Us serious gamers – male or female – love streaming. Streaming is an awesome way to “attend” tournaments if you have no transportation or funds (or are lazy), want to stalk the pros, perhaps gather some tournament data, get new ideas whether it be gameplay or stream hosting, and a ton of other cool things.
 
The first thing any stream monster has to realize is females clearly dominate the gaming scene. It’s ridiculous and you can hear people complain all the time about the lack of males.  Heck, even I complain from time to time.  But is it really their fault for not being as interested? Maybe more than we realize are interested but don’t come forth is how I see it.
 
It’s become obvious to me – It’s OUR fault, the majority, the female gamers – it’s our fault the males aren’t coming forth.  Male gamers aren’t just ignorant (alright well a few) or uninterested, they’re turned off – Completely turned off to hardcore gaming or serious competition.  And honestly, I can’t think of any good reason for them NOT to be.  The argument “Well if they just tried it out…” can’t be used.  We’ve seen plenty of male gamers, even a few who’ve risen to fame or become well known.  The numbers still can’t be ignored, the males are a minority and I don’t really see an increase.  Why?  The stream monsters.  Females run the stream, play the game, and are chatting as stream monsters.  If someone tries to get “into the scene” or is curious nowadays, usually they’ll start off watching people “professionally” or “seriously” play the game online.  When a male joins the room or appears on the stream camera, you know what happens.  The females go nuts with the immaturity and disrespect.  They say the same old pervy things to any male stream monster or host: “How big are your testicles?” and “Get back in the office” and “Lick my vagina” and the worst “Go back to your Nintendo DS and play Working Papa.”  Or they’ll talk about a male they see “How old is that guy on there?” and “Damnnnn he got a nice booty” and “I’d hit” or “Would not hit.”
 
Really?  Why would anyone want to join an activity, culture, or community like this?  Where their entire gender is completely disrespected, feelings not considered, and are seen as nothing more than a sex object?  Where even if they strive to greatness they aren’t taken seriously, STILL seen as nothing more than a sex object, and are ostracized and treated differently just because of their pair of balls? There have even been studies on how many people online gender swap or as we call it “trap.” Now in good ol’ All is Brawl, someone pretending to be a male is more of a troll thing to do or a gimmick or just-for-fun type thing.  But a lot of times, males will “become female” just to escape the torture of being a male in the community.  But that fact is only a side effect of the bigger issue – Males are a joke to us, it’s something to laugh about because if we pretend to be a guy we KNOW we’ll be treated differently by the females.
 
We’ve had plenty of blogs about how to improve our Super Smash Bros. community and our reputation specifically, but this can be used to gaming in general.  Just the other day I joined a Marvel vs Capcom 3 stream with a young, attractive male co-hosting with a female.  The first chat post I read was “Well 16 is barely ok, I’d still do you.”  I know some of you probably don’t care, will keep trapping, will keep mentioning getting back in the office or testicles, but it’s just an issue I’d like to address.  I personally enjoy seeing males in our community and other gaming communities, but I don’t see how in the world we’ll ever improve their attendance if we continue to hypocritically shut them out as we do now.