Women and Counter Strike 

using door stuck as video material for showing male competiveness/aggression was genius.

"I have to admit, my experience of being a woman in Counter-Strike is very limited." Philip cracking jokes while talking about serious subjects as per usual

I think the most insightful points in this were "if women reached the top tiers, would they even want to be there if they're being constantly belittled and insulted" and "female only tournaments should be viewed as a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself"

I saw the saddest post on reddit in tf2 of a woman who asked how to change the pitch of her voice in game, just because she got loads of abuse whenever she used voice chat. I have never witnessed anything like this in thousands of hours, but once every 20 hours is already way too often to justify continue playing.

I have a friend who's friends with a deaf girl. They are both gold novas and while they're not exceedingly good, seeing them using pings, chat and other means of communication is so heartwarming. Someone who has the courage to play cs while being deaf is beyond me. They both deserve all the respect in the world.

34 and have seen this all the way back on rainbow six 3 and halo. It's just too easy to be a coward behind the mic. I'd hate to be a woman online.

Its nice to see Lucy from that clip now casting at the Major qualifiers. She has been amazing.

Has anyone made a "it's called global offensive for a reason" joke yet?

I'm glad you made this. Way too many people excuse it, not realizing the trash talking they get is nowhere near the amount that women get just for being present.

I’ve been told by many female gamers they don’t like to use voice chat because of this. So people are excluded from good teamwork because of gender. Thank you philip for addressing this!

My friends an I play for fun, not trying to grapple our way up the ranks. We have a pretty regular team of 4, and thus occasionally we get a woman as our 5th teammate. One time, about halfway through a game on overpass (we were getting crushed; she was top fragging. any other teammate would be annoyed with us) she told us that this was the most fun shed had in a game in a long time. Its strange, that the bar is so low for solo queuing women that just treating her like a normal teammate made her so happy. Experiences like these (and sometimes having my own girlfriend play alongside us when we happen to get another woman on the team) make csgo feel a little more inclusive for women I’m sure, but they also exemplify how terrible it must be the other times when people just treat women like utter trash.

Weirdly enough I can kind of relate. I started playing CS when I was 12 and had a very squeaky voice for years. Even when I played well, I'd get constantly belittled, dismissed, yelled at and usually teamkilled, kicked and sometimes banned because of it just cause I was young. It sucked. I never realized why they did it and it only got worse if I performed worse, or god help made a mistake. It never really bothered me personally as I would usually just laugh at them off the mic and took it as for what it is - a grown ass dude making fun of a kid for being a kid. Can't find a more moronic and ironically childish reason than that and I realized it. But I realize not everyone can tolerate it the same and the fact that it's there in the first place is just sad, especially given it's your personal choice to queue up with random people in the first place. But there will always be people who are butthurt. If anything I'm glad to have gone through that experience, get the perspective and be much more supportive to what are sadly the minorities in online gaming cultures. I genuinely enjoy helping out no matter how long it takes and cheering on no matter how big the flop whenever meeting them in game.

This is a real man. He can be serious, and he also can be a CSGO Case-Unboxing Millionaire. Thanks for this vid Philip, we need to stop this abuse to women, my girlfriend stopped playing because of it :/

Solid video philip, it's good to see one of the bigger CS youtubers to talk about this openly and strongly. It's nice to see that there's still people left who will go out of their way to document and discover people's experiences instead of just making assumptions on top of assumptions as I usually see in threads about this topic.

One of my friends, she played counter strike and absolutely slaughtered every game, but never used the voice chat and had a super generic username. Literally had their steam profile linked to a male name just to avoid harassment. It isn't that people can't play, it's that they are prevented from playing.

Me and my friends recently got matched up with a girl as out 5th, and we tend to tell the 5th teammate that we're all in teamspeak so just tell us if we forget to call. She spoke for the 1st time in maybe 4th round, and then gave very little info. Somebody called her out for not calling enough and she told us she was scared to talk to us. That is heartbreaking... In the end she was a nice teammate so we invited her to play more after she had told us it's nice to be able to just speak normally and not get heat for being a woman. I wasn't aware of how bad the issue was, I knew that this problem existed but I never really had any girl tell me exactly how bad it is. And yeah she used to just play 5 stacks with her friends to avoid the hate but now her friends stopped playing and she's stuck in this limbo where she enters a match being 90% sure she'll receive hate for speaking up in a game where I'd argue that pings aren't enough, it's no league of legends match where for matchmaking purposes the pings are actually just enough. And I always though that majority of the sexist abuse is caused just by being bad, and being a woman just opens up another branch of insults for the people that are toxic towards you, after all we all get hate in cs... But apparently people just hate women? Every time I see someone hate on a gamer girl that plays just as well as the rest of the team I feel like I travelled 3 centuries back...

6+ years in CSGO as a woman has been quite the experience, thank you for showing love to the female community, this means more than I can even begin to express.

Thank you for posting this. It gets blown aside far too much by people who have never experienced it and think it isn't an issue.

Hey Phillip! As a woman I am so grateful you made this video. I hope it serves to be enlightening to those who watch it! I play CS and my experience tends to be very mixed, sometimes being harassed in a negative abusive way sometimes in a weird thirsty desperate way. Sometimes I get nice teammates who are just here to play and are positive and friendly, so shout out to all those people! I was at the Faceit major in London with two of my guy friends and we saw you and had a chat with ya. Being at the major as a woman was a bit of a scary experience, there was such a huge amount of guys and sometimes there were some odd or dirty looks and such. Thankfully my friends made it better for me. But that's definitely another barrier women face in the esports side - being demeaned for attending an event. Thanks again Phillip

Thank you for this video, Philip! I find your channel very interesting and informative with your insightful and meticulous analysis of many aspects of CS and I can say that I have even more respect for your work after viewing this video.

Thank you for bringing this to light! Abuse inside videogames goes unknown by a lot of people, thank you for using your platform for something important!

Thank you for utilizing your platform to speak on this. As a woman in the community it's incredibly inspiring to see a prominent voice taking the opportunity to discuss an issue that many overlook.

The CSGO community in general is just so extremely toxic. I’m with you on this 100%.

One of the coolest things from valorant are the in-game callouts so you can be helpful to your team without having to be in voicecomms. This benefits a lot of people who play games - women can dodge gender bias, younger kids can dodge getting called a squeaker, people with hearing or speaking-based disabilities can communicate faster and even the odd person with an actually broken headset or no mic in general can be credit to their team. The whole industry is slowly sliding towards more accessible comms. Even counterstrike has improved a lot in this fashion. I remember when map callout locations were something you couldnt even look up online and with some spots there was no consensus even if you thought you knew. You either were in the know or you got flamed for not calling things right, sometimes both at the same time.

Love the idea that we all pretend to be women to dilute and experience the abuse ourselves.

Thanks for this Phillip. I think men don't understand that it goes beyond normal trash talk. It's one thing to have someone call you bad at the game. It's another thing to be demeaned for who you are, in the same way most women are outside of video games. It's an incomparable level of demoralising.

I used to know this girl who absolutely demolished me in CS. Thankfully she managed to gather a full team, so the abuse was at a minimum and she could focus on performing. They aren't inherently bad, there just aren't that many of them, as you said.

I've never understood why people treat other people like dogshit in games, female or not, I've always approached every single person with kindness. Growing up and playing Xbox live with all sorts of people, and having female friends never really hit me, until one of my friends showed me her Xbox messages. it truly broke my heart, seeing that after nearly every single game she spoke in, or was noticed she was either met with abuse, or sexual depravity. We both would constantly be neck and neck, dominating games together and pushing our team to victory in every single game we played together, but purely because she was a girl she was treated like shit. People should fuck off, and stop letting being a Male, Female or whatever else people identify as in 2021 be an obstacle, and just let people play video games and have fun, not be a creep and treat everyone as you would your own damn kin. Thanks for uploading this video Mate, I hope that Girls can get a fair share and a good shot in the video game community.

exactly. you make amazing points in this video as to how sexism is so common that we become numb to it, and thats a problem

i think it’s also something about the power of anonymity. majority of them-they wouldn’t dare do or say something like that in real life. and if they do-they’re considered an outcast. the thing is that CSGO is an awesome game that brings every body from every single part of the world.

Straight to the point. I see it every time I post a clip of a female CSGO player. Many comments are simply "simp" or "girls shouldn't play video games". This is just sad. Most people who comment things like this are just not as good as the shown clip of a female gamer.

It's even more infuriating when people brush the harrasment off as "Something everyone deals with" or "Everyone does this on the internet", it feels like a point that they don't even believe in.

Good on you for posting this, awareness is key.

This is why I've not used my microphone ingame for over a year.

I will call out anyone talking shit towards my team. Toxic behavior is never okay no matter who it's aimed at.

I used to verbally chat with my team (in other games.) I wasn’t always picked on by my co-players, even though I was treated with misogynt the bigger portion of the time talking. Most of the times it weren’t enough to get me hurt, but it happened soooo frequent and consistently I just stopped talking in-game unless my bf were with me. At one time the bullies persistebtly followed me outside of the game and disturbed me on my profile page. They were maybe five or six guys, and they didn’t stop harassing me and my friends for a whole day and night. I’m grateful beyond words my friends were there for me. Since then I didn’t go in a game by myself thinking that I’d talk.

This isnt unique to CS unfortunately. I just got out of a match of Team Fortress where I was berated by 3 players relentlessly. I left the match, quit tf2 and then saw this video. I've had a lot of issues with verbal abuse in cs and tf2 and it has gotten worse over the past couple of years. Usually it would be one bad apple that would sling abuse until they were kicked, but recently I was kicked for cheating because "A woman couldnt find her way out of spawn" and when I told everyone to f2, two people just said "based" in chat. I wish this would change but I doubt it will.

Sexism in gaming is really pervasive and it mostly goes unnoticed. Thank you for making this video and raising awareness for it. Personally, I've just stopped playing online games at all except for rarely with friends, because it's not worth dealing with the constant harassment. Any time you try to talk, it's like rolling the dice to see if you'll get some incel screaming at you over the microphone. It sucks since online games are fun, but they're a lot less fun when you get attacked for existing in a way that makes some people furious.

I look forward to watching the new ESL tournaments. Thanks for the perspective, Philip.

Thanks for making me 'see' these borders philip, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed so it really helped understanding

The funniest game I've ever had while soloQing was a few years ago when we had a girl on our team and everyone was very respectful and not a single bad thing was spoken for the first half which we won 12-3. Then we lost the pistol round and it turned out that another player on the team who hadn't said a word before that was also a girl, and they instantly started fighting and calling each other names. The rest of the game was just two girls screaming at each other. We lost 13-16.

Thank you so much for making this video Phil, I'm not a woman but I play with quite a few and I'm afraid they'll get abuse hurled at them as soon as they speak. All I can tell the assholes is "Shut up and play the game." Even then, they'll come up with some snarky comment "oH iS sHe YoUr gIrLfrIEnD" Not to mention all the guys who will put them on a pedestal in an attempt to get some "gamer girl pussy" and then get incredibly mad when she doesn't give her insta! It's fucking absurd. Women just wanna play in peace without being treated differently just because they're women.

thanks 4 doing a video on this important topic phil, very much appreciated!

I hope some of you in the comments change and grow as a person.

Being a girl on CS I literally sometimes get kicked for... no reason. Even if I am basically carrying, top scoring, whatever, I get kicked because I am a woman. CSGO I have found is the only game with this problem, R6, OW, and basically any other competitive FPS shooter is nowhere NEAR as toxic as CSGO.

This is going to date me pretty accurately but I was playing at the top level of European CS leading up to 1.6. I was playing with a player called Snajdan (if you know, you know) and we were playing a scrimmage VS A-laget. At the time a female was arguably their best player, her nickname was Queen and she later on had a career in female CS and CS:GO. Back then she was on a top team on her own merit. Snajdan figured out she was a woman and, being the young brat he was at the time, he made it his mission to go around the map (cbble) as T and hunt for her. Totally ruined any practice we were meant to get and going A alone every single round doesn't play into the terrorist's favor. But I remember the nasty things he yelled in our comms (he was at least too scared to be disrespectful directly to her) and we were laughing at how pathetic he was acting. Being older now I regret not trying to speak more directly to him why it wasn't okay, at the time we felt like he was proving himself wrong by hunting for her and going something like 2 for 12 in his duel with her. Anyway, she was a top level player way before women's esport was a thing. I remember being a bit sad when she ventured into female CS because I really felt like she belonged to 'my' scene.

Amazing of you to support this topic, been thinking about it for a long time and I just hope it gets better some day!

Happens in every game. My sister played r6 with her boyfriend and he literally said she was his girlfriend, but people just went:"You're really good for a girl! Accept friend request pls!". Also happens to ' squeakers ', sadly like me. Usually when I say something I either get instantly attacked for my voice. If not, then usually when I get into an argument or sometimes when I'm literally giving callouts. It has made me much more toxic and like competitive gaming very little, usually resorting to more laid-back games when I'm too tilted.

Great point about speaking up, it really does help (not always, but most of the time!): I play a lot of cs and valorant with my 8 years younger brother. Some people like to flame either because he is so young or because they think he's bad (we all make mistakes from time to time). However when they say something toxic i usually respond with something like: "Its just a game, we're only playing for fun so there's no need to harass your teammates because of this". I mostly do this to show my brother that this behaviour is not ok. That he shouldn't just accept it and become numb to this thrashtalk. But in 90% of the cases people have acctually apologized for their comments, or at least stopped their toxic behaviour! This really shows how easy people show their worst part of themselves online, but more importantly what difference one small comment can make when needed. Wish you all the best when gaming folks!

It just really sucks when you're trying to make a couple calls or something, and get flamed or griefed for not being a man.

In an ideal world this video wouldn’t have existed. Sadly enough, it does and I’m really glad you addressed this huge issue.

Thank you for shining a light on this Phillip. It really means a lot, especially since I’ve had to leave comp gaming to escape abuse.

I'm so glad you're talking about this topic. It's my dream to be a pro CS player one day(although I don't think it will ever be possible). However, I would love to see a female CS player in one of the big teams one day. It would just feel really good to get some representation and although I don't think I can become a pro, it would feel really inspiring to see a pro female player in one of the big teams. So I really hope that we will eventually see more female players in CS

I will be very proud and happy when one day we have a women's team or a mix team in the major. You've made lots of valid points in the video. In a game where your physical appearance and capabilities are irrelevant, why do we place these barriers indeed? This topic has been on my mind since I saw Juliano doing sponsored merch adverts with G2. I am sure a younger Juliano and perhaps other girls who watch would have wanted to play the game more than be models for some merch.

Also I’m pretty sure Frankie was not presenting at the major due to her pregnancy, she was a great interviewer and had some really good insight of top tier play.

The end clip with the one armed girl really had me in shock. So much talent.

1:20 "And still is." Glad to hear she's still alive somewhere

Great video! This is an important topic to adress and I was so happy when seeing the female tour being announced. As a male I cant stand playing cs:go cus its so incredibly toxic. Cant really imagine being a woman trying to get in to this scene.

Such an Important topic!! thanks for making a video on this!!

It warms my heart to see your response to misogyny on the internet. Thanks, Phillip, for using your platform responsibly to promote sensible behaviours on this topic.

Was just thinking about this yesterday. Seems like most videogames sport more guys than women, really. Glad you made a video of it.

Thank you. THANK YOU SO MUCH for making this video. I've been playing cs since i'm 8. The harassment got worse once I grew older and I turned more "girly" and tried to use voice chat more. It was a mistake, of course. I've even been harassed by other girls and other "pick-me" girls. I know I shouldn't refer to other girls in this way, but it was exactly the attitude they displayed afterwards. Harassment has been part of my life ever since I got into online videogames, and I've tried competing (I've been on teams with guys and girls, all of them amazing), but the barriers do exist. Abuse is a thing that for me, happens 2 out of 3 games. It gets worse in Valorant, but for my teenage years, it was deppresing. I loved the fact that you mentioned the female characters added as skins. For me, it was so heartwarming. I finally feel represented, and not because "it's a strong female character", it's because we finally have a female character. Ironically, I also got hate and harassment from players ingame lmao. I've learned to deal with the "go back to the kitchen", and I just try to shut them up with my gameplay (which happens all the time). Again, thank you. I know this was kind of a rant, but I wanted to show a bit of my experience, especially being from another region (LATAM), which ends up being worse, since misoginy is still a big deal here. Thank you so much for your perspective on this, and for making a point of the misoginy, discrimination, and barriers we have to deal with.

Thank you for this video, this was a fantastic analysis that really helps

Isn't matchmaking tipically toxic? Not just towards specific groups?

Would definitely love to see more women casters and analysts, as well as the hosting/interviewer roles. Shout out to Freya and Frankie!

Very insightful video, thank you for covering this topic.

Great video. Thank you for doing this. Every time I have a female on my team I cringe at the idiot behavior. Be it the over protective white knighting, over sexualizing, or ignorant misogyny; none of that is necessary. They deserve the same support and respect we all want from our teammates. It's a team game for god's sake.

the fact that "Gender is irrelevant" was immediately followed by "Welp. Thanks for the awards." tells you everything you need to know about average male gamers tbh

This video hits a bit harder after what happened to a young female streamer (who happened to mostly stream CSGO) from Serbia a few weeks ago. I hope more people start thinking like you, Philip. More people means more competitiveness, if nothing else. I don't care if I get teamed with a girl in MM, but I do get a bit protective of them, though, because, verbal abuse (and tons of sexual harrasment) happens A LOT. And as I've experienced them first hand, I'd like for the newcomers (and older players too) to feel welcome.

I am always amazed how cool and reproducible you explain complex topics like this one.. thank you for showing where you think the problem lies and for handing some tools on how to fight this behavior if somebody would encounter this and even make the people more sensitive to this problem One of the most important videos on RU-vid I've seen in the past weeks

jesus christ your script writing is so good. My anttention span is quite long, but when i understand the point of the video and the creator just elaborates for too long i just close the video. But in your videos i just enjoy listening. And the pacing is so well done.

Well said. Thanks for using your platform to bring this to attention. Blatant sexism has definitely been "normal" in online gaming since the beginning, but it's time for us to actively put an end to it by calling out perpetrators and cleaning up our own communities (not just CS). It's disgusting how women are treated in these spaces and I can only hope the younger generation is more sensible and inclusive towards all groups. Love you Philip, happy holidays from NYC.

nice to see a large youtuber finally talking about this.

Love the new pfp

One of the top female pro players was kaite, for Mythic I’m North American pro scene playing with mythic against teams like liquid, triumph, pain etc... The was a mixed team also not a full female team for anyone who didn’t know and kaite was an extremely strong rifler.

the final post showed made me cry both of emotion because of her play and frustration because of the comment mentioned

Wonderful video as always! I'm genuinely so glad you made this, I think this topic in general needs much more attention from the community at large. While plenty of smaller voices in the community and larger voices from outside the general gaming scene have been vocal, individuals like yourself speaking on these kinds of issues are few and far between. On another note, if anybody needs convincing that women are capable at competing at the top level in games, the competitive scenes in mmos stand as a great example. While men are still very overrepresented, they tend to be far more diverse than that of a typical FPS. Two that I know of are Naguura(ex world first raider in WoW) and Stal(World first contender in FFXIV).

Thank you for addressing this Phillip, it really means a lot to have someone as big as you in the counterstrike seen to address something as important as this. I hope others see this and take note to improve how welcoming and excepting the community is.

I think women are more likely to touch grass than the men in the tournaments.

I'm amab, I have a voice that could be described as "alto" and my T side model is Getaway Sally. As soon as I started using her, abuse was thrown in my direction. When I told my friends some of them basically told me that it happens to them daily.

One interaction in competitive that I'll never forget is when I was on a team with someone named "I'm a deaf girl, please type". On the second or third round, one of my teammates started a vote kick on her because "she's a liability". Thankfully, the vote failed unanimously and we kicked them immediately after, but jeez.

There's no simple answer imho, people that want to bother you will just use whatever tools they have. I've received a shit tonne of abuse solely from sounding really Scottish for example. That being said targeted harassment is different and would need to be solved. I really hate the character model section bit tho, also find it kinda pathetic. I've played games for years with characters that don't even slightly resemble me and it's not an issue. A generic female character shouldn't be related to because they are female and seems very dishonest.

Good video, this goes far beyond counter strike and even happens in non-competitive games

Thanks for making this video and spreading important information. I've always been worried about my female friend who gets verbally abused in most games she plays. Oftentimes she even gets kicked regardless of her position on the team. It's absurd. She doesn't often want to play alone, mostly due to the abuse. I hope there will eventually be a good solution to this problem.

thank you for making this video, it's interesting to think how this could change in the future

shed a tear on this vid, the things that i never new existed, makes me support the initiative even more

This is a great video I wish more people would watch. Thanks philip

Obviously this behaviour is not acceptable, but in Lucys video, and in other cases, I don't understand why they wouldn't mute the toxic players. I do that all the time, only not for sexist reasons. I couldn't imagine listening to a toxic player for 1 minute let alone 15

So. Damn. Glad. You talk about this. I have thought a lot about this BIG fucking problem cs has. Crazy how these guys talk to women like they're not even human.

this video was perfect, to the point without acting like the entire community is at fault, while still providing strong and intense frustration at points when needed. loved it

The female valorant pros seem better than their cs equivalents. I think it may be because there are far more women playing valorant now

Great initiative. Thank you

Thank you so much for this video. It is time to talk about manners in CS. In Denmark we are in general discussing CSGO manners, especially the last 2 months. We havent gone far yet, people are really not aligned, both on how to behave in game and at events. But the open discussion is nice, kind and great, and the waves has started. I hope the discussion will continue for the better in the general CS communities.

"My idea is that we all pretend to be women" brb inviting the boys over for some casual CrossdressGO.

the mute button kappa

Thank you for addressing this issue.

I am a female csgo player with over 2800 hours. I'm silver 2, have been my whole gaming time. 1:2 matches i get harrassed, the muting thing is very useful.

I'm happy that they are pushing the female-only tournaments, it will only help the scene. Ever since my daughter was born a few years ago issues like this have become more apparent to me. I'm not perfect so I honestly never really thought about this type of issue before because it didn't directly affect me. The thought of our daughter getting endlessly harassed while trying to do something she enjoys makes me sad.

I agree with much of what this video says, but my main gripe against women-only tournaments are their prize pools. It gives a way to earn *real* money for having lower skill, where people who aren’t women must work much harder for such chances. I find it very ironic that they are fighting unfairness by putting skill handicaps in professional gaming, but perhaps the true way to make things fair is to just make everything even less fair.

This is such a good explanation video though