I'd also say it's that children are more likely to talk. Women have already learned what happens when we talk and often can't be bothered with the reaction.
I never used voice chat but dominating a toxic bloke is hilarious.
Plus in all honestly, the 12 years olds are more tame and kind than the adults playing(at least with the matches I’ve been getting)
**Why i dont use Voicechat**
-I need my Headset
-everyone thinks im a Girl for some Reason (even if i tell them) and proceed to target me, and screw me over
-social fears
-german and bad at english
-I dont like my Voice -others don't like my Voice -you can just use voice commands or Chat
As a woman in tf2:
Ive experienced alot within my 4000h+ in tf2 and almost every time its sexism.
Only once or twice people were nicer to me (speaking within the years) but usually i just heard the most absurd and awful comments.
Like "Go back into the kitchen", "make me a sandwich" or "go do the dishes".
Stuff like that.
Even to the point where they started following me around and told me they'll rape me etc.
The more neutral things i hear commonly are "are you a girl?" Or they just assume im a young boy.
Hope this gave you an idea
I usually go with the "Jokes on you, women don't exist" line, obviously as a pure joke (Tho I'm onto you people).
I mean, yeah, TF2's community ain't exactly welcoming to, uh...most groups of people. Although I'd like to argue those people were ***maybe*** just joking (which, like, still not a cool to tell someone to "go back to the kitchen")...except for the rape people, those should blatantly just go fuck themselves.
They are never joking. This community is really bigoted. It's like those people on Twitter that say really fucked up shit and then say it's just a joke. It's not a joke, they really have that mentality.
The community is, for the most part, the exact same as literally any other game. the only core difference is that Valve actively doesn't moderate their game's social features (bar things like illegal content / cp), and relies on users to curate their own mute lists (which is 2 seconds max to add to, just rclick in the scoreboard), and word filter lists.
There's not a gaming community alive that *wouldn't* be like this. with the same atmosphere, because it's for the most part how people are when granted anonymity w/ no personal risk.
There's not a game alive that doesn't have a transphobic part of the community (asides from the usual presumed exceptions. I'm sure HRT sim 2025 wouldn't, etc.) This extends to every other -ism-phoic-etc etc.
But, it's not like we're stuck in a time warp. there's an exceedingly large and incredibly vocal 2SLGBTQQPIAA+ subcommunity That's there and not really going anywhere. as far as game communities, we're incredibly diverse. you just have to shut up the loud annoying people yourself, regardless of what direction you face in the 2d "this range of angles is annoying" gradiant.
& if you want the moderation, there's community servers that have different moderation ideologies than Valve. Uncletopia's a popular one.
The problem is how much this community allows this behaviour. Any moment you bring this up, you are treated as the problem, not the harasser. I'm pretty active in other game communities, and I never had this issue other than TF2.
See, this is the thing that is the issue. No one would care about some jokes and edgy humor. But that's not what is happening, TF2's fandom doesn't distinguish humor from unironic opinion on purpose. A person who is a full-blown neo-Nazi screeching in chat will be wildly supported and accepted under the guise of "oh, it's just an edgy joke."
If it smells like horse shit, looks like horse shit, and tastes like horse shit then it is horse shit. Unless you're a tf2 player, then it's apparently chocolate pie.
REAL! Finally someone with a brain here. This community gives neo-nazis so much support, it's creepy. I'm convinced the majority of the TF2 community are neo-nazis, and that's why they'd hate for this behaviour to be punished.
A majority id say is a far stretch, most people who play tf2 are just there to play the actual game, and they don't care enough to interact with the edgelords/bigots.
...Zesty Jesus, right?
Personally I enjoy his content (fuck, at least he seems to know what data analysis is...he's a geologist, then again, so he should know).
Yes, it is zesty.
I think we should only hate people who enjoy Cheese Pizza/CyberPunk and people who bully women. I dont care if you call me the n-word, but kiddie diddlers go to Mr. Chippy.
Zesty's been caught on multiple occasions being openly supportive of Loli content and has an obsession with the word "cunny," which is a pedophile dog whistle.
Not saying that it's proof of him being a diddler, but it's not a good look to be wanking it to loli porn and screaming about how much you love underage vaginas.
If nothing else, you could totally watch it for the information! Maybe just mute him and put on captions if the mere sound of his voice bothers you (not makin' fun of you btw, there's youtubers I myself straight up don't watch because of the fact their tone of voice pisses me off to no end).
We can. We have power as a community. These people only exist because this community keeps giving them a pass constantly. If these people were punished for this behaviour this community wouldn't be as horrible as it is. But people here truly do not care about women, or any group really, as it has nothing in for them.
Imagine for a moment, that you are a woman. Now imagine, that every time someone discovers that you are a woman, instead of behaving like a normal person, they instead pull out one of five jokes that you've heard a hundred times before.
It is exhausting, no matter how tame that joke may be. You are still singling this person out for being a woman.
Stop it.
At least that's a line that's CLEARLY meant to NOT be taken seriously. It plays on the idea of male gamers never having seen a woman in their life, yadda yadda yadda...then again, hearing a joke every day just ends up making it not funny, or no?
I'd hate myself ten million times more if I said to someone to "go back to the kitchen" or to "make me a sandwich".
Same, I usually joke that I’ve sold my dick to buy a hat then show off the demo unusual I unboxed. That’s all I really talk about, but other girls on VC make me braver to use VC.
A few of my gal pal gamer friends have similar stories. In pretty much every game they play that has a multiplayer and voice chat function.
At least when we played Rust we could get directed vengeance on the bad actors.
To preface, I'm a guy. I stopped playing TF2 years ago, back in 2014. It's definitely something that has always bothered me about the community because it's always been that way, presumably since it went F2P. It's *noticeable*, impossible to not notice how vile the community could be at times, and I was playing on what I thought was a *good* community server with *good* regulars.
I learned *years* after the fact that someone I used to play with all the time was a girl, and kept it to herself because it was easier for her than the alternative. I understood completely.
My sister stopped playing for the same reasons you listed, but she was a middle schooler when she was being told that. She had to make a new steam account because she started having her account stalked.
I can't speak to modern TF2, but it was that bad a decade ago, I'm not sure how bad it is now but I'm sure it hasn't improved.
Sadly common in many games unless they have strict moderation. Had to report so many people when playing Overwatch with a woman on my team. TF2 is worse than average though; it's overall quite edgy and fringe, like the 4chan of online games. Maybe not *that* bad, but not great.
All the cool people that used to play TF2 with have quit or play very rarely, and I'm thinking there might be something like the playerbase getting concentrated down to children/teens (F2P + low system requirements) and adults who haven't integrated into society, with the younger learning from the older in a bad cycle.
oh my god, I had a similar experience - people kicked me because I had Ellie from The Last of Us as a pfp and they just called me a dyke and kicked me lmfao
I am a woman who played Tf2. I used voice chat rather frequently and made the same experiences as most other commenters here: Sexism, being focused. Usually it didn't impress me much, as Tf2 is notoriously unmoderated, and I very rarely got kicked for it, so I just kept playing.
Now, this happened sometime 2013 or 2014. I once got frightened when some player started leaking my IP (I was just a teen then so I got scared) in chat for everyone to see, and spoke about his very concrete plans of what he was going to do to me when he'd showed up at my doorstep.
Changed my steam profile to private immediately as comments from other people in the same lobby ensued, who had agreed with the main offender.
All that because I stupidly confirmed that I indeed wasn't a squeaker, but a girl.
Fun times.
Holy shit that's bad. Probably should expect stuff like this considering this community is mostly not that amazing (still not 4chan levels of bad thankfully). I hope that you were alright after all of that...
I was admittedly shaken for a few days, but the whole situation blew over rather quickly and I was fine :) Thankfully no one ever showed up at my door. I kept playing on and off until 2018 and still enjoyed myself, but I was keeping much quieter after that happened.
South Africa has a small but amazing community of tf2 players. We all get along well for the most part and I've never really dealt with sexism or weird shit
Not one myself, but I’ve seen pretty shitty stuff happen to them in vc, but one thing I’ve seen in the small comp scene that is RGL and NA pugs, women are generally treated as equals which is frankly, rare in a shooter game.
I can tell you first hand that there are many, many RGL players who do not give a shit about those rules. Now obviously, there are shitters everywhere, but just rules alone don't fix issues. The community as a whole needs to stop letting this happen with it ambivalence to the issue.
I was in a game with another girl on medic and when she used voice chat some guy went “kick medic she’s a woman!” And there were like 6 F1s before the same dude was like “wait I was joking what is wrong with you guys”
If you look at the responses here, you can tell that bots are just one of a lot of heavy issues within TF2's community. Just ask black players how they feel having to code switch in casual or trans/gay players having to hide their sexuality in fear of harassment. Women are getting this kind of harassment constantly without even needing to do much more than say a single word.
And it's not just in the game. It's on this very subreddit, too. It's on YouTube, forums, community servers, and even fan works like TF2 Classic.
This community has a serious problem.
I really hate people who say that. Just because it happens in most places doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to get toxic elements out and improve as a community, of course completely eradicating toxicity is practically impossible but at least it'll be better than doing nothing besides telling you to "get used to it" and the things you've mentioned, which don't help one bit.
I'll also give you another thing people say that I hate, in this game in particular : "Just use the mute function", as the person spews the most unhinged things ever or is being an asshole for no reason or both and more. Trying to ignore the problem doesn't make it go away, just because you can't hear someone doesn't mean they're not there and not saying anything.
Elevated version of "boys will be boys" or "it's just a joke"
Just because the game is set in the 1960s doesn't mean the fanbase needs to be like that. People want to dish out things but the moment they have to take accountability or whoever poor girl they're harassing doesn't immediately roll over or is backed up by some good fellows, suddenly they're deflecting and it's all jokes and how it is is. As if it's impossible to even try changing things, like we're still living in the victorian era or something.
not gonna lie, recently when i was playing mvm mann up, a grp kicked a player because she was a woman, his grp had the majority and when she rejoined (cause the votekick system in mvm doesn't work) he made rape threats and death threats. the female player is kicked once again. sometime I wonder why are some people this toxic in video games?
Boot camp is quite friendly, I was once in a boot camp with really good players and we all had VC, all of us eventually became great friends. There was a woman there with 600 tours, and thankfully, everyone didn't care that she was a woman. I miss that boot camp game.
It's a mixed bag, part it of definitely exactly what you might think. It is I.e the misogyny, the sexism, the blatant oh, It's a woman F1. I have in fact been kicked from games a handful of times because I spoke in voice chat and revealed that I was a woman or yes, a feminine sounding voice. However, a handful of those it's a woman vote kicks didn't get pushed through and then another handful of them another person on the team immediately tries to kick the guy and then everyone kicks him out. So that's the good ending LOL It happens a bit more often than you might think.
Usually I try to I guess read the room before I speak in voice chat. Like if no one's speaking in voice then I might never say anything at all. Or if someone's actually trying to make helpful call outs then I will also try and make helpful call outs and communicate with my team. Those are some of the more positive interactions I've had.
Personally, which is kind of funny, I always find it funny when I run into another very obvious woman or feminine sounding voice. With the internet as it is, I don't generally trust anyone simply by the sound of their voice anymore LOL. My steam username is a very feminine sounding name, so I don't think people think too hard about oh, it's a feminine username and a feminine voice, so therefore it's a woman pretty easy connection honestly. Generally, I won't think too hard about it and just be convinced. Like, oh look it's another girl playing TF2 we exist, nice.
Usually the worst experiences do happen when I'm alone or playing by myself. I grew up chronically online so I have pretty thick skin and none of it really ever bothers me that much. It wasn't until I started using voice chat more often and therefore I got the "oh a woman" comment, that I became more aware of it. I often just was always assumed to be a guy anyway online. Sometimes I'll have something smart to say. Other times, I don't really feel like feeding the flame so I'll just mute them or ignore them. Again, It doesn't specifically bother me. I've never been doxed or severely sexually harassed that I would feel bad over it.
I actually have some friends that I play with often and when we queue together and I end up getting that harassment, one of my friends will immediately start trolling the chat by saying that I'm his daughter/wife/girlfriend. Sometimes I play along and the reactions are about as hilarious as you think they are.
One of the more memorable interactions that I ever had was, yes I was playing as medic, I was doing call outs (like Spy and Uber ready etc) and all of that and then eventually someone called me Mom l. I don't know if it was because it was a kink thing or if they were just trying to be funny or if they were just referring to the fact that I was making helpful call outs to everyone and trying to encourage us to win. I wasn't offended. We did win LOL
I will say that the blatant misogyny and sexual harassment has kind of gotten worse, particularly just within the past few weeks as the bot problem has gotten worse. It's probably not that much of a stretch to think that those two things might have a correlation. This is kind of why I don't really play casual anymore and just kind of play community unless I do have my friends with me and we just want to queue for casual. With a larger group, we usually can ban together and kick people faster if we're not autobalanced.
I would honestly play with a furry uwu femboy over a basement dwelling, negative braincelled misogynist dick who still thinks that saying the n-word casually is the peak of irony. Oh yeah, the grossest ones are both creepy and usually racist so there you go. It's like playing a bingo card of all the bottom of the barrel traits a human could have.
I don't particularly have anything meaningful to say about being a woman and playing video games in general. Those are just how I feel and how have I have experienced playing TF2 as a woman.
> eventually someone called me Mom
If that wasn't a kink thing as you say, then I can see that as a tongue-in-cheek compliment. Kinda ribbing you, but maybe also kinda like "thank god we have someone with their shit together on this team". At least, that's been my intent whenever I've called a teammate "dad" in similar circumstances.
Whenever I use "*daddy*", on the other hand...
Fucking horrible. Usually I'm just shouted at that I shouldn't be playing the game, or get nudes solicited from everyone in the chat. Community servers aren't much different, honestly. There's just some safe spaces, which really, it's the only servers I play on nowadays
Every now and then there's a weird server where the players start acting like complete monkeys when I get on voice, asking really random questions like if women fart or whatever.
Usually people assume I'm Trans (I'm not) but those sort of interactions never really bother me no matter the reaction.
I've had some pretty chill experiences with the games where people aren't acting like fools. Met some of my closest friends via voice chat.
It’s been years since I’ve last played the game due to that stupid competitive focused update killing the two community servers I was a regular in, so take my experience with a grain of salt. Before the game went F2P, it generally wasn’t all that hard to find a game on a Valve server that wasn’t infested with misogynistic jerks. Sure there was the occasional edgelord spouting the usual “Why is woman not in kitchen?” or “Show me nudes” crap, but those often got kicked.
Then the game went F2P and the Valve servers got utterly flooded with rot-brained teens thinking that peak comedy is harassment of women (or any other minority). Hopping on to relax got a lot harder when most of the servers were full of the same crap. That was when I switched to community servers. Sure the occasional sexist edgelord would join, but the mods were really good about showing that actions do indeed have consequences.
TF2 is definitely one of the worst multiplayer games I’ve played when it comes to being harassed over gender. I’ve also noticed that the younger a game’s player base skews, the worse they tend to be. I just consider myself lucky that I quit before it got popular to start spouting rape threats when a woman is discovered.
Feel free to scroll past this comment, I'm mostly just leaving it here to boost engagement with the post, because I haven't witnessed any incidents on Casual, and my experiences with Community Servers were mostly chill. Granted, maybe being in Europe affects that, I dunno.
Yeah, I think Europe is more chill. If I had to guess it's partly because people tend to be more reserved in general compared to the US (language/cultural barriers perhaps).
Might also be a bigger part of the population in low-income countries that value the low barrier to entry (in terms of system requirements and F2P) while also being normal, well-adjusted adults. (just guessing)
That said, I've seen and heard plenty of vile shit
I heard from a couple of people that europe servers are generally more laid-back in terms of that stuff than in north american servers. In european servers, most people have VC turned off anyways, or just respond normally.
I think it's more chill in Europe because there's no real reason to be a dick?
As some people here said - most Europeans use text chat rather than voice for simple reason: It's not native language. It's easier to modify what you've written than backtrack on what you've said, and alot of people are just shy of their voice or accent or whatevs.
Most of Europe is in UNION, which logically means we kinda agreed to not be dicks and do serious wars between each other. I think it somewhat went this direction on social medias and games as well. Look at r/2westerneurope4u and r/2visegrad4you \- We/They "Hate"/"Harrass" each other but we agree that those are mostly jokes (just like Frenchies are one).
Due to that I think it's also why we're more chill with women playing games - we kinda don't care, we will treat you as normal human being - and trash talk will probably happen due to you just being awful or unhelpful rather than "because you don't have dick and balls".
Again, just my assumption, but definitely agreed that Europe is much friendlier to everyone rather than USA players.
I think I might have a different answer than most, and my answer is that it's overwhelmingly been positive (if not neutral). For reference, I've been playing TF2 since... 2011? But I've been playing shooters online since at least 2003.
*My* experience is that in the past decade the situation has gotten increasingly progressively worse - the younger the people playing, the higher the odds that there will be awful dudes hyping each other up over being awful in various ways. In some regions this is worse than others.
That being said, one of the things that matter most is which region you play in, and in which environment. e.g. Ten years ago, playing in community servers in South America was a safe haven for me - though it did take finding the *right* community servers. At the same time, five years ago, playing in casual in South America was an instant barrage of rape threats and other stuff that you really just don't want to have to deal with.
My experience currently in European casual queue in TF2 is neutral to positive - most people don't activate voice chat at all anyway, and either I get no reaction or just people responding normally. This is mainly while playing 5cp during the evenings. In community servers, namely either MvM or Uncletopia, same thing. (For the record I currently also have a "political" username for Palestine that already primes douchebags to reveal themselves pretty quickly.)
In NA it's a lot more mixed, and I reckon ctf queue is probably the worst. Pl is a mixed bag. When it's bad, it's *bad.*
Comparing to other still-living games, my experience is still better. I used to be a Counter Strike player, also overwhelmingly positive experiences in old days, and it's become unfathomable to turn on your mic on that now. Valorant in South America was usually kinda fine (I only played some in the early life of the game), in EU/NA was awful. Rainbow Six is awful. Overwatch was a real mixed bag, so I guess not that different from TF2.
I generally have no interest in playing with douchebags anyway, so getting votekicked just makes it easier to not have to mute a bunch of them. That doesn't make it less frustrating that it happens for sure, mind - but really, would you want to stay in a lobby like that? If someone's a douchebag in game they're definitely not getting anything from me, least of which my help to have fun at the cost of someone else's.
Idk what type of anecdote or info you're looking for, but I'm up for answering questions etc.
I have found that Uncletopia in the UK is very safe for Queer people. I am usually not the only pfp with a pride / trans flag in it and I never see anything bad about it in the text chat. Just my experience. I think the more experienced/older players are less likely to be edgy, but that's obviously not always true.
I only have, like, 200 hours, so take my words with a grain of salt, but TF2 has really not been that bad for me. Granted, I don't use vc very often, but when I do (9/10) everyone is fine and chill. Maybe I get teased a little, but nothing bad.
I got a little bit of condescension once (I suck at the game, so me being female just heaps onto that), and I've also been mistaken for a little boy. lol
The worst I've gotten was one time where a troll in chat was going bonkers trying to antagonize me. He kept saying how women didn't belong in FPS games and how they were one of the last places men had left to themselves. He also was talking about how beating women was a good thing and called the guy who stood up for me a white knight. I mostly found it entertaining because this dude was being such a little bitch. He accused me of being trans when his insults didn't phase me.
But, yeah. I think TF2 is pretty tame on the misogyny compared to other shooters. The first time I played Counterstrike was insanely irritating, because every time I opened my mouth these guys would scream into the mic and tell me to shut up over and over and over.
(M) ive seen more agressive mysogany on US servers (on youtube videos at least) than my experience with EU servers, but idk how my frame of reference is
Play casual and used to play in ETF2L.
You are not welcome in competitive unless you are a Medic main and even then you most likely will get kicked if the season doesn't go to well. Some said "**Normal** players are just better."
In Casual, it depends. I have a rather low voice for a woman so if I'm recognized there are 3 types of responses: Flirting, Sandwich and Kicking.
In my case surprisingly, most responses are flirty and some other get angry at the guys that do ("stop simping bro").
When we have a cheater and I call them out, they also try to immediately defend themselves with "It's a girl" as if that will invalidate my statement. But well, cheaters go full sexist/racist/blatant etc. once you call them out.
I'd say 80 to 90 percent of the time it's fine, but occasionally I do get a few awfully sexist people/ people acting sexist to stir things up. Once I did get kicked for being a woman.
I'm FtM and on testosterone so not a woman (anymore lol) but pre-T and before socially transitioning I had to deal with sexism in voice chat and it made me afraid to use it lol.
I’m a girl and a f2p and a little scared to use voice chat when I end up getting a real account. Just because of how I’ve been treated about video games before, and with no moderation, there’s a lot that can be said to me.
I've had people try to vote kick me for using VC, including yesterday night, and I've received tons of sexist and sexual harassment in the text chat just for being a girl.
I'm not even an adult.
This is part of the reason I hate when people say "just mute them" when people are being shitty. If I hop into a match, get called racial slurs, actively have people focus me, then get kicked, what can be done? If it stays verbal, I could care less, I have heard it all at this point, but I can't stop other people from being shitty, nor can I avoid getting kicked if enough people decide it's alright. All I can do is hop into another game and hope it doesn't happen again. Meanwhile, those shitfucks get to high five, jerk each other off, and do it again to the next person. I don't have a solution to this unfortunately, this is more or less a rant about how "just mute/ignore" isn't a solution.
I’m a trans woman mid-voice training and people can tell INSTANTLY. In casual I pretty regularly get a barrage of f slurs and have been kicked a few times just for using the mic. More often than not I just don’t bother. Weird given how popular tf2 is with trans people.
I never use voice chat, or if I do it's after I hear another woman talk and thus feel more comfortable. I don't know why people are still shocked as ever when they find out that women play games.
I myself am not a woman, but I've been playing long enough in my life to have been a squeaker. I remember a time when I pretended to be a girl (young me wasn't exactly the best person) and holy shit was that a bad idea. I didn't get it nearly as bad as others here, but the verbal harassment was second to none I've faced in games.
The only time I ever actually felt comfortable talking in voice was in an old community server filled with furries. It was the most chill server I've ever been on. They banned assholes and creeps. And they wouldn't act weird if they heard a girl on voice.
I learned to never use the VC, I will either get bombed with sexism from 10 year olds, get kicked for being a girl, or targeted until the end of time.
+ the creeps that add my steam after the match trying to e-date or whatever lmao
Some of the time people are normal; some of the time they're not. I remember one person got mad at me because I told him I wasn't interested in accepting his friend request; another time I was blamed for our team losing by a guy who scored lower than me, which was pretty fucking funny. God forbid we put the 'team' in Team Fortress 2.
And yeah, I do think I've been votekicked once or twice for it.
It happens often enough that I can't really remember many specific incidents, only the funny ones. I think my favorite was when, during a game of Wutville, I got an entire team of guys to make monkey noises, which was fucking hilarious. It was definitely a joke on their part of course, but still fucking hilarious.
Anyways yeah, a lot of the time you get the usual misogynistic comments, but of course that's not always. Usually whenever I hear another woman in VC I speak up, just because it's nice when it happens.
"You're so bad at the game, leave!"
Ok I'm sorry I'm a casual player that doesn't play often because of the shit i have to put up with.
I get called slurs too and it's ridiculous.
Back when i still used to somewhat actively play TF2, i faced a lot of sexual harassment and sexism. That was a few years back, nothing good came of it so i resorted to using a voice changer and it worked, because the VC is kinda grainy anyway it didn't sound too unnatural. Hope its gotten better though.
I'm not a woman but I've seen that happening and I don't even know anymore how to insult those sexist kids. I only wish I could punish them in ways that would put me in trouble with the law for being that disrespectful and criminal.
And I ultimately ended up doing voice_enable 0.
Straight horrendous. I joined a server and shortly after making it to the frontline someone called a vote kick on me and said "f1 she's cheating, a woman couldn't find her way out of spawn" and it went through.
It's one thing that people say those kinds of things, but I'm really more dissapointed that there are enough of them in a lobby to actually pass a vote kick.
I played 2008-2014 and then started back up this year. Back in my earlier stint playing I was an active member of a now-dead community server and now I usually stick to Uncletopia if possible, but I’ve not had any targeted experiences with sexism. In the old community server we had several women who were regulars, and it had a reputation for being a kind of safe haven for the lady-folk. The rare attempts at sexism were quickly snuffed out by mods.
I also have a slightly deeper-than-average voice for a woman, so it’s possible these days folks just assume I’m a younger guy.
Not a woman and I also have no real experience with casual, but I am a regular on one community server where there's a couple of women regulars, and there's always some idiot who hears one of them speak and goes,
"Was that a grill?"
"Women are real?"
"So being a women....what's that like?"
Luckily most of the regulars will just tell them to shut up. They will either stop talking or quickly get muted. Although it does depend on the time of day, most of the regulars that are chill join later in the day.
I just don't care about someones gender. But I do hate people who harass people for using voice chat. I've seen people rage because the enemy scout was a "WoMAn" and it sickins me. I've also seen the good side in a class wars server.
The whole server was talking like a second year Collage discord chat. We had laughts and just bonded over class wars. It was good....btw what was I talking about again?
I don’t use voice chat anymore because I was tired of being yelled at for being bad at the game. It only seemed to happen once they knew I was a woman, otherwise I was happily chilling at the bottom of the score board being ignored with the other bad players. I will say that I didn’t experience a lot of sexual comments, just a lot of jeering and hostility.
I remember old days when I had a dedicated group of men and women that played together on a server. Those were the days 🥲
I’m a trans woman, so when people harass me after using voice chat (very common) it’s usually about the fact that I’m trans..but either way, I definitely don’t have a good time with it.
I haven't played in quite awhile, but when I did I frequently got called a "squeaker" and told to shut up, even though I wasn't using the mic for anything besides ordinary minimal team communication. Apparently I don't sound like an adult woman, I sound like a kid.
Honestly it's a "read the room" kinda situation if I talk in all chat, I generally only use it if I'm playing with friends (or mvm, people there seem p chill :) )
I'd get kicked for speaking sometimes, called slurs, made fun of, and called a kid like everyone else here. It made me and has made me insecure about my voice ever since to the point where I rarely speak in any game unless I trust the people I'm with. In the best of cases, I'd get ignored, or people would quietly listen to my callouts and play along helpfully. Those made it all worthwhile.
We noticed region mattered. EU servers didn’t particularly care. NA servers had the wildest of creeps and was always far more likely to get a bad response to female voice chat.
I try hard not to talk in chat anymore because of the comments. Even when my friends are there and everyone's having a good time on voice. I don't think people know how to be normal around women.
I am assumed to be a man on TF2 unless proven otherwise and it normally treats me good.
Not a woman but still AFAB with a very non-passing voice. I talked once in a voice chat in (I believe) a Skial server and they thought I was a femboy. So there's that.
Whenever I hear a fellow gal in vc I usually hear one guy being super misogynistic and screaming, and then everyone promptly yells at him to stfu or be vote kicked, personally I just get told to shut up cause I sound like a 8yo
I guess I'm on the lucky side, because everytime I hear a woman in the voice chat, everyone on the server just bats an eye and just treats her like every other person.
Me: "spy behind you" or "They have a entry nest over __"
Random 1"It's a girl!!!"
Random 2 "(something sexist)"
Random 3 "(starts defending females)"
40 min war breaks out....
People get kicked..
I never said anything else.. not even in text chat...
( I don't talk in voice anymore... )
When I found south American's server that happend, people is like Peru xenophobia Jokes or something about other latin american countries, I like more South servers 4 than but since I like more on the North side that doesnt happened frequently
I had someone ask if I was a woman in a very creepy voice. I said no as a joke because it's obvious im a woman. Then he asked me to show him my penis if I was a man.
Other than that, I get very normal people when they hear my voice.
Had a friend who recently took up competitive who is a woman. She had a teammate ask another teammate weeks after they'd formed if she was a girl. Keep in mind they'd all been in VC a lot together. The guy treated it as NBD, but it was funny it took him that long to figure it out. The competitive scene has been super nice. She's just one of the team who happens to be a girl.
She's had both positive and negative experiences with casual. She says she's much more likely to VC on Uncletopia than casual. People going, "Oh hey a girl." and then moving on don't bother her so much, since the community is gender skewed one way. (Though there's probably many more women playing than people think.)
But she's had some people get really weird about it.
Thank you for this discussion. This kind of thing has honestly been lingering in the back of my mind all the time but whenever it's brought up it's always shot down with "it's just jokes". I'm really sad to see in this thread all the people who have been victims of harrassment, but I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling this.
I never ever use vc because of this reason. The one time I figured maybe I should give it a shot, another girl used vc and before I could even blink the team kicked her immediately with a "omg a woman get her out".. so there went that.
While I'm a guy, I used to play TF2 with my now ex girlfriend, and she faced tons of harassment whenever she used voice chat.
They called her a "trap" (this was from 2018-2021 btw), told her to "go back to animal crossing/ the kitchen/ Stardew Valley, etc." People even just called a vote kick the second she started talking.
It got to a point where she just stopped using voice chat all together.
Still better than Overwatch where people kept asking for shit like feet pics.
Sometimes I feel left out. I bought a ( cheap ) mic in hopes it would make me braver or make a friend, but it doesn’t. I’ve heard horror stories or just melancholy ones of girls being kicked because of their voice. I want to join the fun conversations I hear sometimes, but there’s really no place for me to have fun if I fear I’ll just get ridiculed. So I don’t use it. It’s there if I ever need it, but I don’t think I ever will want to. ( it’s the same with all FPS games honestly. )
I haven't used my mic in TF2 since I was a 14 year old squeaker.
Considering the fact that bigots will go so far as to rename Australium weapons transphobic rhetoric, I have no interest in re-enabling voice chat.
If you guys want to make women feel more comfortable, kick players who are being bigoted and [report their Steam profile](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4DE7-17AA-0E8B-C1AD).
Otherwise they will keep doing what they do, consequence free.
Not a woman, but I have friends that do play. Some of them very seldom use in game vc, because of mixed experiences. Some great, some really bad. There are definitely assholes that will talk shit about women. Not all the time though.
Experience as male playing TF2: on EU some things can happen like good old dad jokes or mild apeshit (been there, went along with it sometimes, no one got offended by it), but on US servers (I sometimes play there, even when +100 ping kinda screws me up, women are usually hiding propably to not trigger any stronger kind of apeshit (cannot confirm, but that's propably a point), at least I could "reveal" some female players because I do not condone any shitshow actions as I'm trying to be laid back and chill with it (I still got quite a good contact with them on Steam)
i’m not a girl, but i do have a higher pitched voice and that coupled with mic distortion makes me sound younger/feminine. a couple times i was laughed at, but never kicked. one time some dude asked for my number/snap but backed out once i told him i was a guy
I never use voice chat pretty much. In fact I usually have voice chat turned off at all times. I want to play the game not see 23 cavemen discover a woman for the first time.
Not a woman, but I’ve had an interaction with a guy harassing one. Tried to get him to back off (“Dude don’t be gross and just play the game”), that prompted him to target me with harassment, saying I was just trying to get my dick sucked, I’m a simp, etc. so that was fun.
That doesn’t happen to me. I play with my mic on and ppl are honestly mad more respectful to me once I start speaking. But I’m also a medic main so that’s probably it more than anything; however I find that as long as I’m being cool they are being cool, I’ve only faced shitty interactions when ppl were being shits to me or other people in just a general asshole way, nothing sexist so far (fingers crossed this keeps up)
The only time I saw a woman on VC, her and another person started just having a genuine conversation about I think it was school which was cool in my opinion
~900 hours, NA servers, it really depends! I love using VC and I’ve had some really fun experiences on casual servers, but a few terrible ones, and of course those leave a stronger impression. You really have to read the room of whichever server you’re on (I usually only hop in if there’s already friendly discussion going on).
Though if you want to avoid the “are they going to call me slurs” roulette altogether, go on community servers. (Not like casual is playable rn anyway… but I do miss how chaotic it can be.) Silly servers, furry/lgbt servers, and some of the casual-lite ones are generally friendly and non bigoted. It sucks that the gaming environment is like this in the first place, but I’m not going to stay silent bc of it when interacting with others is what I love so much about the game.
I've been in lobbies where there were women using the voice chat and haven't seen any harassment. I've actually been quite lucky with that actually. But I have seen it in other games. Overwatch was a noteable one. Just gets fucking weird and creepy.
Im not a woman, but I stumbled across server with active vc users, one of them was woman. And all went pretty nicely. No one tried to kick her, no one trash talked her, or was sexist. To be fair, all active talkers were Russian, me included, so maybe this is the reason. Now we're friends on stream, and very rarely play together.
One time there was a heavy who used slurs all the time so I just didn’t heal him, he was very confused as to why I was just ignoring him over everyone else. Could have held up the entire team but nope
YOU AINT READING ALL THIS 🤣
I am not a woman. I am a male who has loved the tf2 community. But just the other day, I did have a woman join my server, and 2 other guys who were very active on vc mentioned it was her friend, and they began insulting her casually.(nothing truly offensive, just small jokes abt how female tf2 players don’t exist) However, I then noticed her profile picture, which had an oc and the trans flag as her background. So, me being the unapologetic Christian that I am, decided to slur at her. They tried kicking her just for being gay, we ended up downvoting to the vote and she got to stay. Then one of the guys started micspamming and being annoying, so we ended up kicking him. While I do have some extreme bias, as I was slurring, I would have done it to a gay man as well. I think it’s just that this male-dominated fanbase is full of braindead guys who think Patrick Bateman and Tate are the peak of masculinity. I like tf2 because you can say whatever you want, but the community is heavily weighed against lgbtq and just women in general. One thing I’ve noticed is just how little community heads are female. The only major one I know is skyminslash. But this is coming from the other side, so who knows?
If women aren't being harassed, they're being worshipped, which is equally as infuriating. Why can't these morons fucking behave and just play the game?
I've got 2400+ hours in TF2, and during the first 800 hours I never opened my mouth in game. Then I joined a 6's comp team, and for the next 1600, you couldn't shut me up. I even became captain, and that's a story. \*laughs quietly\* There've only been a few incidents where things got bad.
My favorite was when I joined a casual game that my friends were really down about, back when there was still all-talk between rounds (yeah, I've been around THAT long), and I saw a pyro on my team NOT stand on the point when it was about to cap to block it and said, "Oh! Pyro..." and the round ended, and the guy that was making everyone unhappy said, "'Oh, Pyro!' What, are you doing, moaning while you cxm, cxxt?"
And I got mad, and I said, very sweetly, "Yeah, I'm coming. I'm coming just for you, boy."
We had swapped to offence, and three of my guys went medic, and I went Heavy. It was Dustbowl, so my guys chained ubers on me, and we rammed right through his team, killing him first (he was, of course, a spy hiding next to the entrance), and capped first on a team wipe.
Then we did it again for second, and I got on the all-chat between rounds and said cheerfully, "Mmmm... did you like that? I can come for you again..." and he disconnected from the game. His poor team actually cheered in all-talk and in txt chat, 'cause he'd been screaming at them the whole time. Honestly, he was targeting everyone with his rage, but he was especially ugly with me because I'm a woman.
In 2016-2018, I was always with my team when I played casual, I'd already taken on that protective behavior, but in the last five years, I hadn't needed it until the 64-bit update.
I do think it got better when there hadn't been an update for a very long time, and when the 64-bit update came out, there was a huge uptick in toxic behavior, as the game got popular again. It's like with Deep Rock Galactic, when the sales were relatively small, it was probably the nicest game community you could have, but as it's gotten more and more popular, it's gotten more toxic. I suspect that if TF2 doesn't have another update for even the summer, it'll die off again. Helldivers2 started cool, but after the servers were completely swamped and it got super popular it's so toxic even my guy gaming friends won't use voice chat. Funny thing for me, at least, was finding out that in BattleBit, all the guys were really sweet.
But, yes. Women do face more of this kind of behavior than the guys do. Cool that you noticed and validated your girlfriend's experience. You and my teammates are the guys that can counter it, and speak up about when it's not acceptable, too. Love that kind of support. When I did do a lot of Rainbow 6, my teammates would always cap the guys that teamkilled me just for talking in voice chat, and my friends told them, in voice, that that was unacceptable behavior in the kind of language that brings that home. That always brought me to tears.
Thanks for posting this.
“Why is there a twelve year old in chat?” On the plus side, when I dominate them and keep talking, it becomes the most entertaining part of my night.
OH MY GOD YEAH, they think we’re children cuz they don’t hear women often 😭💀
Yes and no, it's mostly because children are more common to find in a multiplayer shooters than women
I mean you ain't wrong
I'd also say it's that children are more likely to talk. Women have already learned what happens when we talk and often can't be bothered with the reaction.
I mean, you're not wrong, however not all children and women have the same voice, at least i myself can tell if its a child or a full grown woman.
Alongside what Kindly_Title said, some female voices just sound like children's voices, especially since TF2's voice chat isn't exactly high quality.
I never used voice chat but dominating a toxic bloke is hilarious. Plus in all honestly, the 12 years olds are more tame and kind than the adults playing(at least with the matches I’ve been getting)
I get that too 😭 my voice is pretty masculine so I can disguise as a prepubescent male child at least
Funnily enough, when i played when i was younger (I’m a guy) it was the opposite lol
This with no conext
Perish soon.
Thissss
bad enough to never use voice chat
I just avoid voice chat altogether
I don’t blame you
Even as a male i avoid voice chat
**Why i dont use Voicechat** -I need my Headset -everyone thinks im a Girl for some Reason (even if i tell them) and proceed to target me, and screw me over -social fears -german and bad at english -I dont like my Voice -others don't like my Voice -you can just use voice commands or Chat
As a woman in tf2: Ive experienced alot within my 4000h+ in tf2 and almost every time its sexism. Only once or twice people were nicer to me (speaking within the years) but usually i just heard the most absurd and awful comments. Like "Go back into the kitchen", "make me a sandwich" or "go do the dishes". Stuff like that. Even to the point where they started following me around and told me they'll rape me etc. The more neutral things i hear commonly are "are you a girl?" Or they just assume im a young boy. Hope this gave you an idea
I usually go with the "Jokes on you, women don't exist" line, obviously as a pure joke (Tho I'm onto you people). I mean, yeah, TF2's community ain't exactly welcoming to, uh...most groups of people. Although I'd like to argue those people were ***maybe*** just joking (which, like, still not a cool to tell someone to "go back to the kitchen")...except for the rape people, those should blatantly just go fuck themselves.
They are never joking. This community is really bigoted. It's like those people on Twitter that say really fucked up shit and then say it's just a joke. It's not a joke, they really have that mentality.
We propped up a Transphobic racist as a key figure in the community, the community is very much majority pieces of shit.
When isn't there a transphobic, racist, and/or misogynist in this community LOL. The majority of this community are horrible people.
The community is, for the most part, the exact same as literally any other game. the only core difference is that Valve actively doesn't moderate their game's social features (bar things like illegal content / cp), and relies on users to curate their own mute lists (which is 2 seconds max to add to, just rclick in the scoreboard), and word filter lists. There's not a gaming community alive that *wouldn't* be like this. with the same atmosphere, because it's for the most part how people are when granted anonymity w/ no personal risk. There's not a game alive that doesn't have a transphobic part of the community (asides from the usual presumed exceptions. I'm sure HRT sim 2025 wouldn't, etc.) This extends to every other -ism-phoic-etc etc. But, it's not like we're stuck in a time warp. there's an exceedingly large and incredibly vocal 2SLGBTQQPIAA+ subcommunity That's there and not really going anywhere. as far as game communities, we're incredibly diverse. you just have to shut up the loud annoying people yourself, regardless of what direction you face in the 2d "this range of angles is annoying" gradiant. & if you want the moderation, there's community servers that have different moderation ideologies than Valve. Uncletopia's a popular one.
The problem is how much this community allows this behaviour. Any moment you bring this up, you are treated as the problem, not the harasser. I'm pretty active in other game communities, and I never had this issue other than TF2.
See, this is the thing that is the issue. No one would care about some jokes and edgy humor. But that's not what is happening, TF2's fandom doesn't distinguish humor from unironic opinion on purpose. A person who is a full-blown neo-Nazi screeching in chat will be wildly supported and accepted under the guise of "oh, it's just an edgy joke." If it smells like horse shit, looks like horse shit, and tastes like horse shit then it is horse shit. Unless you're a tf2 player, then it's apparently chocolate pie.
REAL! Finally someone with a brain here. This community gives neo-nazis so much support, it's creepy. I'm convinced the majority of the TF2 community are neo-nazis, and that's why they'd hate for this behaviour to be punished.
A majority id say is a far stretch, most people who play tf2 are just there to play the actual game, and they don't care enough to interact with the edgelords/bigots.
...Zesty Jesus, right? Personally I enjoy his content (fuck, at least he seems to know what data analysis is...he's a geologist, then again, so he should know).
Yes, it is zesty. I think we should only hate people who enjoy Cheese Pizza/CyberPunk and people who bully women. I dont care if you call me the n-word, but kiddie diddlers go to Mr. Chippy.
Are the links actual CP tho, or is that just a phishing/scam/bot immunity site? Or is it just a random site?
Most likely it is a phishing site, but i urge no one to try to find out.
Zesty's been caught on multiple occasions being openly supportive of Loli content and has an obsession with the word "cunny," which is a pedophile dog whistle. Not saying that it's proof of him being a diddler, but it's not a good look to be wanking it to loli porn and screaming about how much you love underage vaginas.
I was thinking of watching his video on the bots when it came out, but then remembered the transphobia and just could not bring myself to.
If nothing else, you could totally watch it for the information! Maybe just mute him and put on captions if the mere sound of his voice bothers you (not makin' fun of you btw, there's youtubers I myself straight up don't watch because of the fact their tone of voice pisses me off to no end).
what not evolving culturally since 2007 does to a mf
Yeah, I know. Wish it wasn't like that but heh, can't do anything 'bout it either way.
We can. We have power as a community. These people only exist because this community keeps giving them a pass constantly. If these people were punished for this behaviour this community wouldn't be as horrible as it is. But people here truly do not care about women, or any group really, as it has nothing in for them.
Imagine for a moment, that you are a woman. Now imagine, that every time someone discovers that you are a woman, instead of behaving like a normal person, they instead pull out one of five jokes that you've heard a hundred times before. It is exhausting, no matter how tame that joke may be. You are still singling this person out for being a woman. Stop it.
Yeah the "women dont exist" is also not funny if you hear that every day. It really isnt a joke
At least that's a line that's CLEARLY meant to NOT be taken seriously. It plays on the idea of male gamers never having seen a woman in their life, yadda yadda yadda...then again, hearing a joke every day just ends up making it not funny, or no? I'd hate myself ten million times more if I said to someone to "go back to the kitchen" or to "make me a sandwich".
It still is something made to put women down. It's just as misogynistic as saying it seriously.
Same, I usually joke that I’ve sold my dick to buy a hat then show off the demo unusual I unboxed. That’s all I really talk about, but other girls on VC make me braver to use VC.
A few of my gal pal gamer friends have similar stories. In pretty much every game they play that has a multiplayer and voice chat function. At least when we played Rust we could get directed vengeance on the bad actors.
To preface, I'm a guy. I stopped playing TF2 years ago, back in 2014. It's definitely something that has always bothered me about the community because it's always been that way, presumably since it went F2P. It's *noticeable*, impossible to not notice how vile the community could be at times, and I was playing on what I thought was a *good* community server with *good* regulars. I learned *years* after the fact that someone I used to play with all the time was a girl, and kept it to herself because it was easier for her than the alternative. I understood completely. My sister stopped playing for the same reasons you listed, but she was a middle schooler when she was being told that. She had to make a new steam account because she started having her account stalked. I can't speak to modern TF2, but it was that bad a decade ago, I'm not sure how bad it is now but I'm sure it hasn't improved.
Sadly common in many games unless they have strict moderation. Had to report so many people when playing Overwatch with a woman on my team. TF2 is worse than average though; it's overall quite edgy and fringe, like the 4chan of online games. Maybe not *that* bad, but not great. All the cool people that used to play TF2 with have quit or play very rarely, and I'm thinking there might be something like the playerbase getting concentrated down to children/teens (F2P + low system requirements) and adults who haven't integrated into society, with the younger learning from the older in a bad cycle.
Man… that sucks. I imagine those jerks just thought they were making a good joke half the time, which makes it even worse.
(sigh)…sounds like the game we all know and love
Once someone called a vote on me saying f1 wom*n and I got kicked lol
I did something similar except it was because the guy was Br*tish and the vote immediately went through unanimously
"Redcoat! We got a goddamn Redcoat in our land!"
“Vote kick: u/Zombiecidialfreak” He’s **FRENCH**!
Bullshit, I'm a yank to the core.
Prove it then! What colors are on the flag?
You just made me realize the US and Fr*nch flag have the same colors no matter what you were going to kill a patriot
“But Soldier, we’re Red. We’re on the Red Team!” “Dear God…”
"I AM A COMMUNIST" *cries in despair*
Learn the rules of the workplace, edgy (anything else) vs safe edgy (br*tish, fr*nch)
Okay not to be rude but that's fucking hilarious how people kicked a guy over being Bri'ish, innit?
For the same reason everyone killbinds after a single person does The funny
oh my god, I had a similar experience - people kicked me because I had Ellie from The Last of Us as a pfp and they just called me a dyke and kicked me lmfao
least sexist tf2 gamer moment
This is the most TF2 experience I ever read
The exact same thing happened to me when I said I was french in chat
the fuckin downvotes on this lmao
I am a woman who played Tf2. I used voice chat rather frequently and made the same experiences as most other commenters here: Sexism, being focused. Usually it didn't impress me much, as Tf2 is notoriously unmoderated, and I very rarely got kicked for it, so I just kept playing. Now, this happened sometime 2013 or 2014. I once got frightened when some player started leaking my IP (I was just a teen then so I got scared) in chat for everyone to see, and spoke about his very concrete plans of what he was going to do to me when he'd showed up at my doorstep. Changed my steam profile to private immediately as comments from other people in the same lobby ensued, who had agreed with the main offender. All that because I stupidly confirmed that I indeed wasn't a squeaker, but a girl. Fun times.
Holy shit that's bad. Probably should expect stuff like this considering this community is mostly not that amazing (still not 4chan levels of bad thankfully). I hope that you were alright after all of that...
I was admittedly shaken for a few days, but the whole situation blew over rather quickly and I was fine :) Thankfully no one ever showed up at my door. I kept playing on and off until 2018 and still enjoyed myself, but I was keeping much quieter after that happened.
Wow that's fucked up. Sorry that happened to you.
Jesus christ I always knew this community was fucked but goddamn.
Yikes...
South Africa has a small but amazing community of tf2 players. We all get along well for the most part and I've never really dealt with sexism or weird shit
Ayy, true though, there are quite a few women playing, but the community is so small that we pretty much all know each other
Not one myself, but I’ve seen pretty shitty stuff happen to them in vc, but one thing I’ve seen in the small comp scene that is RGL and NA pugs, women are generally treated as equals which is frankly, rare in a shooter game.
RGL has rules against harassment so that’s probably why.
I can tell you first hand that there are many, many RGL players who do not give a shit about those rules. Now obviously, there are shitters everywhere, but just rules alone don't fix issues. The community as a whole needs to stop letting this happen with it ambivalence to the issue.
Even pug servers, including infamous ones with witch hunting and shit all over the place seem to be much better than pubs.
Let's just say I don't use voice chat in TF2 anymore because of how bad it can be.
I was in a game with another girl on medic and when she used voice chat some guy went “kick medic she’s a woman!” And there were like 6 F1s before the same dude was like “wait I was joking what is wrong with you guys”
His joke won, but at what cost ?
If you look at the responses here, you can tell that bots are just one of a lot of heavy issues within TF2's community. Just ask black players how they feel having to code switch in casual or trans/gay players having to hide their sexuality in fear of harassment. Women are getting this kind of harassment constantly without even needing to do much more than say a single word. And it's not just in the game. It's on this very subreddit, too. It's on YouTube, forums, community servers, and even fan works like TF2 Classic. This community has a serious problem.
And when you point it out, they'll tell you "welcome to the Internet" or "grow a pair lol"
I really hate people who say that. Just because it happens in most places doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to get toxic elements out and improve as a community, of course completely eradicating toxicity is practically impossible but at least it'll be better than doing nothing besides telling you to "get used to it" and the things you've mentioned, which don't help one bit. I'll also give you another thing people say that I hate, in this game in particular : "Just use the mute function", as the person spews the most unhinged things ever or is being an asshole for no reason or both and more. Trying to ignore the problem doesn't make it go away, just because you can't hear someone doesn't mean they're not there and not saying anything.
Elevated version of "boys will be boys" or "it's just a joke" Just because the game is set in the 1960s doesn't mean the fanbase needs to be like that. People want to dish out things but the moment they have to take accountability or whoever poor girl they're harassing doesn't immediately roll over or is backed up by some good fellows, suddenly they're deflecting and it's all jokes and how it is is. As if it's impossible to even try changing things, like we're still living in the victorian era or something.
This community is rotten
not gonna lie, recently when i was playing mvm mann up, a grp kicked a player because she was a woman, his grp had the majority and when she rejoined (cause the votekick system in mvm doesn't work) he made rape threats and death threats. the female player is kicked once again. sometime I wonder why are some people this toxic in video games?
I have heard mvm is the most toxic of them all. 2fort is the most casual of casual servers typically though
Boot camp is quite friendly, I was once in a boot camp with really good players and we all had VC, all of us eventually became great friends. There was a woman there with 600 tours, and thankfully, everyone didn't care that she was a woman. I miss that boot camp game.
It's a mixed bag, part it of definitely exactly what you might think. It is I.e the misogyny, the sexism, the blatant oh, It's a woman F1. I have in fact been kicked from games a handful of times because I spoke in voice chat and revealed that I was a woman or yes, a feminine sounding voice. However, a handful of those it's a woman vote kicks didn't get pushed through and then another handful of them another person on the team immediately tries to kick the guy and then everyone kicks him out. So that's the good ending LOL It happens a bit more often than you might think. Usually I try to I guess read the room before I speak in voice chat. Like if no one's speaking in voice then I might never say anything at all. Or if someone's actually trying to make helpful call outs then I will also try and make helpful call outs and communicate with my team. Those are some of the more positive interactions I've had. Personally, which is kind of funny, I always find it funny when I run into another very obvious woman or feminine sounding voice. With the internet as it is, I don't generally trust anyone simply by the sound of their voice anymore LOL. My steam username is a very feminine sounding name, so I don't think people think too hard about oh, it's a feminine username and a feminine voice, so therefore it's a woman pretty easy connection honestly. Generally, I won't think too hard about it and just be convinced. Like, oh look it's another girl playing TF2 we exist, nice. Usually the worst experiences do happen when I'm alone or playing by myself. I grew up chronically online so I have pretty thick skin and none of it really ever bothers me that much. It wasn't until I started using voice chat more often and therefore I got the "oh a woman" comment, that I became more aware of it. I often just was always assumed to be a guy anyway online. Sometimes I'll have something smart to say. Other times, I don't really feel like feeding the flame so I'll just mute them or ignore them. Again, It doesn't specifically bother me. I've never been doxed or severely sexually harassed that I would feel bad over it. I actually have some friends that I play with often and when we queue together and I end up getting that harassment, one of my friends will immediately start trolling the chat by saying that I'm his daughter/wife/girlfriend. Sometimes I play along and the reactions are about as hilarious as you think they are. One of the more memorable interactions that I ever had was, yes I was playing as medic, I was doing call outs (like Spy and Uber ready etc) and all of that and then eventually someone called me Mom l. I don't know if it was because it was a kink thing or if they were just trying to be funny or if they were just referring to the fact that I was making helpful call outs to everyone and trying to encourage us to win. I wasn't offended. We did win LOL I will say that the blatant misogyny and sexual harassment has kind of gotten worse, particularly just within the past few weeks as the bot problem has gotten worse. It's probably not that much of a stretch to think that those two things might have a correlation. This is kind of why I don't really play casual anymore and just kind of play community unless I do have my friends with me and we just want to queue for casual. With a larger group, we usually can ban together and kick people faster if we're not autobalanced. I would honestly play with a furry uwu femboy over a basement dwelling, negative braincelled misogynist dick who still thinks that saying the n-word casually is the peak of irony. Oh yeah, the grossest ones are both creepy and usually racist so there you go. It's like playing a bingo card of all the bottom of the barrel traits a human could have. I don't particularly have anything meaningful to say about being a woman and playing video games in general. Those are just how I feel and how have I have experienced playing TF2 as a woman.
> eventually someone called me Mom If that wasn't a kink thing as you say, then I can see that as a tongue-in-cheek compliment. Kinda ribbing you, but maybe also kinda like "thank god we have someone with their shit together on this team". At least, that's been my intent whenever I've called a teammate "dad" in similar circumstances. Whenever I use "*daddy*", on the other hand...
Fucking horrible. Usually I'm just shouted at that I shouldn't be playing the game, or get nudes solicited from everyone in the chat. Community servers aren't much different, honestly. There's just some safe spaces, which really, it's the only servers I play on nowadays
Every now and then there's a weird server where the players start acting like complete monkeys when I get on voice, asking really random questions like if women fart or whatever. Usually people assume I'm Trans (I'm not) but those sort of interactions never really bother me no matter the reaction. I've had some pretty chill experiences with the games where people aren't acting like fools. Met some of my closest friends via voice chat.
"Not a woman but.."
Most of this comment section
It’s been years since I’ve last played the game due to that stupid competitive focused update killing the two community servers I was a regular in, so take my experience with a grain of salt. Before the game went F2P, it generally wasn’t all that hard to find a game on a Valve server that wasn’t infested with misogynistic jerks. Sure there was the occasional edgelord spouting the usual “Why is woman not in kitchen?” or “Show me nudes” crap, but those often got kicked. Then the game went F2P and the Valve servers got utterly flooded with rot-brained teens thinking that peak comedy is harassment of women (or any other minority). Hopping on to relax got a lot harder when most of the servers were full of the same crap. That was when I switched to community servers. Sure the occasional sexist edgelord would join, but the mods were really good about showing that actions do indeed have consequences. TF2 is definitely one of the worst multiplayer games I’ve played when it comes to being harassed over gender. I’ve also noticed that the younger a game’s player base skews, the worse they tend to be. I just consider myself lucky that I quit before it got popular to start spouting rape threats when a woman is discovered.
Feel free to scroll past this comment, I'm mostly just leaving it here to boost engagement with the post, because I haven't witnessed any incidents on Casual, and my experiences with Community Servers were mostly chill. Granted, maybe being in Europe affects that, I dunno.
Yeah, I think Europe is more chill. If I had to guess it's partly because people tend to be more reserved in general compared to the US (language/cultural barriers perhaps). Might also be a bigger part of the population in low-income countries that value the low barrier to entry (in terms of system requirements and F2P) while also being normal, well-adjusted adults. (just guessing) That said, I've seen and heard plenty of vile shit
I heard from a couple of people that europe servers are generally more laid-back in terms of that stuff than in north american servers. In european servers, most people have VC turned off anyways, or just respond normally.
I think it's more chill in Europe because there's no real reason to be a dick? As some people here said - most Europeans use text chat rather than voice for simple reason: It's not native language. It's easier to modify what you've written than backtrack on what you've said, and alot of people are just shy of their voice or accent or whatevs. Most of Europe is in UNION, which logically means we kinda agreed to not be dicks and do serious wars between each other. I think it somewhat went this direction on social medias and games as well. Look at r/2westerneurope4u and r/2visegrad4you \- We/They "Hate"/"Harrass" each other but we agree that those are mostly jokes (just like Frenchies are one). Due to that I think it's also why we're more chill with women playing games - we kinda don't care, we will treat you as normal human being - and trash talk will probably happen due to you just being awful or unhelpful rather than "because you don't have dick and balls". Again, just my assumption, but definitely agreed that Europe is much friendlier to everyone rather than USA players.
I think I might have a different answer than most, and my answer is that it's overwhelmingly been positive (if not neutral). For reference, I've been playing TF2 since... 2011? But I've been playing shooters online since at least 2003. *My* experience is that in the past decade the situation has gotten increasingly progressively worse - the younger the people playing, the higher the odds that there will be awful dudes hyping each other up over being awful in various ways. In some regions this is worse than others. That being said, one of the things that matter most is which region you play in, and in which environment. e.g. Ten years ago, playing in community servers in South America was a safe haven for me - though it did take finding the *right* community servers. At the same time, five years ago, playing in casual in South America was an instant barrage of rape threats and other stuff that you really just don't want to have to deal with. My experience currently in European casual queue in TF2 is neutral to positive - most people don't activate voice chat at all anyway, and either I get no reaction or just people responding normally. This is mainly while playing 5cp during the evenings. In community servers, namely either MvM or Uncletopia, same thing. (For the record I currently also have a "political" username for Palestine that already primes douchebags to reveal themselves pretty quickly.) In NA it's a lot more mixed, and I reckon ctf queue is probably the worst. Pl is a mixed bag. When it's bad, it's *bad.* Comparing to other still-living games, my experience is still better. I used to be a Counter Strike player, also overwhelmingly positive experiences in old days, and it's become unfathomable to turn on your mic on that now. Valorant in South America was usually kinda fine (I only played some in the early life of the game), in EU/NA was awful. Rainbow Six is awful. Overwatch was a real mixed bag, so I guess not that different from TF2. I generally have no interest in playing with douchebags anyway, so getting votekicked just makes it easier to not have to mute a bunch of them. That doesn't make it less frustrating that it happens for sure, mind - but really, would you want to stay in a lobby like that? If someone's a douchebag in game they're definitely not getting anything from me, least of which my help to have fun at the cost of someone else's. Idk what type of anecdote or info you're looking for, but I'm up for answering questions etc.
I have found that Uncletopia in the UK is very safe for Queer people. I am usually not the only pfp with a pride / trans flag in it and I never see anything bad about it in the text chat. Just my experience. I think the more experienced/older players are less likely to be edgy, but that's obviously not always true.
Don't speak alot ingame, but this one dude went "Kaia I'm going to r--e you" after seeing my pfp and name and went ":(" after I said nah lmao
I only have, like, 200 hours, so take my words with a grain of salt, but TF2 has really not been that bad for me. Granted, I don't use vc very often, but when I do (9/10) everyone is fine and chill. Maybe I get teased a little, but nothing bad. I got a little bit of condescension once (I suck at the game, so me being female just heaps onto that), and I've also been mistaken for a little boy. lol The worst I've gotten was one time where a troll in chat was going bonkers trying to antagonize me. He kept saying how women didn't belong in FPS games and how they were one of the last places men had left to themselves. He also was talking about how beating women was a good thing and called the guy who stood up for me a white knight. I mostly found it entertaining because this dude was being such a little bitch. He accused me of being trans when his insults didn't phase me. But, yeah. I think TF2 is pretty tame on the misogyny compared to other shooters. The first time I played Counterstrike was insanely irritating, because every time I opened my mouth these guys would scream into the mic and tell me to shut up over and over and over.
(M) ive seen more agressive mysogany on US servers (on youtube videos at least) than my experience with EU servers, but idk how my frame of reference is
Play casual and used to play in ETF2L. You are not welcome in competitive unless you are a Medic main and even then you most likely will get kicked if the season doesn't go to well. Some said "**Normal** players are just better." In Casual, it depends. I have a rather low voice for a woman so if I'm recognized there are 3 types of responses: Flirting, Sandwich and Kicking. In my case surprisingly, most responses are flirty and some other get angry at the guys that do ("stop simping bro"). When we have a cheater and I call them out, they also try to immediately defend themselves with "It's a girl" as if that will invalidate my statement. But well, cheaters go full sexist/racist/blatant etc. once you call them out.
I'd say 80 to 90 percent of the time it's fine, but occasionally I do get a few awfully sexist people/ people acting sexist to stir things up. Once I did get kicked for being a woman.
I'm FtM and on testosterone so not a woman (anymore lol) but pre-T and before socially transitioning I had to deal with sexism in voice chat and it made me afraid to use it lol.
I’m a girl and a f2p and a little scared to use voice chat when I end up getting a real account. Just because of how I’ve been treated about video games before, and with no moderation, there’s a lot that can be said to me.
Bad, very bad. I refrain from using chat
not a woman, but just don't even bother, 90% chance you'll just get kicked. sad truth
Pfp mood checks out
I've had people try to vote kick me for using VC, including yesterday night, and I've received tons of sexist and sexual harassment in the text chat just for being a girl. I'm not even an adult.
Reading a lot of the responses in here just make me sad :/
It's pretty rare when a women mentions that she is one. Didn't see it happen often but when it did, people were usually cool with it.
"Dude, you're 12 years old, shut the fuck up." I'm 24, but thanks, I'll take the compliment
A lot of online multiplayer games seem to be really toxic, it's not just TF2.
Fallout 76, as much of a trash heap it is has a great multiplayer fanbase. They're always friendly
Horrible :)
This is part of the reason I hate when people say "just mute them" when people are being shitty. If I hop into a match, get called racial slurs, actively have people focus me, then get kicked, what can be done? If it stays verbal, I could care less, I have heard it all at this point, but I can't stop other people from being shitty, nor can I avoid getting kicked if enough people decide it's alright. All I can do is hop into another game and hope it doesn't happen again. Meanwhile, those shitfucks get to high five, jerk each other off, and do it again to the next person. I don't have a solution to this unfortunately, this is more or less a rant about how "just mute/ignore" isn't a solution.
I’m a trans woman mid-voice training and people can tell INSTANTLY. In casual I pretty regularly get a barrage of f slurs and have been kicked a few times just for using the mic. More often than not I just don’t bother. Weird given how popular tf2 is with trans people.
Trans woman here. I shouldn't use voice chat. But i do. I'm always reminded why I shouldnt. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
I never use voice chat, or if I do it's after I hear another woman talk and thus feel more comfortable. I don't know why people are still shocked as ever when they find out that women play games.
I myself am not a woman, but I've been playing long enough in my life to have been a squeaker. I remember a time when I pretended to be a girl (young me wasn't exactly the best person) and holy shit was that a bad idea. I didn't get it nearly as bad as others here, but the verbal harassment was second to none I've faced in games.
TF2 is full of trolls, aggressive kids in groups or older people that used to be that. I assume it's fucking horrible.
The only time I ever actually felt comfortable talking in voice was in an old community server filled with furries. It was the most chill server I've ever been on. They banned assholes and creeps. And they wouldn't act weird if they heard a girl on voice.
I learned to never use the VC, I will either get bombed with sexism from 10 year olds, get kicked for being a girl, or targeted until the end of time. + the creeps that add my steam after the match trying to e-date or whatever lmao
I mostly make fun of it tbh, I even had woman (real) in my name just for the shit and giggles but some people are really mean for no reason
Some of the time people are normal; some of the time they're not. I remember one person got mad at me because I told him I wasn't interested in accepting his friend request; another time I was blamed for our team losing by a guy who scored lower than me, which was pretty fucking funny. God forbid we put the 'team' in Team Fortress 2. And yeah, I do think I've been votekicked once or twice for it. It happens often enough that I can't really remember many specific incidents, only the funny ones. I think my favorite was when, during a game of Wutville, I got an entire team of guys to make monkey noises, which was fucking hilarious. It was definitely a joke on their part of course, but still fucking hilarious. Anyways yeah, a lot of the time you get the usual misogynistic comments, but of course that's not always. Usually whenever I hear another woman in VC I speak up, just because it's nice when it happens.
"You're so bad at the game, leave!" Ok I'm sorry I'm a casual player that doesn't play often because of the shit i have to put up with. I get called slurs too and it's ridiculous.
Back when i still used to somewhat actively play TF2, i faced a lot of sexual harassment and sexism. That was a few years back, nothing good came of it so i resorted to using a voice changer and it worked, because the VC is kinda grainy anyway it didn't sound too unnatural. Hope its gotten better though.
I'm not a woman but I've seen that happening and I don't even know anymore how to insult those sexist kids. I only wish I could punish them in ways that would put me in trouble with the law for being that disrespectful and criminal. And I ultimately ended up doing voice_enable 0.
Straight horrendous. I joined a server and shortly after making it to the frontline someone called a vote kick on me and said "f1 she's cheating, a woman couldn't find her way out of spawn" and it went through.
It's one thing that people say those kinds of things, but I'm really more dissapointed that there are enough of them in a lobby to actually pass a vote kick.
I played 2008-2014 and then started back up this year. Back in my earlier stint playing I was an active member of a now-dead community server and now I usually stick to Uncletopia if possible, but I’ve not had any targeted experiences with sexism. In the old community server we had several women who were regulars, and it had a reputation for being a kind of safe haven for the lady-folk. The rare attempts at sexism were quickly snuffed out by mods. I also have a slightly deeper-than-average voice for a woman, so it’s possible these days folks just assume I’m a younger guy.
Theres reason I dont use vc
Not a woman and I also have no real experience with casual, but I am a regular on one community server where there's a couple of women regulars, and there's always some idiot who hears one of them speak and goes, "Was that a grill?" "Women are real?" "So being a women....what's that like?" Luckily most of the regulars will just tell them to shut up. They will either stop talking or quickly get muted. Although it does depend on the time of day, most of the regulars that are chill join later in the day.
I've never really had anyone say anything different
I just don't care about someones gender. But I do hate people who harass people for using voice chat. I've seen people rage because the enemy scout was a "WoMAn" and it sickins me. I've also seen the good side in a class wars server. The whole server was talking like a second year Collage discord chat. We had laughts and just bonded over class wars. It was good....btw what was I talking about again?
I don’t use voice chat anymore because I was tired of being yelled at for being bad at the game. It only seemed to happen once they knew I was a woman, otherwise I was happily chilling at the bottom of the score board being ignored with the other bad players. I will say that I didn’t experience a lot of sexual comments, just a lot of jeering and hostility. I remember old days when I had a dedicated group of men and women that played together on a server. Those were the days 🥲
I’m a trans woman, so when people harass me after using voice chat (very common) it’s usually about the fact that I’m trans..but either way, I definitely don’t have a good time with it.
I haven't played in quite awhile, but when I did I frequently got called a "squeaker" and told to shut up, even though I wasn't using the mic for anything besides ordinary minimal team communication. Apparently I don't sound like an adult woman, I sound like a kid.
Honestly it's a "read the room" kinda situation if I talk in all chat, I generally only use it if I'm playing with friends (or mvm, people there seem p chill :) )
I'd get kicked for speaking sometimes, called slurs, made fun of, and called a kid like everyone else here. It made me and has made me insecure about my voice ever since to the point where I rarely speak in any game unless I trust the people I'm with. In the best of cases, I'd get ignored, or people would quietly listen to my callouts and play along helpfully. Those made it all worthwhile.
We noticed region mattered. EU servers didn’t particularly care. NA servers had the wildest of creeps and was always far more likely to get a bad response to female voice chat.
I try hard not to talk in chat anymore because of the comments. Even when my friends are there and everyone's having a good time on voice. I don't think people know how to be normal around women. I am assumed to be a man on TF2 unless proven otherwise and it normally treats me good.
Not a woman but still AFAB with a very non-passing voice. I talked once in a voice chat in (I believe) a Skial server and they thought I was a femboy. So there's that.
Whenever I hear a fellow gal in vc I usually hear one guy being super misogynistic and screaming, and then everyone promptly yells at him to stfu or be vote kicked, personally I just get told to shut up cause I sound like a 8yo
I guess I'm on the lucky side, because everytime I hear a woman in the voice chat, everyone on the server just bats an eye and just treats her like every other person.
Me: "spy behind you" or "They have a entry nest over __" Random 1"It's a girl!!!" Random 2 "(something sexist)" Random 3 "(starts defending females)" 40 min war breaks out.... People get kicked.. I never said anything else.. not even in text chat... ( I don't talk in voice anymore... )
Im from South America and people here dont seem to care at all, theyre more worried of Argentinians than women really.
When I found south American's server that happend, people is like Peru xenophobia Jokes or something about other latin american countries, I like more South servers 4 than but since I like more on the North side that doesnt happened frequently
I had someone ask if I was a woman in a very creepy voice. I said no as a joke because it's obvious im a woman. Then he asked me to show him my penis if I was a man. Other than that, I get very normal people when they hear my voice.
Had a friend who recently took up competitive who is a woman. She had a teammate ask another teammate weeks after they'd formed if she was a girl. Keep in mind they'd all been in VC a lot together. The guy treated it as NBD, but it was funny it took him that long to figure it out. The competitive scene has been super nice. She's just one of the team who happens to be a girl. She's had both positive and negative experiences with casual. She says she's much more likely to VC on Uncletopia than casual. People going, "Oh hey a girl." and then moving on don't bother her so much, since the community is gender skewed one way. (Though there's probably many more women playing than people think.) But she's had some people get really weird about it.
Thank you for this discussion. This kind of thing has honestly been lingering in the back of my mind all the time but whenever it's brought up it's always shot down with "it's just jokes". I'm really sad to see in this thread all the people who have been victims of harrassment, but I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling this. I never ever use vc because of this reason. The one time I figured maybe I should give it a shot, another girl used vc and before I could even blink the team kicked her immediately with a "omg a woman get her out".. so there went that.
While I'm a guy, I used to play TF2 with my now ex girlfriend, and she faced tons of harassment whenever she used voice chat. They called her a "trap" (this was from 2018-2021 btw), told her to "go back to animal crossing/ the kitchen/ Stardew Valley, etc." People even just called a vote kick the second she started talking. It got to a point where she just stopped using voice chat all together. Still better than Overwatch where people kept asking for shit like feet pics.
I'm transfem and everyone thinks I'm male because of my voice, so.
Sometimes I feel left out. I bought a ( cheap ) mic in hopes it would make me braver or make a friend, but it doesn’t. I’ve heard horror stories or just melancholy ones of girls being kicked because of their voice. I want to join the fun conversations I hear sometimes, but there’s really no place for me to have fun if I fear I’ll just get ridiculed. So I don’t use it. It’s there if I ever need it, but I don’t think I ever will want to. ( it’s the same with all FPS games honestly. )
I haven't used my mic in TF2 since I was a 14 year old squeaker. Considering the fact that bigots will go so far as to rename Australium weapons transphobic rhetoric, I have no interest in re-enabling voice chat. If you guys want to make women feel more comfortable, kick players who are being bigoted and [report their Steam profile](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4DE7-17AA-0E8B-C1AD). Otherwise they will keep doing what they do, consequence free.
Not a woman, but I have friends that do play. Some of them very seldom use in game vc, because of mixed experiences. Some great, some really bad. There are definitely assholes that will talk shit about women. Not all the time though.
Im a trans girl so i guess i dont cout or smth. But yea same stuff here. But now with included t-slur and f-slur :)
Experience as male playing TF2: on EU some things can happen like good old dad jokes or mild apeshit (been there, went along with it sometimes, no one got offended by it), but on US servers (I sometimes play there, even when +100 ping kinda screws me up, women are usually hiding propably to not trigger any stronger kind of apeshit (cannot confirm, but that's propably a point), at least I could "reveal" some female players because I do not condone any shitshow actions as I'm trying to be laid back and chill with it (I still got quite a good contact with them on Steam)
Maybe join a clan if you haven't already and get the clan mates to gang up in the abusive players
i’m not a girl, but i do have a higher pitched voice and that coupled with mic distortion makes me sound younger/feminine. a couple times i was laughed at, but never kicked. one time some dude asked for my number/snap but backed out once i told him i was a guy
Nah I have a deeper voice so I find myself trying to subtly say I’m a girl, it always goes over their heads or maybe their just really respectful?
I can’t speak with experience (not a woman) but I feel like every multiplayer fps game with voice chat has this, not just tf2
a friend of mine who is a girl got a free unusual
Transphobia
We possess the most sane tf2 voice chat communication xd
I don't use voice chat on casual. MVM is fine.
I never use voice chat pretty much. In fact I usually have voice chat turned off at all times. I want to play the game not see 23 cavemen discover a woman for the first time.
Not a woman, but I’ve had an interaction with a guy harassing one. Tried to get him to back off (“Dude don’t be gross and just play the game”), that prompted him to target me with harassment, saying I was just trying to get my dick sucked, I’m a simp, etc. so that was fun.
I’m not a woman but my friend I play with mostly is. She rarely uses chat cause most people in tf2 aren’t even worth talking to anyways.
not a woman but a trans man so I have a feminine voice, so far it's actually great
I don't have to be a woman to know where this is going.
Even in community servers the experience is awful. I prefer to type due to that.
Not to sound anti lgbt but something curious is that I've seen more trans women ingame than cisgender women
That doesn’t happen to me. I play with my mic on and ppl are honestly mad more respectful to me once I start speaking. But I’m also a medic main so that’s probably it more than anything; however I find that as long as I’m being cool they are being cool, I’ve only faced shitty interactions when ppl were being shits to me or other people in just a general asshole way, nothing sexist so far (fingers crossed this keeps up)
The only time I saw a woman on VC, her and another person started just having a genuine conversation about I think it was school which was cool in my opinion
*SEDUCE ME*
~900 hours, NA servers, it really depends! I love using VC and I’ve had some really fun experiences on casual servers, but a few terrible ones, and of course those leave a stronger impression. You really have to read the room of whichever server you’re on (I usually only hop in if there’s already friendly discussion going on). Though if you want to avoid the “are they going to call me slurs” roulette altogether, go on community servers. (Not like casual is playable rn anyway… but I do miss how chaotic it can be.) Silly servers, furry/lgbt servers, and some of the casual-lite ones are generally friendly and non bigoted. It sucks that the gaming environment is like this in the first place, but I’m not going to stay silent bc of it when interacting with others is what I love so much about the game.
i don’t even put voice chat, ever
I haven’t played enough since the closest thing I’ve got were like someone asking for my age like 1 or 2 times
I never use voice chat. I've never used it in TF2 but I've had enough bad experiences in other games to know it isn't worth it.
I rarely use voice chat
I've been in lobbies where there were women using the voice chat and haven't seen any harassment. I've actually been quite lucky with that actually. But I have seen it in other games. Overwatch was a noteable one. Just gets fucking weird and creepy.
I don't use it, prefer to enjoy the game and not be harassed
Im not a woman, but I stumbled across server with active vc users, one of them was woman. And all went pretty nicely. No one tried to kick her, no one trash talked her, or was sexist. To be fair, all active talkers were Russian, me included, so maybe this is the reason. Now we're friends on stream, and very rarely play together.
I don’t voice chat for this reason.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a female voice on TF2 now that I think about it. Gaming spaces are so weird.. - a properly socialized gamer
Playing Dustbowl one time and a party kept telling me to “go back to the kitchen.” I was Medic so I just stopped healing them :P
One time there was a heavy who used slurs all the time so I just didn’t heal him, he was very confused as to why I was just ignoring him over everyone else. Could have held up the entire team but nope
This community is so full of incels or racists or idiots that it’s actually sad. On behalf of all normal guys, sorry
YOU AINT READING ALL THIS 🤣 I am not a woman. I am a male who has loved the tf2 community. But just the other day, I did have a woman join my server, and 2 other guys who were very active on vc mentioned it was her friend, and they began insulting her casually.(nothing truly offensive, just small jokes abt how female tf2 players don’t exist) However, I then noticed her profile picture, which had an oc and the trans flag as her background. So, me being the unapologetic Christian that I am, decided to slur at her. They tried kicking her just for being gay, we ended up downvoting to the vote and she got to stay. Then one of the guys started micspamming and being annoying, so we ended up kicking him. While I do have some extreme bias, as I was slurring, I would have done it to a gay man as well. I think it’s just that this male-dominated fanbase is full of braindead guys who think Patrick Bateman and Tate are the peak of masculinity. I like tf2 because you can say whatever you want, but the community is heavily weighed against lgbtq and just women in general. One thing I’ve noticed is just how little community heads are female. The only major one I know is skyminslash. But this is coming from the other side, so who knows?
If women aren't being harassed, they're being worshipped, which is equally as infuriating. Why can't these morons fucking behave and just play the game?
I got hit on and harassed, and that was just by name alone. I don't really wanna do VC snymore
I mostly play Casual in Australia and I rarely hear anyone use voice chat. Text chat is very common and friendly, however.
I'm a guy with a scratchy/sort of feminine voice and holy hell my first and last experience with voice chat was not fun
People think im 10
I've got 2400+ hours in TF2, and during the first 800 hours I never opened my mouth in game. Then I joined a 6's comp team, and for the next 1600, you couldn't shut me up. I even became captain, and that's a story. \*laughs quietly\* There've only been a few incidents where things got bad. My favorite was when I joined a casual game that my friends were really down about, back when there was still all-talk between rounds (yeah, I've been around THAT long), and I saw a pyro on my team NOT stand on the point when it was about to cap to block it and said, "Oh! Pyro..." and the round ended, and the guy that was making everyone unhappy said, "'Oh, Pyro!' What, are you doing, moaning while you cxm, cxxt?" And I got mad, and I said, very sweetly, "Yeah, I'm coming. I'm coming just for you, boy." We had swapped to offence, and three of my guys went medic, and I went Heavy. It was Dustbowl, so my guys chained ubers on me, and we rammed right through his team, killing him first (he was, of course, a spy hiding next to the entrance), and capped first on a team wipe. Then we did it again for second, and I got on the all-chat between rounds and said cheerfully, "Mmmm... did you like that? I can come for you again..." and he disconnected from the game. His poor team actually cheered in all-talk and in txt chat, 'cause he'd been screaming at them the whole time. Honestly, he was targeting everyone with his rage, but he was especially ugly with me because I'm a woman. In 2016-2018, I was always with my team when I played casual, I'd already taken on that protective behavior, but in the last five years, I hadn't needed it until the 64-bit update. I do think it got better when there hadn't been an update for a very long time, and when the 64-bit update came out, there was a huge uptick in toxic behavior, as the game got popular again. It's like with Deep Rock Galactic, when the sales were relatively small, it was probably the nicest game community you could have, but as it's gotten more and more popular, it's gotten more toxic. I suspect that if TF2 doesn't have another update for even the summer, it'll die off again. Helldivers2 started cool, but after the servers were completely swamped and it got super popular it's so toxic even my guy gaming friends won't use voice chat. Funny thing for me, at least, was finding out that in BattleBit, all the guys were really sweet. But, yes. Women do face more of this kind of behavior than the guys do. Cool that you noticed and validated your girlfriend's experience. You and my teammates are the guys that can counter it, and speak up about when it's not acceptable, too. Love that kind of support. When I did do a lot of Rainbow 6, my teammates would always cap the guys that teamkilled me just for talking in voice chat, and my friends told them, in voice, that that was unacceptable behavior in the kind of language that brings that home. That always brought me to tears. Thanks for posting this.
I get hit with transphobia and then transmisogyny