Female Streamers — Case Study Part I

▶ BCM332 Global Media Interventions

Twitch is a popular live streaming platform where typically people who play video games or as they typically call themselves ‘gamers’ stream their game while an audience watches. There are many types of streamers on the site that cater to different audiences so if games don’t interest you then there are other options that are your cup of tea.

Majority of gaming streamers are actually male and the main reason for them to be streaming themselves playing these games is to show their competitive side and present their skills (“Top Female Twitch Streamers – The Rise of Female Streamers in Gaming”, 2020); streamers are also able to obtain subscribers and followers where these subscribers can donate real money through linking their PayPal account to their Twitch account and if the streamer gains a certain amount of subscribers or followers as well, they are able to gain sponsors or sponsorship from companies or organisations.

Image taken from gurugamer.com

While the community of streamers has a tendency to fluctuate, there has also been an uprising in female streamers/gamers. That’s where some controversies come into play. Since the main purpose of streaming yourself playing a video game is to show your skills in the game and possibly teach your viewers some of those skills all while entertaining your viewers as well. The reason why some controversies occur when it comes to female streamers is because the biggest stereotype that has been around for a long time is the idea that ‘games’ or ‘video games’ are only supposed to be for boys, while girls are supposed to do other things like do their make up, household chores or anything that would be classified as ‘girly’.

Once a female streamer emerges from Twitch, viewers have a tendency to look for one of two things when it specifically comes to female streamers; whether they are skillful in said game that they’re playing or their looks. Just like in society, women are always overly sexualised or objectified when presented in media, so that doesn’t differ from this particular media platform. There is always a stereotype with women not being good at video games and the biggest occurrence is that these women tend to get harassed for their skills (BBC, 2020) when in reality some men have just the same skill set but they don’t usually get commented on.

Image taken from kulturehub.com

The issues that female streamers have to go through on a daily basis are harassment from the men in the gaming community, because it was once uncommon for females to be playing video games nonetheless, streaming playing video games, men don’t feel obliged to compete since they believe that “men are better at video games”. However since the amount of female streamers are increasing, women have resulted into other ways to gain subscribers and viewers through taking advantage of the judgement and harassment from the opposite gender (Clarke, 2019), with that, you start to see more female streamers with their webcams and being dressed up for their streams – some even showing off their physical appearance just for a way to gain viewers.

You don’t usually see a male streamer with their webcam on and them being shirtless, whilst streaming what they’re playing – do you? But for female streamers there is a quite a number of them that stream while wearing revealing clothing just because that may be their only chance in gaining a following on Twitch.

References:

1. BBC. (2020). Harsh realities of being a professional ‘girl gamer’. Retrieved 22 May 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180417-harsh-realities-of-being-a-professional-girl-gamer
2. Clarke, L. (2019). Silencing the haters. Retrieved 22 May 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/sports/toxic-online-culture-women-esports/
3. Ismail, J. (2018). Why is being a woman gamer so hard? A look into the sexism on Twitch. Retrieved 22 May 2020, from https://kulturehub.com/women-gamers-streamers-twitch/
4. Top Female Twitch Streamers – The Rise of Female Streamers in Gaming. (2020). Retrieved 22 May 2020, from https://influencermarketinghub.com/top-female-twitch-streamers-rise-of-female-gamers/