Our guild had an interesting discussion last week about sexism in the Gamer community. It baffled me that there are still a lot of men who deny the gamer community is sexist at all.
Just look at all the comments surrounding EA’s announcement to include women’s teams in FIFA 16, look at the gamergate scandal from last year. The gaming community is still very much sexist, and denying that only makes you look even more ignorant than normal.

A lot of guys don’t even realize that what they say is sexist. “Oh, she’s a good player… For a girl”. No, no people it doesn’t work that way. Gender has nothing to do with being a good player or not. I’m not different because I’m a girl and I don’t require a special set of skills to be on the same level as a guy.
And then there’s the constant “kitchen” and “housewife” jokes. Newsflash, they’re not funny. But seeing as they’re only jokes apparently us women need to suck it up and deal with it. And god forbid if you say something about it, then you’re an uptight bitch who can’t laugh at a joke.

I have a male friend who is very pro when it comes to women’s rights (no he’s not gay before you ask). Even he makes inappropriate jokes at times, which I told him. He gets very offended then, how I would dare call him sexist. That’s how far the jokes at expense of women are ingrained into the male society, even the ones that do stand up for equality don’t even notice it when they make inappropriate comments themselves.

Sometimes I feel like it’s a lost fight to begin with. Women are still not equal to men in many ways. Our society has made huge steps, I’ll admit that, but we are nowhere near true equality. There are no jokes at the expense of men. Women don’t make fun of men doing “female” sports. We don’t tell our men to go to the shed and fix our shit. We don’t accuse men of being asses because “they’re probably on their period”. Yet this is stuff I have to deal with on a regular basis. Hearing a guy make fun of the women’s football World Championship is just hurtful, making comments that “women’s football is comedy” is not right and does no justice to the women who work hard to play there. It’s plain disrespectful and rude and it’s making me hate the people I’m around in the gamer community.

Ofcourse one hundred percent equality isn’t attainable. Men and women are simply not the same. Our brains develop differently making us excel at different stuff. Men are usually in better physical shape, women are better when it comes to socializing (in general, don’t bite my head off). This is the result of thousands of years of evolution. I don’t expect a woman to do the same hard physical labour as a man, often times women are simply not built for it. I don’t expect a man to be as good in sharing his thoughts and emotions as a woman simply because it’s a new concept for them. Ofcourse there are women who do hard physical labour (and I mean real hard labour, working in mines, as lumberjack etc) and ofcourse there are men who have very developed social skills. But in the base we are just not the same and it’s good that way. But it’s time that both men and women realize that we should respect eachother and stop making one or the other gender feel like less than they are. Because it’s breeding hatred and resentment and that can never end well.

So guys, please think twice before making a degrading woman joke. It might be funny to you, or when you’re alone with your buddies, but it’s highly inappropriate and sometimes hurtful when there are women around. And girls, not all men are sexist or out to hurt you. Stop putting the male society down, don’t turn into feminazi’s.

To end this post on a positive note: Look at my Dragoon Nexus Weapon!