What Not To Say To a (Girl) Gamer

It seems (some) guys need a brief refresher on how to talk to gamers that are also coincidentally female. I don’t like to separate genders when talking about gamers because we are all a united group of people who enjoy the same thing, but some of the stuff I’ve heard said to myself and other (girl) gamers is downright rude. Enjoy this list of things frequently said to female gamers with some very sarcastic answers!

1) "So what do you play, The Sims?"

Yes because I am a girl and the only game I know how to play is The Sims and the only thing I can do on The Sims is make sandwiches.

2) "Do you need me to do (blank) for you? Or I can do that for you!"

Of course I need your help because I’m a girl therefore I can’t beat this level or finish this raid on my own, I need the help of a man who actually knows about games!

3) "You’re actually really good!"

I know it might surprise you because I'm a girl so of course I should only be good at girl things, which video games aren't.

4) "Oh you play (blank), but that’s a game for guys!"

Darn, I forgot to look at the gender icon on the box to tell me which games are appropriate for my gender. Sorry!

5) "Do you even know about video games?"

No I know nothing at all about video games I just like to sit and hold the controller and take pictures of myself holding the controller for the interwebs.

Now I’m not saying every guy has this mindset towards women, but hearing these things on a daily basis gets rather annoying. This goes both ways as I’m sure men get some annoying comments as well. The next time you meet a girl who plays video games, treat her like a regular person and not as an odd alien species sent from Mars.

On another note (most) male gamers are putting women gamers on a pedestal and completely sexualizing them rather than allowing them to play games like a regular person. Look up "girl gamer" on google images and my point proves itself. Some female gamers like the attention they get by men, but most often girls just want to play games without drawing so much attention and criticism to themselves. As the gaming industry opens itself up to more women interested in developing and working with games, it seems like the only way to get ahead or to gain popularity is to be pretty, or show their bodies.

(Most of) the male gaming community needs to grow up and realize that girls are going to play games, probably a lot of the same games as them, and they should be treated as equals, nothing more and nothing less.

[annoyedgamer]

The image at the bottom serves no purpose really because typing in girl anything will result on borderline explicit images. And your profile picture is of the same nature so...

Some of the other points are legitimate but some are not for example the point about men offering help. What in the world is wrong with being offered help? If you not need it say no thank you and move on there is no need to be offended by a friendly gesture.

[Conzul]

Spot on.

Personally, I refuse to police myself of any of these tropes, and the girls I play with have yet to call me out.(Maybe like 3-4 of my 30 Destiny friends) Maybe they're made of sturdier stuff.

Oh, and one more thing. I will NOT treat you like an equal, unless you ARE my equal. I don't care WHAT gender you are.
If you are inferior, I will tell you so if I think it will help, and outline how you can improve.
If you are equal, then I will treat you as equal and probably not say much of anything.
If you are superior, I will treat you as a superior, and learn from you whenever I get the chance.
And I will always be judging everyone I meet, so that I may place them into one of those categories.

[thorstein]

In my experience, most of the males that don't know how to talk politely to women are also incapable of polite discourse around males.

I love to game. I love to have friends that joke around. Many of the times the jokes are situational. If there is a woman playing with us she will fit in wonderfully (as they often do already.)

I think the problem is that you are looking at people who are either A) socially inept or B) complete ignoramii and saying, "These people don't know how to talk to women" when in reality, they don't know how to talk to anyone.

In my experience the same guys that do that also call black people by the N-word, other men as fags or gays, also berate women.

They are nothing new. Best ignored, muted, and blocked.

For even more fun, GRIEF Them. There are entire youtube channels devoted to this. It is quite fun. My favorite in COD is to run around firing my weapon into the air near the racists. Then they get killed. Record it then post it and it is good for laughs.

I take special time out to grief racists as they rage the most and usually rage quit.

[annoyedgamer]

A lot of people use the N word now and they are not all white. Grouping is bad. Also name calling is nothing new and while rude is not really wrong as the only problem is we live in a society where everyone thinks they have a right to offend others but not to receive the same treatment.

[Concertoine]

I'm a female gamer and i've been playing games my whole life and been playing them online through xbox live since 2009. Honestly these scenarios don't pop up often, to me at least. Of the thousands of people i've run into on xbox, maybe like a couple dozen times i had a condescending experience like this. Which isn't really a lot, statistically. And most the time people said something like this, some of the more conscious and level-headed folk would shoot them down. Relative to how many girls are on xbox, i've had WAY more hostile encounters with girls actually, haha. Most of them are attention whores though.

I prefer to keep my gender ambiguous on xbox not because of this, but because i get too many kiss asses sucking up to me because im a girl who likes games. That happens way more often than any insulting or immaturity. Those people are nice and all, but i don't want to join your party every time i sign in and don't want to give you my private information lol...

Just looking at your snarky responses to questions, you look sensitive and presumptuous. Like someone saying "You're actually really good" should not arouse contempt. That's a compliment. I would take it as a compliment, at least.

[annoyedgamer]

You are right, a lot of male gamers tend to be a little socially deprived especially with female contact. They tend to gravitate towards girls wherever they see them especially on games. A lot of those girls like the attention, but some don't as you stated.

I can personally verify this as I once offered to train a girl from my school's account on an MMORPG. All I had to do was ask and kids were literally lining up begging to help. Oh, and let's not forget the loads of free stuff I was offered. It was hilarious and a little sad.

This blog is highly suspect, the user is newly joined and has not done anything on N4G besides post this copy-paste rant.

[Concertoine]

It is highly suspect, it seems like trollbait, not gonna lie.

Arguments for the whole "gaming online is a bad environment for women" usually seem to come from guys, which strikes me as odd. I dont want to sound too political, but the same thing happens with abortion arguments, a lot of the people on the podium are men who have no idea what its like to be pregnant. Like you can have whatever moral stance you want, but do you really know what its like to be a woman in that position?

Whenever some guy/girl says stuff like this, it makes me wonder what games theyre playing, and how they act online. I have the most hours online on various Battlefield games, L4D, Monster Hunter 3, Red Dead and GTA 5 and 99% of the time the only harassment i get is not intentionally malicious or rude. Just annoying, lol.

[stuna1]

Damn I never knew you were a girl gamer! Now I'll never be able to disagree with you again. /s

I have about a 50/50 mix of both girl and guy gamers on my friends list and, what's funny is a lot of the girls gamers are the one's spanking me in a round of Call of Duty or giving me strategy tips on my gameplay. I've never been the type to look a girl gamer as unqualified at playing any type of game, no disrespect I just view them as one of the guys.

[Blacklash93]

All it really goes to show is that there's tons of annoying idiots online and we've all got to tolerate them; whether they target us because of sex, age, username, performance, salt, or for no particular reason at all.

[Halo2ODST2]

"finish this raid on my own," er.. no you can't, you need 3 people to finish a raid or multiple depending on level

[Skate-AK]

The only one I have actually heard myself is "You're really good." Knew this girl that wrecked COD and everyone swore that she was just talking while someone else was playing.

[LightDiego]

What should i say then? I will stick with my pick-up lines.

[xHeavYx]

"Male gamers are putting women gamers on a pedestal and completely sexualizing them rather than allowing them to play games like a regular person"
*Checks OP's Twitter profile photo* Well... That's kinda ironic.

While I do think that most men react weirdly when they encounter a female gamer (which, let's be honest, is pretty rare with mainstream games) I also think that most of the reactions are to be expected. I mean, what man doesn't talk trash to other people while playing PVP? You'll always hear (or make) mom jokes or sexual preference jokes.
What I don't like is that some women feel that they can make a penis size joke and it's ok, but if a man makes a kitchen joke, that man automatically becomes a racist SOB

[mushroomwig]

Their Twitter profile photo and their N4G photo, it's completely hypercritical.

[Big_Game_Hunters]

@#3 everyone is a noob but me so i say that to everyone /s
This entire list just seems like a bad stereotype to me.

[Amuro]

are you an archaeologist?

You might want to take a look at this. This footage was actually used by NBC News the other day to talk about the toxic environment of gaming, especially to women by Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

ABC News Report: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Gh05t]

You know it would have only lasted 30 seconds if she muted them. Nice thing about Xbox is that I can make it so I don't hear anyone but friends and no one hears me.

Its really not that hard a concept... just mute them and move on like the rest of us who don't cry victim every time someone says something sexual or offensive towards us.

[DefenderOfDoom2]

Same thing here. If someone is just being rude on Psn, i just mute them.

[Angeljuice]

You don't want female gamers to be seen as sexual objects yet your avatar is a semi-naked female torso, you perpetuate the very thing you complain about (in typical female fashion).

[SilentNegotiator]

It must just be like, a really meta satire, right?

[knifefight]

I think she can choose to be sexy without generally condoning overt sexualization of a term/demographic, though.

If she's choosing to *be* sexy herself on a website, I see that as different than being okay with the whole of society seeing the demographic as sexy all of time.

It does look strange on the surface, though, I get what you're saying.

[SilentNegotiator]

"Sexualized things aren't okay unless *I* say that it's okay or *I* do it."

--typical feminist

[TuxedoMoon]

3) "You're actually really good!"

I don't see how this is extremely demeaning. I'm a guy, but I don't play many competitive shootings games and my friends know this. So when I to play a game like COD or even something like the EA-MMA game they like and I make them sweat, they say that. I'd say the same thing if I saw a person who ONLY played Fifa picked up smash bros and was wrecking people with jigglypuff.

The reason why many guys gravitate to gamer girls is because of similar interests. The same thing would happen if it was anime or movies or sports. If a chess player finds out there a girl that loves chess, he'd gravitate to her. It's not because ZOMGBo0bies, it's because he found someone that shares his interest. Not all gamer guys that hit on gamer girls are looking for sex. They just want a female companion they can play games with and cuddle with.

I don't know how true the gamer population based on sex is. Supposedly there are just as many male gamers as females, but when I look around all I see are males. School, work, out and about...it's mostly male gamers all around. So for me personally, if I did meet a girl that played games I WOULD treat them a little special. It's a little hypocritical to say NOT to do that too. I'm sure if you met a person that was an astronaut, your old teacher, or from a far away country, you'd treat them special in some way. It depends on the person and where they live of course. Everyone changes their tone for certain people.

Friendship equality is a little hard to get, imo. We treat each of our friends/family/colleagues a little differently. Jokes, games, and activities change based on the people we're with. Even in a gaming setting, we'd do the same thing. With some people you can talk smack, while with others you can't. For Male gamers who haven't really had female gamer exposure, it's hard to treat them like one of the guys. I guess what I'm trying to say that I wouldn't treat Veronica like John, I'd treat Veronica like Veronica.

It's messed up that female gamers get harassed and the such, but you have to understand that female gamers are rare to many male gamers. Things are slowly changing, but don't expect it to be "normal" for another generation or 2. It doesn't help that Anita the Femnazi is keeping all that progress back with her bull crap. Her actions so far made it seem like females who play videogames are always getting death threats and are always being pushed away by males. Male gamers are pretty accepting...overly accepting sometimes Anita. The reason why YOU (Anita) are being pushed away by gamers (both male and female) is because you were never a gamer to begin with and criticize a medium you have no passion or experience with only leeching money from playing a victim.

[ichizon]

I think these issues will normalize as society moves into a state where gaming is more commonplace in adults. Games have been kind of a niche up until recently, and still sort of is. Despite what recent studies hint at, male gamers still far outnumber female gamers in anything but cell phone games. And while more and more adults play games, it's still a huge minority that does anything on a "gamer" level (i.e. plays involving or a varied set of games regularly).

I don't think we can change the mentality of the vocal minority of gamers. Being a scarcity, most young guys like the idea of chatting up female gamers they come across, but generally with no experience or idea how to do so. And when those immature people are rejected, many of them become butthurt and filled with enmity.

[mixelon]

http://www.notinthekitchena... And http://fatuglyorslutty.com were always pretty funny/enlightening for this sort of thing.

Everyone gets treated differently, so nobody's experiences are representative, but being a girl can make you into troll target #1 on occasion, for sure. Immediately standing out as different in any way can do that. You should've seen the craziness when I let my daughter livestream briefly. :/ (I didn't let her anywhere near the chat so she was none the wiser) seriously ppl, eeeew.

Even here the tone (and content) of many replies changed somewhat when I started maybe being female (avatar choice) - places like PS:Home also had bizarre gender behaviour. All the girls I knew who played had male character slots they'd switch to when they wanted people to stop chasing them constantly with pickup lines and weird crotch manouvering.

[DragoonsScaleLegends]

Guys are horny creatures what do you expect lol. There seems to be lots of male gamers who were not taught how to treat women and let their hormones get the best of them or just think that the anonymity of the internet lets them say whatever they want. I have seen plenty of comments directed towards women that even grossed me out and I'm a guy.

[mixelon]

Well yeah, a little common decency goes a long way, I wouldn't suggest it's specifically a gaming thing, but im still glad people call this sort of behaviour out in our corner of the net. Not doing anything isn't going to get us anywhere. :)

[DragoonsScaleLegends]

I would say I agree with most of this blog but It's pretty hard to change peoples thoughts on what girl gamers are like when they have never met or played games with one before lol. Female gamers don't get pissed if you hear a comment like the ones in the blog post above because usually they did not even think they were saying something offensive or sexist to you. While it may piss you off that some male gamers think you suck because you are female just inform them how good female gamers can be by kicking their butt at their own game. I know I have got my butt kicked by plenty of female gamers in my favorite games before.

[mixelon]

Some people take it awwwfully personally and get angry if they get beaten by a girl, which is also pretty weird and I don't fully understand it, lol.

Reminds me of school. >.<

[Kavorklestein]

Good to know! So, As your equal who isn't trying to offend you = You said you don't like it when guys say "You're actually really good!" Well Okay! Fair enough. (=

So, we are officially equals, and no skill, or lack of skill level playing video games is due to our gender- or to be based on sex- as you are also trying to convey in your blog- Well good! That perfectly noble rule of respect also means:
That when You win, you don't try to rub it in a guy's face any harder just because you are a girl. (;
Since we can all be equals in our passion, enjoyment, and skill with video games, there is no extra bragging rights than normal. It's all about having a good game, and enjoying the game despite if it's a victory or a loss.

I can tell ya I'm not mocking you right now, and overall I can see that it still is good info.. especially for some of the socially awkward or sexually stupid folks who DON'T understand that women are people, not things, or not stupid, and that you like games too.

Anywhoo, Happy gaming!

[SpiralTear]

The girl gamers I know aren't put off by these phrases, but by the women who get offended by the phrases. They just want to play games and not hear about what a female gamer "should be."

Seriously, I encourage more people to actually talk to real girl gamers. I'm not talking about girls you meet in an online Call of Duty match or that you see in Youtube videos. Go to a game night, game club, or convention, and talk to real girl gamers in person. Trust me, the bizarre stigmas that the internet has regarding them will hold much less water. At the end of the day, they're no different in skill or capability than any guy gamer.

Once again, I feel this is a problem when internet anonymity makes idiots think they have permission to be idiots. The "girl gamer" issue completely falls apart once you talk to real girl gamers in real life.

[mixelon]

The ones I've spoken to all have very different outlooks on this sort of thing. It gets to some people more than others, and some people get a lot more shut than others, so it's not a fabrication, just complex.

[Enate]

There is a difference in skill it just has nothing to do with gender. Though I'm pretty sure that is just a given fact.

[rainslacker]

From my experience, girl gamers are just as diverse as male gamers. I tend to treat people as individuals, and not based on their gender.

If someone is nice to me, I'm nice to them. If someone is respectful to me, then i'm respectful to them. If a gamer is better than me, I accept it, and if need be compliment them. If they suck, then I don't usually bother to tell them anything because it's not very polite, and they're probably just trying to have fun.

[SpiralTear]

What a concept, right? :)

[NixonMonoxide]

I saw this rubbish and instantly rolled me bloody eyes.

Then I saw it was another "how to approach girls" on a gaming site. And laughed.

[GamePeace]

I dont need to say anything to anyone, neither male nor female ... I'm tired of this whole boys and girls shirt, really. In the end I'll prefer to play alone, haha.