Marie* turns to her computer after a long day of classes and school works to relieve herself of the stress she experiences throughout the day. She finds solace in online games that can tune out the background noise around and transport her to an imaginary world she has control over. But instead of finding comfort, she is greeted by harsh words, unwanted attention, and chilling threats from the men she encounters in these games.
“’Yung game na pang destress ko sana, mas nagiging source lang din ng stress ko,” Marie says in disappointment.
Marie is a 20-year-old female gamer who regularly enjoys indulging in online computer games. She started playing Valorant in June 2021 back when it was a trend amongst her block mates.
Valorant is a first-person shooter game released by Riot Games for computers in 2020. In this, a person can select characters to play with to compete in teams of five against other players. A person can create a team with their friends or randomly match with other anonymous gamers online to form one.
Even though Marie delights in playing online games, she observed the harsh reality that being a woman in the online realm entails a lot of struggle.
In the online gaming community, the apparent misogyny and sexism further excludes and discourages women from becoming part of it. Women’s studies experts believe that gender roles and perception from the real world are translated online, thus creating an uneven playing field. In turn, changes and resolution should also be a community effort that includes all members.
The Simp Culture
In her experiences, Marie noticed that there are some men who, after finding out her gender through open communication, try to strike up a conversation with her. They ask personal questions such as her name, age, or relationship status while playing the game.
Sometimes, men would constantly send her friend requests and game invites even after she denied them. “Uncomfortable… lalo na pag gusto ko lang naman maglaro ng mag-isa, pero gusto nila akong isali.”
The Simp Culture or Simping, as Marie called it, is when a man tries to catch a woman’s attention through actions that seem like “manliligaw type na papansin.” For her, being nice and welcoming around these women is a good thing, but sometimes, too much attention can be uncomfortable for the person receiving it.
She further emphasized, “Dapat 'yung respect sana prevalent s’ya sa community at hindi lang binibigay sa specified na tao o gender. It’s better if may respetuhan kasi mababait silang tao, hindi dahil uhaw sa babae.”
Marie pointed out that giving special attention to women could possibly be rooted from some men carrying out their fetish for "e-girls" or female gamers. She thinks these men with fetishes are trying to fulfill the fantasies they created in their head with women they meet on online games.
According to Associate Professor Rowena A. Laguilles-Timog, chair of the UP-Diliman Department of Women and Development Studies, fetishes are not at all problematic. She added, “[Ang] problematic is how they carry out that fetish. [If] ayaw naman o may resistance ’yung participant [ng] fetish, doon palang hindi na dapat sya tumuloy.”
But fetishes can also become a threat when it violates someone’s personal space. In Laguilles’ example, when female streamers like Yasumi who receive spam messages on Facebook lives with sexual harassment, demands for sex, and their attraction for her body.
Whether actions of simping, giving too much attention, and fetishizing can be considered harassment depends on how these women feel about it. Laguilles cleared that it is definitely harassment if the receiver already said “no."
From a legal standpoint, these actions are defined as harassment and are punishable by law. Actions like this are included in the Safe Spaces Act Article 2 Section 12. Gender-Based Online Sexual Harassment. This law included “unwanted sexual misogynistic... remarks and comments online whether publicly or through direct and private messages, [and] invasion of victim’s privacy through cyberstalking and incessant messaging” in describing online harassment.
The Pocket Sage Trend
A feature of Valorant is it allows players to choose characters with different specialties and skills, which then gave rise to the ‘pocket sage’ trend. Marie describes this trend when partner gamers — a man and a woman — play together, the man would play a main duelist (fighter) character and assign the main healer (Sage) to the woman.
“Merong kind of generalization na top frag (player with most kills) boyfriend mo, and ’yung girl, na 'pocket sage', ay bot frag (player with least kills),” Marie said. There is a generalization that these women are only playing because their boyfriends asked them to.
Sage is a beginner type of agent and has less intimidating skills, therefore it is the heavily suggested one for women. “Nahahalata ko talaga na kapag Sage is babae,” she pointed out. She herself started out playing Sage, as suggested by her male friends.
“Related ’yan sa matagal na stereotype of a woman being the nurturer or carer, since we (cisgender women) are born with the reproductive capacity,” Laguilles said.
University Research Associate Jasmine Cruz of the UP Diliman Center for Women’s and Gender Studies says that the limiting of roles of women also stems from their historic struggle for the opportunity to have jobs. Much like the women before, these gamers were allowed into the field, but as Cruz added, “Kahit na pinapasok mo ’yung mga women, nili-limit ’yung roles nila.”
Their characters as support for duelist men are dictated on the basis of their sex. In turn, it reveals an unfair perception of society of women as supporting characters for men.
The Backseat Gamers
The main premise of Valorant is to eliminate all your team’s enemies before they kill all of you (except for a few other instructions that make it technical). In certain situations wherein all but one member of the team is left to finish the round, ‘backseat gamers’ crowd communication lines to dictate what to do.
When Marie was a beginner, she accepted these dictations since she wasn’t that good at the time. But as she progressed and became better, some men would still ‘backseat game’ her.
When she and one of her girl friends lost a game after they refused to listen to their guy friend's dictations, he called them out and told them that they were “nagmamarunong.” The girls have been playing together with them for months.
To be fair, she said this criticism also happens to some male gamers, but usually only if that man is a beginner or a poor player. Women, on the other hand, go through this experience whether they are good gamers or not.
“Feeling ko andu’n na ’yung instinct sa kanila na mag-coach lalo na if alam nila na babae [ka]. Sa tingin nila baguhan parati ganu’n,” she said.
Men in this community have built a solid ground of trust with each other and their skills that backseat gaming rarely happens to them. This built-in trust has kept women on the outskirts of this community.
Sexism as a belief system plays a part in why men can’t seem to trust women in these situations.
Cruz said, “Society says that a woman’s biological nature makes her weak and dumb, while men are strong and smart.” This is a stereotype that is deeply ingrained in our society. She said it is a belief system that is impossible to change and would require a deep self-reflection before it becomes a possibility.
Such sexism, according to Cruz, is always going to create excuses or unfair explanations when women divert from stereotypes. For example, if a woman successfully wins a round on her own without anyone guiding her, some men will create excuses saying that it was “chamba” or that she cheated. In some cases, they would blow up this small win with exaggerated expressions though as if her winning comes as a surprise to them, and as if she was incapable of doing it in the first place.
Women are pressured to try and keep up with the men in the community, but at the same time, “men typically expect you to perform less, and it is actually what drives [us] to a point that [we] feel the need to prove something,” Yasumi said. She added that men are afforded the luxury of playing and becoming great in these games because of societal images. “Boys play video games, girls play Barbie."
In the end, roles and gender perceptions in real life are migrated to the online world, making the playing field unfair for female members of the community.
Changing from within the community
That’s not to say that all men in the gaming community are actively partaking in the negative experiences of female gamers. But as Cruz pointed out, the problem is that male gamers disregard these actions even though they have the privilege of speaking out against it.
The reason why simping, pocket sage, and backseat gaming are embedded in the gaming culture is because men regard them as normal actions that do not require intervention.
Men with these behaviors are the large part, and therefore dominate this community. Laguilles said, “Kung sila rin naman pala ang nagsasabi ng what’s in and what’s out, hindi [nila] masasabi na mali ito.” A sexist and misogynistic community would not find faults within itself.
However, resolving this issue would require a community effort that includes all members.
For men, the challenge is to use their power in this community to call out these behaviors. Because as Cruz said, “[they] tolerate this behavior by not exercising [their] power and privilege as a man for the good.”
Additionally, Cruz said that these men should self-reflect and assess whether their actions are just harmless socializing and casual gaming or if it crosses the line of harassment and sexism.
Although men have the power in this space, women can dismantle it. By banding together and finding commonality in their experiences, they can validate each other's truths. Together, they can resist unfair and unspoken rules and support each other.
Laguilles said that as a community, they should question if this culture of harassment and sexism is a shared interest. “We should not protect the image of [harmful] gamers, hindi ’yan community kung nangva-violate ’yan.”
“Nasa part na rin yun ng mga game developers to monitor kung ano naman ’yung nangyayari sa chat, especially kung sobra na talaga s'ya,” Marie said. They can monitor and censor, not just the chats, but also the open mic communications feature of these games.
According to Laguilles, their job to find a balance between censorship and freedom of expression to ensure that the gaming experiences, whilst being a safe one, is also a good avenue of socializing.
Harassment and sexism are issues that are difficult to resolve, especially if it is deeply embedded in the community. For now, women should just keep on playing, asserting their space, and resisting these cultures and trends because while it is a site for struggle, it is also a site for possibilities.
Editor’s Note: *Real names are hidden behind pseudonyms.
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