Commentary: what it’s like being a woman in the Southeast Asian gaming industry

Kotaku recently wrote about a female games industry veteran in the US being harassed by a male games reporter. Screencaps of the harassment – via Facebook chat – were shared in the report; during the course of an initially benign conversation, the reporter began making comments like “I will kiss your vagina if you do” when trying to coerce his interviewee for answers.

After reading the report, I wanted to share it on Facebook and caption the link “Thanks everyone in gaming for not being perverts to me.” Then I caught myself. Why did I want to be grateful for people respecting me?

Still, it did raise a point. I’m a woman in the Southeast Asian gaming industry, and the predominantly-male industry that I work in respects me enough to have never made sexual advances on me.

Yay.

Why is this so? I believe the main deciding factor is our culture. As a kid I grew up without a sense of entitlement. I was not told I was allowed to have dreams. I went to school, wore a uniform, and was celebrated for being part of the flock. As a kid in Southeast Asia you grow up according to a set of rules. You’re expected to follow a specific educational path, a specific career part, and a specific way of living your life. I obviously bucked the trend, much to my parents’ chagrin, which is why I now write about video games instead of scanning someone’s stomach for their unborn baby, but the fact is, an upbringing like this does not raise adults who think: I deserve what I want. Rather, it makes them think: I have to work hard.

And so by extension, Southeast Asian men do not grow up thinking that they deserve the fine piece of ass on this woman, or that woman, and that they have the right to demand it. Instead they believe that if they work hard enough, something magical will happen. This leads to many a friendzone, but that’s not the point.

While us ladies don’t get sexually harassed the way we might in the Western industry, the gaming industry in Southeast Asia still also unabashedly sexist, and I feel our cultural differences put us at extra disadvantage when it comes to battling sexism.

In Asian culture, because you’re expected to shut up and sit down, people don’t learn to chase their dreams. Women don’t get up one day and say: cook your own damn rice, I’m going out to change the world. They still follow all the prescribed rules that have been written for them since birth.

Which is this.

And the problem is, even though there are women in the regional gaming industry (hi, ladies!), we still haven’t learned to speak up. And because we allow the men to continue with their sexist-as-heck stereotypes without telling them they are wrong, sexism in the Southeast Asian gaming industry is perpetuated.

One of the first question new acquaintances ask me when they receive my name card is “so do you play games?” The automatic assumption is that women don’t play games because that’s ‘boy’ territory. Though nobody has said, “so do you play games and can I touch your boobs?”, there is no way to answer this question appropriately apart from saying ‘yes’. It’s just Not Asian to blow up at a new acquaintance for asking me that super ridiculous question (would I be writing about games if I didn’t play games, you asshole?).