A lot of Anonymous’ work is centered around how hard it is to pursue your dreams/passions as a woman. As a woman myself, I tend to find myself in these situations a lot because of what I like to do in my free time. Ever since I was little, I’ve played video games and it’s stuck with me all throughout my life. My family doesn’t really mind me playing games at all. It’s more about the people I run into on the internet.

Even though a lot of women play games, the majority of players are men. At least with the type of games I play. I play a lot of first person shooters such as Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, and Valorant. These games are heavily based on communication. If you can’t communicate, your plays are sloppy and it doesn’t end up working out well. To solve this problem, most games have a built in voice chat. However, when people hear a girl talk, they get unnecessarily misogynistic for no reason. Not only has this happened to me but, it’s happened to other random girls I’ve seen while playing games and my other girl friends. They make comments such as, “A woman belongs in the kitchen,” or “Go make me a sandwich because that’s all women are good for.” These aren’t the worst things I’ve heard either. Of course I could always mute them but, the damage is already done.

A lot of people dismiss the misogyny on video games by saying it’s a joke but, after hearing these comments made towards you it starts to get to you. There’s been countless amounts of time where I considered stopping playing video games because I couldn’t deal with all the comments I get just for being a specific gender. However, I realized that video games is something I’ll always enjoy doing no matter what, so I try to not let the comments bother me too much.