Today I came across to a video in youtube, gamer girl manifesto by SexyNerdGirlPresents. It is a manifesto of female gamers telling not to sexualize them for their existence in the game world. It is not only embrace that sexist is not acceptable, but also suggest not to be homophobic and racist. In the end they questioning “you know what kind of player they are and what kind of player you are.”
Don’t be racist. Don’t be homophobic. Don’t be sexist. Follow that code and everybody will have a good time. And when someone breaks that code, CALL THEM OUT. Don’t just let it ride.
I think it is an interesting video and have great message. The female gamers in that video are quite diverse which also represent that female gamer are heterogeneous. However there are quite few differences from people who like it and dislike it. There are 13,689 likes and 10,560 dislike and most of the comments are negative. Mostly people said that in the online game gender does not matter, because the important thing is how u play. Is that really happen? I do not think so.
When I am playing online game, I never get harass but I can not generalize my experience with others. In my online field work, I did it in the online game (AIKA) and asked the experience of female gamer. One female gamer said that when people know she is female, they start to bully her. Another female gamer told me why she use male character, because she don’t want to get harass by other gamer. It means, that choosing male character seems to be a safe way for the female gamer to avoid harassment.
Then I tried to find out the female gamer’s experience in the online game, and I found an interesting blog by Jenny Hariver titled not in the kitchen anymore. Her blog documented her experience when playing games, included sexism in the online game.
Further, in her blog, Valerie who made that video told the reason of that video as well as why she choose sexynerdgirl as her account name. This is interesting since her choice to use sexynerdgirl have raise controversy and even people start to accuse her, she tried to get attention by using that kind of name.
I do support that in the gaming culture, the culture of non-sexist, non-racism and non homophobic should be embraced and that video not only mention about sexism! In the game world which is stereotypically male dominated area, it is possible that sexist behavior exist in the gamer community. Further, the game which using sexy female avatars may also contribute on it.
Interesting findings! Another recent blog entry that can be related to this, can be found here: http://www.applecidermage.com/2012/03/07/learned-helplessness-harassment/, and another one from the same blog: http://www.applecidermage.com/2012/03/29/feminists-all-the-way-down/
Regarding the comments, it would be interesting to look closer at them.
those are interesting posts and so relevant… I want to ask directly the experience of female gamers, however since there is a crash of the game program in my laptop so I should uninstall it and don’t have enough time to do it. But I had included my experience when discuss that matter with my respondents during my online work.
Thank you for the comment, and I tried to edit it a bit. Btw, I also found a reply of that video (http://youtu.be/PC9xhS0Qy74)