Egirl should be considered a severe insult.

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What about a phrase like: "Ignore the eGirl" aimed at a player? That's clearly meant in an offensive way, even more so if the recipient is actually a woman or girl cause there's a whole extra level of heavy then.

Well, you don't know whether the recipient is actually a woman. It's pretty common to see an imaqtpie situation where it's actually a creepy weirdo.

"Ignore the Lux." Telling others to ignore someone is not "clearly" offensive. Nor is calling someone an eGirl, as you pointed out, since it's not inherently derogatory.

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and you know hotaru is not a woman because...?

I don't - and I didn't say I did. I said I'm going out on a limb, and guessed that they might not be female - and I hope that I made it clear that I wasn't ragging on them. I thought I was pretty clear in the idea that it was a risky assumption and that I might be wrong.

I'd be happy to be wrong in fact - cause that's a whole new avenue for dialogue. Plus it's always awesome to see women participating in sports that most people assume requires a particular anatomy to be good at or to enjoy.

For what it's worth, I'm not and I didn't really take offense to that. Vaelkyrie said it in a positive way and claimed it was just a guess. No harm done :p

Thanks to those on this thread sharing their perspectives! I would like to add that in my own personal experience as a female gamer, every time I've seen the word "eGirl" it's being used negatively. I typically see things along the lines of, "You're just an eGirl," implying that my opinion doesn't matter because of the perceived stereotype I've been associated with. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use this term in a positive or even neutral way. What would that even look like? "Yay we have an eGirl on our team!" "Please ward tri, eGirl." It's hard for me to imagine any instance someone would naturally use this term inoffensively. I completely acknowledge that this is only my own experience, but I perceive the term "eGirl" as a slur and have reported it in the past (depending on how nasty the user was).

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i don't understand what you're talking about. women already are gamers. the only people who bother with labels like "femgamer" or "egirl" as if a persons genitalia has any relevance to their skill with a mouse or joystick are the ones who are not worth the effort to bother with.

exactly what is your deal in this discussion? im getting increasing white knight vibes from you with every comment i read

My deal?

I'm not white knighting (though in general I detest that term when it's aimed at people trying to do the right thing, and I'm not saying you).

Quite simply, I am a woman. A girl gamer even (my favourite t-shirt is the gamer girl one from PAX). This discussion is one that I wish would happen more often, and I am so impressed with how measured and thoughtful most of the replies and comments have been. A pretty productive thread.

So I have a stake in this. I didn't want to 'come out' as female cause experience tells me that is going to add other problems, but it sort of bothered me that the assumption must be that I was white knighting rather than possibly speaking from a place of knowledge and trying to further the discussion.

And since the cat is out of the bag so to speak, I can assure you that terms like eGirl are felt and heard very differently than has been described by a few people on the board. It doesn't matter that there are benign meanings to the word - the existence of the derogatory and marginalizing ones are the ones that come to mind first. And in my experience every time I've heard it, it's been used dismissively, as though to negate the other person's legitimacy as a player or person.

That said, I'm not advocating an outright ban, but maybe it's time to consider that the term is loaded and ask what would be lost by discouraging its use as a general pejorative.

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That's fair, but I'm worried it's not balancing idealism with pragmatism. If our goal is for female gamers to feel comfortable playing League, how do we achieve that? I'll push progress along as much as I can, but just look at this thread: OP is inexplicably at -20 for having the audacity to express that she's female and uncomfortable. Troll threads where the OP is blatantly exposed to be lying about intentionally feeding get fewer downvotes.

I want to offer OP a potential solution that can be used today, not just a promise that thing will get better some time later.

It's definitely a hard issue. One of the tough things to over come is that by addressing the issue we also erode some long held 'privileged behaviours' of various groups who aren't keen on realizing they aren't the only colour of smartie in the box and its not okay to pick on green smarties anymore. Your point about OP is a great example. Or when I tried to make my points in a gender neutral, human centered way, I was told I was giving off a white-knight vibe (which I half expect someone else to follow up with a SJW tag).

I've enjoyed our discussion. Thank you.

First of all, I appreciate you sharing your perspective in a respectful way. I see your posts on the forums a lot and you have always struck me as a kind, reasonable person.

I think the issue I see here is that if we don't say anything, nothing will change. It often sucks being a woman playing this game, but if we don't speak up, the same sexism will continue on unchecked.

I think about how some people on Facebook unfriend people who disagree with them. If you do that, you will eventually only be preaching to the choir. You have to speak to the people who have different viewpoints if you want even a chance at changing anything. Even then, you may not change anyone's minds, but you will at least have burst into their echo chamber with a new perspective, showing them something they may not have even known existed.

tl;dr: it's hard being a female gamer but it would be worse to avoid sexism by not addressing it