Greetings earthlings!
Welcome to the MadqueenShow, I am your host the MadQueen
On today's menu, we're going to talk about women in video games culture
This is a video I wanted to make as a result of the recent, and not exactly surprising
controversy that happened in Spain regarding a gaming event that was only for women called
"Gaming Ladies", a private event that was organized by the journalist @Blissy
in collaboration with King
This event that was scheduled to take place this summer in Barcelona was canceled due
to pressures of men that harassed both organizers under the excuse that the event only for women
violates the right of men
to make the world revolve around their dicks
First of all, if you're in this video because you are anti-feminist and you want to insult
at least take the effort to watch the whole video because if you don't you most probably
are going to comment something that I already refuted here, so if you really want to contradict
my arguments it would be great that you know
what my arguments are in the first place
But if you just want to show yourself as an ignorant please go ahead and leave your trashy
comment that YouTube is going to filter and no one is going to see but you
Because, pro tip for haters, any interaction counts, it doesn't matter if it's a like,
a dislike, a praise or an insult, YouTube counts it as interaction and it improves the
visibility of this video, so with every dislike and insult my video goes one step up in YouTube's
ladder, so please, go ahead
If you're obviously looking for something to get offended by, don't worry,
I'm going to help you find it
As I gamer that has been playing games all her life I find pretty amusing when a man
tries to "defend his territory" in the gaming industry
and even in the "nerdy world"
Mostly because most of the times these sexist comments are done by people that are assuming
things about me just because I'm a woman, not considering that I started reading comics
before I started reading books, or that I spent most my childhood and up to my adult
life playing pen and paper roleplaying games, or that I had my first console when I was
8, but even though I must confess that I look like a nerd, and even more when I was a teenager
and in my early twenties because nerd shirts were only done in big sizes so I always looked
like a fat teenage schoolboy, even though it was pretty obvious that I was really into
these things men always felt the need to check on my knowledge before applying the label
of "nerd" on me, like it was some sort of sign of approval, because I obviously I
need the approval of a man to be considered nerd
And by that I don't mean that you have to
look a certain way to be a nerd, that is absurd, but obviously if you wear a Spawn tee and
a Boba Fett lighter and a Batman wallet I believe that it's safe to assume that a
person with so much merchandise over her is most probably a nerd and if you need to question
her about her knowledge on Frank Miller's Batman compared to Bob Kane's Batman before
you accept that she has this taste and most probably she knows her shit better than you,
it says a lot more about you than about her
Video games and all nerd products, in general, are marketed for men, that is true
The trend is changing, really slowly but is changing
and now I'm going to explain the reasons why
But it's true, advertising is targeted for men, that is probably the main reason why
we live in this social construct that says that gaming is a male activity
To start with I'd like to talk about some statics, and I'm going to leave a link in
description for the sources of this statics for you to check along with other reference
material used for this video, because I don't want you to believe only in my word and having
sources to back your data is needed
As I said before, one of the "funniest" things around talking about women in gaming
as consumers is that it is socially accepted that gaming is a male activity
And why is it funny?
If you watch the statics you can see that in 2014 women represent the 48% of the gaming
community, that's almost the half
Not only that, statics also confirms that for a female to identify herself as a gamer
she needs to spend more time playing games than a man, so a casual male gamer identifies
himself as a gamer while only hard gamer women do so
So, 2014, what a great year for videogames, it was the year of Alien: Isolation, Bayonetta 2
Dark Souls 2, Destiny, The Evil within…
it was a great year to be a gamer, wasn't it?
Well, maybe not that much if you were a woman
2014 was also the year when the organization of the E3 event had to step out and give a
solution to the problems with sexual assaults on past edition, that was even called the
"Creepy-rapey-E3"
Many women, both visitors and journalists, stopped complaining about men constantly checking
on their knowledge on games, even if they made a living out of this knowledge, to share
stories about sexual harassment and sexual assaults at E3 up to a point where several
exhibitors threatened the organization to cancel their appearance until the organization
could guarantee that this was a safe convention for everybody
The most ridiculous part of this controversy and this problem with sexual harassment at
E3 is that it didn't get full visibility and attention until some years later, when
a male employee of Deep Silver complained on Twitter that he ended up getting drugged
at a party at E3 by drinking a drink intended for a girl he was hanging out with
2014 was also the year when Anita Sarkeesian, the founder of Feminist Frequency, had to
cancel a speech for the first time, under threats over her life and the lives of people
attending, within a tour she was making on her video series "Tropes Vs Women in Videogames"
where she analyzes the figure of women in videogames, that since the launch of its Kickstarter
campaign triggered a wave of sexist harassment against her that is still going on up to today,
a noxious campaign to discredit or intimidate outspoken critics of the male-dominated gaming
industry and its culture
And if you want to see what this constant harassment looks like you just need to type
her name on Twitter
2014 was also the year where pro-gaming saw a jump in popularity among women, where the
viewership of e-sports went from 15 to 30 percent, the double of female viewers
Even though there is a very small presence of professional gaming women, which according
to a study from SuperData Research it is in part a result of marketing strategies targeting
a very specific demographic: men between the ages of 21 and 34, so Companies like Coca-Cola
or Intel, that have this target in mind, are more prone to support male professionals because
they want to connect with "affluent young men", even though women also drink Coke
So, again, marketing campaigns shaping our vision of reality
This may not be the only reason, though, because online abuse has been prevalent in the gaming
community for years, especially on e-sports, and If you don't know how hard it is you
can ask the video game developer at Ubisoft and professional gamer Stephanie Harvey, who
has to face death and rape threats on a daily basis for daring to be a professional gamer
and to talk about the representation of women in the video game industry
And, again, if you need to understand what this online harassment looks like, you will
find a link in the description to a very educating blog called "Not in the Kitchen Anymore",
where the gamer Jenny Haniver documents her experiences in online gaming with transcriptions
of audio captures of her online sessions.
That is an information that you only need if you're a man because if you're a woman
either you're incredibly lucky and improbable as a unicorn or you know exactly what I'm
talking about
2014 was also the year of the Gamer Gate controversy
Starting in August that year, supporters of the GamerGate movement, that basically are
against facing issues of sexism in video game culture and in general have a problem with
progressing, specially in games
supporters of the Gamer Gate movement starting a coordinated
harassment movement targeting several women in the video game industry, including the
video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, and the feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian,
and the male video game developer Phil Fish for trying to defend them
Gamer Gate supporters subjected these people amongst other
to harassment, doxing, death and rape threats
The GamerGate trash even published personal information of the people they were targeting
like their home addresses and telephone numbers in 4chan and Reddit, as well as information
of the people that defended the victims of this coordinated harassment, like the YouTuber
Boogie2988 that saw a stranger posting the address of his home
along with a death threat to his wife
If you slept under a rock for the past 4 years and know nothing about that, I'm going to
put in the description a link to the Wikipedia page that explains the Gamer Gate controversy
because I'm afraid that I cannot talk about this subject anymore
or my blood is going boil
So, yes, 2014 was an excellent year to be a gamer
Not so excellent if you are a woman
So, what a surprise!
The statics that said that in 2014 almost half of the gamers were women and it dropped
all the way to this year, to a 41%
8% of women, and in here we're talking about roughly 16 million people as this study is
based on America, 16 million people thought that the gaming culture was not for them and
just stopped wanting to be part of it
The video game industry lost 16 million consumers only in America
And you, men watching it, lost 16 million opportunities to get married to a woman that
likes the same things as you do
So, yes, right now the gaming culture is a scary place to be if you're a woman
your knowledge and validity as a gamer is always going to be questioned, you're going
to get harassed if you play online, You're going to receive sexist comments if you have
a gaming YouTube channel, you're going to be judged by your looks or the amount of fabric
on your tees is you're on Twitch, and if you're public enough and have enough visibility,
then prepare for death and rape threats, and even to have to face these threats offline
if your personal information gets leaked
Just a note, because I know what's coming next
I know what you're thinking dude
Not all men are like that
So, if you're a man and your first response is going to be "not all men", yes not
all men do this and do that, you are completely missing the point
First, because you're trying to shift the discussion here, about the oppression of women
to the protection of man's image, because in here we're not talking about men in the
first place, and maybe "not all men" do harass women, but "Yes all woman" have
to suffer harassment from men, so please don't try to derail the conversation to make it
about you
And second, because by saying "not all men" you're saying that you're more worried
about yourself than about the epidemic of violence and harassment committed by men against
women, so if you really believe that your ego is more important than that
you have a problem
When we do discuss about these things the main matter here is that we are really tired
of being treated like we don't matter, because men believe they have the right to make everything
revolve around them, so if you say "not all men are like that" what you are really
saying is "yes, this needs to revolve around me too, so I'm like that too"
So, back to the building, harassment and sexist behaviors are the everyday bread of women
in gaming communities
No matter if the perpetrator is a kid whose parents didn't slap on time to teach him
some respect for other people or if it is a public figure with lots of influence, the
truth is that this is a reality, you like it or not, because the funny thing about reality
is that it doesn't give a shit about your opinion, it won't cease to exist if you
don't believe in it
This is a reality that is so accepted that even when you are listening to a conversation
where a woman is harassed, or even a conversation that makes her feel uncomfortable and where
she's forced to set some boundaries around that conversation for her to feel safe this
is seen as an overreaction, because we women are expected to accept that and to put the
feelings of the man saying those things to us on top of the feelings that we're having
for being treated that way, because the other person that is being disrespectful to you
doesn't want to take responsibility over his words, so the responsibility is always
Do men insult other men in gaming environments?
Yes, of course, but if the answer of the insulted man is "shut the fuck up" it's not considered
an overreaction because he's not expected to accept this behavior and he's accepted
to set some boundaries on the way other people treat him
So where do we go with this?
The original "Gaming Ladies" event, and I hope they make a new event, because is more
than necessary
Safe spaces where we are free of men that want everything to revolve around them, where
women are free to wear whatever cosplay they want without a men thinking and acting like
this cosplay and the amount of fabric of this cosplay revolves around them, spaces where
a woman can play freely without a man feeling the need to undervalue her skills as gamer
so he can have the fake feeling of being "better"
I know there are some men who don't like that, like the huge controversy around the
event proved, that want everything in gaming culture to revolve around them, and the ironic
thing is that with their behavior they proved that these safe spaces are really needed
If it wasn't for the emotional cost of the controversy, because we're talking about
coordinated harassment towards Blissy, the woman that was behind this event, and this
harassment has an emotional cost that no one participating in it wants to assume, if it
wasn't for that, I would be absolutely happy with this controversy, even though the event
was cancelled
First, it gave visibility to the issue
This is an issue that is visible for most women that are in the gaming community, I
mean, no choice here, we have to suffer it, but it's invisible for most men that, as
they don't have the experience, they don't understand up to what point this is a problem
and how serious it is
Again, the first thought men have: overreaction
You're over reacting
A thought that is based on two false premises: first that we somehow have the obligation
to tolerate this kind of behavior even if it makes us feel uncomfortable or unsafe because
we're women and second that someone else has any kind of right to tell us how we should
feel and we need the validation of that person over that feeling
because is not valid by itself
A statement that only wants to invalidate the frustration we feel when we encounter
this kind of issues to avoid responsibility
No, we don't have any kind of obligation and no we're not overreacting, and all this
controversy proved it
It proved how serious this problem is
Second: it validated the point here
See, people, usually men, that don't understand how serious the problem is, that don't understand
the need of these safe spaces
And they position themselves against creating separated spaces for women because they believe
that this, instead of solving the issue, is going to make it worse
I even saw people comparing a woman only event to a concentration camp, like, yeah, concentration
camps where absolutely safe
They do that because they don't understand that there is something that we need to feel
safe from
But all this harassment, all this controversy proved the point that we need some spaces
where we can get rid of these assholes, and we can be ourselves and feel safe
Because that's what these safe spaces are about
as the name says, to be and to feel safe
So, all the harassment and controversy validated the point, proved to the people not understanding
this, that these people and these kind of behaviors are indeed the ones we need to feel
safe from, that there is something we need to feel safe from
And everybody against these kinds of initiatives, what they are saying to us is: you don't
have the right to feel safe
And my answer to that is, why?
Because you say so?
Third: it united female gamers and gave more visibility to the event
There are many women that when they see how bad the things are in gaming culture they
just drop the controller and say "ok, that's it, this world is not for me", but seeing
that there are many others that will stand against this kind of behavior may pick the
controller back like "well, maybe there's hope"
And, well, as Mulder says if I quit they win
There are lots of women that didn't know of the existence of this event until the controversy
exploded and obviously now they want to be part of it
So, yes, Blissy, you did a great job, even though you had to pay the emotional price
for it, and I'm very sorry for that, but at the same time very glad of your achievements
Apart from the people who are obviously positioned against women being part of the gaming culture,
and knowing that most of my viewers are men, I hope that this video gave you a glimpse
of how serious this issue is
If you still believe that men and women have the same treatment into the gaming culture,
I strongly suggest that you visit the links that I put in the description and compare
them with your own gaming experiences before having an opinion about something you don't
really know
As usual: please be informed before throwing opinions because, I'm sorry to tell you
that, but an uninformed opinion is not an opinion, is bullshit
If you're a man, please stop pretending that this is not happening, because if you're
not part of the solution, you're part of the problem
Learn about what's going on, talk to female gamers about their experience, and speak up
when you see this kind of behavior
If you're a woman and you don't feel safe in the gaming community, look for support
in other female gamers, as we're here to support each other
Look for initiatives in your environment, online and offline, to learn to defend yourself
from these kinds of behaviors
Well folks, thanks for watching
I hope you found this information useful and amusing
if you like what we do, hit that subscribe button to join
the Madqueen Army
See you in next videos and stay being amazing
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