The year of 2009, I found myself learning how to play MMORPG's (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) and quickly learn to never mention that you are a girl. Why?
Expect three reactions:
The guys will make sexual comments and follow you around.
Apparently, they want to "protect" you.
You'll be called fake because they'll associate you with other gamer girls who have had no idea what they're doing.
I hate to break it to you but not every girl is the same. I don't call out the handful of boys I've played with that suck just has bad but please, go on.
Guys don't care.
As the year passed and streaming became a thing, the reputation of women that play games severely got tainted by the other women that would show off their assets on the streaming platforms. Of course, in a streaming platforms e-girls are doing more than destroying the image of girls playing; they are also making it harder for people that work themselves out to create good content. I am not saying that all the women that stream are like this, no, in fact, several of them are fantastic players, but e-girls are far more common.
E-girls are the reason why on MMORPG's we pick a male character to be taken seriously. The irony of that is that in real life, we also need to be portrayed as male to be taken seriously by men and it just should not be like that. Back to the gaming world, playing a male character and keeping our mic off gives us some peace, although, when we play female characters we like to brag (if provoked) to the enemy (if male) was defeated by a woman. Doing this is tilting for men but hey, a lot of us know how to play games! We are not e-girls, we are the girls that are wearing hoodies and eating pizza while thinking why we got stuck with idiots that want more kills than being objective. We are the girls that spent hours trying to create good content to receive nothing in return because e-girls are out there building a show to get more money.
Today, I still play online games, and no I do not stick with a male, I also play with females characters and make sure to make my character be the strongest one. I play with a group of guys and girls and nonbinary people that respect your gender and sexuality and stand up for each other when bullied. Sure, some of the guys drool over e-girls, but at the end of the day, they complain about how they are not playing the game at all, and it's annoying.
What I am trying to say is to not hide your identity as a woman that plays the game seriously. Go out there and prove them that your assets are not the ones getting the kills but your skills also, that you are not an e-girl.
