Of course, this is a way of sexism. Most people get surprised by the fact that you are a "gamer girl" and have a great amount of prejudices about it such as you only play "girly-looking" games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. As a matter of fact, this also happens inside of the gamer's community throughout insults and sexist comments in the voice chat. Nowadays, it is also common to classify every woman that shares her gaming experience in social media as a "fake gamer girl".
However, not everything are bad news, the girl's presence in video games is increasing exponentially every year and owing to platforms such as Twitch they are starting to be recognized. Undoubtedly, creating woman references in every topic has an extreme importance for every girl to be whatever she wants to achieve, including gaming.
Well, talking about my personal feelings about games, this are my way of spending my spare time and also I've met some of my friends by this kind of community.
During quarantine, they helpped me to "escape" of they anxiety that being isolated can create and I really enjoy them. I want to encourage every girl that reads this to try them and to not let society tell you what you must like to do for being a woman.
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I'm always glad to read something about video games, because I consider them the tenth art (and also for others critics since the National Endowment of the Arts considered video games as a "work of art" in 2011), but your post have some issues for me.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the idea of only weird people play video games is quite obsolete for the majority of society because, everybody plays video games! Maybe in the 90's or even in the first half of the 00's but, nowadays? Nah, the video games industry makes more money than cinema, so...
By other hand, I would like to see in your post a series of famous females players. You complain about the (wrong, IMO) idea of people being sexist with girls on video games, but you don´t talk about any female player, only about you, and I think there are many examples on YouTube and Twitch.
As a girl that doesn’t usually play videogames, I really appreciate that Marta made this post about the problems women go through in gamer communities.
ReplyDeleteI often hear or read experiences of women in these environments that talk about the mistreatment they suffer because of gamer men and society’s stereotypes. That is just unfair.
Also, I think it is crucial to bring this topic up because videogames are part of the everyday life of children. In between them, there can be young girls that dream about growing up to work in this field or just make it their hobby. Our responsibility as future teachers is to encourage them to do what they want and educate young boys to respect and embrace them, in order to make stereotypes disappear and create a safe gaming environment for girls and women.
Yes, Marta, I totally agree – it is important to move beyond such limiting patriarchal prejudices and you and your classmates as future teachers are well situated to positively influence your future pupils in this way!
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