Women hide when they game online to fend off sexist comments, discrimination and harassment
21 May 2021
59% of women who play video games online mask their gender to avoid harassment, according to a new study by Reach 3.
Why it matters: Women face harassment that makes simply enjoying a multiplayer video game online a fraught proposition.
- Some women play as male characters, refrain from speaking over voice chat, disengage, or seek women-only gaming groups to avoid sexist comments and harassment.
- "We try to hide what we are so people don't flirt with us, send us stuff or send us messages we really don't want or pictures," one respondent to the Reach 3 survey said.
- Three quarters said they've faced gender-based discrimination, including sexual messages, patronizing comments and "men throwing or leaving a game when finding out the player is a woman."
The big picture: Gaming has historically been marketed to boys and men, explicitly or implicitly encouraging a culture in online games that is hostile to girls and women. Progress to create a more tolerant atmosphere is slow.
- Experts say men need to call out other men, to create a climate inhospitable to harassment.
- The games industry itself and the competitive gaming scene are dominated by men and have been slow to root out harassers and abusers. A wave of #MeTooaccountsmadeheadlines last summer.
Women play many of the same games as men.
- 88% of women in Reach 3's survey say they play competitive games, including MOBAs, first-person shooters, fighting games and more.
Watch this viral clip from January, in which a streamer verbally dismantles a sexist male Twitch viewer as she flawlessly plays a game.
The bottom line: Chronic harassment of women and girls happens in such great numbers that many women aren't allowed to be themselves even in online spaces.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.