Oh, So You Like Women? Name 5 of Their Interests

This query sits at the crossroads of men who consider themselves pro-women’s rights and men involved in gaming spaces (and more generally, “nerd culture”): how come, even though you have “plenty of female friends” you — or someone you know — has said “Why can’t I find a girl that likes gaming?”

The reason might lie in how we treat even our closest friends and their interests, hobbies, and passions.

What Does Friendship Even Mean?

Why do we so often talk about friendship like some kind of immovable absolute that says everything about our personality? The phrase structure, “I’m not ___, I have plenty of ___ friends” gets thrown around a lot both for comedic effect and socio-political statements. Having acquaintances that fit into a minority group or a group that faces societal pressure is often cited as a preclusion from being a part of the offending party — having black friends being cited for why someone isn’t racist, or having female friends cited for why someone isn’t sexist. Whether or not it’s true when a person says it, there remains an underlying assumption about friendship that remains unsubstantiated.

Think of all the people in your life you’ve drifted away from. Think of friendships you made in school or at work that may not have lasted, and ask yourself how much you knew about that person’s interests, and how much they knew about yours. Do you still like that person? Did you even fully like them when you were “friends”? Did you like, or even know, everything about them?

For most, developing a friendship is not a long, drawn out process in which you first learn everything there is to know about a person. Sometimes, all it takes is hanging out with a guy twice at a party and adding them on Facebook. And I’m guessing you — like myself — have lots of people added on Facebook that you barely know. Beyond that, there are people I’ve known for years, and I’m still learning new things about their personality, which will no doubt continue evolve as time passes. Which is why “I have a ___ friend” starts to sound less and less credible as a defence of our character or knowledge. And also why men having female friends isn’t a surefire sign of a pro-woman, progressive attitude. Men having female friends and knowing about their interests, personalities, beliefs, etc. is a much better sign, and unfortunately much less common. The reason why you or your pal never found the “elusive gamer girl” while simultaneously knowing so many women could just be because you don’t actually know anything about those women — and when you do learn something, it better fit your preconceived notions of that person’s character, or your mind is going to trash that info like its spam mail.

Women Seem to Know Where All the Gamer Girls Go

Women who are into gaming routinely encounter men who say something like “I wish there were more girls interested in gaming!”, “Gotta find me a girl who likes video games!”, “Maybe I’m just unlucky, but I don’t know any girls who share my passion for gaming!”

When these sorts of comments come up online, or at events, I am never left wanting the female response to it. This response is never absent. There are droves of women who will come forward to say “Plenty of my girlfriends like gaming” or “We’re not really as rare as you think”. Sometimes I am part of that response, sharing my own outings and adventures about gaming, and sometimes I just sit back and watch other women say what I am thinking. I sit back and soak up all of the stories women have of their female friend groups, their Saturday gaming escapades, their roadtrips to comic and video game conventions, their all-nighters and all-dayers spent playing an MMO, a LAN competitive game, or a tabletop game.

If you ask women “where the girl gamers at?” they seem oddly privy to this arcane information that escapes the average male gamer. It’s not a case of all the women who have ever (casually, competitively, zealously or sporadically) enjoyed games having moved to an idyllic amazonian continent where the wifi is free, your controller thumbstick never wears or tears from usage, and GFuel flows unending from gorgeous byzantine fountains. The answer to the question of where female gamers are “hiding” is usually: right in front of you, in broad daylight.

If you’ve ever met a woman, or if you have even the smallest number of female friends, chances are you do in fact know a woman who enjoys video games. She may have even mentioned it on multiple occasions only for it to slip your mind.

You may not like it, but this is what the ideal male gamer looks like.

Women who game have found that unless you are extremely zealous about your hobbies to the point of practically walking out of the house dressed like an NES cartridge, you’re not making it “obvious” enough for men hunting down that rare “gamer girl”. This is a level of zealotry for a hobby that men do not have to express in order to be considered “gamers” . Men, you don’t have to be nerd stereotypes for people to know what you like, or to take your interests at face value and not doubt the “validity” of that interest.

Creating Imaginary Friends Out of Real Women

I find that a lot of guys who brag about having “tons of female friends” — which, if you want to stop sounding like you’re bragging about your tons of female friends, maybe stop saying the phrase “I have tons of female friends” unironically — don’t know much about the hobbies or interests of their female friends, or subconsciously curate a view of their female friends that fits their narrative of “I’ve literally never met a female gamer in my life!” From my own perspective, male friends of mine in the past have seemed to know more about me if it fits a stereotypical view of “female interests” and less about me if it doesn’t. What follows is an almost cartoonish proclamation of “Oh, I didn’t know you were into THAT! Wow!”

An example: after I went to an alpha event for the 2015 FromSoft game Bloodborne, I practically told everyone I knew how much fun I had (and furiously hid how awkward I was in an interview they published for advertising purposes). When I tell people about my “college experience”, I usually just mention the nights I spent playing Dark Souls and Demon Souls in my underwear. I have literally never shut up about the hype, release, and following backlash about Dark Souls 2 to friends and acquaintances who have asked. Despite this, the same people have continuously acted surprised if I mention that I happen to like the Souls series (or have for like, more than half a decade). That surprise may be heightened by this particular series being branded as a “difficult” game with gory, dark undertones. I tell people I think Dragon Age was pretty cool and nobody bats an eye because of how frequently the games offered romance options appealing to a mass female audience.

The shock and awe that some men express when talking to girls who like a variety of games can feel, at least as far as I’ve experienced, uncomfortable at best. We didn’t just tell you we’re BFFs with American astronaut Peggy Whitson, that we secretly ghostwrote George R. R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter, or that we shoot lasers out of our eyes. All we said is sometimes we sit in front of a TV for hours on end and press buttons. So why are you acting like this? Nobody has acted this surprised at my “accomplishments” since my 1st grade teacher reacting to my drawing of a pony. Not even an anatomically accurate pony. It feels exaggerated.

Often, these reactions do not come from men who can genuinely feign ignorance of our interests and hobbies. They’re our friends: Men we’ve met only because we borrowed a copy of Call of Duty from them. Men we’ve gotten to become friends with only because we invited them to the game of Dungeons and Dragons we run weekly. Men we’ve met because we professionally or casually stream video games on the internet for others’ entertainment. Men who, after years of friendship, still manage to say “Oh, I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing” even if you remember telling them point blank on multiple occasions that you are indeed into the thing.

So to my girls out there: I encourage women with self-professed progressive male friends to take note of what they forget that you like and what they don’t forget you like. And if you really really enjoy gaming, to the point where it would take amnesia for your friends to forget about it, take note of when your male friends say they don’t know any female gamers, because they are confessing you don’t fit their curated image, or you’re just not the kind of friend they bother actually getting to know, like a human person does. Like everyday people do. People who actually see women as their equals view them as subjects, with autonomy and personal interests.

And to my male friends, future, past and present, who want something to take away from all this: I trust people who can say nice, encouraging things about their friends and what their friends like. I admire when a man can speak candidly about the lives and interests of his female friends. It is important I know that my friends see me as a person and not a thing.

To everyone: be a good friend. Learn about what your friends like. Remember it, and encourage their passions. See them for all the multifaceted, wonderful reasons that convinced you to call them your friend in the first place.