{"id":24908,"date":"2026-02-25T11:53:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=24908"},"modified":"2026-04-02T11:56:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T19:56:55","slug":"girl-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/girl-gaming\/","title":{"rendered":"Girl gaming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A photo of a woman\u2019s computer setup. | Photo from @cosymolly on Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Feb. 25, 2026 | Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief<\/span><\/p>\n

The gaming space online is catered to, and run by, men and boys. They dominate competitive gaming and casual spaces, too. It\u2019s been my experience that these online spaces have grown unwelcome to the presence of women and girls \u2014 and I want to understand why.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like a lot of people, I ran into the internet while still a kid. It captivated me. I made friends, played games and learned new things. It was online that I learned how much I loved to read and write, and that\u2019s where I practiced my creative skills. In middle school, I took a typing class where I faked my speed results because the teacher thought I typed incorrectly, even though I could type faster than her and any boy in the class \u2014 a proven fact from dozens of typing competitions I\u2019d join in the library just to prove myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most important thing that I got from my computer, however, was friendship. I met a lot of girls online when I was closer to ten years old who shared my age and interests. We bonded \u2014 quickly \u2014 and supported each other through the years, sending messages, emails, Skyped until it traded with Discord and so forth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, however, I watched my friendships \u2026 dissipate. Around high school, I had fewer active online friends than I had ever had. We migrated over to social media friends, and that was all I really heard of them, where they were vacationing and hanging out with their real life friends. But then the pandemic happened \u2014 all of a sudden, everyone was back and everyone was online.<\/span><\/p>\n

Games peaked again, but so did the toxicity. I became incredibly aware that I could not turn on my mic when playing an online first-person shooter, and that I should not join online groups in case they were dismissive of me because of my gender. And, once the pandemic dwindled away, which we all were feeling bittersweet about, suddenly, all of the girls I had felt my friendship reignite with were gone again.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few of them deleted their online accounts because they had no use for them anymore. The rest of the women traded their games for jobs, yet I watched every boy I ever dated boast about his super-computer setup and 2 a.m. daily bedtime. It was, frankly, infuriating; I\u2019d have to sit by myself in the evening and watch as these guys, who were pretty much no different from me, had this virtual meeting every day where they just had fun together. And I couldn\u2019t find the same thing, for no good reason other than that girls don\u2019t play video games.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I looked online for girl gaming groups, it struck me that maybe I couldn\u2019t trust people online who didn\u2019t seem to have interests other than gaming. None of the women I met in real life were telling me about their last matches or new games, and I couldn\u2019t seem to find a place with guys who liked the same games as me. It\u2019s dramatic, but I felt like my interests made me weird. I like the pace of an online gaming match. I like the quickness, how it feels to win, my hands on the keyboard and I liked being the fastest typist in my class \u2014 maybe still the fastest typist I know.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know there are still women out there who play games. There has to be. According to the Entertainment Software Association, there are \u2014 they reported in 2025 that 47% of all American gamers are women. Even though women statistically are half of all players in the space, they are quiet about it, shuffled into only gaming with their partners, playing feminine, less-competitive games or opting for solo-queueing. Or, alternatively, they\u2019re forced into a box that includes kitty ears on their headset and a hot pink computer, labeled as an e-girl or an online pick-me. I wonder if other girls feel the shame that I feel \u2014 that one of my favorite hobbies is going home and seeing what I feel like playing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was in class last week when a guy asked me if I played Overwatch. Shocked, and immediately flooded with embarrassment, I offered a meek \u201cyes,\u201d and we agreed to play. It hasn\u2019t happened yet, but since then, I\u2019ve been pondering my gut instinct: if I want to play with other people, why do I run from the opportunities and fail to look for women who I know are out there? And, yes, I\u2019m still embarrassed to admit all of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a duality: I love a good competitive match, but I also do it while wearing my own fake nails. I\u2019ve been playing Overwatch since 2017, but I also have 5,000 hours on The Sims 4. I think we spend too much time talking about women and their hobbies, sorting them into archetypes and making assumptions about who they are when they\u2019re alone or happy based on how they appear. Someone would never know the amount of money I\u2019ve invested in games and computer tech, because all they would see is someone who loves to wear dresses and paint pottery. Also, I manage to maintain these interests while managing two jobs. It is possible. Men, you can get a job and still go home and play League.<\/span><\/p>\n

TLDR: women still like video games, even though they\u2019re quiet about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact the author at howleditorinchief@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feb. 25, 2026 | Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief The gaming space online is catered to, and run by, men and boys. They dominate competitive gaming and casual spaces, too. It\u2019s been my experience that these online spaces have grown unwelcome to the presence of women and girls \u2014 and I want to understand why. Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Girl gaming","_seopress_titles_desc":"What it was like growing up a girl on the internet \u2014 and what it\u2019s like now","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":"saragerrick","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24913,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24908\/revisions\/24913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}