Just to clarify, I'm a guy. My little sister plays online with my brother and I all the time, she's 15. On a regular basis she has to hear obscene comments and inappropriate jokes made at her expense because of all the immature little shitheads who think they should say whatever they want. Girls are treated like they are worthless when they get online, like the butt of a joke. Obviously, there are good guys who would never be so inconsiderate, probably most guys are cool, but there are still too many that actively ruin the experience for girl gamers. They shame them for being girls and objectify them. That's why so many girls avoid joining parties or using lfg forums. (Edit 5: apparently I need to make something clear. I'm not talking about joking around or even making some friendly jabs. I'm not talking about trash talk. I'm talking about genuine HARASSMENT. There is nothing, NOTHING, okay about some adult guy telling my 15 year old sister she makes him want to masturbate. There is nothing okay with telling her that she is giving him a hard on. These are genuine experiences that she has encountered that I happened to be in the party for. I'm not saying it happens everyday, not even every week, but still way more often than it should.) So when I apologize on behalf of men, feel free to treat me like I'm being a white knight, trying to get attention for myself. Just be aware that it makes you a part of the problem because you trivialize the terrible treatment that the female part of our community has to endure just to take part. Sorry ladies. Edit: I've always been a believer that we've approached bullying in our society from the wrong direction. I believe that instead of punishing bullies we should focus on raising the self worth and esteem of our youth and the problem will take care of itself. But that doesn't alter the fact that as a community, as gamers, we have a very large sexism problem that a lot of people continue to deny exists. Should girls be able to handle it better, probably... But we can't expect the victims to do all the changing. If we want the gaming community to improve, we have to be willing to accept that as guys we need to make a change and influence each other to treat the ladies, our fellow gamers, better. Just like we cant deny racism exists, guys... We can't deny this is a problem. It's not the only one, but the one I'm addressing here. Edit 2: Tl;dr- they're hiding because they are sick of being treated like crap by immature guys. Edit 3: I'm not trying to make a point about racism or singling out white people, I'm just using that example as a comparison. There are hundreds of others I could come up with. Edit 4: It's really simple, we should treat the girls with respect. I don't understand how there's any opposition to this. This thread started out pretty positive and now the crappy side of the community is showing its colors. It's ugly. Edit 6: 2000 Replies wow. It's not all good but I've seen some awesome discussions taking place.