I don't believe most people are saying these things under the guise of malice. My first thought when I see these statistics is, where are they? I mean, yes, I believe these stats to a point... But, unless I'm at an anime convention, I never see women openly playing games, talking about games, reading about games, etc. On the flip side... Men generally don't have issues talking openly about the latest game, wearing gaming shirts, reading magazines, or pulling out a 3DS on the bus. So, I can understand when people are seemingly bewildered by data like this.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely want to see more females entrenched in gaming. But, it almost seems like they don't want to be found. Yet, they do exist. This is why males still think of them as magical unicorns.
It's actually very easy to find us online in the games we play, at least in my experience. The problem being, naturally, that a lot of these games are games that aren't particularly popular on console-centric sites like Neogaf - MMORPGs in particular being chief among them (and where I've spent most of my gaming time in recent years). Well, that, and text chat is not forthcoming about who's behind the keyboard.
Jump into the discord of any decently large guild in a popular MMORPG (especially FFXIV) and you'll find a LOT of feminine voices all over. In fact, my experience has been that it is
quite rare to run into an MMORPG guild that's a pure sausage fest. Might also just be the games I play, which would make sense, since my tastes will naturally run in that direction.
But in public there is simply no reason to advertise our interests, especially if we do play stuff like MMORPGs and the like (which the generic male gamer in public has a remarkably low chance of also being into - much more likely to run into guys who play sports games, action games, first person shooters, MOBAs, and so on and so forth). It's just unnecessary. Not like we have any shortage of male attention even without that knowledge being advertised everywhere. If I want to try to keep my head down and avoid being harassed in public then advertising how much of a (closet) geek I am is very much the opposite of what I want to do.
It's funny, too, how much flak I tend to get just for making my preferences known even on a board like this - there are
tons of guys who like to downplay the opinions of folks who are unlike themselves making any attempt at making my voice heard extremely arduous. And you guys wonder why we're not all loud and proud like you folks tend to be. I mean, shit, just look at the typical reaction to the notion of a gender option in a Zelda game - I just want one lousy male-female gender option (an option, mind you, that would hardly change
anything at all) and folks just come out of the bloody woodworks to cry out at how much it matters that Link
has to be male and shit like that. That is not how you encourage me to publically acknowledge my interests!
So, basically, just pay attention. Pay attention to the general climate around gaming. Pay attention to how much shit women get just for making it known that we exist and happen to play some of the games that you guys do (and a lot of the ones you don't). Shit, pay attention to how much crap we get just for admitting that we're female in the first place! This really shouldn't be news to you guys. Honestly.