A GAMER has spoken out about the “heartbreaking” sexist abuse she receives from men online.
Amber Wadham, 27, from Adelaide, Australia, has been gaming since she was a teenager and is now a full-time Twitch streamer turning over six figures.
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Playing under the gaming handle PaladinAmber, Wadham caught the gaming bug at a young age and said she and her brother would play games “religiously” as children.
Now a full-time Twitch streamer, she routinely rakes in six figure pay packets.
But her lucrative passion has also attracted an ugly side.
When asked about examples of traumatic abuse she has endured, Amber says there are “too many to list”.
She added: “When I first started playing as a teenager, we’d often play in teams of three or four and it was unheard of for one of those players to be female.
“I used to wonder why, until I would see female-identifying players booted from group games with abuse rallied at them from the other players.”
On one occasion the female group were “berated” by men and boys who told them to “get the f*** off”, because gaming was a “boys thing”.
Results from the 2023 Bastion Insights National Gamer Survey revealed 83 per cent of female identifying gamers have directly experienced and/or observed offensive behaviour or language while online gaming.
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While Amber has amassed an eye-popping 214,000 followers across Twitch, Instagram and TikTok, she discusses how distressing it is to receive the scale of abuse she has in recent years.
She continued: “It’s really heartbreaking to see a space that I just love playing in and brings me so much joy, also be able to bring me so much resentment and sadness.”
“I just remind myself that it’s not just me, and it happens in every industry. I think a lot of people who would agree with me when I say it’s not unique to any industry.
“You have to really be in your own corner and tell yourself not to let it live rent free in your head and to keep pushing on.”
