Wait, that's supposed to be armour?

character from World of Warcraft

Yes, yes indeed, that revealing piece of cloth that looks like a bikini is meant to be full body protection. Oh and don't fret! No one would ever think about stabbing you in the stomach or shooting an arrow trough your heart.

In many online games it seems as though women have some kind of magical power to protect their most vulnerable parts. Parts like the chest and stomach that should be covered unless you wish to die in the first seconds of a fight. In MMOs though that doesn't matter. For some reason, either the enemies are too stupid to actually hit the large target that presents itself or female characters have indeed powers I wasn't aware of. In any case, this is the first reason I personally and probably many other women do not like to play online games.

The way female characters are dressed in MMOs always bothered me. Not only is there no logic behind their attire but also does it feel like they are only there to please the male gamers eye. I don't mean to say that all men like how women look in those games but they are clearly designed to do so. It is just really strange to walk into a fight, wearing nothing but a metal bra and a short skirt while the male characters wear heavy armour with broad shoulders, sticking their iron clad chest out in a proud manner. But sadly the sexism doesn't end here. As a woman playing a video game, especially online, you will most likely become victim to harassment and before that, you are told that you will never be as good as a man. I do want to stress that not all men are like this but there are still far too many out there that really think that way.

characters from League of Legends

So let me just summarize everything until that point. Before a woman even starts to play a game she will probably have heard in one or another way that games are for men and that she won't ever be as good as one of them no matter how much she tries. After that she is confronted with does absolutely unrealistic looks and armour, luckily you don't have to choose to play your own gender. Maybe she chooses a female or a male but the fun begins when men find out they are playing with a woman. Suddenly she is called names, being told that she is a bad gamer, that she doesn't belong, she should go back into the kitchen or just have sex with them. They are not all like this but those things happen.

There is something really sad I want to talk about at this point because online games are not only a battleground where men stand against women but men against men as well. I have read several comments to articles regarding the way females are treated in-game and some men said that if women want to be seen as equals they should stop whining because men don't treat each other any differently. In my opinion this is awful and I don't understand how this can be fun at all. Online games look like a battleground to me, a war zone and not because the game developers intended to throw the player into a war like environment but because everyone is fighting each other and not because the game demands it.

Knowing all this it's no surprise to me than many women stop playing online games or try to hind their identity. As a consequence of constant harassment there aren't that many all female groups entering tournaments, neither are there many females joining other groups. Which doesn't mean that women aren't capable of being professional gamer for example Kat "Mystik" Gunn .

Despite the fact that female gamers aren't any worse than male gamers there are still many men out there thinking that, only because they are male, they have an advantage over women. To some extend that's true but not because men are better than women but because female gamer have to endure much more negativity and have to fight much harder to be accepted. We don't start from even grounds.

I now have come to the end of my entry but before I go and leave you to your thoughts I want to thank every man, every male gamer that treated me and my sister with respect, seeing us as equals and thank you to all the women who did not think I am crazy for playing video games.

Short video about female gamers:
Just A Game