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Disclaimer: Please note due to recent circumstances I should include that the women represented in this piece (other than TechRaptor staff) do not reflect the views of TechRaptor and are not endorsed by this article.

Recently, Feminist Frequency, a non-profit feminist YouTube channel, released a video called "25 Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male." The video which you can watch below, lists 25 things the author believes effect women in gaming, as read out by several notable men from the industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47-FMmMLy0

As a woman I found it hugely offensive. As someone who is meant to be the oppressed class, not only had I never experienced any of the things mentioned in the video, but it bothered me that a range of men would mansplain to me what I should be offended by. However, I do understand that I am just one woman and I wondered if I was alone in my outrage. So I took to Twitter to ask my female followers to weigh in with their thoughts. I included the first responses I received so you can see I was not cherry picking answers to fit with my own bias. However, it should be noted that those who follow me on Twitter will often enjoy my viewpoint.

@CeleciaKat

Shameful. I really shouldn't have watched it. It's just a headache in video form. Oh, and repetitive. Some of those things listed were just rewordings of their previous statements.

@NerdGirlGames

I don't like Mr. McIntosh telling me what it's like to be a female gamer. I experience it first hand every day, thank you.

@SusanJacques1

All nonsense. Nvr felt anything but welcome in ~30 yrs as a female gamer. Sick of being treat like a fragile snowflake TBH.

@TrivialGravitas

As far as the list itself goes, before I start I should say I'm a transwoman, my experience is not exactly the same as cis women. This [the video] seems really padded, repeatedly talking about not having gamer cred questioned or sexual harassment.

The padding ends up burying the con stuff. I don't go (and would likely have a very different experience as I can't pass for shit) but I hear some real horror stories from women who do (and if you're gonna mention the gamer cred thing repeatedly, why not the idiocy surrounding cosplayers not being real geeks/gamers?). Seriously the groping stuff should be a centerpiece, and a shorter list would help highlight it.

You can read more here.

@AngelHeartNight

"We must save the delicate wimmins from the evil male gamers...the wimmins are so soft and make clubhouse smell nice"

@ThornBlossom

It's incredibly condescending to women. Men telling women how bad culture is for women is the essence of "mansplaining" I feel like the SJW men think I'm too dumb to understand what's REALLY happening to me, so they have to explain it.

@Kite_Tales

Why not address online behavior overall? Why divide it, like it's different when toward a woman? I think people need to quit caring about what's between the legs and start paying attention to what's in the heart.

Kite Tales also made a satirical video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKCakYj-dI4&feature=youtu.be&a

And a few from my fellow lady writers at TechRaptor:

@LucyWalcott

I felt the video was kinda derogatory and viewed what happens to some women to what happens to all women. It turns me as a female gamer into a victim, and I feel it also views men as benefiting from this somehow. As if men don't have to deal with double standards in the gaming culture that some of us female gamers take for granted. Like not being told we are lesbian if we suck at a game, or otherwise sometimes getting free stuff simply because of our gender. It's this weird Male = perpetrator/Women = Victim mentality, and it kinda hurts both sexes. It's a very extremist viewpoint and it does not benefit women or men to exalt men as this godly pinnacle free from negative effects due to double standards. This form of separatist behavior is far from inclusionary.

@cidsa

Having a bunch of dudes telling people how hard women have it feels awfully condescending to BOTH sexes; they are talking down to men for being too stupid/blind to see their immense "privilege" and reinforcing the victimhood status of women. This is wildly offensive because I am not a victim, gaming is clearly not worse for me than for guys and I don't need a bunch of random white knights telling me that I totally have it ~so terrible.~ Not only do they pass off this paternalistic fearmongering as helping, they then turn around and cry about "issues" that only exist because there's not enough women interested in the industry. Kinda hard to have more female gamers, devs and journalists when you're here to tell us how awful it is for women!

There's a lot of misinformation here too: Men get harassed more than women online (10% male, 6% female), they get harassed just as badly, they get groped at cons, they have their "nerd cred" tested, etc. There's also this bizarre obsession with genders matching. It seems to say that women are completely unable, or unwilling, to accept anything that has a male main character or anything a male journalist/dev/etc has to say. How many women are literally unable to relate to a character with a different gender? That just makes women sound like total sociopaths or something.

And lastly it asserts that sexism against men is taken deadly seriously which made me burst out laughing. Not only is this blatantly untrue, the video totally negates this point by not taking the shit men go through seriously in the least. It basically asserts that all of this is men's fault and they have to fix it.

Thanks to all the ladies who took part.

What did you think of Feminist Frequency's video?