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Peking House is my family-owned Chinese
restaurant in Willimantic, Connecticut,
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where I spent nearly 20 years growing up,
before we sold it.
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My brother and I spent most of our time
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in the room in the back
called "the office."
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"The office" was really
just a storage room,
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but it had our gaming systems,
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and the game that we played the most
was called Super Smash Brothers Melee.
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For those who don't know,
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Super Smash Brothers Melee
is an older fighting game
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made for the Nintendo GameCube.
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My brother and I spent hours
playing this game,
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so much that we even challenged
restaurant customers to matches.
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Eventually, my friends dragged me out
to a local tournament,
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where I ended up placing 13th out of 33.
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Not bad, but definitely far from the best.
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After training with higher level players,
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and taking notes
on matches I found online,
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I started to travel
to national tournaments,
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and before I knew it,
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I was being whisked around
the United States at the age of 17,
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all because of a video game.
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Totally living the dream life, right?
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This is how I ran head first
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into the competitive
Super Smash Brothers Melee community,
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a scene that I've been a part of
for nearly ten years.
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I'm sure that when
I say competitive gaming,
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you guys are imagining a room of people
hunched over their laptops.
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Sometimes it can look like that,
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but more often
it looks something like this.
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(Laughter)
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Because Smash Brothers Melee
is such an old game,
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it requires those big,
boxy TVs to be played on.
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Our players are so dedicated,
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that they will actually lug these things
onto their flights as carry-ons.
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(Laughter)
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The community is also absurdly diverse.
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This is a photo of Apex,
an annual tournament held in New Jersey.
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In 2013, over 1500 people showed up
from 16 different countries.
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I feel like if 16 countries
are flying out to New Jersey,
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that's saying something.
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Sorry, New Jersey.
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(Laughter)
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In the gaming community,
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I was known by my gamer tag "_milktea,"
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but in real life,
I was still very much just Lilian.
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When I was 17, I was shy and quiet,
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and I was often bullied by my classmates
for being different, for being Asian.
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Some of them made fun
of the clothes I wore.
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Others asked me out on dates as a joke.
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Another called me a Chinese prostitute.
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But when I was "_milktea,"
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I was part of a community
that welcomed and accepted me.
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Except what's missing from this picture?
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Do you see any women?
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When the gender imbalance is this large,
social dynamics can become a bit skewed.
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You get a lot more attention
than you normally would.
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[milktea is an angel]
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At the time, I didn't understand why
I was getting this attention.
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I just knew that it was so much better
than what I was dealing with at school.
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[I love Milktea.]
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Here's one of my favorites.
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[Milktea chan you are really attractive.]
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[If I had to rate you for beauty
I give you a 8 out of 10]
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[Only because I've been
crushing on another girl for a long time]
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(Laughter)
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But then, things took
a turn for the worse.
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[Why is everyone blaming milktea lol?]
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[She is a harlot.]
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[She doesn't like Smash,
she just wants attention.]
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And then you started
to see comments like this.
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[coz you're only known in the scene
for being the subject of nerdy fantasies]
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[suck a **** in crappy smasher's dreams]
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Over years,
I began internalizing all of this,
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and then I took these attitudes
and projected them onto other women.
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"Ew, why is she so girly?
Is she even a real gamer?"
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I felt my voice shrinking
and the resent growing inside of me,
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and eventually, I distanced myself
from the Smash community altogether.
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Fast forward a few years.
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I landed my first job in New York City.
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There, I realized that sexist behavior
didn't have to be the norm.
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But nevertheless, I stayed quiet
and withdrawn.
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Public speaking? Never going to happen.
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(Laughter)
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But then, this Facebook comment
appeared in my feed.
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[Stop chalking up the terror
of the internet to the Smash community.]
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[In general, we're very
accepting of females]
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I swear, at that very moment,
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my inner wallflower
spontaneously combusted.
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I started writing blog posts
that talked about my experiences
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and issues I had faced
within the community,
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and to my surprise,
they went viral within our scene.
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A well-known fighting game website
picked up one of my posts
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and later on, Polygon, a gaming site,
covered my future work.
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All of this led to the creation
of The New Meta,
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a panel that I cofounded and moderated
with the NYU Game Center.
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We roped in tons of women
from different gaming communities
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to talk about issues of sexism
within gaming.
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But the entire panel's point
was to raise awareness
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in a way that did not shame male gamers.
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As a woman, I was sexist,
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and even misogynistic,
against my own gender.
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Sometimes, when you've been immersed
in an environment for long enough,
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it can be hard to differentiate
between harmful behaviors and normal ones.
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While some gamers
are intentionally malicious,
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some may not even realize
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that they're perpetuating sexist
behaviors in the first place.
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Empathizing with these gamers
is more productive
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than outright dismissing them.
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Initiate a conversation.
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Deconstruct these behaviors,
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no matter how obvious
they might seem to you.
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And please, leave
the accusatory tone behind.
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If I had been dismissed
as a sexist neckbeard,
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I wouldn't be on this stage
talking to you right now.
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And to my surprise,
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I found that people were willing
to change, and they wanted to help.
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[As a guy, how to treat girls
in eSports equally?]
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[Trying my hardest,
but advice would help.]
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And whenever I had any doubts,
I started to receive feedback like this.
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[I got a few female Smashers
into the scene because of you.]
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This entire experience has shown me
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that my silence only further enabled
sexism within gaming.
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Nobody is perfect.
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Internalizing biases and becoming lost
in them is deceptively easy.
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By being vocal,
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you force yourself and those around you
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to reevaluate their actions
and their perceptions.
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Everyone in this room has a voice.
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You have to use it,
and you have to use it responsibly.
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Not only can you provoke change,
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but you can empower others to do so, too.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)