Sexism Remains a Problem in CS:GO; Girls Leave Over Unpleasant Experiences
One CS:GO streamer showed the rather unpleasant reality that female gamers often face in Valve's shooter. Getting kicked out of the game and unpleasant comments due to their gender are often the norm, unfortunately.
It would seem that multiplayer games should provide equal fun for all players. Unfortunately, these theorety often falls short of reality. As shown by the example of streamer xoQueenScar, girls in CS:GO don't have it easy.
Kicked for gender
Through her TikTok, the streamer showed several situations, in which she was kicked from a Counter-Strike tournament match, because the rest of the participants did not want to be on the same team with a girl.
As soon as QueenScar used voice communication, the behavior of fellow players instantly became awful, and almost immediately she got kicked from the game with a vote.
One of the situations depicted made its way to Reddit, where the video quickly gained considerable popularity:
Toxic players - a common phenomenon or isolated cases?
In the comments under the material, there was quite a discussion about similar behaviors in CS:GO. Many players and, above all, female players described their experiences in Valve's shooter.
"This sucks. I'm done with CSGO, except for times where I only play with friends. Even my dad isn't fond of the game anymore, after hearing other players talk back to me if I say anything," writes user annieedisonirl.
Another example was provided by user vClimax, who described her experience on private FACEIT servers:
"On FACEIT, I have been threatened with doxing and rape. A friend recognized my name in every subsequent game and harassed me just because he knew I was a girl. I emailed FACEIT about this twice with evidence and nothing was done."
User Kamsa 12 completes the picture. This particular description gets really unpleasant:
"[...] Typical are threats of rape, murder, being intentionally blocked because of your gender, constantly being asked if you have Insta or Snapchat, being asked if you are Asian for some reason (EU queue). My favorite is getting asked how old you are. As you can probably guess, not once did the words 'I'm underage' stop anyone. Sometimes it gets really obnoxious and innuendos are being thrown throughout the whole game. Occasionally they write it all over the chat room to get the other team to also bother you in some way."
Well, there is no denying that CS:GO community's problem with toxic behavior towards women exists and it is noticeable. What's more, it's not just the domain of Valve's shooter; misogynistic, homophobic or racist comments have been around for a long time in all sorts of online games, especially where voice chat is present and evidence of nasty behavior is harder to collect.
And while you can't stigmatize all male players, the toxicity of the gaming community is something that cannot be condoned.
