I’ve been referred to as a ‘Gamer Girl’ a couple thousand times in my life. It’s certainly not a description I’ve pushed for and I actually get quite offended on some levels. Not because I don’t want to be associated with video games, or with girls who do like being labelled as a ‘Gamer Girl’, maybe they find it empowering and that’s a great perspective to have. However, I personally don’t particularly want to be because I’ve clearly spent far too much time thinking about it. My problem lies firstly with the phrase: ‘Gamer Girl‘. I have an interest, something I enjoy doing sometimes that in no way encompasses my entire personality and society has decided that my gender is so crucial and relevant to that interest that it becomes the crux of it. Why? I don’t hear anyone applying genders to any other hobbies? There’s no ‘Reader Girls’ or ‘Rides A Bike For Fun Sometimes Guys’? So it only really applies to those who play games, but I reckon a guy would get pretty mad if every time they mentioned anything to do with games they were instantly referred to as a ‘Gamer Guy’ and associated with all the negative stigmas women are faced with. I am segregated into a different category because I have a vagina and I personally don’t agree with that.
But that is mostly because of those stigmas that surround girls that play games. That’s what really irritates me endlessly, that I can’t feel proud without being put down. I mention games and I am usually met with the two most popular reactions that follow the “You’re a Gamer Girl?!” statement: Type 1. I am fake and doing it for a attention, I must list all my favourite games and pull every console I’ve ever owned out of my bag as proof. Type 2. I am instantly more attractive, + 3 sexual appeal, number one girl who knows what game is, special.
I trivialise these men’s thought processes into the following: you’re a kid and you’re playing in the sandbox, you’ve been playing with all the spades and buckets there for a while building sandcastles but suddenly this little girl comes up and just takes one of the buckets away from you. Type 1. You’re upset, you were playing with the buckets then this bitch rolls up and takes one away from you. Now she’s wearing the bucket on her head and filling it with sand and taking selfies with it in her mouth? She didn’t even ask, most of the other girls thought buckets were lame but now suddenly they all want the bucket because it’s ~*~ cool ~*~ in this warped ironic, bucket-nerd culture? Yeah you have other buckets but the girls are playing with a bucket now, thinking they can come and monopolise on buckets. They probably don’t even like the bucket or are good at playing with the bucket; they’re just jumping on the bucket-bandwagon! Or Type2. Ah! That girl likes the bucket?! Other girls don’t like the bucket! She is a super special bucket-loving snowflake! We can play with the bucket together! That makes her ~*~ cool ~*~ in this warped ironic, bucket-nerd culture!
Type 1.
I got a bit carried away with that bucket metaphor, my bad. These are obviously the extremes I’ve encountered and I agree it is a stupid metaphor. But what I’m saying to these guys is: the buckets do not belong to you. Buckets are not gender specific objects. Just because you’re depicted as having taken interest in the buckets first doesn’t mean no one else gets to play with them. Just because you really love playing with the buckets does not mean all buckets are yours. Outside of that sandbox no one cares whether you have all the buckets, you’re being a dick, didn’t your mother ever tell you to share? Who are you to say that the girls don’t actually like the buckets, that they’re just pretending to seem more appealing or something? The word buckets has lost all meaning so I’m just going to break right through the powerfully constructed, mysterious, deep metaphorical walls now and just say buckets represent games.
I didn’t realise until I was a teenager that games came with such awful stereotypes based on gender. I didn’t know that because I was a girl who just happened to spend a lot of time playing games I’d be stuck with this stupid label. I was raised by a single mum; we always had consoles, always played games there was no male influence. It was just something I did, continue to do and love amongst all the other crap I do. Yet I, and other women who play, are constantly met with this crazy, defensive mentality. If I don’t know everything ever about games then I’m faking it. Assumedly so I can be part of this clique of nerd culture or so I seem more attractive. D’you think when I was seven years old playing Sonic The Hedgehog on my Sega Megadrive I was doing it so one day I could be like “Oh YEaH I BeEN plAYing GamES MaH WHolE LiFE, SUPaH SPEciaL”? When I say I have played games from a young age and enjoy them, that I’ve owned every single playstation console and currently have a PS3 and an Xbox 360 in my room, am I somehow saying that I know everything about games? Am I saying I am really great at all games? No? I am not asking to be tested, I don’t care which level in your mind I will be placed on regarding whether I am a proper gamer or a casual gamer. Stuff like that takes the fun out of games. But no I am not making it up for social approval, I just like games. That is literally it.
All that said, I can slightly empathise with your stance. There is a minuscule amount of genuine irritability to some of these claims that is created in a realistic place. When I was a kid and an early teenager I was met with a lot of disinterest and even a bit of bullying when I used to talk about how much I loved Tomb Raider or if I mentioned I’d spent the weekend playing Resident Evil or MGS. It was something I really enjoyed and yet eventually I found myself never mentioning it, never talking about it because I knew none of my friends were particularly interested and I didn’t want to bore them. Then as we got older suddenly playing games became more acceptable, even desirable and people who had before made fun of me for liking games suddenly claimed they had always played them. Which was blatant bollocks.
I completely understand that some people don’t get into games until their teens or later, it’s not like people are born and play games right out of the womb. My nan has a figurine statue thing of Lara Croft that she got with a limited edition release amongst other Tomb Raider related valuables she got years ago because she loves it that much and I don’t think she got that so guys would find her sexier. But suddenly there were girls - teenage girls, not the highest level of maturity - who were clearly doing it to seem more appealing on some level. They didn’t just play games; they wouldn’t shut up about them. Whenever there was a guy around it was all they talked about and it was very irritating because it’s coming from a twisted, teenage, ‘I hope this makes boys like me more because that’s where the majority of my self-worth comes from’ head space. I was resentful because I was a lot more immature at the time and I’m only human; being slightly socially ostracised for years for one particular reason and then that reason being adopted by loads of people who previously mocked it, that’s annoying.
So, I understand why it would be annoying for guys - and girls - who have felt like I had their whole lives and have experienced the whole “being-a-nerd-is-cool” explosion from this side. But just because we liked games before this cultural shift does not mean we own it. It does not mean no one else can have it. And most of all, it does not mean you can treat an entire gender as a hoard of lying, fake, dishonest human beings. When 99.9% of girls talk about games it’s because we like and enjoy them, we want to talk about it. I’m also not saying that makes us special snowflakes, we just like games stop making a big deal out of it. Other women - and I am almost positive some guys will have used gaming to gain cultural relevance and appeal - probably also really like games they just use it for weird purposes that aren’t particularly right or genuine in my eyes. Not from a gaming stance, more from a social, human stance. But really, in the context of the entire world, that’s not that much of a big deal either.
So sorry type 1’s but you’re just going to have to live with it. Some men like gaming. Some women like gaming. Some people like gaming. Regardless of whatever reasons you’ve made up in your mind that tell you women can’t genuinely enjoy and be good at games, you’re wrong. And sexist. And stupid. And you need to calm down.
Type 2.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily sexist to be so surprised when a girl likes a game. Some people just don’t seem like they’d like a particular game or games in general at all so it’s surprising when they break out of the social shell you’ve constructed for them in your mind. I get that. It’s when the surprise is solely because the person is female. When you put a Facebook status out mentioning that your girlfriend’s playing a game and that makes her a better girlfriend and human being in your eyes, y’know because she can grasp the concept and enjoy playing a game. In my opinion, that is so, so patronising. You are still applying our gender to a hobby. I get so annoyed when I see guys commenting on stuff saying “YOU’RE A GIRL AND YOU LIKE GAMES NSIFBNADFPBNDP *EXPLODES*”. Just stop it you patronising dick stain. That makes me feel like I need to prove myself even when I know that I don’t.
I get this sort of reaction due to a couple of other things as well. When I was a kid my favourite cartoons were X-Men, Spiderman and Dragonball Z and two of my favourite movies are The Matrix and The Lord Of The Rings. When I mention these to some guys I’m met with “BAH, BUT YOU GIRL?” or “YOU ARE AWESOME! YOU DIFFERENT FROM OTHER GIRLS” and I just don’t understand? Is it because they’re regarded as more masculine? Why does that make me “awesome”? You should know I also still own every single episode of The Little Mermaid series on VHS as well as almost 200 Disney movies because I was a total Disney kid. Is that more stereotypically feminine? Does that put me back in the girl category with all the other girls where we’re all platting each other’s hair and watching Casablanca? More worryingly, because I’m put back in the stereotypically feminine female box does that make me less “awesome”? Why? What are you talking about?
I don’t want to be put on a pedestal or patronised or separated from other women for any of those things? I don’t enjoy any of them to be anything. They’re not things I like so I can construct a persona or to make myself appear special, I just like that stuff amongst hundreds of other things. And it’s the same with games. I wear my Skyrim T-Shirt and acknowledge I know what the College Of Winterhold is and some guys lose their shit. One of my favourite things to do as a kid was play a lot of games yeah, but I also dressed up like a princess a lot, had a lot of Barbies and my life revolved around replicating the cat on my lego box, but I never did because I swear it was built with different lego then what I got. And to this day I will talk about games I enjoy until you want to shoot me in the face, it’s something I enjoy doing. But why do you keep feeling the need to tie my gender into it?
So, don’t call me a Gamer Girl. Don’t use my gender to segregate me into a different category of ‘gamer’. I don’t feel the need to specify which gender I am when I say I play games. I don’t want to be a genderless blob, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to put the fact I game through a gender spectrum. My boobs are not in anyway related to my abilities on a console. Don’t just throw the words ‘Gamer Girl’ at me and then get all mad or weird about it due to stigmas you’ve created. You’re labelling me and pinning those connotations to me. I just want to play games and not be accused, sexualised or generalised because of it. I would suggest society changes and those stigmas are eradicated but that doesn’t seem likely.
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