‘Go back to the kitchen’ Journalists at Glasnaya Media ask why so many Russian gamers hate women
Last winter, Russian gamers reacted poorly to the news that the next installment in the Witcher video game series would put them in the shoes of a woman character, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, the adopted daughter of Geralt of Rivia, the main character of the previous games. Ciri has been in the games before, and her appearance (a sensitive issue in an industry that earns huge profits by pandering to the “male gaze”) has barely changed. In the source material written by Andrzej Sapkowski, her role has also grown. Nevertheless, many Russian gamers responded with misogynistic outrage when they learned Ciri would be the main character in “The Witcher 4.” Reporters at Glasnaya Media and the Blue Capybaras project, which mentors aspiring journalists, investigated why a woman’s perspective enrages so many of the men who play video games. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of their reporting.
In the summer of 2020, a gamer named Tissa started playing the multiplayer online game PUBG Mobile. Her father introduced her to the game, and she says she was quickly hooked. Tissa told Glasnaya Media that she especially liked the ability to build her own house in-game and feel like an architect. “It was such a high,” she told the news outlet.
Tissa fell in love with the game despite harassment from the player community, whose toxicity greeted her on day one. “It came from both guys and girls,” she said. “The guys would say things like ‘go back to the kitchen, that’s where you belong,’ and the girls would call me things like ‘slut’ and worse.”
Tissa told Glasnaya Media that the other players seemed to grow more hostile as her skills improved. Men would become frustrated, she said, while women would lash out at her, apparently hoping to ingratiate themselves with the men. The Russian speakers are the most abusive, Tissa added.
“I got a Sony PlayStation 2 when I was six, and by nine, I was already playing on a computer I got from one of my relatives,” said Valeria, a game blogger, streamer, and feminist known as Twinky Time. Valeria is originally from Ukraine and spent the first months of Russia’s invasion under occupation outside Kharkiv. After relocating to Europe, she resumed streaming on Twitch, YouTube, and Telegram, engaging her audience in Ukrainian, English, and Russian.
Like Tissa, Valeria frequently encounters insults. Men often leave comments calling her “ugly,” “fat,” or “stupid.”
“Strangers in games often start acting differently when these guys realize that my friends and I are girls,” she told Glasnaya Media. “It starts with name-calling — ‘you’re just a schoolboy, some tranny, stop lying’ — and then comes the ‘nice guy’ sexism and flirty messages.”
As she immersed herself more in gamer culture, Valeria began to reflect on how women are portrayed in games. When she was younger, seeing the typical women characters made her think: “Why don’t I look like that? I’m not pretty or thin enough.” She says she struggled with an eating disorder, wanting to resemble the impossibly proportioned heroines on her screen.
As an adult, she came to understand that these idealized images are unattainable: the cartoonish characters have little in common with real women. Valeria says she no longer beats herself up about the beauty standards in video games. In fact, much to the irritation of her haters, she talks openly about how unrealistic they are.
Valeria told Glasnaya Media that Russian-speaking gamers are often hostile toward the progressive trends seen elsewhere in the global gaming industry. Russian players and gaming journalists frequently push back against gender diversity in games. Valeria said the men she’s encountered in this community are especially uncomfortable with the idea that people — especially women — can look different and aren’t there just to please the male gaze.
According to Artemy Leonov — a game producer, journalist, and blogger — the roots of the industry’s misogyny go back to early game development, which was dominated by white, cisgender men who loved coding. Most games were made by men, for men. Though gaming audiences have grown more diverse in the last two decades, men remain at the helm.
“But gatekeeping is slowly fading,” Leonov told Glasnaya Media. “In the 2000s or early 2010s, you’d hear things like, ‘You’re a girl who plays games? You’re just trying to get boys’ attention.’ Now people see how cringe that sounds.”
Technological advances over the past 20 years have made game development more accessible, Leonov explained. Additionally, inclusive hiring policies at Western companies have lowered the entry barrier for women, queer people, and people of color — all of whom are now claiming space in the gaming world.
Leonov calls the Russian-speaking far-right gaming community a “vocal minority” that appears more powerful than it really is due to the lack of moderation on Russia’s major platforms. For example, DTF is a progressive-leaning Russian-language gaming site, but reactionary players have hijacked its comment section.
“You hop on Elon Musk’s Twitter and see people openly praising Nazis, and you probably want to get off the platform,” Leonov said. “It’s the same thing here. People don’t want to argue because they know they’ll get downvoted, meme’d, or trolled. So they just stay out of it.”
Glasnaya Media also spoke to “Yuri,” a gamer in Russia’s right-leaning community who administers a Vkontakte group devoted to video games. Echoing the rhetoric of chauvinist gamers around the world, he complained that agenda-driven game development is ruining the industry.
Yuri told Glasnaya Media that games suffer when designers prioritize “contemporary Western political trends” over quality. He said he also objects to efforts in gaming to improve diversity, equality, and inclusion — the “DEI” boogeyman that animates so much right-wing activism today. Queer and nonwhite characters were already in games — “even Japanese ones,” he noted — but in the past, “they served a role” that had nothing to do with their sexual orientation or skin color. When reminded that liberals also reject tokenism, Yuri quipped: “Even those freaks know they’re just tools of propaganda.”
However, not everyone in Russia is so bothered by video games’ capacity to indoctrinate and radicalize some players. The Russian government has recognized this potential, said Glasnaya Media, and the state-sponsored Internet Development Institute has allocated billions of rubles to create video games that promote traditional culture. One of the most high-profile (and disastrous) examples was Smuta (“Time of Troubles”), a billion-ruble game that flopped with both players and critics.
Video games are no longer on the fringes of culture wars. In countries like Russia — where the nation is at war and boys are told they’re not real men until they pick up a weapon — the gaming community has become a particularly charged battleground.
Original story by Glasnaya Media