Most Women Disguise Their Gender When Gaming Online To Avoid Sexual Harassment
New research that asked 2,000 women their gaming habits has revealed that 76 percent of them have disguised their gender while playing online. Of these, 93 percent did so due to experiencing sexual harassment when gaming. Despite women making up almost half the players in the US, they still face immense levels of harassment.
Unfortunately, the research done by FandomSpot will come as no surprise to any woman, or almost anyone who knows a woman who games. Just over half the women who disguise their identities use masculine-sounding or ambiguous ones, and almost 20 percent said they won't be presenting as their real gender anytime soon.
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The research uncovered some more disturbing information. Barely one in five women feel comfortable talking to others online via voice chat while playing, and a quarter have stopped playing specific games due to the amount of abuse they've received.
It's easy to see the rampant sexism women in gaming face on a daily basis. Female Twitch streamers are regularly accused of "stealing" views from hard-working men simply because they have boobs, even though there are only two women in Twitch's top 50 highest earners - Pokimane and Amouranth.
Pokimane and Mizkif have both recently spoken about the glass ceiling women on the streaming platform face. They noted that while women may stand out initially on the male-dominated platform, they are then "hard capped at a ceiling of around 600 to 1,000 viewers."
One male streamer, JasonR, has been accused of muting any women he plays with online, showing that even if women don't get directly harassed they can still be ignored just for being women.
It's not just players and fans who make
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