That is true. People will fuck with anyone they can get to though. I don't think I have played more than a handful of competitive matches where someone on my own team wasnt talking shit to me or other teammates. And I play with a few female gamers. Many times I was singled out, not them. I'm not saying people don't single out female players. I'm saying that people single out people who are easy targets and in the gaming world women are easy targets for prepubescent boys which is the group that seems to make up the majority of the competitive gaming world.

I desperately want to see this study resume with different age ranges and a larger test group for each age range and see how that effects it.

Without this information we are just making generalizations without knowing exactly who we are generalizing and that doesn't help anyone. Someone else spoke of this on here as well but it can actually be a detriment the spreads misinformation.

Edit: additional content

As far as hitting on the first girl they hear. The internet is a place of anonymity where guys who would otherwise not have the confidence to approach a woman let alone hit on them don't have to worry about any real repercussions including hits to self-esteem. These are the same people who, because of their lack of experience with women are likely to be bigoted towards them, much of the time without realising it. There was an article about it a number of years ago but there is so much about sexism on the internet that I can't find it. Long story short it's about people's own insecurities not keeping girls out of video games.