Sweet Anita opens up about her experience with sexual harassment while pursuing game design degree

A recent legal action against Activision Blizzard alleging a "frat house" work culture has inspired females like Sweet Anita, who have made a place for themselves in the gaming and esports industry, to come out and talk about their own personal experience in dealing with sexual harassment.

Sweet Anita recently took to Twitter to talk about her experience back in the day when she was pursuing a degree in game design. She told her fans that she was the only girl among a group of 40 male students, and she was a constant victim of eve-teasing and harassment.

Her classmates would make lewd gestures behind her back and also make sexually explicit remarks to her face or even make bets about who would be the first one to sleep with Sweet Anita. Absolutely disgusted by this, the Twitch ambassador decided to drop pursuing game design and switch to animation.

When I was a student I tried to do a degree in games design, I was the only girl among 40 boys. They stared, they took bets behind my back on who would sleep with me first. They would pretend to hump me behind my back and two kindly offered to teach me what a "spitroasting" was.
— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) July 29, 2021

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Sweet Anita says she dodged a bullet by dropping her pursuit of game design

After joining a course on game animation, Sweet Anita was again in a class of 40 other males, but here she was treated with respect. She genuinely felt at that moment that she had dodged a bullet by withdrawing from her pursuit of game design. The recent news surrounding the culture that exists in game design has only made her feel more certain that she had made the right decision back then.

I left games design and went into animation, where I was one girl among 40 boys, but they all treated me with respect. I dodged a bullet. I knew at the time I never wanted to graduate and work with these men, I didn't want my life to look like this. https://t.co/BlLmmffste
— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) July 29, 2021

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According to Sweet Anita, her generation of game designers has cultivated an extremely toxic culture in the working environment, and she did not want to get stuck in a place where her life would have been "hell".

It hurts to look back at that decision and know that I was right. If I had stuck at games design my life would have been hell. When I tell people now they don't believe me, but this is what my generation of games designers grew up to be, https://t.co/t0A7jJxPTd
— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) July 29, 2021

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Unfortunately, Sweet Anita wasn't the only female in the gaming industry who had to go through sexism and harassment. Even popular streamer Hafu shared an account of the 2008 Blizzcon regionals where a team named itself "gonna r*pe hafu at regionals" and Blizzard turned a blind eye toward the toxic World of Warcraft team.

I'm not the only one with a story. It's not a problem with men, it's a problem with gaming. These are the people we create when we only buy consoles for boys, and then watch them grow up alone in their rooms with no contact with women. https://t.co/tpFZh1uv12
— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) July 29, 2021

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Sweet Anita feels that the problem resides in how people approach gaming as a male-centric activity. She believes they need to normalize themselves to females in gaming.