Black women are facing 'disgusting' misogynoir in online gaming

Online gaming is supposed to be fun. And, when you’re controlling digital avatars and characters – it really shouldn’t matter what you look like. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many black women who are facing ‘disgusting levels’ of misogynoir and overt racism in the world of online gaming. Jay-Ann Lopez founded Black Girl Gamers in 2015 and says she has had countless experiences of racism and sexism while playing video games online.

‘I’ve had the misogynistic stuff – being told to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich,’ Jay-Ann tells Metro.co.uk. ‘And then there are specific racist comments. ‘I’ve been called the N-word, I’ve been asked if I can twerk on camera, someone has told me to go and make them some chicken. This is all whilst gaming online via chat. It’s disgusting.

‘There was also this stupid, racist Knuckles meme – based on a character from Sonic the Hedgehog, but it’s like a Ugandan version and would take the mick out of African accents and make jokes about Ebola.’

‘These experiences are happening to this day,’ says Jay-Ann. ‘So many of our members post videos where they are being targeted because people can tell they’re a black woman via the voice chat. They will just get called the N-word, particularly if they’re not playing like the other gamers want them to play. ‘A lot of gamers and streamers – especially black women – are tentative to game and stream online because they don’t want to go on camera. They feel like they will be targetted.’ These aren’t unfounded fears. This type of racial abuse is happening with alarming regularity to black female gamers. A 2019 study found that two-thirds of gamers have experienced serious harassment while playing online, much of it involving racist threats. 53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. And these aren’t always empty threats, the researchers found that ‘an alarming 29% of online game players have been “doxed” in an online game, meaning that their personal or private information was publicly exposed against their wishes. It’s also an incredibly hard problem to police, and thousands of incidents aren’t being followed up or monitored by the authorities. So, Jay-Ann created Black Girl Gamers (BGG) in direct response to this need for a safe space to game. She wanted to find other black women in the community and help these women feel empowered to game and be online without being afraid of abuse.

‘The community has now expanded to 5,700 members, globally. Now we host events too, and we hold panels,’ explains Jay-Ann. BGG Recently hosted the first women-only UK gaming event – Gamer Girls Night In – in collaboration with Nnesaga and Facebook, which she hopes to take to the States.

Jay-Ann says that as well as creating safe spaces, the group also aims to create connections between gamers and game companies, coders and developers. She says the beauty of BGG is their ability to give a voice to some of the most important issues in the black gaming community. ‘Finding people who are as vocal as I am can be difficult because a lot of people tend to assimilate when they get into the room,’ says Jay-Ann. ‘To be a black person in this industry often means not being able to speak up about an issue, or being shut down if you try to raise it. ‘Gaming is seen as an exploratory passion, and as such, people don’t really like to mix it with politics. People say that gaming isn’t about race. But gaming is always political if you are erasing people of colour, LGBTQIA people and women.’ As well as abuse in online forums, the games themselves can be guilty of perpetuating racist attitudes with offensive stereotypes and damaging racial assumptions feeding the design of characters and communities. A 2018 study found that African American avatars in video games were likely to be ‘physically imposing, angry and menacing’, and white people playing as a black avatar were more likely to display increased aggression towards others. Jay-Ann, who also works with the Institute of Coding, says her aim is to tackle this issue head-on and make it clear to gaming companies that simply shoehorning a black character into a game is not enough to solve this pervasive problem.

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