Even more on harassment in video games online

A recent presentation at PAX East talked about the harassment gamers face online.  In it, the posit three cardinal rules for women who want to play in online gaming environments. They are:

• Don’t choose a distracting name—as in, one which will remind male players that women actually exist
• Don’t choose a distracting avatar—as in, again, one which is anything but male
• Don’t distract other players with your voice

Of course if you want to be anonymous, and of course anonymous online means male, then this is good advice to follow. But it makes me pretty uneasy. It reminds me of the advice, “don’t wear a short skirt if you don’t wanna get raped.” If you don’t want to be harassed, stop being yourself; stop identifying with any of society’s markers of femininity. Doesn’t this just reify the idea that gaming, and online interaction in general, is for men?  If even the women who participate can’t act like women, then we really are saying that this is a male space.

Now, I think this is smart advice I would give to my hypothetical daughter– were she 13, or 15, or 17. For younger women anonymity may be the best course of action to avoid something that is truly scarring. But I don’t think there are that many young women at PAX East, or reading our favorite site fatuglyorslutty.com. The panelists at PAX East do come to a similar conclusion: not feeding the trolls will not make the trolls go away.

On the other hand, I’ve unknowingly followed the advice above. Well, except for the female avatar point. In my experience, enough males play female characters that it is much less of an identity marker than one would initially think. Though, I wonder if stable avatars like your xbox live avatar is different than, say, a WoW character. Anyway, I never used VOIPs until I knew another player for weeks or months– and then never in large raid groups. And when I was creating my new xbox live id, I actually did think about all the shit I would get if I overtly labeled myself.

I guess my point is this: we need better advice for adult, female gamers who want to participate in online gaming environments. Anonymity isn’t quite right. Creating groups, networks, and organizations dedicated to exposing the problems, supporting the players, and changing how things are done are key. Fatuglyorslutty, Border House, Women in Games International, the Ada Initiative, and I would like to think NYMG, all of these are amazing organizations that I think really are changing the environment. But until things change a whole lot more, I wonder what advice we can give to the player. What can we do as individuals when faced with this harassment?