When I was in high school, my dad gave me a piece of wisdom that has shaped my view of the world. We were driving around picking up stuff to get me ready for my Junior Prom, and I was listing all the things my date had scheduled that day to get ready. There was a moment of silence and he said, “son, be glad you were born a boy--being a girl is really hard.”

He meant it as more of a throwaway joke about how much effort girls had to put in to look pretty for prom pictures, but that little phrase has stuck with me throughout my entire life. “Being a girl is really hard.” I think a lot of times as a guy it’s really easy to go through life not considering what it must be like to be a girl. Having never been a girl, most of the time I don’t even consider how situations can be different just because of the way your chromosomes decided to sync up. I think this College Humor sketch actually illustrates the dynamic pretty well.

Now then, what the heck does all this have to do with voice chat? Well, I’ve seen some pretty disappointing comments made on Twitter, and felt obligated to provide another perspective. Prominent figures within the community have outright dismissed concerns about toxicity in voice chat using the defense that “it’s optional, just turn it off.”

Honestly, I don’t 100% disagree with that point. Looking at the issue from a male perspective, you’re going to get stupid trolls in your games from time to time, so you just turn off voice chat, or mute that person, and move on with your life. However, as my dad said, being a girl is really hard. Girls who play on voice chat are going to immediately have their play experience changed once their teammates discover they are playing with a girl. Their play will be immediately scrutinized on a different level. The comments won’t be just about how “this Nazeebo is bad,” the comments will more often be something to the effect of “this dumb bitch can’t play the game at all.” Toxic remarks won’t be focused on the game, they’ll be targeted directly at the girl, often turning into sexual harassment. This will happen in the vast majority of their games.

However, as we said before, the feature is entirely optional. Sure, it sucks that people are jerks, but just turn the feature off. Again, that seems like an entirely reasonable line of thinking, but you’re essentially telling every single girl who plays Heroes of the Storm that this feature was not made for them. They’ve been told their whole lives that games aren’t for them, that it’s weird that they like to play games. Now we’re adding a feature to the game that many people are saying will improve the experience and lead to more competitive games, but we’re telling the women of our community to turn it off. You’re basically saying “voice chat is an amazing feature for the guys of the playerbase to enjoy.” I don’t know, to me that seems a little bit insensitive.

That said, I don’t know that I’m against voice chat being added to the game. We can’t make every decision based solely on how a feature will be mistreated. I’ve regularly dismissed concerns about hero swapping being used by trolls, because I think the good of the feature outweighs the bad. But, no one is going to be able to use hero swapping to sexually harass someone. Voice chat gives bad guys another weapon to use against women. Whether you’re in favor of voice chat or not, I think it is irresponsible to dismiss that fact outright.

So, most likely voice chat will be added to the live game soon, and some people will really enjoy it. That’s great. But when it does get added, I want every guy reading this to remember that being a girl is really hard. If you hear a woman on voice chat, she’s fighting through all the negative stereotyping, harassment, and abuse to try and have a better gaming experience. That’s something that should be commended. If one of your teammates starts to attack her just for being a girl, you have a responsibility to do something about it. Speak up against her attacker. Report them after the match. Hold Blizzard accountable to policing the voice servers, not just the chat logs. Being a guy is sort of like being Spiderman--”with great power comes great responsibility.” You were given the superpower of being a guy in a world dominated by men. As a result, you have the responsibility to use that power responsibly in every aspect of your life.