I think I've come across a discovery, something that has been exposed from my own experience.
The male-dominated gaming community seems to be turning young women into pickme's. Growing up, I never seemed to be able to keep female friends. I'm not sure where it stemmed from, but I was a very rude person and lost all my friends going into middle school. I went to a different middle school than my old friends and figured I'd start fresh. As a seventh grader, I spent months cracking down on my bad habits and became a more friendly person, only to end up in a physically abusive friendship.
I ended that friendship come high school. I made a new female friend and she was very kind. With her, I became friends with two guys in one of my classes. They were fun to be around and pretty nice at first. We began to hang out with them and their friends more and eventually we became a large friend group (~10ish people) that hung out everyday. Me and her were the only girls. The rest were males, who also happened to be gamers.
Excited about all my new friends, I ignored the build up of harassment as I was worried about being alone again.
All these boys seemed to be very obsessed with racist and sexist jokes. They would often tell me and my friend to go make them a sandwich, or clean stuff up for them. We put up with it!!! I honestly convinced myself that these jokes were funny and worth putting up with. I would even start to make jokes about it. Being the only girls in this group, we got lots of attention for being "gamer girls" and got to flirt with whoever we wanted. It was addicting.
Time went on, and I slowly became sick of it. My girlfriend started dating one of the guys and he would constantly be calling me a "bitch" for no reason. I distanced myself from them, but didn't have others to turn to and came back to them. I put up with it for another year.
Throughout this, I realized that when I stood my ground, I got "punished". All the guys would band together and berate me at once. To avoid this treatment, I adopted pickme behaviors and tried to please them. This didn't work either though, because while they wouldn't insult me as much, I would have to put up with sexist jokes and jump through hoops to please them, and overall still didn't feel respected.
I really internalized a lot of the things they said, which haunted my high school relationships. My pickme behaviors extended to these relationships and lead me to having my boundaries broken constantly, which is something I'm still recovering from today.
I am a bit ashamed to say that I just made this discovery... But wow! I'm glad I finally realized all this. I am happy to say that I've cut most of these people out of my life and am still in the process of doing so.
The gaming community is very toxic towards women and I'm hoping to distance myself more from it as I continue to "recover". These men are so female-deprived, they forget how to act like normal human beings when they finally have "access" to one.
TLDR: Avid male gamers are so female deprived that they forget how to be respectful human beings towards women. With the few vulnerable women who do give them attention, they "train" them to put up with misogyny and verbal abuse.
Thanks for reading everyone! Please leave your thoughts down below :)
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