The Twitch space has not, historically speaking, been a particularly safe or inviting place for women. Despite the fact that women make up nearly half of people who play video games, they make up only a small percent of the most popular streamers on Twitch. Additionally, after examining tweets, Twitch chats, and the Twitch Community Guidelines, it is clear that women in the space face challenges that their male peers do not. Overall, Twitch, and gaming culture more broadly, can be an uncomfortable environment for women and non-binary individuals. Within the space, they face frequent harassment and mistreatment from community members. This can come in many forms of sexism and other gender-based harassments, including victim-blaming, misgendering, slut-shaming, and discrediting.
The examination of tweets related to Twitch is helpful in witnessing and understanding sexism and other forms of gender-based harassment that women and non-binary streamers face within the Twitch communities. Many of the tweets exemplify double standards that women face in comparison to their male peers. They illustrate and highlight the experiences of women and non-binary streamers within the current Twitch community. The tweets demonstrate the confluence of sexualization and sexual harassment, role delegitimation, and belittling that interfere with women’s opportunities and experiences on Twitch. QTCinderella’s video “He Tried Being Me For a Day,” exhibits some of the different kinds of harassment that streamers on Twitch face during their streams, specifically highlighting some differences in experience between men and women on the platform. Female Twitch streamers frequently face sexism on the platform, and the video demonstrates just that—the amount and kinds of sexism women face on the platform on a regular basis. Additionally, the Twitch Community Guidelines provide insight on the treatment of women on Twitch as well. The Guidelines have seen some significant improvements in regards to their specificity in the past few years. However, despite improvements, there is still room to grow, as the guidelines lacking clear definitions on important topics, such as their lack of a distinct definition of sexual harassment. This lack of clarity can lead to unequal and unfair enforcement of the rules.
Through my conversation with Izadoodle, I found that women do face harassment within the community and that it can affect the way they stream and present themselves online. This interview affirmed many of my concerns about the ways that sexism looks on the platform as well as illustrated some of the ways that it can directly impact streamers. Furthermore, it feels as though the issues and toxicity on Twitch stem from gaming culture more broadly. It is clear that sexism and gender-based harassment is an issue within the gaming industry as a whole, but what is it about sexism specifically manifesting on Twitch that is such an issue? Sexism, and other forms of discrimination, are amplified on the platform—Twitch is a social space, and as a result sexist views spread through interaction. While there is sexism within gaming as an industry—i.e. in game development—individuals do not necessarily have access to game developers in the way that they have direct access to, direct interactions with, and direct influence from streamers and community members. This also applies to other forms of discrimination in the Twitch and gaming community, such as racism, homophobia, ableism, and transphobia. However, it does seem like the culture is generally shifting in a positive direction, albeit slowly.
Additionally, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this project. One of the challenges of studying Twitch is that content from the site expires after three months unless it is uploaded to another platform, which is why I chose to analyze Twitter posts, a YouTube video, and the Twitch Community Guidelines. In further explorations of this topic, there may be other ways to navigate this issue that also sufficiently showcase parts of the Twitch community. Furthermore, while I reached out to five streamers, I only heard back from one, so in an ideal version of this project I would have the opportunity to talk with more streamers to learn more about personal experiences on the site in order to get a broader picture of the culture on Twitch. At the outset of this project, one of my hopes was to be mindful and inclusive of the experience of non-binary and gender non-conforming individuals on the platform, and while I do think I was able to consider their experience, one of the benefits of having more interviews would have allowed for direct inclusion of additional perspectives.