Sweet Anita is not one to shy away from speaking her mind. Recently, she did an interview with LAD Bible and opened up about the reason it often appears that men are better at gaming than women.
The Overwatch streamer has always been open with her fans when it comes to her Tourette’s and her opinion on the gaming space. She recently reflected on a socially accepted stereotype that men are better at video games than women. This has been stated in the gaming world time and time again despite
studies
showing men and women have equal mechanical skills and
gaming abilities. So why does it seem like more men excel at video games?
Sweet Anita
discussed this touchy subject with LAD Bible.
Sweet Anita explains why men have an advantage in video games
Sweet Anita started by saying that the gaming community is predominantly men. Why? It’s not because men are better at computer games, she said, but because they were marketed towards boys when personal computers and computer games originally came out. Meanwhile, girls didn’t have much of an incentive to play video games 30 years ago.
“It became a boys’ club just by virtue of marketing,” Sweet Anita explained. “People just assumed girls wouldn’t like them, which was wrong.”
Since women weren’t playing video games, the space became a community of boys who were “socially inept,” hiding from reality in games. Sweet Anita added that this is not a criticism, since she also turned to video games due to a lack of social skills, but explained that it meant it created this group of men with “low social skills” that “kind of resent women for not f—ing them.”
Now, women aren’t only behind due to the initial marketing but because of how they are treated once they do try to start playing.
“You enter that space and they’re all aggressive towards you, constantly insulting you and rejecting you. They don’t cooperate with you. If you do callouts in the game, they’re not going to listen to you. So it’s harder to learn how to cooperate, it’s harder to learn those team skills because there’s a 50 to 90% chance no one is really going to listen to you or help you as a woman,” Sweet Anita said.
A lot of fans on TikTok called the clip insightful and related to Sweet Anita’s in-game struggles. Women opened up about not using a microphone when playing for fear of getting harassed by male teammates. The inability to communicate effectively with the majority of gamers has made it much more difficult for women to climb ranks and grind games at the same rate.
Olivia Richman
About Olivia Richman
Olivia has worked in media ever since graduating from college, with her coverage ranging from traditional newspaper reporting to digital coverage of all things gaming, online betting, and nerd culture. She has traveled around the world pursuing that coverage, from the far coasts of the United States to the busy downtown core of Tokyo, Japan. Olivia’s favorite games include Overwatch and Super Smash Smash Bros, and she has been published at Esports Illustrated, Inven Global, EsportsInsider, Upcomer, and elsewhere.
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