Every man should play online games with women who use Mics. I dare you. Especially anyone crying “NOT ALL MEN!” Or saying all the good ones are at home playing videogames. 🙄

Cis/het/male here, and I have recently been playing CoD off and on with a group that is mostly women and OH MY SCIENCE DO NONE OF YOU HAVE MOTHERS/DAUGHTERS/BASIC HUMAN DECENCY?

Holy shit. I knew it was bad. Just not how bad.

By no means am i saying I didn’t believe women on this one, but im just fucking impressed in the worst goddamn way. The things dudes say to women when there is anonymity protecting them from being outted as vile pieces of shit is insane.

And it. Is. CONSTANT. Every round. If they aren’t hitting on them in the most crude and aggressively cringey way, theyre threatening sexual assault. If they’re not doing those, it’s kitchen jokes, calling them fat, or making comments about their genitalia.

And yes yes… I know not all online communities are this bad. But CoD is one of the biggest online communities in the world and a very casual-friendly game in general and its fucking revealing about the average male gamer that i cant get into a single lobby where my female friends DARE TALK and not get some chode incel making everything uncomfortable or downright hostile.

Guys, if we want women to actually want to play games with us, we have to make some fucking space for them. And it doesn’t stop at just not participating. If you hear some bullshit, say something!

Do better, y’all. Gaming is for everyone.

Edit: when i said CoD is “casual friendly” i meant that it’s a pick up and play game that anyone can figure out and play the kill slot machine. Not that the community is anything but rude.

Edit 2.0: to clarify once more, using “not all men” to emphasize that men are not a monolith and have a constructive conversation is not the same thing as screeching it to dismiss the experiences of many women and put yourself on some kind of pedestal for showing basic human decency to the opposite sex.