Gamer culture remains crude, rude and male-dominated, study finds

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Misogyny is a defining characteristic of gaming culture, even though half of the players now are female.
Women who game face unwelcome sexual advances and crude condemnations of their skills, say Benjamin Baker and Arrington Stoll, UWM doctoral students who recently completed a study on the topic.
"Video games have historically been steeped in hypermasculine culture," said Baker, 31, a lifelong gamer. "Games have been developed by men and marketed to men."
While the audience has evolved, the sexualized characterization of women has not. The streets, dungeons and battlefields are more realistic than ever but still populated by brawny males and a few women clad in cleavage-revealing costumes.
Stoll, 28, began playing about six years to stay connected with her younger brother when he went off to college. She played a character with masculine traits in the online Xbox 360 game Call of Duty, but her feminine username and voice were immediate giveaways (players wear headsets and communicate with one another).
"It was terrible at first," said Stoll, who was berated in crude language when, as a newcomer, she didn't perform well. "My brother would stick up for me," she said. "He'd say 'Hey, that's my sister!'"