[BLOG] Female Hearthstone player speaks about harassment

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PredictedCyborg
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[BLOG] Female Hearthstone player speaks about harassment

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In the world of Hearthstone there are a lot of well known players, and one of them who is known as one of the best Hearthstone Arena players in the world is Hafu Chan. However, Hafu is female and that means that she has to put up with some stuff that people would never dream of directing towards a male player.



Now such issues and experiences are being shown off in a ten-minute documentary about the subject entitled "The Trials of a Female Esports Champion" in which she is interviewed about the abuse she has faced both now as a Hearthstone player and streamer, but also before that when she was a WoW pro player as well. She was previously turned off from that game's competitive scene by such incidents as the time a team formed for a WoW Tournament Realm called "Gonna Candlelight dinner for two with doves Hafu At Regionals". Just, wow.



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In the documentary she talks about this and also why even though she loves Hearthstone, she's thinking about walking away from streaming it for similar reasons.



“When you have 70,000 people watching a stream, and all you see is terrible things being said about you, it's kind of like, why am I competing?” she says. “[Viewers] know to press where it hurts, right? And when you kind of show where it hurts, people will just keep pressing.”



Of course, there are some watching who claim that she has it wrong and that the abuse and harassment does not come from her being female - but simply because she is a streamer and therefore should expect such insults and attacks upon her person. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a male livestreamer being told that said commenter would love to "Candlelight dinner for two with doves them" or tell them that they're only using their bodies to get them attention for their videos (not specific examples from Hafu's video but commonly seen around many websites sadly). All streamers get trolls, but females are significantly more likely to get abuse related to reducing them to nothing more than their appearance or something to have sex with.



Either way, whether you disagree or agree with what Hafu is saying I'd recommend at least giving the video a watch. It's just ten minutes of your life after all.



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