What is more fun than exhibiting l33t gaming skills online? Being able to talk trash while you do it. Today's gaming environment takes something that's already fun and competitive to the next level with the addition of verbal communication, but what does that mean for girl gamers out there? A whole lot.

With the addition of voice chat in games, I'm no longer able to hide my gender and blend into the crowd of testosterone. That creates some unusual situations in my gaming world. I find that 80% of the time, the game becomes a dating service where so many overflowing geek hormones can roam free, hitting on any female that dares enter. Or, there's the opposite scenario where one player is clearly offended by the gall of a woman to play an online game. This forces him to be an ass the entire time, or simply leave. Either way, they play differently against me than if they thought I was just one of the boys. That's the disappointing part for me...I just want to kill you like everyone else, don't give me any special treatment.

And then there's the few and far between women online that I encounter...can we say territorial? As though there aren't enough guys in the pool to offer attention to two girls rather than one. They're all yours, ladies! I doubt that Mr. Right or Mr. Sensitive will be pounding you with his Mech anytime soon. With verbal communication, all of these situations are immediately brought to the open and the game just doesn?t seem to be about the game anymore.

Voice free, I'm able to easily blend in with the all the guys. "Eclipse" isn?t intuitively male or female and given the current gender mix in online games, it's assumed 99% of the time that I'm a he?not a she. This leaves me free to play as I would normally and I receive none of the undue "a/s/l" attention. Not to mention, being beaten by a girl really seems to bruise the fragile egos of many, so when they believe that I'm just one of the guys I get a "gg" at the end, rather than a "fucking bitch".

The beauty of text chat is that anybody can be anybody. I can talk trash with the best of them and come across as one of the guys. If needed, I can reveal my gender, though I can only think of one instance where it was, in my opinion, absolutely necessary. On this occasion I was playing MOHAA against a guy who clearly thought he was the shiznit. After spanking him soundly, I felt it necessary to inform him that his ass had been kicked by a girl. I simply thought it would benefit his personal growth and overall life experience to be taken down a notch. But these instances are rare and something I like to deal with on my own terms and definitely something I do not exploit often.

There are some solutions out there that offer a bit of hope, but they?re still in infancy. The voice masking available on the X-Box could be great, if the voices were realistic. Currently it's only used by young kids, who obviously get no respect, or by women who want to hide their gender. Either way, it's not a seamless or unobtrusive solution. Everyone knows that if you are masked you're hiding something or you're just plain being annoying, so what's the point?

Don't get me wrong there are some guys online that don't care one way or another about the gender of their teammates or opponents and they're the ones I love to play with. They know who they are. But, in general, I like to leave the option of revealing my gender up to me. Can I avoid voice chat in games forever? Probably not. But until there?s a real solution in voice masking, I'm sure as hell going to try.