Honestly? (opinion of a guy) The games I grew up with were Tetris on a Gameboy and Super Mario on the SNES. These were my first experiences with video-games and consoles. Back in the day, gaming wasn't exactly mainstream as it is today. And especially girls weren't really interested to play them, for the most part. I have no idea if it was the iPhone, Twitter, boredom, or whatever changed that, but girls/women playing video-games has started to become a thing. Back then, when I was young, every boy I knew stated that one of the coolest things a girl/GF can do, would be to play video-games (no we didn't count the Sims as being a video-game). Nowadays a lot of things have changed and there are quite a few gamer girls/women out there. The Hobby is still dominated by males, no questions asked, but overall there has been a slight shift. My GF nowadays doesn't mind playing a bit of Destiny, for example. She was a very big fan of The Last of Us as well. So what I do not understand, is why certain guys have the need to specifically insult girls, or harass them. It was the "dream of a whole generation" to have girls being more interested in video games (obviously this has economic reasons as well. Since the female population makes out roughly 50% of the planet's population, corporations are missing out on a lot of profits). And now, when it finally started to happen, some insecure 11 year olds, have to tarnish these efforts from girls, guys and the industry alike. They must be so insecure and sad to harass female gamers especially, that there very probably is no rational explanation to their behaviour. There is no excuse for it, and these guys don't deserve any sympathy. However, expecting special treatment simply because you are a girl, doesn't work either. As you said in your OP, girls are here now and they will be here to stay. Which is a good thing. The more the merrier!