WHAT TO EXPECT AS A WOMAN IN ESPORTS
Opinion
REVISED 9/9/25 - Removed less relevant details to shorten “systems” section, tied the reactionary parallels I see between modern movements together more towards the end.
There are many women among the Super Smash Bros. competitive community that often get pushed out for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, it comes down to the lack of support from other women to get camaraderie through some of the most annoying, unresolvable social situations.
The men around you, the majority of them being regular gamers without the mental fortitude or experience to go very far in most tournaments, will look at you and could make many baseline assumptions. Two of these are what I hear the most.
If you nullify or exist beyond these baseline assumptions in their mind, say you socialize a bit and make some friends, the repeated longstanding interaction that I’ve experienced and witnessed among the years is what I’ve come to call the overbearing nerd that either comes from a place of genuinity or objectification.
These are all real situations I have witnessed or experienced:
“Ohh, do you play Peach? I can give you some tips. There’s a setup in my room, want to hang out?”
“Hey, we’ve never met before but I want to be forward, do you wanna get dinner?”
*A man is standing next to a woman watching her boyfriend play a set in bracket that has gone on for a while
“So, do you play? What’s your name? I like your eyes…”
“You blame men for ALL of your problems. Men are good. You need to stop hating men so much. You only care about them if they do something for you.”
“Smash Sisters is a pointless event and the idea of a safe space is comical.”
To be clear. This is NOT a demonstration meant to shame anyone who may have naively went about these all too common interactions. As a matter of fact, the Smash Bros. community as a whole is young, and nowadays, the vast majority of the old leadership more confident in what direction they wanted the community to go is gone. The people who remain exist in a much more disorganized environment that many aren’t sure where to rise up from. In this writing, I want to suggest my own personal beliefs, ideologies, and goals from my years of experience essentially being raised in this environment that is often not kind to women as a guide for other women that may eventually face complicated circumstances with nobody else to confide in. For years, I’ve only been able to confide in a handful of people, mostly those that no longer even attend tournaments anymore. This is an honest representation of my experience, the good and the bad.
I cannot possibly represent every belief and ideology, but I wholeheartedly began in the Melee subsect of the Super Smash Bros. community because of the vibe around the game first getting into it. I played with my brother growing up and attended my first tournament when I was 14. Politics were lost on me. I was far too young, immature, and inexperienced to know what I would eventually face amongst my own womanhood in a male dominated environment, but I am one of the very few lucky people that had positive adult role models courageous enough to break it down for me, no matter how uncomfortable. This saved my life and my future.
BROKEN SYSTEMS IN THE REAL WORLD
The first point I’d like to make is to say, the success of a minority in a world with a broken system should not be paraded as though the system is fixed. You should never feel fully satisfied until true systemic changes are achieved. I never understood why, at age 15, hundreds of people ridiculed me beyond what was reasonable when I barely understood how deep something like sexism went in our society, and didn’t seem to care. I also didn’t know why people were overhyping me, as if I were about to launch myself into top 50 within the next year. That amount of pressure frequently ate away at me from a young age, and often led me into panic attacks or general depression at events. To explain more of how I saw the world at the time, I simply saw the popular online anti-SJW (Social Justice Warrior) sentiment and didn’t see how any of it could be taken seriously. Back then, the issue of my socioeconomic status is what led me to the conclusion it was all nonsense for people too privileged to see the real world anymore. They had to argue about air conditioner temperatures in the office were oppressing women, when I was so poor I often did not have access to enough tampons each time I got my period. Every time that happened, or every time I was at a tournament desperately folding toilet paper sheets in place of proper hygiene products, it was hard to take the movement seriously, therefore, I fell into the typical edgy teenager mindset. Despite feeling outcast at that age, like I could not relate to my peers, this was a product of class divide. I wasn’t experienced enough to comment on anything, yet people were constantly outraged I wasn’t the projection of an imaginary version of me they created.
To draw what could be interpreted as an overdramatic comparison, which I will do frequently in this document, the election and era of Barack Obama had the general populace and average white moderate or white liberal all united under similar ideals, ones discussed years prior in Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man. The book was released in 1992 and is a product of its time, predicting what the world could end up looking like in the coming decades. It’s controversial and talked about more today, but we feel it every time consumerism changes its shape ever so slightly to appeal to the next young generation. In order to relate to your peers, you now must consume.
Every time the pendulum swings left or right, in my lifetime, I’ve come to see how wrong it is to believe liberalism is anything other than a fantasy ideal meant to stop any real activism from succeeding. The radical leftist movements from the Vietnam War era were effectively killed alongside many of the revolutionaries representing them. Ending the draft brought everyone together, and the left has been fully incapacitated ever since. Even then, it was always class issues first, women’s rights second. The attitude has always been, “We’ll get to you.” A more recent movement that was considered successful was Occupy Wall Street, where at the places people camped out, women were sexually assaulted and raped at extremely high rates. It would be flat out wrong to say this is unique to our generation, as women face this type of violence in protests everywhere all over the world consistently. It is severely underreported and not discussed, as protesting in America today typically lacks “seriousness.” How will we get the attention? Make signs… March… Yell… In a place where we don’t need permits or don’t actively go against laws we disagree with… Some news outlets report it for the night and then move on. There only exist individual political violence, not organized group efforts by revolutionaries to change what they see fit. It’s a cycle you’ll see repeatedly and it saddens me.
Democrats today are mostly centrists desperate for the white moderate to magically regain power. Anyone progressive with a prominent following today rubs a thick layer of irony and pure lack of any vulnerability because of how dominant conservatism has become in our culture overall, and due to how difficult it is to rally anyone for radically progressive events.
Republicans will fiercely stick together under any ideal because that’s how their party has always been deep down. Quite frankly, they don’t care if they’re wrong, ignorant, or uneducated because anything the left has to say is “woke nonsense.” “Woke” is a similar accusation today as it was back then to be a “commie.” I didn’t even know for the longest time that the Black Panther Party had a reactionary right-wing equivalent called the White Panther Party. It is not much different from the Black Lives Matter movement having a reactionary All Lives Matter movement, which didn’t go far, so it was then replaced by the more sellable Blue Lives Matter reactionary movement.
Whether assassinated by government officials, police, or self-proclaimed vigilantes, or eventually giving in during the 80s rise in centrism. Many people surviving in that era saw how liberalism suffered, how democrats continuously fumble, and how tone deaf they are to the life of the average working American. It leads us to where we ended up today, many historically leftist progressive elders took the Trump Kool-aid because he ignored the professional theater of politics and addressed issues perverting the mind of America like immigration. The last surviving politicians of progressive movements exist in Bernie Sanders, who stood alongside people extremely sought after by the FBI and CIA like Abbie Hoffman. Sanders is unafraid and deeply understands what a real progressive movement looks like, however, because he’s the only serious one who knows what he’s saying and doing, democrats easily break and sabotage his movements.
Sanders is dealing with a completely different young generation of people. The youth today deeply fear surveillance, going viral, etc. How can you mobilize a generation that is paralyzed with fear based on all the documented evidence of centuries of abuse America delivers to its people who are “too different?” We even have detailed, on-the-ground information about how movements get broken up by the government, how anyone with too much attention gets a target on their back for the rest of their life. Abbie Hoffman’s fate ended with him going completely underground, changing his name, changing his entire life and identity to have some normalcy due to CIA persecution. His life ended in suicide. How does progressivism succeed in the minds of a generation that has witnessed the pain and suffering you must endure, when, well… Staying inside isn’t so bad, and the internet is an infinite gift of entertainment, knowledge, vice, gratification, and pleasure. Why die for my beliefs when there is no foundation to organize for them? Why die for my beliefs when we can see how protests don’t do anything to move the needle politically? Why die for my beliefs when I don’t even fully agree with the people who will stand beside me?
Before I lose anyone, yes, I know you may think,
“What does any of this have to do with being a woman in eSports?”
The political stage for the Y2K era was uniquely set by all of these things. Melee was released in 2001, and while it is fading out, the Y2K mindset still exists here and there within the competitive scene. The entire act of learning crazy tricks in Melee is the surviving bastion of how it felt to try and grind out tricks in something like Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Word of mouth discoveries between your friends, like your cool niche little secret, ignites a fun, passionate fire in the minds of youth, especially in the coming days of how ridiculously politicians like Hillary Clinton would attempt to rail against violent or sexual video games. The concept of a child seeing virtual blood or sex? As important of an agenda as the “War on Terror.” There are also still new discoveries made within Melee or shown off in clips every single event. Despite the thousands of existing sets between Fox vs. Fox, none are exactly the same. Oddly enough, the grassroots community that came to be due to the lack of Nintendo support or understanding of what people wanted out of their game created the foundation for small forms of organization that are undoubtedly political. Smash Sisters’ first event was in 2015, which it’s organizers simply sat down one day, made a Facebook post, and ran the event with pen and paper at Genesis 3. A women only event that desired the type of camaraderie many people get to experience in the competitive community. It peaked mostly in the ‘15-‘20 era, but since then it has gotten smaller, less hyped, and less talked about amongst the general community.
The modern social media age has undoubtedly muted its once vibrant colors, attempting to force “content” and monetization onto a community that thrived beneath more of a curtain. The overwhelming disconnect between the average spectator today compared to the competitors is almost otherworldly. Spectators online often demand blood or justice for things that will never affect them. They’re simply bored and addicted to the adrenaline one gets from negativity on social media. However, despite the modern problems, the era of 2015 to 2019 in Melee marked some of the most known moments in the game’s entire lifespan. At The Big House 11, I ran Smash Sisters myself, where the organizer gave us a block to stream it, not just record it. In the past, Emily and Milktea, the founders of Smash Sisters, were at odds with this issue. Milktea believed it was best to keep it in-person due to the online harassment, while Emily wanted to really push the competitive spirit for women that desired something more serious. Having these different ideals led to more variety among each Smash Sisters event, and it was a good thing they considered those obstacles. My event was more like a stress test, but I’ve come to land more on the side of Milktea. If it’s your first time ever really competing, which for MANY people in those crew battles was true, would you want to do it in front of a live camera? And what about a camera that’s going to give a bunch of faceless people the ability to comment on what your body or face looks like?
Now that I have properly set the stage for you, in a world where the system is irrevocably broken and young people have no ways to organize or self-express, we land in passionate grassroots communities such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, because if we can’t vote, protest, or even use violence to achieve some sort of political victory, what else can we do aside from come together and remind ourselves we are not alone?
The entire Y2K era was inherently apolitical despite all the force-feeding of war in the middle east. For those that would like to seek more information on this topic specifically, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is an important framework that gives us the language to properly express how it is mass media feels so deranged and blots our minds. With social media, we experience something I’ve started to call “manufactured wholesomeness.” Due to how impossibly fast mass media has grown due to social media, media literacy is overall lacking, especially among the very young and old. The age old tale of everything on the internet being fake unless proven otherwise is an important lens to look at just about EVERYTHING, which is even more true with the advent of AI. This is placed onto any and every woman who may compete seriously at any level at first. My existence rejected it at first. I was never forced into the restrictive box of femininity growing up. I did not have to be ladylike, I wasn't scolded for not wearing a bra or cutting my own hair. My mother specifically went out of her way to warn me: You can act this way, but men are going to look at you more often. My parents simply let me be. People who first met me as a teenager were very quick to find that I was incredibly brash, swearing like a sailor, and pretty clearly a “delinquent.” My local community more or less dealt with it for what it was most of the time, but after my first major attendance at The Big House 6, more specific observations about my character, my beliefs, or anything I posted online repeated themselves everywhere. In fact, I had deep internalized misogyny and contempt for other women in the community, and I projected all of it back onto others too.
And then I faced what was simple comedic uplifting that others saw and transformed into something negative, despite the fact that I was merely the subject of these interactions, and there was no way for me to control it.
This is a common growing pain for serious women among any male dominated field, but especially eSports, and even other sports like competitive chess. It can come from a place of extremely high expectations on yourself to “catch up” to male peers. It wraps back around to self consciousness and insecurity, which many women have a difficult time shedding their skin of. An insular, serious woman such as myself, displaying individualism and a focus on self is so abnormal to male dominated environments that ridicule will come at you in any and EVERY form available. Despite how concise and professional I may act in person or when I must work with people I am fundamentally incompatible with, this is not enough for most people. Despite being friendly, I’m not always “nice.” I don’t sugarcoat feelings because that would be dishonest to how I see the world. The projections of what womanhood and what a woman should be will land on you, and even for me, you’ll occasionally try to slip under the radar without a peep, because it’s a lot easier to remain silent so people can project whatever they want onto you for approval.
In reality: Basic respect and decency requires you to have confrontations, and if you’re always avoiding confrontation, you are choosing cowardice. A simple example of speech would be how generally women may always lead with, “I think.”
“I think we should readjust the deadline.”
Rephrasing it to be more commanding, “We should readjust the deadline,” might seem like an incredibly minor detail, but the level at which many of us evaluate our speech and ourselves in order to succeed is crucial for something like communicating ideas and beliefs. Most women I know think twice before taking up more space than they “deserve” rather than take the space they know they need.
“I think…” Why do I care what you think? I don’t know you.
“We should…” Oh. Why do you think we should?
I have not always been that way. I fell into the same cynicism that anyone may fall into when overexposed to too many random opinions online. I have confided in few about my experience as a teenage girl in this community, but I faced a different kind of ridicule at the end of the day. It came from a place of jealousy and rigor among competitors. Other women I have spoken with in the community today had to navigate situations of flirting, men wanting to have sex with them and discussing it openly, men calling them their “girlfriend” or “that’s my wife I saw her first!” These aren’t issues unique to just the Smash community, but what young woman in a male dominated community wants to deal with that? Especially if you’re new to the game, the overbearing nerd sweats at every opportunity to explain basic stuff to you. Within a game like Melee, it makes sense, it’s complicated. The second you try to prove it and get maybe a joke in, you’re not initially met with approval. You’re met with rejection. It requires repeated, consistent effort to get a crumb of real social acceptance. It may exist online in bursts, but it feels nothing at all like true respect from your peers in person.
THE LOSE-LOSE SITUATIONS YOU WILL HAVE TO FACE
Directly to the point: You’ll be sexualized online by strangers. People twice your age. Oftentimes, you can’t say anything. There are two sides that represent an extremely disconnected and sad reality of the world. I was the first person to publicly denounce behavior from prominent commentators at the time who sexually harassed a woman on stream while she was playing friendlies. The video was called, “Why Don’t Women Play Smash?” I have privated it because if I was the woman in the video I’d like my face to be covered up. I still have the clip for anyone curious but it’s honestly so long ago resolved that I don’t feel the need to parade it around.
Side one represents the people who, if you speak out about being sexualized, harassed, assaulted, or even raped, your words will be ripped from you. You are now the she-devil witch many men create in their minds of women.
I can’t really speak on this side because what is there to criticize aside from telling them you need to open your mind in the conversation? It exists as a pain exercise, putting you through the pain they feel you deserve based on another projection they’ve made of you in their mind. This one just happens to be negative. It may feel horrible, scary, and it made me feel paranoid at times, but it comes from a place of unresolvable hatred. It’s something that guy has to realize for himself, and it’s not something you’d be able to change his mind on. It is best to take these sorts of comments and move on, or don’t even bother reading the negativity. The most disciplined athletes in the world don’t consume the negativity thrown their way, as it would get in the way of their ability to focus and compete. It’s not even worth the space in your brain. I go as far to tell friends to not even show me anything, because I simply don’t care to see it, and if someone is not confronting me directly, it may as well be as useful as chicken scratch. Taking a note from Magi directly, “So when I do VOD review I open the Twitch tab, let it load, aaaaand let’s close the chat. Always the first step!”
Side two, which most people in the community end up in solely because they are trying to have good intentions & make amends for the wrongs they see, unfortunately has problems. Moral grandstanders who will gladly also rip speaking out away from you to use it to further whatever agenda they’ve got in their mind. If the person is someone who was not fully socially accepted, the conversation transforms into, “Yes! We FINALLY have a real reason to hate this guy!”
To those I ask. Why do you care more about pure social exile for a guy you hate than trying to correct this issue that happened among our own community? I’ll gladly hate any rapist that gets exposed, but most victims need support emotionally. What kind of emotional support does something like a Twitter hate-mob provide to the victim aside from the occasional validated laugh?
Unfortunately, even after the #MeToo movement and sweeping accusations around 2020, many of which ended up with years of abuse finally ending for some victims, the extremity of these two sides has led to a deafening silence for men and for women. Of my own experience, I came forward about harassment I faced from a fellow competitor. Many in the community offered me support, which I was grateful for, but many also failed to take proper measures to prevent further harassment. It led to me leaving tournaments for about a year and focusing on finishing high school (I tend to really forget how young I was for all of it.) While I didn’t feel comfortable in my own local community, people from all over the U.S. were more than happy to see the injustice I was facing to morally grandstand and put other women in the community down for speaking about other issues or joking. How dare these other women not rise and become revolutionaries? It’s a bitter cycle that never seems to end itself.
This reaction from both sides, while one is very obviously worse than the other, is what has led me to remain completely publicly silent about a prominent competitor in the community who became so obsessed with me that he would send me hundreds of messages a day even if I didn’t respond. In my own naïveté, I was more open a few years ago, and the “bro” culture of Smash I always enjoyed being a part of. The person in question did not view me as a friend at all. We only ever really interacted in person three times, and because I hated being viewed as a victim so much after my first time coming forward, I just shut up and constantly gave benefit of the doubt. I hated how the situation was warped beyond my control, and how even when I tried to dispel rumors around it, I was talked over and ignored. Before Melee, I also suffered at the hands of a childhood friend that basically complained every day about how much he hated girls and women, and really placed down the blocks for me to truly believe I did not deserve love, could never be loved, and I’d always still be a woman, so what good are my accomplishments? Then, in the lowest point of my life, I was extremely isolated. I didn’t have much consistent contact with any of my friends or family because my mental health turned into a crisis, specifically a stress-induced psychotic episode that ultimately led to me wanting to find ways to commit suicide daily. This is the real time where the messages I was getting from this person felt more genuine. I was so down low that I took solace in him, and then quickly after the fact, four different people reached out to me asking what was going on with this guy.
In this moment, if some women in this community ignored the sense that there was something very wrong here and “let me be,” it’s likely I’d still be getting messages from him today, and I’d still be spinning my wheels on if I should try to defend myself.
I learned the hard way that anything and everything I confided in him was told to probably everyone else he spoke to, including people I had to work with, including people who could potentially blacklist me from events and opportunities, including people who I looked up to and even wanted to potentially get coached by, collaborate with, etc.
To learn from the mistakes of my youth, rather than make a big public spectacle unintentionally, I filed a police report first, then I reached out to relevant tournament organizers. The police report was not really to do anything specific except create a paper trail. At the time, I was incredibly oblivious. Then I learned this guy was practically telling people I was his girlfriend, despite the fact I have made it clear to everyone around me I only date women. I am fully a lesbian. My existence as a woman that does not center men in my life did not click with him. Constantly saying I “prefer” women, not that I literally was not interested in him. My own agency was not even respected because even if you’re a lesbian, lots of men believe, “you just haven’t had good dick yet.”
Even though this is just my own personal experience, the issue of never coming forward aches among almost every woman in this community. I am writing this to say it still happens, and to those who have felt it, you are not alone. I can’t add more to the conversation except you need to go through the proper channels first for yourself. It is not just video game tournaments at that point, and worrying about the other person suffering is normal. However, it is most important that you save your own life. Building a case against someone with verifiable evidence that can easily be retrieved by authorities and eventually lead to a protective order or more is the most important thing to do in this situation. Tournament organizers can have any bias or benefit of the doubt they want, but a court mandated order cannot be ignored. The system isn’t perfect and often fails, but it can be a safety in ways you could not even imagine.
In order to succeed as a woman in this community, a seed of doubt among everyone you’re around is REQUIRED. No, it’s not fun, and some may even feel offended by it, but my safety comes first. The reason I have been able to be totally safe in this situation is due to the fact I am only ever at tournaments with people I can trust with my life. I’ve never let myself be alone one on one with the vast majority of people in this community, solely because I don’t really know many of them well enough. Even people I see in passing, every major or regional I’ve attended over the years, I’d prefer to keep my interactions public, around others, and if anyone ever is in my hotel room, it’s a group, people I know, and I’m not about to text it to them. It’s an in person conversation or walk there. You really have no idea who someone can be most of the time. Yes, I have to admit I have trust issues, but it has protected me in these situations, and more often than not, you can tell via the “weird” social interactions that may leave the warmth of anxiety in your chest that you may not be able to trust someone. MORE PEOPLE NEED TO CONSIDER THIS, NOT JUST WOMEN as the culture among Smash is to immediately accept anyone who’s described as “totally the homie” by anyone you might know personally. Even if someone has been in the community for a long time does not immediately exclude them from this, and I hate that I need to say that.
I am there to compete or work. I don’t care for sex or romance within that space. It just gets in the way of everything else I view as more important to me in life. But you can’t avoid insane men, because to some of them, you’re not a competitor, a worker, caster, figurehead, you’re a cute girl and they’re attracted to you physically. It may not be the only thing they see, but more often than not, they think about it. I only say this with confidence because for the men who don’t see you as a potential partner, some get a little too comfortable objectifying other women to you and thinking they’ll get approval or that you can relate if you also seek out women as partners.
Act quickly, always save evidence, and create a paper trail. The fewer channels you use to discuss it the better, because there are some people that will take any opportunity to manipulate others and get ahead of what they know you will eventually speak up about, even if it’s only behind closed doors. If absolutely necessary, know that you can defend yourself physically with proper techniques and training. When your life is in danger, you must fight back. Even if I truly dislike another woman in this community, I will always warn her of someone that verifiably could put her in danger, because others have given me the same respect throughout my life.
ATTENTION
To try and summarize a general experience, you’re going to get a lot of unwanted attention all the time. Positive, negative, and everything in between. People are going to dig to find ways to combat you from all angles. If you dare speak up about the wrong person at the wrong time, you’re going to face harsh ridicule even if there’s no action to follow it up. If there is only one thing you need to know about the community as well is that it will never, ever let go of any grievance it has with you. Grudges exist almost permanently despite the fact there’s over 20 years of existing between the game’s release and your time in it. If you’re a woman, you can bet on that, especially if you ever go through a breakup within the community. It’s a weakness of such a small scene, despite the praises I sung earlier. Gossip travels quickly and sides are taken even if people claim they won’t do that. The more you expect this, the more you witness it online or in person, the best equipped you will be to ride out these waves of life. However, this doesn't apply to everyone. Certain communities and regions that may follow this sort of idea tend to have a few people controlling the general direction of the narrative, and it’s going to vary by each group. Even then, you are not alone.
Many may believe that, when you have a partner within the Melee community that is skilled, you should also be skilled, and if you’re not, it’s a waste. If they have a lot of attention, you’ll get lumped in to being “the girlfriend.” This is a normal dynamic that applies to any relationship in the community, and most people don’t think too much about it. It’s a bit of an odd thing, but it’s one of the many ways effort is dispelled and you’re judged for participating at all. That barrier is something many women in the community feel before they even really start competing. The only reason I jumped right into it is because I was a lot more focused on the game itself, and socially, I was so shy and intimidated that most of what I could relate to others with has been the game alone. My suggestion to those that may deal with this is to use your partner’s skill not as a crutch, but as help to navigate the beginner levels of competition. Finding someone of your skill level that you can struggle with mutually is easier to do when you have someone supporting you through it, especially if they’re capable of judging what you can improve on, and assessing the types of play others have to see who would be a good fit to practice against. More now I see this positive direction, and women are less deemed as, “Only good because your boyfriend is good,” and more as, “They both work together because they’re both passionate to succeed.”
In Smash Sisters crew battles in the 2010’s, the conversation would lean toward, “That’s So-and-so’s girlfriend,” as if her skill was a representation of so-and-so, not her own dedication to the game. The tools are there, but everyone has to put in the actual time, and that is worthy of respect from any competitor who shows up.
People you shared friends with, will hear things, they’ll notice, but not everyone will stick up or maintain consistency. I’ve had people who would support me on Twitch lie about being my friend to others and then spreading further false rumors for attention, then turn around and pretend like I am evil, and they hate me. I have to take it in stride, because if I don’t, every time I lash out people log it in their mind. In the permanent memory bank it goes, waiting for you to stray slightly too far so they can justify their hatred of you, even if you honestly have no idea who they are in the real world. It sucks. That’s really it.
FINAL WORDS
As much as I want to encourage more women to join this community, it feels wrong of me to do so without painting the picture true to my own life. I joined at a time where the majority of the players weren’t fully absorbed by the game and its culture, it was more of an escape. It was also when, well, women were finally starting to get their own platform and space. For the first time. Ever. In the past, some women’s restrooms would be used by men because at tournaments they felt entitled to it. We’ve come a long way since then, but the silent pains we all experience are not discussed honestly enough, and fade in the realm of Twitter, where nobody really cares about what they’re mad about, and nobody really wants to take the time to show some vulnerability or confront uncomfortable truths. It has shaped my worldview and I often find everywhere places in which the burden of unserious and self absorbed men are put onto women. You can see it today, the “male loneliness epidemic.” I’ve seen that repeated more than I ever see people talking about the fact I don’t have rights over my own body to get an abortion, even in a medical emergency, even if you’re far too young. You see it growing up when men claim pregnancy doesn’t hurt as bad as getting kicked in the crotch. You feel it when you’re out with men and they feel entitled to your time enough to catcall you.
I have spent plenty of time on the ground around my peers navigating growing up, the painful realities of politics, and the growing pains within the community itself. Each time I am reminded that this community is the product of a greater world, where its issues are much harder to address, and often not much I can do to change it overall. I listen to and sit beside people who are different than me from all over the world. Whenever I am treated as a figure, I know I didn’t choose that path consciously. Whenever people are surprised that I’m willing to talk about or discuss issues with them, I have to remind them and myself that a “following” doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. I got opportunity, took it, but I’ve never let it cloud me to the point where I think I’m better than people who don’t do it the way I do.
We see palpable right-wing reactionary movements popping up today among the Melee community. Things such as the ManaMonthly, ran by a self-proclaimed Nazi, that houses members of the community who were mostly banned for sexual misconduct and/or abuse, get a lot of attention from actual politicians that have fed off of hateful rhetoric in the real world. They don’t care to look into the source of why the reactionary movement exists, they just jump right on. It’s intentional, because to them, anyone different deserves persecution. They need to be silenced for X, Y, Z. They represent the weird, unsavory outcast nerds. In their minds, they’re abandoned, but the refusal to grow or change perspective is what has left others that may have wanted to help shaking their heads and walking away. Why stand next to someone whose perspective is alien to me despite wanting the same proper attention from society? The cycle continues, because the grassroots platform was too strong and too loud, despite something like Smash Sisters representing a grand total of probably less than 1,000 unique entrants over the years. That’s what happens, because the fight doesn’t end just because one movement succeeded. It continues, because a new generation falls for a new shape of the same hate, taking grains of truth and hiding it beneath layers upon layers of misguidance or blame they’re told to care about right now.
Smash Sisters exists to try and invite more women into the community comfortably, in the same ways there are Women in Engineering fairs, the same ways any kind of blue-collared work has events to bring women together. If people find this radical, or if people feel the need to keep laser focus on it in their minds, call the competitors disgusting, its a sign of a deeper problem. In reality, in these spaces you find other women who get what it’s like, who might be more experienced and willing to share things with you without having to navigate the brutal reality of dealing with thousands of different archetypes of men. They don’t take the reigns from you or attempt to do it themselves out of “courtesy” or “chivalry,” they lift you up and share what they have learned and discovered. ManaMonthly’s group exists to air grievances about consequences they’ve faced for repeated misconduct, organize trolling for fun, and create a blame cycle without ever trying to improve oneself or help one another overcome their own flaws. “Laugh at thee, don’t look at me.”
Social climber? Yes I am. Attention seeker? Oftentimes. e-Girl? Maybe to the people who only see my Twitter page. If the shoe fits, sometimes you have to strap that boot on and roll with the punches. When I was faced with some of the worst harassment and ridicule of my life, I came back stronger, and found who else I could support through similar times, because I’m not alone, and I’m not the first or last woman to be name called or overly judged. I have the experience, and I used it to be stronger, and I know I’ll always have to prove myself against new waves of doubt. It’s difficult to always point out problems you notice because in today’s culture, where all right-wing ideals and memes dominate our perceptions in media, you risk becoming the stick-in-the-mud everyone rolls their eyes at and moves on from. Providing a serious lens or truly believing an idea that may not be fully accepted is much more taboo, because we want to be generally free, but don’t want to get too serious about it.
For any tear shed can be turned into a laugh with women who might not have realized how often it happens, and how funny it is that we can get through it together. Even with how outnumbered we still are, somehow we continue to try and rise above it, walking away with strength we didn’t know we have.