80 Women Share The Casual Sexism They’re Tired Of Pretending Is Harmless

One of the places where I see the damage caused by sexism the most is gaming, probably because it is also the world I know best. After years of playing and analyzing video games, I’ve seen how much gender can affect the way people are treated. 

When women reveal their gender online, it can completely change how they experience gaming. Harassment sometimes forces them to play alone, hide who they are, switch groups, or avoid talking to others. Many women choose to stay anonymous just so they can enjoy games without unwanted attention or inappropriate behavior.

Games themselves can reinforce these ideas. Female characters show up less often than male ones and are usually in secondary roles, with unrealistic bodies or sexualized outfits. Still, newer games are starting to include more diverse female characters, showing that representation can improve as the industry changes, even though hypersexualization is still common.

For many years, video games have influenced how players think female characters should look. In the 1990s, sexualization was especially common, with female characters often given exaggerated bodies and revealing clothes instead of real personalities or skills. These designs were not random. They reflected an industry that mostly targeted male players.

Things have improved since then, but the pattern still exists. Secondary female characters are still shown in more sexualized ways than male characters. There are more diverse characters now, but it is hard to separate gaming culture from years of using women’s bodies as entertainment.

Of course, gaming did not come up with these ideas. Long before anyone created a female video game character, societies had already set rules for what men and women should do. In 19th-century America, the idea of “separate spheres” meant women were expected to focus on family and home, while men took part in politics, paid work, and public life.

These expectations did not apply the same way to every woman. Race, class, work, and money all affected what women really experienced. Even so, the split between a so-called private female world and a public male world shaped how people thought about work, family, independence, and authority for generations.

Gender roles show people what their culture sees as proper behavior for men and women. Children learn these expectations early. Traditionally, girls have been guided toward being nurturing, focusing on appearance, and being passive, while boys have been encouraged to be independent, ambitious, confident, and assertive.

What matters most is that these roles are not just written rules. Families, schools, media, and daily life often reinforce them by repeating messages about how boys and girls should act. Over time, these patterns shape what people expect from themselves and each other.

When people grow up with the same gender expectations, those ideas can start to seem like common sense instead of social rules. For example, girls often hear they should be caring or agreeable, while boys are encouraged to be independent and assertive. These patterns become familiar without anyone needing to explain them.

The American Psychological Association points out that traditional gender roles often continue because boys and girls are treated differently, sometimes without people even realizing it. This helps explain why sexism is not always intentional. People may just repeat behaviors they learned before they ever thought to question them.

Some of those old expectations still show up in everyday family life. In U.S. households where both parents work full time, 52% say the mother does more daily parenting, and 43% say she does more chores. Only 10% say the father does more parenting, and 17% say he does more chores.

This pattern stands out even more when looking at paid work. Even if mothers work more hours than fathers, people are still more likely to say mothers do more parenting and housework. The numbers do not explain why families split tasks this way, but they show that old expectations still affect daily life.

Another term that often comes up is chauvinism. In particular, male chauvinism is the belief that men are naturally better than women. This idea is closely tied to the gender roles we talked about before, where men were expected to be strong, independent leaders, and women were given different expectations.

Then, Machismo has a more specific cultural meaning. The word became common in English in the 1950s and 1960s, when American scholars used it to describe what they saw as an extremely masculine culture in Latin America. Later, the term spread into popular culture and came to mean aggressive or controlling masculinity.