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Becoming a Frag Doll, part 2: Women in gaming
Jacqueline DiOrio
April 6, 2009 1:39 PM ET in Gaming
So refreshing
When I started playing Everquest II, I had the amazing luck to find a fantastic guild on my first try. The guild was family friendly, and catered to all players and play styles, which meant that it was made up of an eclectic group that had a higher female percentage than normal for games. In fact, of our four guild leaders, two are women. Because I had the good luck to fall into this accepting community so early, I didn’t encounter a whole lot of astonishment in EQ2 over the fact that I was female. This was augmented by the fact that I didn’t raid very much due to time limitations, so there also weren’t many opportunities for people to hear my voice and know that I really was a girl.
When I made the switch to FPS games, I began to realize how unusual I was. That’s not to say that to some extent I didn’t realize that I was a little different before; I avoided mentioning to people in the real world that I played games, since I felt a little embarrassed about it. I didn’t know any other women that played games, and I was afraid of being marked as being “weird” for it. Even though I was conscious of my oddness in the real world, online I was not.
I started out playing Team Fortress 2 with a lot of my real life and Everquest 2 friends. I really liked the game, even though it was my first FPS. After a while my friends started to get bored with it, while I did not. I started playing more on my own, which is when I started encountering more astonishment over my gender. I got comments like “Are you a girl, or a 9 year old boy?” or “A girl? Marry me!” and of course, “A girl? TITS OR GTFO”. Just today I had an interesting experience playing TF2—a player, upon identifying me as being female, asked me to marry him, professed his love, and then began to tell me all of the things that he would love me doing to him, and vice versa. It didn’t bother me, probably because I’ve gotten used to it. But that begs the question—should I have to just get used to it? What he was doing was definitely sexual harassment, and if it had happened in the real world I probably would have been considerably more disconcerted. Why do I make exceptions for the sexual harassment that I receive online everyday? The scary fact here is that the above experience is tame compared to what some women have endured. I count myself as lucky that my harassment on the internet hasn’t been more severe.
Female sniper by pan10 @ deviantART
Being a girl on the internet, and being a girl who plays games is not an easy task. Over time I’ve gotten used to it, but the environment is often not even remotely welcoming. That’s not to say that most people out there on the internet are out with malicious intent against women, but even when people are simply joking the content is often highly sexualized. There often isn’t a place for female gamers on the net, except for a few special places, like the Frag Dolls. That’s one reason why I think they’re such a good group—they represent a strong, female partnership that’s out to prove that the girls can compete with the boys.
I also think that the video game industry itself needs to make a stronger effort to make games that are geared towards women, or at least portray women in a different light. This means having female avatars in games like TF2, or having strong female characters that don’t have size D’s. I was actually surprised at my own level of joy over the fact that Mirror’s Edge features a rather normal looking female protagonist. We need more games like this. I’d also like it if the games that we have that cater to younger girls weren’t all about raising puppies or cooking. It reinforces the wrong messages about girls and their interests.
The online world changes rapidly, and I hope that with time, there will be more of a place for women on the net and in games. I hope that more games are created which do show strong females, and I also hope that I somehow have a part in it. I truly think that video games represent a new horizon, and are their own form of literature. I just hope that we can shape a literature that all can enjoy.
Read part one of Jackie’s quest to become a Frag Doll
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