Now this is an interesting survey. HuffPost published this article talking about the online harassment women face, especially in the gaming industry. Even though we have about 48% of gamers who are women, men seem to not respect and trust them. Writer Rebecca Adams, in the article, gives a solid proof when she writes – “How genders interact with each other, in gaming, it seems, might just tell us a lot about what women in general encounter outside of these virtual fantasy worlds.”

She mentions about this recent study at the University of New South Wales and Miami University that looked at the interactions between men and women playing the first-person shooter game Halo 3. The players have no idea they are being studies, and hence their natural reactions towards one another were noted. The researchers used pre-recorded commentary by a male and female voice to interact with these teammates.

It was found that – men who were better at the game were more positive in their interactions, regardless of the gender of the commentary voice they heard, while men who played poorly only responded positively to the man’s voice.

Phrases like – “Should’ve made me a sandwich, b*tch,” “It’s the b*tch stealing my kills” and “Shut up, you whore.”

Ah poor they. They do sound very frustrating.

Therefore, it was summarized that men who feel inferior to women are more likely to harass them. Because in the survey, when men heard a female voice as the commentator after loosing the game, they felt nothing less than losers and therefore abused the voice.

A possible solution (as mentioned on the website) – according to the researchers, is to communicate to men that “losing to the opposite sex is not socially debilitating.” But honestly, it’s pretty sad if these sore losers can’t wade through their testosterone and figure that out themselves. Women can’t be expected to kick men’s butts at Halo and massage their egos at the same time.

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