When you go to best buy looking for "gaming equipment", the first thing that you see is sleek monitors sitting with a black RGB mechanical keyboard with a matching mouse to boot. It's all fairly carbon-fiber-y and pretty monochromatic if you sift through enough brands. However when you look for products geared towards women, it becomes overloaded with pink.
Gaming has been, and is largely still considered to be a space almost exclusively for men. For the most part, the male gaming audience has been most catered to within the industry - even as far as basic things like keyboards. Gaming equipment itself is largely sold in the following colors: black, gray, and maybe red or blue if you're lucky. One of the largest gaming equipment manufacturers, Razer, had only released their "Quartz Pink" line targeting women in 2018. The association of women and only the color pink is a minor problem itself, but the fact that gaming equipment itself wasn't directed at women until very recent years is a major problem. There's nothing wrong with having a pink gaming set-up, I happen to have a pink mechanical keyboard and mouse myself. When it seems like the only option for female gamers and solely associated with them, it becomes an industry problem. Razer called it the "pink phenomenon", while proudly stating they were the creators of this wave.
What Is A Gamer Girl?
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At a glance the term 'Gamer Girl' is fairly upfront and neutral. Just a girl, or woman, who plays games. It's fairly simple in this way however , it's slang for something much more negative than that. A Gamer Girl, according to Urban Dictionary, is a 'girl' who plays video games strictly for grabbing boys' attention. Not to be confused with the average woman who's playing video games, Gamer Girls are not so sneakily infiltrating these male dominated spaces in gaming for one reason, the maximum level of power in this mortal world: attention. If someone is referring to a woman as a Gamer Girl, it's more-often-than-not an insult. They're considered "fake gamers", entering the scene to flirt and capture the hearts of male gamers.
Now there are also definitely women who act in ways that reflect the negative 'Gamer Girl' dynamic.. If you play any popular online games you're bound to run into one, "PrettyKitty738" who flames any other girl in the vicinity for fitting into some perceived presence as a 'Gamer Girl'. I had one spam in all caps "GOOGOOGAHGAH" in chat whenever my female friend tried to explain anything in chat. So, perhaps some kind of toxic gamer girls exist. And they're just as annoying as they say they are.
What's The Core Issue At Hand?
For me personally, it's about how the term for one group became stereotyped into any female gamer. You have a pink set up? Congrats, you're a gamer girl. You have a pink mouse? Congrats, you're a gamer girl. You have a feminine username? Congrats, you're a gamer girl. You play female characters? Congrats, you're a gamer girl. You're just stuck with this label.
You play any competitive game and they hear your voice on voice chat, there will always be something that sounds like "WHOOOOOOOA!!!!! GUYS THERE'S A GAMER GIRL HERE", "WHOA WHAT A GAMER GIRL? THAT'S A MYTH, THEY DON'T EXIST!!!!!", "GUYS GUYS GUYS LET'S BE REAL. IT'S A 12 YEAR OLD BOY", and the classic "ARE WE READY TO LOSE BOYS". The caps lock is not an over exaggeration. They're often actually yelling. They're making the same 12 year old boy joke. They're shoving anything you have to say out the door purely because you're a girl. If you don't believe me, you can watch literally any female streamer who plays a competitive online game. Spawntaneous, a gaming Youtuber that has an entire series dedicated to documenting how she is treated as a female gamer. It's an incredible series, but it can get really hard to sit through with the constant insults and put downs.
But There's Toxic Gamers Everywhere?
Yes, Gaming can have LOTS of toxic people, but this brand of toxicity is really centered on the fact that the gamers that it's targeting are women. There's a lot of blatant sexism with amazing and original quips like "Go back to the kitchen!" and "Girls can't play video games". The whole 'Gamer Girl' archetype depends on the belief that women do not play video games because they enjoy it, it's entirely based on the belief that girls want male attention.
I think many women in gaming can agree with me here: Just because I want a 'pretty' set up doesn't mean that I'm an annoying Gamer Girl who's trying to beg for compliments and attention. Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a set up that none of these often rude players ever see, if I didn't actually love being a gamer? Just because I have some feminine or flowery presentation or some animal or cutesy element in my name doesn't mean that I haven't been in this space for just as many years, trying to learn and hone my skills competitively. Let's make an effort to retire the 'Gamer Girl' stereotype and make the gaming space better for 50% of players - and perhaps, slightly less toxic.
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