Despite women's documented surge in gaming, "somehow, gamer girls retain their aura of mystery," writes Dairuka Sutain. "Gamer girls are not special anymore. Take them off the pedestal."
Sutain believes two types of misogyny are at work in the Gamer Girl stereotype - the first is condescension, that if women aren't less skilled at popular games, they're at least less serious. The second is the ridicule of men who are less worthy performers or competitors in games with female co-players.
If you dare to turn on the TV, you'll see gamer girls flaunted in video game commercials, while on the Internet, they're placed up on a pedestal in tongue-in-cheek music videos sponsored by G4. Through no fault of their own, every single gamer girl in the world has suddenly been lumped into one gigantic generalization that was obviously based on the same types of misogynistic fables that I used to have back when I was young.
[...]
It's time equality took its place up on the pedestal. Stop the egotistical ranting about where a woman belongs. Stop the senseless mocking of men who have lost to a more skilled female player. Women not only belong in gaming, they excel at it. So quit making excuses when you lose, while acting as if women aren't up to snuff.
Although as a white guy, it rarely, if ever, happens to me, I can understand how a marketing stereotype presuming to speak for my experience would be off-putting, to say the least. But that's how marketers operate, reducing things to symbols and then attaching a value to it.
The issue of online behavior is something that will be persistently disappointing, however, to anyone expecting better of gamers. Patronizing or misogynistic behavior, like racist or homphobic comments, isn't going to go away because of well written arguments or appeals to character. It hasn't gone away, fully, in other settings, has it?
Gamer Girls Aren't So Special Anymore [Busted Analog]