There has been a sharp rise in video game popularity and streaming, but sexism toward women in the gaming community is not addressed enough among students.
“Personally, I like it more when female characters have more armor,” said Crystal Doan, a kinesiology junior in a Zoom interview. “Because I think it looks really cool. Dudes look cool in armor, so why can’t girls also look cool in armor.”
There tends to be a hypersexualization of female characters within video games themselves, whether it’s the character’s revealing clothing or their exaggerated physique.
For example, a character whose design has been oversexualized is Chun-Li from the combat game Street Fighter.
Not only is her clothing noticeably tight, but even her body proportions contribute to the sexualization of her character. She has extremely large breasts and very thick thighs, features that are often unrealistic and serve no purpose to the game.
However Chun-Li isn’t the only character with this issue.
Similar to Street Fighter, the game Mortal Kombat has a character named Kitana who wears non-protective clothing for the sake of looking sexy.
While she’s wearing clothing that covers more of her body in the newest version, Mortal Kombat 11, previous iterations show her in a bikini and thigh-high boots that expose her cleavage and thighs that don’t contribute to protecting her in battle.
Both Kitana and Chun-Li are often found on online lists rating their attractiveness similar to one created by LevelSkip, a website created by gamers to share information and in-depth content. The website has a list showcasing 50 of the “hottest female video game characters.”
Not only are female video game characters sexualized, they’re usually pushed into supporting roles, such as a healer, whose special ability helps regenerate a player’s health. It’s very uncommon to see the most powerful character in the game be female.
Melody Shepard, a pictorial art junior, said she feels female characters and female gamers are expected to play a secondary role.
“What I've seen is the man is the protagonist and you know, they have a female sidekick,” Shepard said. ”I've seen that a lot, it kind of plays on to the trope of the woman having to be the support, just supporting that strong male lead.”
Alongside this expectation, some male gamers are more degrading toward women gamers just because they identify as such.
Sandy Cai, a kinesiology senior and Spartan Gaming president, said she wants to stream her gameplay but hasn’t because of the misogynistic sentiments hurled at female streamers.
“Sometimes there's the sarcastically [“nice person”] who is just like, ‘oh, oh, you're playing with me? Oh, I bet she wants support, right? Because you're a girl,’ ” Cai said in a Zoom call. “And she's like, ‘No I play another position. I don't want to play support. I don't have to play support.’ ”
To automatically assume just because someone is female, they’d want to play a supporting character is sexist and misogynistic.
There are also common,derogatory phrases said toward female gamers during play including the term “dishwasher,” telling them to “go back to the kitchen” or even simply assuming just because they’re women they aren’t as skilled.
This type of toxicity is often shrugged off as just part of the game, but the gaming communication, whether it’s text chat or voice chat, is intended to enhance gameplay and not encourage sexism. However, it seems like women gamers tend to receive a lot of this misogyny.
Although representation has improved within video games, the community still has a lot of work to do in furthering respect for women gamers.
