Online Gaming and Sexual Harassment

Are video games due for their #metoo moment? What's it like online gaming as a woman? Join A & B as they level up your video game knowledge and discuss how to make the video game community better. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridgett, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. Today we are
talking about another important aspect of my nerd life, which

(00:25):
is gaming, and specifically female gaming and specifically online gaming
and what it's like for women. What are your favorite games? Annie, Oh?
I am a big RPG role playing game person, so
I really loved The Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts BioShock,
which I guess is I'm also a first person shooter,

(00:45):
which makes me kind of an outlier because women aren't
traditionally big into those, But I really love BioShock as
an evil and The Last of Us is like my favorite.
And Kristen and Caroline did two part episode on kind
of the whole state of air is of the video
game industry a while back, and we're going to be
rerunning those soon, so keep it keep an ear out

(01:06):
for that. I wanted to include listener Emma. She suggested
this to us. She emailed us a message, and I
wanted to read a bit of it at the top here.
I wrote this email because the Action Fixture episode that
y'all did, as well as several of your discussions about
violence towards women, got me thinking about how I have
slowly distanced myself from the video game community over time
because of the harassment that I have faced as a

(01:27):
female gamer, as well as the industry's lack of caring
when it comes to harassment and violence towards women, as
well as the continuous glorification of multiple forms of violence
against women. Just check out the game Agony and the
rape scene that was removed. Many male gamers seem to
think that, because they also face harassment, yelling slurs at
each other, et cetera, that the harassment female gamers face

(01:48):
is on the same level. And I want to say
a wholeheartedly that being privately messaged to send nude photos
are hearing men try to basically have phone sex with
you when you're on MIC requires an unfair amount of
inner g on our parts to tolerate if we want
to continue playing the games we love. Agreed. Something I
really want to parse out from that message. First of all, Emma,

(02:09):
thank you for writing in. But it is different. It's
different when someone says, hey, face, you did a bad
job at this thing in the game. That's different. Then
I'm going to send you a private message and ask
you to send me pictures of your breasts. That's very different.
And so people who would argue that it's a similar
kind of harassment that both men and women face in
these gaming communities, that's just willful ignorance because it's so different, right,

(02:33):
And like Emma sort of pointed out the trash talking
men get when gaming, that that's like very very different
than a solicitation of nudes or rape threats or death
threats of you and your children. And a lot of
female gamers have pointed out that, hey, we like trash
talking too if it's based on skill, but if you're
going to base it on gender, that's different and that's

(02:55):
not not fun at all. I gave up online gaming
after kind of my attempt at appearing gender neutral didn't
work out, and that is a common strategy for women online.
Did you have a mail or genderless avatar? Yeah? Yeah,
I didn't ever add a picture my name, gave no
hint one way or the other, but I don't know.
Somehow it always seemed to come out. And this is

(03:18):
a plot point and ready player one actually for anyone
who's seen or read that. Another strategy is to never
use the microphone, which sucks because the microphone is meant
to make things easier and kind of enhance your gaming experience.
But as a woman, well, if you're if you're trying
to avoid being known as a woman, you will not
use it. So I never used it. You could do
what's the voice modification thing they use in the movie Scream.

(03:41):
It's like I'm playing video, I'm playing you know, Last
of Us with the guy from Scream. Actually the killer
was a woman. Wait spoiler alert for Scream if you
haven't seen it, it's been out for tick twenty years.
So also there's like a lot of killers. Who knows
which one we're talking Okay. Also a point I did
want to say that I, uh, some places, some online

(04:02):
spaces and games do have from what I've read, very
lovely online community. So this is a big brusher painting
with and there are spaces that are not this way.
I have heard kind of in an interesting benevolent sexism
thing where some people are like, well, I like it
when people find out I'm a woman because the men

(04:22):
go out of their way to be super nice to
me in the game, and I'm like, okay, uh so yes,
those things exist, and you can love something and critique
it as we've said before on here. Yes, I know
someone out there is going to be listening and thinking, like,
why are you trashing video games? I love video games
from trash him. Just because you have a critique about

(04:43):
gaming or game culture doesn't mean you're not a gamer,
doesn't mean you're not a fan. It's okay to critique
art media, whatever, whatever we consume. It's okay to critique
it and still like it. Yeah, and I would. I
would argue that you're trying to make it better, You're
trying to make it more than it is right now. Yeah,
because if you really love gaming, you want it to

(05:03):
be as good as it can be. Yes. I want
to be able to use the microphone and not worry
about some guy of ex sex. I can't believe I
even have to worry about that, but apparently apparently we do.
And Emma and I aren't alone in our abandoning of
online games in the face of harassment. We found story
after story, message board after message board of women sharing

(05:26):
their experiences with sexual harassment when gaming online. A twenty
sixteen study published by Media and Society found that quote
both general and sexual harassment predict women's withdrawal from online games.
Sexual harassment, but not general harassment, leads to rumination and
subsequent withdraw Sexual harassment, perhaps unsurprisingly, seemed to have an
effect that ha ha, you suck and are dumb does not. Yes,

(05:50):
I would agree that is unsurprising. Well, that's exactly what
we were talking about before that. It's this is not
just your average, you know, trash talk, which of course
is going to happen in gaming. It's happens in sports whatever.
That's different than sexual harassment, rape threats, that kind of thing, exactly.
And I enjoy a good trash talk session. I'm sure

(06:12):
you do, knowing you. I know that you do do,
but it has to be kind of like good and
good spirit um as competitive as I am. I like that,
but not Yeah, sexual asthma is completely different. And this
study was a study of two ninety three women playing
games in average of twenty two hours a week, so
not the most representative study, but I do think it's

(06:32):
worth mentioning, especially because there aren't that many studies on
this out there yet, and the paper didn't address this,
but several others have. Rumination is linked to negative outcomes,
including depressive symptoms, so this is it's not good. It's
not good. And what pisces me off the most about this,
and there's so much to be piste off about, is
I know so many people for whom video games is

(06:55):
their stress relief. It's their way to build community. If
they're living someplace so they don't know a lot of people,
it's a way to feel like they have, you know,
a social outlet. Imagine all the women who are kind
of pushed out of this space that could mean so
much for them socially, personally, and they're pushed out because
of jerks out there who are treating women like this

(07:15):
because they happen to be gamers. Yeah, it's really it's
not fair. No, no, it's not fair at all. I
did find one interesting account um that's speculated that maybe
because so many of us women are pretending to be
male or I have like a gender neutral avatar, that
perhaps there are a lot more women playing than we think.

(07:38):
And I there was one story that really caught my
eye and kind of tickled me where this one woman
described her experience of like dominating the team fortress to leaderboard,
and everyone just assumed she was male because she was good,
so it must be male, right when she finally revealed
she wasn't. Several other players were like, yeah, I'm not either.
Oh I love it. It's like they all take off

(07:59):
their math and it's like, oh, we're all women. What
this whole time? That's like something out of a Oh
my god, have you ever seen this is so dumb?
Have you ever seen The Little Rascals that the remake.
We're at the end, they're doing the big race and
it's and she takes off her helmet. It's it's Darla,
like you think it's a male driver because he's wearing
like a This is so stupid. But it's like that

(08:21):
scene where she pulls off her mask and it's a
girl the whole time. You're right rigid. It's just like
the Little Rascles. Most things in life can be related
back to The Little Rascals. Another note before we dive
in here, the un released a sixty page report called
cyber Violence against Women and Girls a Worldwide wake up Call,

(08:42):
but it contained several errors in poor citations and was
generally quite flawed, so hopefully they will readdress that. Come
back to that later. A lot of people we mentioned
they did call on to speak at the event. It
was the paper itself was kind of had a lot
of issues. Okay, so gaming is a big As someone
who doesn't do a lot of gaming myself, these numbers

(09:03):
I found were really kind of shocking to me. In
SI in the US, consumers spent thirty point four billion
on video games. Globally, that number is an annual one
and one billion, and it's estimated at the growth rate
until will be around six percent. That means that forty
million people worldwide play video games. Yeah, and online games,

(09:25):
specifically online games. Yeah. And I would guess when you
think of a stereotypical gamer, I mean, what do you
think of bridget Definitely a dude, probably someone who sits
on the couch and you know, dudes it out with
its other dude friends. It's very masculine. You know that
the common narrative of a gamer doesn't look like you,
doesn't look like Emma, I'm sure. Yeah. And sixty of

(09:49):
the public, when asked, would say something similar. It's a dude,
probably a white dude, probably a younger white dude. But
statistics from the Pew Research Center found that about fifty
percent of both men and women's that gaming on a PC,
console or handheld device is a pastime they participate in.
Men are much likelier to claim the game or label though,
as compared to women to six per so. Something that

(10:12):
we were talking about off Mike that again kind of
made me scratch my head was when you look at
those numbers people who pushed back on this idea that
gaming is a pretty you know, it's split pretty evenly
between men and women. I was like, well, that surprises me.
And then you said, well, some people will push back
on that because they say a lot of women are
gaming on their cell phones and some folks out there

(10:34):
might say, oh, that means they're not real gamers. To me,
I thought, well, they're fake gamers or imagining. What does
that mean? And I had no idea that there was
this connotation that if you play games on your phone
you are a fake gamer and should not be included
in the quote gamer label. Yes, and I think the
more I kind of thought about this, it kind of

(10:57):
comes up a lot where men have like they do
the real thing and women do kind of like the
fake note. I was just thinking about this in terms
of politics and that studies show that women are a
lot more likely to get involved in politics running for
office because they want to make change, and they don't
care about the glitz, the glory, whatever, Whereas the research
shows that men are much more likely to do that

(11:19):
same kind of thing because they want the label of activists,
of politician. They want the thing, the like stamp on
their forehead that this person is making X y Z
kind of change, isn't aren't they great? Whereas the data
shows that women just want to do the thing, they
don't care about the label. And I'm sure there are
so many instances where if men do it, they are

(11:40):
assumed to be the representative thing, you know, whether it's gaming,
whether it's an activist, whether it's you know, well, we
talked about a little in our fan fiction episode with
writing science fiction. Yeah, that was the real thing exactly.
And Emily and I had an episode on journaling where
when women wrote journals, it was just assumed to be
these like little diaries, not important. Who can it's I'm

(12:00):
writing about their feelings and their crushes whatever. But when
men write, it's it's their papers and it goes in
a museum or something. But for women it's just start
a little you know, Yeah, we're not real writers. It's
just their little doodles. Yeah, the doodles. When it comes
to video games, there is like core gaming, which is
seen as like not phone playing games on your phone,

(12:21):
But most people do play games on their phone, like,
not just women, most people, because we have them all
the time. And if you're just like kind of waiting around,
might as well play a game. I did wanna mention
that female video game developer interviewed about this whole thing
said one of her coworkers assumed that only five percent

(12:42):
of women were core gamers and the rest are casual gamers.
So developers are making the games for men. The core
gamers like with that in the back of their head
that women don't play video games, so I make I
make video games for them. That's so well to me
because what other industry is like that. If you're someone
who sees a movie in a movie theater once a

(13:02):
month and you're a casual movie you know, movie person,
that people don't neglect you as an audience. And just
it's interesting to me that they're thinking, like, oh, we
can only market games towards people who are very involved
in this. I mean, it's interesting because this is a
whole other side conversation. But It's interesting to me that
the identity label that is wrapped up in the work gamer.

(13:23):
I think there are so many other things like pastimes
that people do not make it part of their core identity.
I think gaming lends itself to people taking it on
as a kind of label about who they are, their
identity in the way that other kinds of pastimes maybe
do not. Yes, I completely agree with you, and I
do have an interesting quote about that later in the episode.

(13:46):
And to go back to what you were saying about
like marketing. Marketing research has been pushing the video game
industry to change. It's been showing like you could be
making a lot more money. We found so many, so
many market reports that conclude did that if the video
game industry and markets behind it, if they did make
games for women, they could majorly increase profits. So well,

(14:09):
that's like our episode on action figures, where there's money
to be made. These people is holding onto these not true,
outdated ideas about who plays video games and gender. Is
holding onto those rigid gender attitudes more important than money.
It seems like it is that they could be making money.
Do they not like money? It was a deal? Yeah,
they're they're entrenched in their ways, and we're not going

(14:32):
to touch on this too much in this episode, but
and one of the classics that we're gonna be replaying
that Kristen Caroline did. They talk about how the industry
is like ten to twelve the designers making video games
are women. So if it's that small of a percentage,
I can see how that would kind of have ripple
effects into what games are made. And speaking of big business,

(14:54):
let's talk about the sports. E sports is like really
growing very quickly. Is organized and competitive play, usually of
an online game that has an aspect of performance that
might be rewarded. Competitive video gaming. Essentially, the sports have
really really taken off. They've doubled in size in the
past three years, especially in Asia, the US and Europe.

(15:17):
The NBA is getting involved in it and in the
next couple of years it's expected to be valued at
thirty five billion. From what little data we have on this,
about thirty percent to professional gamers are female and people
get paid for this. If that's not clear, like some
people millions. A report in the BBC looked into China's

(15:37):
female E sports team and found that compared to men
who can and have earned up to two million, you know,
pretty much celebrities. Women earn far, far less. In general,
big companies don't want to back female teams because they
think that the male teams people are more likely to
watch them. We hear that argument all the time. People
want to watch the male teams play, but not the

(15:58):
female teams. China has seventy million esport players and made
over half a billion dollars for the country in this
industry did, which is very impressive considering that from console
games were banned and labeled by the Chinese government as
digital heroine. Yeah. I think that for anyone listening was thinking, oh,

(16:21):
why are they talking about video games? It's just some
stupid pastime. This is a very real part of economies,
you know, it's not just people's lives. It seems like
a really big part of what can make a country
like China function is video games. So it's not just
some small thing. Yeah, no, not at all. What I
also found really interesting is ex professional gamer Lillian Chen,
also known as a milk Tea, wrote this viral blog

(16:44):
post about what it's like being a female gamer. So,
if you're curious, what is it like being a professional
female gamer? Who this is not just a pastime. This
is how you make your money. She played Super Smash Brothers. Yeah,
and so if you want to know what it's like,
it's actually fascinating. Yeah. And one of the reasons video
games have for so long been masculalized does their late

(17:04):
back to our Action Figure episode um. In the nineteen eighties,
the video game industry in the US had like way
too many video and arcade games, and American video game
producers were on the verge of bankruptcy. So their solution
was to create more novel content that was reflective of
the audience, which meant they needed to narrow down the
audience and also increase visibility to that audience. So they

(17:28):
decided to move video games into the toy department, and
since toy departments were gendered, they picked boy over a girl.
At the time, boys played more games than girls. Video
games were then made with boys in mind, and therefore
most of the playable characters were male, and therefore women
who might have been into video games were turned away
because they weren't made for them. And not only that,

(17:52):
female characters and video games were seen as totally optional,
and when they were included, they were probably a hindrance
probably in an owing one our sex object, a prize
to be one all of the above, and if that's
what you're seeing as a female player, yeah, you're probably
gonna check out. Video games are one of the most
popular forms of entertainment for children too, so we're teaching

(18:14):
these messages at very young ages. And it might go
without saying, but women are more attracted to games with
female protagonists, which are not supplentiful. For every five male characters,
there is one female one and that number gets even
worse if you look at door or action characters, and
then over games with only one protagonist, that protagonist is male.

(18:37):
So this actually reminds me so much of my childhood
because when we were growing up, we were obsessed with
the Ninja Turtles and I always had to be April
a real meal because she was the girl. And the
mall Chesterfield Towns and Tremol in my town when I
was growing up used to have this big arcade and
the best game they had was that stand up Ninja
Turtles game that you know, where it was like four

(18:59):
players could play at one and you were all sort
of standing in a semicircle and it would be like
my brother and my cousin's all playing, but since I
was the girl, there was no there was no kind
of role for me. If you know that game, in
the beginning, Splinter and April are kidnapped, and so that's
when that's why the turtles are fighting in the first place.
And so because in my sort of family, when we

(19:20):
would do Ninja Turtles games and playing Ninja Turtles in
the yard, which he did all the time I was April,
I had no role in that. In that game, you know,
there wasn't even a role for me. And I'll remember
this in the Mario franchise. You know how Super Mario
Brothers one you're saving Princess Peach, but then the Super
Mario Brothers too, is like really strange and all this
strange stuff has happening. It doesn't look anything like the

(19:42):
other Super Mario games. Not to trash my brother, but
when we were kids, we were playing in that game
for the first time, and in that game you can
actually play as Princess Peach. He was like, what is
Princess Peach doing in game play? Like she's supposed to
be being saved. And I'll never forget that I was
a kid, but I was like, why can't she play right?
I couldn't even be saved all the time. Maybe she

(20:03):
wants to play. Do you remember that game? It's a
very strange game that involves you floating on a cloud
and there's a scene where like a chicken eggs being
shot at. Now that it goes bowl, it's like a
very weird game. I feel like it's an acid trip.
It doesn't make sense in the franchise at all. But
you can play its Princess Peach, and that was very

(20:24):
important to me. Yeah. I had similar conversations with my brothers,
and yeah, not to trash talk them either, but they
were very It's funny because like, compared to the rest
of the population, I am like a gamer, but they
thought I was a fake gamer, so they would erase
my video games because you could only have three SAPs, right,
Remember how if you like unplugged it loves. My friend

(20:49):
of mine kept a plugged in small TV in his
room where it was like a sign that said do
not touch. Just trying to say the high score for
so long and I feel like, and this is going
to be buried with This was like ten years ago.
This was well into when you could have been playing
a console that allowed for turning off the system and
not not having not saving a game, so many of

(21:11):
us were traumatized by losing games. Yeah, tune into our
spinoff podcast, Annie and Bridget talk about their brothers. It
just just talking. Yeah, if you didn't get that idea
from the title, if we if we go look at
video game covers, male characters are four times is likely
to be featured on the front and um. First person shooters,
which I mentioned earlier, is a traditionally male dominated video

(21:34):
game genre, they have a much greater female playership. Studies
have shown if a female protagonist is involved, so games
where you can customize your character generally pretty popular. Cost
gen or divides too. It is worth noting that a
lot of people do like to play as the opposite sex.
It's not like if you see a male avatar, very
well could be well if you see a female avatar,
very well could be a man. But it's good to

(21:56):
have those options. I know that in general, I always
play as a woman if it's an option. Um, oh
you like this. Bridget In, the creative director of Ubisoft,
made headlines when he said Assassin's Creed didn't have a
playable female character because quote, it was really a lot
of extra production work, which led to the viral hashtag

(22:17):
women are too hard to animate. Oh my god, that's
that's all I'm started. It's hilarious. Yeah, I have. One
of my favorite video games, Fantasy seven, has this scene
that even as a kid, I was like, this is weird.
And one of the main characters she has really big boobs,
really big, and there's a cut scene where she gets

(22:37):
knocked over and just the like motion, I wish you
could see what and he's doing with her hands right now,
It's like, do her boots have a ripple of that
you're basically doing? It was? It was a site of
a hold and it's stuck with me years later. So
you know, maybe maybe there are challenges animating boobs. Who knows,

(22:58):
I mean not if you live in the world old
ms are of how books? Yeah, are really you could
just kind of leave them alone. I don't know. They
really don't need to do anything special in the video game.
I don't think, no, unless you're using them to shoot
a gun or something. Sure, using them for gameplay, yeah,
I'm sure those games exist. And this is changing more

(23:19):
female and l g B t Q characters are becoming
more common in video games. In fact, Listener Rose which
was recently about this, sighting Horizon Zo, don Overwatch, Dragon
Age Inquisition and Ellie from the Last of As which
I mentioned at the top, and that gameplay just came
out recently for the second one. It looks amazing, so
some improvement, but we still have a long way to go,

(23:42):
and we're gonna get into that after a quick break
forward from our sponsor and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
We in When real life women started venturing into this

(24:03):
male world, a lot of intense gamer dudes were not happy.
They tried to keep women out with insults, harassment, and
even threats like gamer Gate. I'm sure we're all familiar
with gamer Gate. Anita Sarkesian was threatened with rape and
death to sent pictures of game characters raping her and
a game called beat Up. Anita Sarkesian was made um

(24:24):
because she kind of intruded in their world and started
talking about feminism and sexist trokes. Again. She likes video games.
You can critique things and still like them. She wasn't like,
I watched the videos and they're great, but yeah, she
was just like, hey, let's look at Sammy's for a minute. Yeah,
I once had a really scary and eye opening situation.

(24:44):
This was many, many years ago when I had first
got into into the mixed writing and blogging, and I
was doing a review of one of Sarkasian's pieces and
it was completely by the book. I certainly did not
editorialize it, because that was not my job. I was
just like, Oh, this is a piece that she has,
here's what she says, blah blah blah, very by the book.
Publish the amount of vitriolic hate that I personally got

(25:10):
just because she happened to tweet this piece out because
it was about her. I have never seen anything like it,
and I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again.
And bear in mind, in no way did she say
people who game are sexist and awful like, she didn't
think anything like that. It was just a pretty mild
breakdown of gaming. You know, the tropes in this game.

(25:31):
It was. In no way was it anything that anyone
she could upset about. It wasn't. It was basically a
movie review. If you wouldn't think that a movie review
would be something to lose your cool over. It certainly
wasn't anything different from that, and I just could not
I could not believe the shocking level of response that
she got. And then I got this from a mild
association with her work. I was like, what the hell

(25:53):
is going on? Yep, but well, angry gamers trying to
paint gamer gate as a response to like a lack
of journalistic integrity. It's about integrity and gaming. It's about
ethics and gaming journalism. And that's why I'm saying we
should rape this woman. I don't know, it's about ethics. Yeah,
I can't believe you missed that. So if we look

(26:15):
at that, there's the story of Zoe Quinn, who was
an indie gamer developer who had a positively reviewed game
called Depression Quest, and an ex lover of hers put
transcripts of her life online. And here comes the gamer
gators alleging that Quinn's relationship with the journalist was behind
her games good reviews, and that was all the excuse

(26:36):
angry dude gamers needed to ask her to the point
that she went into hiding and hiding. I just wanted
to point out that gamers didn't go after the journalist.
If you if you're wondering about that ethics and video
game journalism. Why do you what what could be the difference?
I don't know. I don't know what a good view
it did find a really interesting article written by Devon
Ferarchi called why I Feel bad for and understand the

(26:56):
angry gamer Gators. I have a really long quote that
I probably shouldn't read the thing, but it was. It
was interesting to read. It kind of goes back to
what you were saying Bridget about how gamer is such
an identity for some people. I guess when you feel
like people are intruding into this thing that you've producted
and cultivated, when you are someone who is an outsider,
who is downtrodden, you will fight back. I guess we

(27:18):
could post it it is. It was really interesting to read,
especially because I know, I don't know if I know
someone who is is like a gamer gater, but I
know guys that are very very protective of like they're
gaming worlds, so full disclosure, Like I casually sometimes play
video games, but I would never call myself a gamer,
but so so I'm a little out of the loop. Admittedly,

(27:41):
are gamers like a downtrodden group, Well not anymore. Well,
I don't know. I will say we kind of touched
on this before, where like nerds haven't inherited the earth, right,
So I feel like in the eighties nerds certainly was
depicted as very down on in and being getting picked

(28:02):
on and bullied. I honestly can't speak to right now.
I will know, the most gamers I know that are
men are not perhaps they were nerdier. Yeah, I again,
and this is not this is Bridget's opinion, anecdotal. I've
always pushed back against that idea that gamers on a

(28:23):
whole are this marginalized group. As you pointed out at
the top of the show, a lot of people game,
and so it's the majority of people are playing video games.
They might not have this label of gamer, but it's
not a niche hobby. In fact, quite a mainstream hobby,
I would argue. And so I hear that people feel
that they have lived a life full of hardship because

(28:44):
they were nerdier, because they were skinnier, because they were
not popular or whatever. I understand that uns how I
felt growing up sometimes, But whether or not they are
actually like a marginalized group or who actually is downtrotch
I'm always sort of got to cole about that. Yeah maybe, yeah, yeah, no, totally. Um,

(29:05):
I don't know the word for it. Most most gamer
geters are young. They're pretty young, so I don't know
the movie should post the article. It's interesting to read.
There's one. There's one bit I really liked where it
says these guys get told lies that I think are
really insidious, like it doesn't matter what's on your outside,

(29:25):
it matters what's on your inside, which leads to an
entire affinity of groups address and smell like and don't
take care of themselves. And this leads to a horrible
cycle where socially awkward weirdos who dressed like garbage get
rejected by attractive women, which causes socially awkward weirdos to
start blaming women in general for their problems and reinforce
their social awkwardness. They do it because they have been

(29:46):
raised in a world where women are not humans but prizes,
and so they can't see them as individuals. They can
understand that they are women out there who also are
socially awkward weirdos who might truly be into comic books,
video games, thunder and dragons. Yes, oh, my god, I
have a lot to say. This reminds me so much
of the episode that we did a while back Emily
and I on men going their own way, And if

(30:07):
you don't know what that is, basically, it's this attitude
that some men have today where they are basically retreating
from society. They don't want to have a romantic partner,
they don't want to be included in everyday society. The
reason why that topic was something that was on my
radar at all was this study that had come out
that had just come out then about young men and

(30:29):
video gaming and how the role it can function in
a young man's life in this day and age. And
it's a lot of what you talked about, where young
men especially have been sold this kind of lie. I
guess there's no other word for it, that they will
grow up, be successful, get a job, to find a wife,
blah blah blah, like do this sort of white picket
fence American dream thing. But look around you, that's no

(30:50):
longer happening. And you know, gone on the days when
just by virtue of being born white and male, you
can be promised things like a spouse, things like a job, success,
life and video games, it seems, are kind of functioning
as a a way to be like, Oh, the life
that I was sort of promised is not a reality
for me. I'll just retreat into video games and new society.

(31:13):
In that episode, we took a lot of heat for
almost humanizing young man who feel that way too much.
But I do think it's like an interesting position to
be in because from that experpt that you just read,
it just sounds like we are not setting these young
men up for successful, healthy lives, and that's what it
really comes down to. And so part of me does
feel sympathetic, not so sympathetic that they're out there standing

(31:33):
rape threats and like making zo Quinn's life horrible. But
part of me can understand if you grew up hearing
that it's what's inside that counts, and that just by
virtue of being born white and male, you will have X,
y Z good things, and then come to find out
that actually you do need to have a decent personality,
You actually do need to take care of yourself, You
actually do need to have basic hygiene and like a

(31:53):
basic understanding of how to present in the world. If
you want to have good things in your life, you
actually do have to work for them. You know, it's
not gonna get hand to you. You don't. You don't
earn it is by virtual being you. It's not a
prize that you can just get by showing up. Because
we are filling these young men's heads with those lives,
and because video games function, a lot of them function
in a way where that's the case, you know, like

(32:14):
we'll post it in the show notes. This article talks
about how so many games the reward system rewards tasks
in such a way that it can almost mimic work.
And so if you are someone who is underemployed or unemployed,
gaming is designed to stimulate something in your brain that
maybe makes you feel like you are working when you're not,

(32:34):
you know what I mean. And so you're not gonna
feel like you need to go out and join society,
join the workforce to get those brain warm fuzzies if
gaming provides it in a kind of way. I know,
I sound like someone who I mean this. People who
are gaming are like get no, bridget. But when I
found this out, I thought, oh, of course. And the
reason why I found this out is because I had
someone in my life who was underemployed and was like, yeah,

(32:56):
video games are really getting me through. And at first
I thought, Jesus, that's at But then I when I
really unpacked it, I thought, oh my god, it makes sense,
and this is what's happening to a generation of young men,
and it explains so much about how young men see
themselves in the world. You know, if they're heterosexual, how
they're functioning with women, why they might want to check
out a society if they feel like they've been sold

(33:17):
a lie. Yeah. And I mean it's not just video
games either, those eighties movies. This has been the story
we've been telling for a long time that eventually it's
just gonna work out in the end and you're going
to get the girl. And I'm glad we're moving away
from that and telling different stories. So many women, so
many women have spoken up about harassment in gaming. There's

(33:40):
Jenny Honover. She runs Not in the Kitchen Anymore, a
website dedicated to her experience as a female gamer, particularly online.
She records and transcribes audio files of her interactions and
post them and let me tell you, it gets really
grim best. I think she's stepped away from it so
it's more of an archive now, but if you're looking

(34:01):
for reasons to get angry, it's there. Julia Hardy, who
was a gaming journalist, has a similar website called Misogyny Monday,
where she posts abusive comments she's received and her pretty
hilarious comebacks. After someone tweeted it her to go back
to the kitchen and make me a sandwich, she responded with,
what is it that you most fear about? Women? Are keen? Agility?

(34:21):
Are the fact our periods attract bears? Well, anyone knows
that's true, now, I know that's just science. Another website
documenting abuse female gamers receive online is fat, Ugly or Slutty.
It hasn't been updated in a while, but this is
another good one if you want to be mad um.
I really like the categories on the side because it
kind of sorts the comments and the categories are like

(34:41):
sand which making one on one are crudely creative. I mean,
if you've got to put a silver lining on it,
it's pretty good. Yeah. Honestly, what this displays is that
a lot of these digs are just not very creative. Yeah.
I wonder if I still have any I should go
look a lot of them don't make much sense. Yeah,
so it's annoying to get abuse online. I try to

(35:02):
stay all social media in these days, but when I
do blog back in, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is
why I left. What I hate the most is when
I'm thinking, that's not even a good joke. It's not
even a good comeback. If you're gonna insult somebody, that
doesn't even make sense. At least make it good. The
gender based insult that I would hear a lot of
is take your tampon out, And I was like, having
a tampon it doesn't have an effect on your mood, Like,

(35:23):
what are you trying to say? If you've got an
argument to make about me being on my period? Make
it succinctly. Just wearing a tampon does not have any
impact on how I'm behaving. That doesn't even make sense.
At least put some thought into it. It's just insulting
to both. It's insulting too. It should be insulting to
the person who is tweeting that you're better than that.
You're gonna insult somebody, put a little full thought into it.

(35:43):
That should be your response. Better than you're better than this,
You can do better. I used to collect my um
any kind of insults I received online, and I want
to make a modern art poster of them. But my
favorite one I ever got was I know the produce,
sure of this, and she's a slut because it's interesting
to call out the producer. The other one was her

(36:05):
mouth looks like it's made of crabs. What wasting? The
venarial disease or the animal I don't know. I didn't
If you're going to insult somebody, those are important questions
to ask. Yes, the Tories and Culture editor at I
G and Entertainment a lot of tears. She has an
interesting way of dealing with. Perhaps some of these insults.

(36:28):
Quote fairly randomly, I get sent rape threats. Someone sent
me a Facebook message saying they would rate me if
I ever saw me in person. I checked his Facebook
account and it was a young boy. So I managed
to find his mom incredibly easily, and she made him
hand write me a letter of apology. So I doubt
he will ever do it again. Good on that mom.
I love that. I mean part of me wants to say, oh,

(36:49):
it shouldn't be up to this person's mom to to
do this. But if you're an adult, if you're young,
good on this mom for taking some initiative and saying no,
you're not going to treat somebody like that. You're gonna
write an apology letter. Also making someone right a handwritten
apology letter is is she's mom in real heartor she's
a mom in heart. Has a duma who has a
pretty sizeable YouTube gaming channel advises blocking your muting root comments,

(37:12):
So that's one way. Yeah, Something that I have found
is that if you're on Twitter, especially mute over block
if you can, because blocking is can sometimes be like
a badge of honor. Honestly, we should do an episode
on how to deal with online harassment in general. But
I have found that if I block someone, someone else
will tell me, oh, they then tweeted a picture of
the screen of you blocking them, and it sort of reverberates.

(37:33):
And so if you mute someone, they don't know that
you muted, but you don't get a notification that they're
mentioning you, So it's just them farting in the wind. Basically,
they can keep on talking, you won't see it, and
they don't get that badge of honor that oh I
ruffled her feather. So much that she blocked me. Can
you believe this? You know? Um? So, just a little
tip that I've learned Bridget's words of wisdom. Brianna Wu,

(37:55):
a game developer, hired an employee to deal with the
constant Internet trolling she gets. That's much she gives. After
we posted a meme about gamer gators on Twitter, they
went after her company's financial aspects, impersonated her on Twitter,
and launched a campaign to destroy her career by sending
emails to journalists from burner accounts. One of the scariest
messages she received was from someone claiming to know where

(38:16):
she and her husband lived, and the message described in
horrific graphic detail how he was going to kill them
that night. Woo wrote in an article, They've taken down
women I care about, one by one. Now the vicious
mob of gamer Gate movement is coming after me. They
threatened to rape me. They threatened to make me choke
to death on my husband's severed genitals. They've threatened to
murder any children I might have. In interview with NPR,

(38:40):
she said that as far as she can tell, the
video game industry has not had its me to moment,
and that it really needs to quote, look at the hiring,
look at the culture, look at who makes up the
food chain, because we've really created a culture of silence
in my field. That is very similar to why Harvey
Weinstein was able to go for so long unchecked. I
can completely believe that is the case, and I think

(39:01):
it probably is one of those things. I mean, it
took so long for me too to trickle down to
industries like animation, and I think it's because they are
heavily male dominated, and because it's like a nerd culture
kind of thing. It is seen as if you speak
up about abuse, about terrible treatment, about that kind of thing,
you're not a cool You're not a cool nerd anymore.

(39:22):
You know. We had this free wheel in thing if
anything goes and a lot of really toxic stuff confess
and cultures like that. Yeah. Absolutely. In Washington Post article,
we did give some specific recommendations targeting Gamergate mostly, but
so major gaming institutions need to come out against Gamergate
and harassment in general. Hiring in the industry needs to

(39:43):
be looked at and examined at all levels, and game
journalism needs more women too. As I know, she's running
for Congress in Boston are she was as of recording
this episode. Another woman who has spoken up about this
is Lena Van de Venter, who, along with Dan Golding,
co authored a book called Game Changers. From Minecraft to Misogyny,

(40:04):
The Fight for the Future of Video Games. And here's
just one of her encounters with sexual harassment and online gaming.
I could hear him masturbating on the voice chat while playing.
He would ask breathy, labored questions. Other teammates found it hilarious.
I wish I could focus on my objective in the game,
but I knew I had to leave this server. My
mouse was hovering over the exit button when I heard
him climax moaning my user name into his microphone. Oh God,

(40:27):
I mean, who thinks you can play a game in
those like conditions? But that's what you were saying before.
It's what pisces me off about this. There's so much
wrong with it, but it's this idea that women who
game have this unfair extra burden, Like male gamers are
not dealing with someone moaning their their user name into

(40:49):
the god microphone that's are trying to play. And so
as bad as that is, these male gamers still think
that women somehow are not real gamers. Basically, it's like
that old quote, you know, that Ginger Rogers quote that
I do everything that Fred Astair does, I do it
backward at and heels. I guess what pisses me off
the most is that men then still say acts like
women aren't real gamers, aren't good enough, blah blah blah,

(41:11):
when in fact they are having to do the same
challenges in these games that men are doing, but doing
it while somebody is breathing their god name into a
microphone while they masturbate. Could they do that? No, they couldn't.
That's distracting and awful. We shouldn't have to put up
with it, but we are. And I guess it pisses
me off that, despite the fact that women are gaming,
playing the same games as men and doing so with

(41:33):
such an unfair burden, that they're still seeing as not
real gamers when in fact they're putting up with more
than the men are. Yeah, and just like I remember
back when I still online games, and I would just
be filled with trepidation every time I ventured in. It
was supposed to be a fun thing, but instead I
had like this nervousness about doing it because you didn't
know who you're going to encounter in there, and that

(41:54):
really sucks. It shouldn't be that way. There is a
whole movie about sexual harassment in gaming two called t
f O, which creator Shannon's son Higginson, was inspired to
make after she saw a Capcom sponsored game stream where
the female gamer was harassed for thirteen minutes and she
did not return for the final round and the guy
doing their harassing, and that video is quoted saying the

(42:16):
sexual harassment is part of the culture, and if you
remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the
fighting game community. What the Oh it's awful. I watched
it and it's gross. It was weird and gross and
it just kept going on and on. And they were
on the same team too. But this is her teammate.
That that's absurd. Okay, So when people say, how dare

(42:39):
you critique video games? I would posit that guys like
this who say, oh, if you don't like this, and
this is what the community is and a big hallmark
of the community, I would argue that that guy doesn't
like gaming is an a real gamer. I would argue
the people who are saying, hey, that's not Okay, don't
do this be better than this kind of sleazy poll
who does it to their own teammate. I would say
that the people who are calling that out, they are

(42:59):
the ones who are true gamers who actually care about
the industry. People who are saying this is just how
it is. It's sleazy and it's bad, and that's how
it is, I would argue that that guy doesn't give
it that gaming It is not a real gamer. Yeah.
I mean, if you were in any other industry and
you tolerated and accepted that kind of bad behavior, you
wouldn't be like, oh, that's a titan of the industry,

(43:20):
who really cares about the craft. If you were a
surgeon and you just said, I smoke cigars while I
do surgery, that's just the way it is. If you
don't like it, yeah, if you don't like it, that
means you don't you don't really love surgery. You would
say that guy doesn't care about surgery, didn't care about
the craft. How did we elevate the people who vocally
don't give a about whether or not gaming is a

(43:40):
good community. How did we elevate them to be the
spokespeople of the community that they're the real gamers. How
did we allow that? That is a great question. I
also wanted to mention he this guy, he pointed to
his First Amendment rights when give me a brig of horse?
He did. Journalist Ali Fogg had this counter point, What

(44:01):
you fail to understand is that the use of hate
speech threats ambling to terrify and intimidate people into silence,
are away from certain topics is a far bigger threat
to free speech than any lingal sanction. Imagine this is
not the Internet but a public square. One woman stands
on a soapbox and expresses an idea. She is instantly
surrounded by an army of five thousand angry people yelling
the worst kind of abuse at her in the attempt

(44:22):
to shut her up. Yes, there's a free speech issue here,
but it's not the one you think. I love that. Yeah,
I also think that people misunderstand free speech. If there
was one argument, I wish that people would be a
bit more thoughtful about when they hurl. Yeah, it would
be free speech. Yeah. A study reported on by Wire

(44:42):
called Insights into Sexism Male Status and Performance moderates female directed,
hostile and amicable behavior. That's quite a title. Found that
harassment towards women from men goes up when men are losing.
And I can addest to that. I'm sure I won
this tournament once and the experience was so terrible. I
have not competed since I felt like I lost. Man,

(45:06):
I felt like I have lost in so many ways.
That's that's my point. I mean, this is this is
gonna sound dumb, but there's probably a woman out there,
a woman or a girl out there who was gaming
who had an experience like the one that you just
described where it was so bad you thought never again.
That person could have been a professional gamer. You don't
know all of the think of all of the talent,
the promising talent that we could be losing out on

(45:28):
because we are allowing them to be bullied and harassed
out of gaming. Yeah. And I mean, even this, like
as dumb as it it was, there was prize money involved.
There was like five prize, So we need a women
should be able to get feed for that money too.
Oh man, here's another quote from this study. Female initiated
disruption of a male hierarchy in sights hustile behavior from

(45:51):
poor performing males who stand to lose the most status
These results suggest that it is lower skilled, poor performing
males that are significantly more hostile towards females, and higher
skilled focal players are more supportive. So women threatened to
the hierarchy and dudes don't like it, And if they
don't threaten it, then the men are like, okay, you're

(46:11):
allowed to stay in here. Wow, I also love poor
performing males just as it. Yeah. Um, The researchers did
not that this dynamic changes based on games, so again, please,
we're painting with broad rushes, but there are differences. There're
certainly pockets that are not like this, and a lot

(46:32):
of accounts from female gamers lamented that as a woman
you're expected to be twice as good and if you want.
It was seen as due to someone else's failure or success.
But if you lost, that was because you're a silly
woman and didn't know what you're doing. Of course you are.
What other reason could it be? Yeah, when I won
that tournament, it was definitely like, oh my controller, she cheated.

(46:53):
She I don't know something's wrong here. This couldn't happen
and not be something have Yeah, like some wild explanation.
It couldn't have be that you were better than them.
You were that good. It has to have been. Oh
my house got struck by lightning and the server blinked
and blah blah blah. You know. Yeah, Well this was
an interesting case because we were all playing in the
same room, but somebody said he could hear a fire

(47:15):
alarm and it was distracted to him, and I'm like,
we're all here, with anyone else here, We're all here.
It sounds like another piece of reasoning from a poor
performing mal bird. Pass burn wherever you are not listening
to this. I hope he's listening. Oh God, maybe maybe
he's changed. He was kind of a decent fellow outside

(47:36):
of that. So moderately performing mail, moderately performing mail, we
can only hope vigin. So we have a little bit
more to talk about. But we're going to pause for
one more quick break for word from our sponsor, and

(47:57):
we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So life Wire has an
article called Xbox Live Survival Guide for Female Gamers, and
it starts out with this tip. First off, guys, when
there is a gal in the room, just leave her alone.
You don't need to her ask her and ask her
what she looks like and to send her weird pictures
you can, and we'll be banned from Xbox Live if

(48:18):
you harass people too much, So just knock it off.
Just because you can hide behind the veil of anonymity
doesn't mean you have the right to ruin the game
for other people. But then it continues. Since most guys
probably won't bother you to pay attention to that paragraph,
you ladies are going to have to take charge of
how you are treated online, and the article continues with
tips like play with friends, use the player review feature,

(48:39):
and not calling attention to yourself things we shouldn't have
to do. This reminds me of the running thing again, like, yeah,
it's just something. Ah, it's ridiculous that there's even a
playbook for this, like how to play as a woman
versus how to play as a man, but there is.
Xbox Lives actual code of Conduct does not mentioned sexism,

(49:01):
but players are told not to harass any players as
always more accurate gender portrayals, I eat not sex objects
made for the male gaze, which it is totally cool
to have a sexy lady, but she needs to be
a character and not an object. And more women in
the industry is a good place to start if we
want to change this culture, and I think we do.

(49:22):
I think we do, think we do. Um Calling out
harassers in the game and community, both by creators and
players is another step. So basically having a bit of
a me to effect in gaming. Yes, I have a
theory that there are certain industries that so far me
too has been slow or not happen, but once they do,
it's going to be a domino where it turns out

(49:42):
it's just creeps and turtles the whole way down, Like
who knew. I feel like video games, once there's a
you know, a real high profile professional in the industry,
I think it's going to be a real yeah situation.
I do too. I do think the sex objects saying
sex objects do not warrant respect, and if this is
a media is shaping the perception of players is particularly

(50:05):
young players, and all they see representations of women as
sex objects. In their eyes, women don't deserve respects. Absolutely,
think about the messages that you're passing down a younger
generation with when that's the case. Something I found real
interesting was this idea that you could propose a tech
solution to this issue, and that really revolves around creating

(50:26):
a social stigma in these games around harassment. So one
solution revolves auto muting. And so if someone is muted
ten percent more than average in a game, that person
is automatically muted, and so you wanted to you could
un mute them, but hopefully that would really drive home
the point that hey, nobody wants to hear your harassment,
nobody wants your sexism, and really sort of doing what
I think is the more kind of difficult, challenging cultural

(50:49):
work of creating an environment where there is stigma and
shame attached to being a harasser. I think that steps
like those are difficult because it's difficult to shape culture.
It's difficult to shift culture. But I think that where
we can normalize the attitude that this isn't cool and
that you're not going to be seen as this like
bad boy, edgy rebel, if you do this, you're gonna

(51:10):
be seen as a loser and nobody's gonna want to
hang out with you on the game. I think that
that's really really important. Yeah, and I think a video
game researcher at University of Melbourne, Robbie Fordyce would agree
with you. Is when he was talking about online harassment
in an interview I was reading, he said that it
is indicative of something much bigger. Quote in terms of
solving the problem, I don't know that games can do it.

(51:33):
I wish it was possible, But gaming is simply a
hyper and intensified expression of a more general problem with
toxic masculinity. So it is a big culture shift in
conversation that we're going to have to continue to have,
and we're going to have to keep pushing for a better,
better world in gaming, but in general as well, because
it is sort of all tied together. And I wanted

(51:55):
to leave on this uplifting call to action written over
at Bustle by s Zan Salmon. Video games are for everyone,
There for me, there for you, There for our little
sisters and our daughters to create, to play, and to critique.
We cannot allow cruel, statistic people to take our joy
away from us. We need to stand up to game
or gate and keeping ourselves. But it starts with you

(52:15):
and me. It starts with us refusing to shut up.
There we go, and I want to end on an
angry note, which is, hey, poor performing males, stop it
just stop. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to
see your dick. Stop it just stop. I love everyone,
love everyone. I love that. I feel like we've given

(52:35):
you a new phrase, the catchphrase. I'm already planning how
I'm going to use poor performing males in my daily life.
Like looks like another poor performing mail. Actually, that should
be a thing for the show, like hashtag poor performing mail.
The author of the study is gonna think, what did
I create with this? What if you see someone harassing

(52:55):
someone on Twitter, you can just say it looks like
another hashtag poor before mail. I really want to start this. Yeah,
and I love it. It's so of course, it's like
very on brand for us that it's inspired by a
gut bacademic study perfect perfectly lines up with with everything
we believe in over here. I'm going to try to

(53:16):
find that guy O the poor performing mail. You should
send him this episode. That'd be a good diss. Send
him an email that just says I thought you'd like this,
and then the link to the episode. But no other contacts.
Oh man, that's good. That's a that's a nice like
I am I hold grudges. That's a nice, like long come.

(53:38):
It's like all you thought I forgot about this. Well
I didn't. I did it, but I thought on national
podcast mother not to self. Do not just purch it off.
Stay on our good side everyone. You know you're not wrong. Okay.
So that brings us to the end of our our
video game episode. Something tells me we will be returning
to address other aspects of this because there's a lot

(53:58):
to talk about. But in the meantime, we're gonna read
some listener mail. Sarah wrote, I wanted to recommend some
books that may or may not count as published fan pick.
The first is The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It
is a feminist reimagining of classic fairy tales that brings
the latent sexual and violent undertones out, but it never
feels gratuitous. The other is my absolute favorite book, The

(54:21):
Penelope ad by Margaret Atwood. This is centered around Penelope,
Odysseus's wife from the Odyssey, and it's her side of
the story. Another really great one is Grendel by John Gardner.
And finally last one is Helen of Troy by Margaret George.
This is the Trojan War from the point of view
from the woman who quote started it, you know, because
it had nothing to do with Agamemnon being an aggro

(54:43):
asshole or the idea that Minnelis was entitled to hell
and like, dude, I get it, your wife left you.
That sucks. Get the hell over it anyway, apologize for
their aunt. I have so many feelings about toxic masculinity
and misogyny and greekness. I hope you'll check out these
books and thinks so much for the great show. Well,
thank you. I love book recommendations too, so very excited

(55:03):
to check those out. Next letter, Sophia wrote, firstly, I
want to say thank you for creating my favorite podcast,
and I especially want to thank you for defining a
concept that has really helped me see myself and other people.
And I'm more forgiving light the problematic faive. I tend
to hold myself in very high regard, and I let
my insecurities project onto people being overly critical of them
as a way to make me feel better about myself.

(55:25):
That sounds very familiar to me, because I do the
same thing. The notion of a problematic faith has helped
me realize that nobody's perfect, least of all myself. In
a way on my own problematic faith I've caught myself
saying incredibly classiest and ablest things with no malicious intent.
But I'm glad to have exceptionally woke friends that have
called me in on it, and I am constantly trying
to be more aware. Thanks to the problematic faith, I

(55:46):
also see how the people around me are problematic and imperfect,
but knowing this is okay and that they are still
a good person has been a great eye opener to
a person like me who likes to see the world
in black and white. Having a term for the problematic
fave really hits the nail on the head and my
opinion and as a daily reminder of all of our
imperfection and humanity. Sophia, I love this. I can completely

(56:06):
relate to it. I have to say we did not
coin the phrase problematic fave. I wish I did, but
it's something that I really found eye opening, and so
I'm glad that you found that eye opening as well.
And I always say I'm my own problematic fave. I
am your girl is problematic. You know, we all say
things and do things that we wish we hadn't, and
it's so much easier to look at the problematic behavior

(56:27):
of others, and at least for myself, I find myself
doing that as a way to not think about or
deal with our parts, my own problematic and so it
is a youthful concept. I'm glad that you found it
useful as well. Yeah, I mean pretty much everything we
talked about, like this episode video game, it was problematic, fave.
You know, it's again you can still like something. You

(56:49):
can still like something and try to work to improve it.
I would say that means you'll like it even more so.
Thanks to both of them for emailing us that you
two can email us mom Stuff and how staffers dot com.
Where else can they find us? On social media? They
can find us on the social media. We are on
Instagram at stuff I've Ever told You and on Twitter

(57:10):
at mom Stuff Podcast. But if it's harassment to say it,
because we're gonna mute you and you'll never even know,
it'll be up fart into the wind. Yes and things.
As always to our producer, to Kathleen Killian, we're waiting
to her in the studio. Yeah,