Female Gamers: Part One

I recently asked my twitter followers to describe girl/female gamers in one word.  
The majority of the responses that I received were positive:
"Badass"
"Unique, endangered species"
"Sexy!"
"Rare"
"Unconquerable"
"Dedicated"
"Gamettes"
Others certainly emphasized gaming as a gender neutral term:
 "Same as male ones i guess?"
 "Gamer"
Others I didn't quite know what to think of:
"If a girl gamer states her gender then you can't help but judge them for wanting attention."
So, what to think of these responses? Well clearly from this small sample of my Twitter followers (the majority being male) people think female gamers are pretty damn cool. Overall it would seem that female gamers generally have positive interactions with male gamers. 
In my experience 99.9% of the time I receive praise and support for being a gamer. But there has been a handful of times where I have been insulted, degraded, and put-down simply for being female. 
In part two of this blog post I will explore the typical negative perceptions of female gamers, why I believe this occurs, and how we can discourage this negativity.  
For now...
Game On!