The Hateful Side of Electronic Sports: Sexism, Misogyny and Transphobia in a “Man’s Space”

Electronic sports (esports) has been a rapidly growing industry. Individuals have been increasingly interested in playing multiplayer and competitive video games as well as watching the best players compete against each other in various esports titles. The industry itself has many issues such as an alleged pay gap, a ton of alleged exploitation, rampant sexism, discrimination, and transphobia. This project will focus on discrimination in esports, particularly sexism, misogyny, and transphobia. Anti-LGBTQ+ opinions and specifically transphobic views have seen a recent rise in public discourse in North America which has influenced transphobic policy to be implemented within sports like chess. My interest in pursuing this research project stemmed from my experiences as a former salaried player in “Counter-Strike” (CS) where discrimination was common. This research project will address these topics using semi-structured interviews with ten esports competitors that identify as women who have a competitive experience in esports. Their experiences will be important to contribute to a big gap in esports literature which is mostly filled with quantitative research mostly in the form of content analysis. This research project is pursued by Kwantlen Polytechnic University student Filip Mitevski and the project supervisor is Dr. Petra Jonas.