Sexual Harassment and Video Games. - An Opinion

Note: The stance in this article is that opinion of the author alone.

With the recent outburst that happened on Cross Assault between Super_Yan and Aris, it has come to a forefront that women who are into video games, I believe, are treated unfairly. Now, the conversation between both Yan and Aris came to light because of the Livestreaming of the event, and inside of the stream chats, a mostly male community backed the male causing the offense. You can also find many other rude or offensive chats between 'boys' and women in gaming on YouTube easily enough, and quite a few times it led to the 'boys' complaining or cussing or offending the woman in general, especially if the woman player was significantly better than they were. This makes the game less fun

Now, it isn't a surprise to know that 'boys' don't like getting out done by women, it's a ego thing. This is considered a greater hit to the ego if the woman is a professional in that particular format. This is even more of a problem in niche communities, gaming for example, that has a male dominated community. Yes, there are plenty of women who play games, but they are far and few in between who play games professionally. Now, one would hope, most professional players will do what they are called.. be a professional, play nice, don't offend your opponent, and enjoy what you are doing. You do this because YOU'RE THE FOREFRONT OF THE COMMUNITY, people look at you to be the poster child, what you do is what is reflected on the genre. Aris didn't do this, and neither did the community watching on the Livestream. Now, the Livestream I can understand, but I will get to that later in the article, Aris, however; should of known better. He is one of the more well-known in the professional fighting game genre, and this is what makes this a problem. When you have a community of folks, good things and bad things happen... though it is the bad things that comes forward and rarely the good things get covered and looked at.

And this is just the start of the problem.

Online gaming is a issue, anonymity plays a huge factor in this, as people who game and watch games online use this anonymity to protect them from 'harm', bring great amounts of trash talking. This anonymity also leads to significant amounts of trolling and worshiping. When Aris started smarting off to Yan, a majority of the online community moved to back Aris. Now, ignoring the whole such thing that there is 'no women on the internet', most of these people are probably in their mid-teens to late 20s with a majority of those backing Aris PROBABLY(my own opinion) in the teenage crowd. This makes the online community easily influenced, and when they watch a 'professional' like Aris talk down to women, they thing it's perfectly fine that a woman shouldn't be gaming, that if a woman does game that they can talk shit to them and they'll be fine because they have the internet they could easily hide behind when confronted. You also have to deal with the idiots in games themselves, if a 'boy' player ends up learning that one of the players in the room is female, the trash talk turns more offensive in a heartbeat.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Women are people too. There are reasons why workplace sexual harassment laws are in effect, they are to be treated fairly just like any other person. This goes for gaming as well. You can look at the professional community and find many people who are great competitors and keep up the spirit of how a gamer should be: Mike Ross, ComboFiend, Daigo, Justin Wong, and one who should be credited for being a gentleman in all of this, Mr. Sub-Zero. These are all male professional gamers who act like professionals, and they treat ALL their opposition with respect. All Aris did was stick out like a sore thumb and make those who actually do good in the professional gaming community look like idiot 'boys' who don't respect women, and the professional community doesn't need that. All gamers themselves will also be effected by this, as stated before, the professionals in the community are looked at the most. So if a professional does something like sexually harass a female player ALL gamers MUST sexually harass female players, and with the way things are turning out online here, its looking more and more that it's the case with so many people defending Aris's actions.

I give my gratitude to Mr. Sub-Zero for what he did, and to Super_Yan for sticking up for herself.


People who play professionally or casually, you're still gamers and respect those, Men or Women, as people and fellow gamers. The eyes of people are all on you, and what you do effects the community as a whole. Don't do what Aris did and tarnish that reputation.