Alanah Pearce is a game reviewer on a TV show called Button Bash, and co-host on a radio show called Zed Games in Brisbane, Australia. Alanah had been receiving overly sexual and threatening messages and comments from a variety of trolls on her Facebook page that turned out to be teenaged boys.

Pearce told the Guardian, “A while ago, I realised that a lot of the people who send disgusting or overly sexual comments to me over the internet aren’t adult males. It turns out that mostly they’re young boys and the problem is they don’t know any better, so responding to them rationally didn’t resolve the situation. And it got to the point where their comments were starting to make me feel really uncomfortable.”

Alanah decided to fight back. But rather than engage in an online war of words with her attackers, she contacted four of their mothers. Three of them didn’t respond, possibly due to the fact that on Facebook, messages from people not on your ‘friends list’ go directly into an “other” inbox that most people don’t even realize is there. But one mother did respond and this is the conversation that ensued:

Courtesy of Twitter

Text reads:

“Hi Anna, I don’t know you, but I was wondering if [blanked-out] is your son?”

“Yes he is. Why?”

“I have never met him before, but he sent me a concerning message to my public Facebook page today that I was wondering if you might be interested in discussing with him.”

*screengrab*

“Omg, little sh*t. I’M SO SORRY. YES I WILL TALK TO HIM!”

The image has since gone viral and, at last count, the conversation had been retweeted about 35k times. Alanah went on to say, “I wasn’t going to post it on Twitter [either] but I was just so excited. And I thought some of my friends would find it amusing.” For Alanah, this was an attempt to make the boys see that this sort of sexist behavior should not be tolerated, even on the internet and that they need to realize, “that they are real people and that there should be actual consequences for that.”

As long as there are women like Alanah in the gaming community who are willing to stand up to this sort of abuse, the community owes it to her to stand beside her. And for that matter, all women in the gaming community. Our opinions may differ on what games are good, what games are bad or what consoles are better but we all share a common love: gaming. And that should win out over everything.

Be sure to follow Alanah on Twitter and check out the blog she wrote for Kotaku, 30 Days of Sexism for a little more enlightenment on the subject of sexism in gaming.

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