Women often have a hard time gaming. A female streamer reveals the kinds of hostility she sometimes has to deal with.
AnneMunition is one of the more well-known female streamers, with nearly 300,000 subscribers and over 10,000,000 channel views, who has built a loyal audience. A few days ago, she spoke out about how women are still treated in video games and responded to the following questions on Twitter.
“Why don’t you use voice chat?”
“Why can’t I find a girlfriend who plays video games?”
“Why do you mute people when they ask if you’re really a woman?”
In the video, she only shows clips from a single round of “Rainbow Six Siege” and what kind of hostility rains down there – solely because she is a woman.
In the video, it seems she can’t please the gentlemen of creation either. When she dies early in a round, she is insulted for being “so bad.” When she then gets multiple kills, they say she “took them from the others.”
Further insults come continuously during the match:
- “How old is it?”
- “Your kind is not welcome here.”
- “Hey, tranny bitch, kill her.”
- “We are not like this because we dislike women. We are like this because you suck.”
- “Are you playing the right game, lady? This is not League of Legends or some shit where you just flaunt your tits in the stream.”
- “I hope you die.”
Mixed reactions as a response: The reactions to the video are varied. On one hand, AnneMunition receives a lot of support from other women who also state that they always end up as targets for hate when they reveal themselves. Some other players counter that one “shouldn’t take it so seriously” and that insults on the internet are just part of it. It’s pure coincidence that it sometimes also affects women.
In an interview with Kotaku, AnneMunition added that she thinks “maybe I’m a naive fool, but I don’t refuse to accept that we can’t all treat each other a little nicer.” She is tired of the subject being swept under the rug time and again and everyone pretending that everything in this area is fine.
“Players have learned that they can do these things without fearing any consequences.”
Maybe it’s time for some serious consequences.
