Internet - Women are reporting more frequent aggressive encounters with Alt-Right supporters on gaming platforms. The experiences are alienating, and the victims feel like they have no option but to hide their gender or stop playing altogether.

Women having to hide their identity or suffer through bullying in gaming isn't new, but it seems more than ever those bullies seem to be primarily Alt-Right movement supporters.

Subscribers to the Alt-Right movement generally oppose racial, religious, or gender equality, and have historically used gaming platforms to recruit young, impressionable white teens to their ranks, according to Vox.

There are two dominant attitudes about women that Alt-Right supporters share: first, they see women as less than men with no right to game, as it is a "man's sport." Second, they believe if a man demonstrates "chivalry" towards a woman during a game, he is then entitled to ask for sexual favors and she is obligated to accept. Failure to do so opens a woman up to further harassment from slurs to outright stalking.

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TAG24 spoke with gaming community commentator and pro-speedrunner Tim Englehardt about the worrying trend, and he provided some background on how the Alt-Right movement has been growing.

According to Englehardt, "Part of the reason why it's so easy for people from the gaming community to become Alt-Right is also that in countless games female characters were portrayed in an objectifying way. Women are there to be rescued and adore the male lead."

He says that while the portrayal of women is improving slightly, "the damage done in the past persists." He admitted that at one point he found himself also steered in that direction by persuasive arguments and phrasing when he was younger. "Luckily I got out before it got too bad."

He said the overarching attitude isn't limited to video games. "Queen's Gambit was such a hit because women were just kind of expected to be [untalented], and it's often enough seen as a crazy exception when they're not."

Engelhardt also manages a large community server on Discord, where he has to handle regular reports of harassment and mete out punishment for bullies. He says that non-binary and trans individuals are also regular targets for Alt-Right harassment just as much as women are.

Another gamer, Danielle, asked TAG24 not to reveal her last name, but freely shared some of her experiences with the Alt-Right.

Danielle says as a woman in gaming, she has been "conditioned" to expect harassment. "Unwanted attention or advances can be gradual and even manipulative, like people can seem friendly [...] until they begin to push once your guard is down," she says.

She describes Alt-Right gamers treating her as a trophy or as an investment sure to pay returns: "I’ve had guys pressure me when I was a teenager cause they’d help me improve my aiming or combat skills in general [and then] pull me aside and push for [romantic attention] because I spent time with them."

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The disappointment that comes with not being appreciated for her actual talent rankles, and not being viewed as an equal or as a friend is disappointing, she says.

"It’s always sad when that happens, like you think it’s just a casual gaming thing and then they push for nudes or sexual messages because you willingly were around them at all, as though it’s owed afterwards."

Her experiences highlight a fake code of chivalry used by the Alt-Right to make themselves seem more heroic, all while being very condescending towards their opponent. "Sometimes in games men don’t necessarily tank the team or try to target women in a 'make them lose' way," she explains.

Instead, "Opponents want to 'let me win' because I’m a woman," and perhaps even more degrading is when Alt-Right gamers purposefully single her out for being a woman with "a ton of attention or gifts or perks in games to kind of smother me," a phenomenon that gamers identifying as male do not have to deal with.

Refusing such patronizing acts, no matter how diplomatically, often results in insults, abuse, and more harassment.

Another gamer, Andy, told TAG24 she gave up gaming altogether after getting tired of the harassment. "Even without knowing what I looked like, those right-wing guys would throw games as if that would woo me?! I couldn't judge my own ability in anything and didn't have the chance to develop skills to get better."

Andy eventually gave up gaming altogether, "When I turned down their dirty questions and asked if we could just have fun playing the game, I got called a b**** and ungrateful wh***, and was accused of only playing video games so guys would pay attention to me."

"These are scary dudes who see women as objects, and I would honestly be scared if a man treated me like that in person. It's absolutely abusive. They would rot in jail if they carried out the acts they threaten women with all the time."

She says even with relative anonymity with games, she was afraid one of them might figure out her real identity. At one point when she was a teenager, a guy she played an online role-playing game (RPG) with got a mutual friend to reveal where she lived.

"He had shared a lot of fantasies about me, and in the back of my mind I was afraid he would find me to act them out. Thankfully, he never showed up, because I wasn't sure I could tell the cops, 'Hey, I think this guy thinks this game is real and might travel across the country to find out'. Maybe I should have."

For now, there's not a lot of recourse for reporting abuse, other than reporting it to server administrators who can mete out punishments like muting and banning. Gaming companies have a long way to go to help women feel safe on their platforms.