It's tough to be a woman in the smash community

I will have to preface this as saying that these are my personal observations over the past decade interacting with people in the Smash Community. I will also preface that generally speaking, I would say that 90% of the community does a good job interacting with women and there are 10% (or less) of the community that are the main sources of harassment.



With that being said, there seems to be an underlying current among the community that has a disdain towards women in the community or general ignorance about the perceived benefits a woman. One pointed out that a woman was “social climbing” her way into the community and receiving special treatment that a guy would never get.



So let’s break this down.



1. Said woman got extra free material ( a head set)

2. Said woman has a working relationship with a prominent tournament organizer



I’ll start off by saying, yes there are certain privileges a woman gets for being a female and a minority in a prominently male community. Women can get special attention and will likely have more access to figures, organizers, and possibly even top players for help. It does work both ways however, and it’s never really mentioned how a male could be using their influence in the community to start a relationship with someone they find attractive. But that’s its own tangent.



So in some ways, I’d say it’s somewhat easier for women to get started in the community. However, there is a huge uphill battle that comes before they even decide to enter the community and also when they are in the community. Women are generally shunned from pursuing gaming/engineering/STEM etc… from a young age, so naturally the funnel system for how a male and how a female enter the community are going to be very different. This is what most people would site as a core issue for why there are a disproportionate number of men vs. women in the community.



However, this ratio is further exacerbated by what type of treatment women get from our community. I have mentioned that some people help give special attention to women to make sure they are comfortable, but there are a litany of other issues that they go through for the sake of being women.



1. Constantly undermined for their intentions



It seems like many people within the community have an idealized view of how women should participate in the community and make it very well known. If a woman comes to hang out, then they are “not involved” at all. If a woman tries to get better, they tend to get gatekeeped and questioned about how hard they are practicing or if they actually want to compete. If they meet with influential figures or top players, they are viewed as “smash hoes” or that they are “social climbing”. As a guy, I’ve never had these accusations made towards me and I imagine this would be the case for most males in the community, but for some reason, loud voices in the community want to make it clear that many women are in the community for some nefarious inauthentic reason.



Now as an outsider, it may be easy to say “screw the haters”, but it’s not really easy when no matter what women do, they are perpetually questioned about what they are doing in the community. It’s tiring and alienating and part of the reason why many women lose their enthusiasm to be in the community and lay low on the sidelines instead.



2. Harassment



This leads to the next point of harassment. The most common form would be twitch chat spamming “GRILL” whenever a woman appears on stream. While twitch chat will always be twitch chat, this extends into the IRL community where there are many creepy guys that make creepy advances all of the time on women. Granted, it’s also hard to control 100% of interactions between 1000s of community members. However, we also have prominent members within local communities that harass and target women in the scene. A classic example comes from when a couple breaks up. There have been many recent instances of a guy using their clout within a local community to passively remove a woman from a community after a bad break up. We’ve even had a recent incident where a guy found a girl’s parent’s Facebook to remove her from the community.



3. It’s hard to just play Smash



I can go on and make an endless list of things that make it difficult for women, but this will be my last among many examples of why it sucks to be a woman. Imagine, it’s a weeknight and you’re trying to play Smash with a few friends. As a guy, I can hit up the Facebook group or call a few players and go to someone’s house to play (and fortunately there’s netplay now). I do not have to worry about my safety or “leading another guy on”. This is not the case for women as they have to worry about awkward potential relationship dynamics or a man bitterly wondering if they can get with the woman for playing smash.



While this sounds weird, this is also why you see women stick to playing amongst themselves or with vouched community leaders or top players, but if we’re to bring back bullet point #1, women would be shunned for hanging out with certain types of players. So no matter how a woman tries to improve or get involved in the community, they are always questioned and criticized.







Now with that being said, I’m not saying women are 100% free from blame or that they never do anything wrong, but I just want to point out that in every step of the journey for women, they are constantly met with pressure and the demand that they need to prove themselves worthy of being in the community. While this is not outright the level of sexual violence/assault/physical harassment, it’s still something that greatly effects the willingness for a women to stay in the community.



I wrote this piece for general awareness. As I mentioned in the introduction, I do believe that the majority of the community mean well, but I think we can do even better if we continue to bring awareness and also shun bad behavior.



<3



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