“They don’t mean to hurt”: Female gamers’ reluctance in recognizing and confronting sexism in gaming as an online-offline juxtaposition

Abstract

Female gamers have long suffered from gender-based online abuse in the gaming community. Apart from commonly observed quitting and gender-masking behaviors from female gamers, this study explores what female gamers understand as sexism, how female gamers react to it, and why they choose certain reactions instead of others. Findings show that female gamers are keenly conscious of normalized sexism in gaming culture, and thus often prioritize preventing personal interaction with strangers online, resulting in their shared preference for gaming with trusted acquaintances, which makes gaming an online-offline juxtaposition. Shouldering gender norms in doubled dimensions of gaming and specific real-life relationships, female gamers thus become reluctant to recognize and confront less violent sexism from male acquaintances. Female gamers’ strategic self-protection, although gaining them relatively safer gaming spaces, also consolidates sexism in gaming, and further suggests gaming as a critical social space for reproducing broader gender inequalities.