E-sport, Norwegian E-Sports Association | Elin shares horror stories from the environment: – It’s a “whore” right away

Belgian Eefje Depoortere is probably not a very familiar name to most people in Norway, but to those who follow e-sports she is a well-known figure.

The 36-year-old, also known as “Sjokz”, has long been a presenter for the European league LEC, but in recent years she has also been visible in the context of Counter Strike. On X, she has over 800,000 followers.

And even though she’s like a veteran in the esports community, she still gets a ton of hate mail from men. She tells about this in a post on X, where she shows one of the many messages she has received.

– You are not working, you are there as “eye candy”, says one message.

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The Norwegian president shares horror stories

Depoortere herself writes that she has no intention of letting messages like this stop her, but after twelve years in the industry she worries about what it must be like for new women entering e-sports.

It may Elin Yoojung Moen tell more about. She is president of Norway’s e-sports association, and she doesn’t mince words when she describes the harassment women have to deal with in e-sports.

Yoojung Moen says that men and women experience approximately the same amount of harassment online, but that there is a big difference in the type of harassment men and women receive.

– With men, it’s more about them being bad players, while for women it’s straight away “whore”. It is about gender and is very direct and a number of grosser insults. It is often very descriptive of a sexual nature, she tells Nettavisen.

She goes on to say that a woman will be slapped in the face daily that she is a “whore” or that she has to get back to the kitchen.

– In the worst cases, it’s “I am gonna kill you and rape you”. Preferably in that order too. It is of a much coarser nature and it is an everyday thing, says Yoojung Moen.

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The thick skin

The e-sports president thinks it’s a shame that it’s the way it is, and she says that the rough harassment often ends with women dropping out of games where you have to talk together.

– Those of us who continue and have grown older have become a bit thick-skinned. But why ask a 15-year-old girl to be thick-skinned when someone says they are going to kill her and rape her? There should not have been a need to be thick-skinned at that level, she says.

Yoojung Moen says that there is a lot of focus on the harassment women experience in e-sports, but that it is difficult to do anything about it.

– Quite a lot has been taken up. So far we don’t have a good answer on how to solve it. What young people do on the internet is not so easy to control, she says.