J. Paradise recently began a series over at DailyGame called Confessions of a Girl Gamer, cataloguing some of the less-fun aspects of multiplayer gaming on Xbox Live. As a female gamer, she noted some of the less pleasant behaviors of the majority of the other gamers on the system, who presumably are male, if common sense and all known statistics can be trusted.

While most of her complaints are entirely valid and each of the behaviors she describes is undoubtedly annoying, I thought there were one or two points which deserved to be responded to, given the criticism the gaming industry receives almost daily in the current political climate for promoting sex and violence. Before this and other articles get referred to in an attempt to heap the charge of promoting sexism among America's youth gets piled onto the heap, it might be worth thinking a little further on some of the topics J. Paradise raises.

Paradise cleverly puts a good portion of her article in the format of a mock wildlife documentary, where unsophisticated and immature male gamers treat female gamers like some "rare and elusive" beast, and then proceed to be rude to them.

Should you come across one of these females, be sure to make yourself look as incompetent as you can. This can be achieved by asking her completely uniformed questions and making sexist comments. A good way to start is to constantly ask her if she is in fact a girl, regardless of the fact that her gamertag positively identifies her as a female. Names that would denote gender, such as 'girl'(or any odd spelling variation there of) 'woman' and 'lady' can all be misleading, and should be ignored until further proof of gender is gathered.

I think Paradise is being unncecessarily unkind when complaining about disbelief among gamers about her gender. This is entirely understandable on the part of most gamers and easily avoided from her own side.

The fact is that, for whatever reasons, the majority of gamers on systems like Xbox Live are male, and among the portion of that community using what seem like feminine names (as opposed to male-sounding or more neutral names) are a significant number of males. Whether this is due to RPG fans who like playing female characters on-screen so they have something pretty to look at, or to serious questions of gender identity, I honestly have no idea. But like any other piece of personal information you can glean from a chatroom or online game service, having a feminine-sounding name is no more indicative of being female than having any other kind of name is indicative of the opposite.

In fact, more than anything else, I am prompted to ask why Paradise or any other "girl gamer" would choose a name specifically for the purpose of pointing out the owner's gender. While XBL has its share of names with "man" or even "boy" in them, the majority do not. And while many might seem to be masculine, due to references to death, destruction, killing or 1337ness, that association may be purely arbitrary.

What is so special about being a girl who games that Paradise feels the need to point out the fact that she is a girl gamer? And having done so, is it not logical and natural to expect that choice to prompt inquiries such as she describes-- either disbelief about her professed gender, or insults catered to her professed gender?

Now that we have all of the formalities out of the way, let's move on to the actual game. It is imperative that you call her every name that you can think of which is specifically derogatory to her gender throughout the entire game. She will pretend that she doesn't like it, but a little known fact about the Girl Gamer is that she actually enjoys being called 'bitch', 'slut', 'whore' and 'dyke' every 2 minutes. Also, try to be helpful by reminding her of her (and her entire gender's) place. Statements such as "Girls can't play Halo" or "This is a man's game, bitch" work nicely. Sometimes, just a simple "Get back in the kitchen" is all that is needed. The name calling and sexist remarks will be sure to please the female, and it will ensure that she will accept the friend request that you will invariably send after (or during; refer to the above paragraph for proper timing) the game.

The mistaken assumptions are pretty thick here, even if the essential complaint-- that players on XBL are, as a rule, foul-mouthed and rude-- is fair.

First of all, as for being called 'bitch', 'slut', 'whore' and 'dyke'-- I think with the possible exception of the last, just about every male gamer who has played on XBL for more than five minutes has been called each of these many times. While these words may have once been associated only with the female gender, this is no longer so, especially within gaming communities. "Bitch" is used almost generically now, having evolved from slandering women by associating them with canines, to being used as slander against men for being like women ("I'm going to make you my bitch" and so on) to being a catch-all insult word good against anybody. "Take that, bitch" is about as generic a comment as you'll get on Xbox Live-- regardless of the gender of the speaker or the insult's target.

The same goes for "slut" and "whore" even if their usage is slightly less. However, even if it were not so that these words have become more gender neutral over time in their common usages, the bald fact is that players on Xbox Live are foul-mouthed and rude. If they are choosing these words in particular to use because of a gender bias they see in a gamertag, the essential behavior is the same: they are insulting their opponents. They are merely using different words than they would if the gamertag they were insulting was gender-neutral-- although, as I've pointed out above, maybe not, as it seems just about everybody today is a bitch.

Of course, phrases like "girls can't play Halo" and "get back in the kitchen" seem more blatantly sexist, but to be honest I've heard both of these used against male gamers as a way of impugning their ability and their masculinity. This doesn't make the remark any less sexist, but it seems that the problem here is that femininity itself is being used as a pejorative-- the only difference here is that when it's used against a female gamer the denotation is correct even if the connotation isn't, whereas against a male gamer neither is.

When Paradise sarcastically remarks that "the name calling and sexist remarks will be sure to please the female" I have to wonder why this is even relevant. Xbox Live may exist to please its subscribers; but the subscribers pay and connect to the service largely to please themselves, not each other. While such rude behavior is, and should be, against XBL's policies, and those policies should be enforced to make XBL a safer and more fun place to play, there is a lot of distance between that and the sentiment that one should be logging on with the intention of pleasing one's opponents. And the word "friend" in "friend request" I think probably should not be read too literally.

If you find yourself actually losing to the girl, make up excuses to account for your poor performance. Blaming it on lag is the tried and true method, but don't be afraid to get creative. You could try 'I am sick right now because while I was visiting the rainforests of Brazil, a howler monkey threw poo at me, and I contracted a rare form of monkey hepatitis.' (Warning: Do not use the aforementioned example. This excuse was thought up by someone who is creative, as well as intelligent. Two things that you, quite apparently, are not.) The Girl Gamer may appreciate the effort you put into to making your excuse clever and unique, and will help to separate you from the other 100 jerks she played with that day that sent her friend requests.

Again, I don't think any of this behavior is defensible, but neither do I think any of it has to do with Paradise's gender. Losers always have excuses for losing, whether it is lag, hacks, cheats or rare diseases-- regardless of who the victor is. I've also consistently seen rude and uncouth players send me friend requests after games. I've no idea why they did that, but clearly it had nothing to do with my gender. Why should her treatment have anything to do with her gender? In fact, if she's expecting to be treated better than any other XBL subscriber, isn't that asking for a kind of sexism?

As a girl gamer on Xbox Live, it is more common to be sexually harassed and called derisive names than it is to be just left alone. On the rare occasion that a group of males actually compliment our skills, it is indeed a shock.

If you take out the word "girl" in the first sentence, you get "As a gamer on Xbox Live, it is more common to be sexually harassed and called derisive names than it is to be just left alone." That statement is just as true with or without the word "girl".

Take out the word "males" in the second sentence and replace it with "players" and that sentence is also just as accurate as it was before. I remember playing Myth when every game ended with a chorus of "gg"-- either heartfelt or at least obligatory. When playing Halo 2 on XBL, it's an exception rather than the rule.

This basically tells me that while there might be sexism (as well as racism) lurking on Xbox Live and other online gaming networks, the predominant problem is the same one eloquently expressed by the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory-- that anonymity plus an audience turns otherwise normal people into foul-mouthed jerks, regardless of their own gender or the gender of the audience.