.

Find a group of friends to play with if you can. It is far more enjoyable than talking to the cesspool of trash online gaming chat usually becomes.

Mute is also a great feature. You can't fix the world.

I don't think we should talk about this problem as if it's limited to gaming-focused communities. Sexism, harassment, bullying, and people being trashy bastards in general is a problem in pretty much any community, and it can be especially vile towards women and minorities. It's a societal issue that needs to be studied and discussed at a much higher level than just one singular hobby, even a hobby as widespread as video games. Still, since this was asked specifically in regards to video games, I'll talk about it in that context.

What can be done in the hobby itself? Publishers and developers can better enforce rules about harassment and misbehavior. Forums and internet boards can also enforce these rules better. Permanently prevent assholes from returning, whether that's an IP ban or a MAC address ban or whatever. Alternatively, allow them to return to the game, but force them to be an object of ridicule - they have to wear a skin that marks them as a shitty individual or something. Or, if they're into competitive games, knock their rank all the way down. You might have made it to the higher ranks, but make sportsmanship part of the higher ranks - if you can't behave, you can't be there, and you can't brag about it. Or, secretly put them in matchmaking queues that only match them up against hackers and other assholes.

What can us gamers do specifically? Call out publishers and developers who don't actively try to keep assholes out of their games. They have a financial incentive to not really care if some of those people are there, because some of them spend a lot of time and money on their game (or games) of choice. If a massive enough group of people raise enough hell on Twitter, or on that game's specific forums, or publicly call it out, they'll do something. Note - the people who can do something about this aren't paying attention to your rants on Giantbomb forums or your favorite subreddit. These comments have to be seen, and they have to be in great enough numbers for the people at the top to do something. Oh, and they have to justify this to shareholders, because you're cutting off a source of revenue when you prevent Jimmy Dickwad from spending five hundred dollars on Fortnite or Counter-Strike or whatever every month. Note that you should be careful not to become a harrasser yourself - this isn't going to be solved instantly, and will probably never be solved entirely.

What can you do, by yourself, just you? Be nice. Treat people with respect. Anyone concerned about this almost certainly already does, but it's worth mentioning. I don't think that calling assholes out specifically is always the best idea - often, these guys are happy to harass you in ways you can't even fathom if you speak out against them - really, you're just starting another argument and you aren't going to win it. Instead, it's best to encourage liberal use of the mute button and speak up in a nice way and be friendly to other people. Most people playing games aren't assholes, they just aren't speaking up at all. If more people spoke up in multiplayer games and they were friendly, it wouldn't feel so hostile, and the worst members of humanity wouldn't be so confident about being awful all the time.

For being friendly in online games - never forget that it's a game, and that someone else is trying to have their own fun. Never publicly blame someone else for your team losing. Do your best, take the loss and move on. If you're trying to be competitive and you want to move up in the ranks, find a dedicated group, you'll have more fun.