Hypermasculinity &amp; Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public

Salter, Anastasia; Blodgett, Bridget

doi:10.1080/08838151.2012.705199

Cited by 181 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

142

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, self-stereotyping has been shown to increase if there is a perceived threat to the in-group's status (Spears, Doosje, & Ellemers, 1997). This finding is consistent with the observations of Juul (2009), Huntemann (2012), Salter and Blodgett (2012), and Vanderhoef (2013), all of whom suggest that gamers feel their community is threatened by feminist critics and changes in the games market, such as the rise of so-called casual games. Status may also be involved in perpetuating the male gamer stereotype in a different way.…”

Section: The Mechanics Behind the Male Gamer Stereotypesupporting

confidence: 80%

“…#GamerGate originated as a campaign demanding ethics in video game journalism, but it became dominated by a vocal group of gamers who responded to feminist critiques with extreme online harassment including rape and death threats (Anita Sarkeesian has been one of the main targets in this regard Alexander, 2014;Chess & Shaw, 2015;Wingfield, 2014). At the heart of this conflict is the alleged divide between a White, young, male community of hard-core gamers and the criticism of the gamer community by perceived feminist interlopers (Huntemann, 2013;Salter & Blodgett, 2012). This notion of an almost exclusively male gaming community is articulated in several popular YouTube videos, such as those made by the users Summers (2014), Maddox (2013), The Amazing Atheist (2013), and thunderf00t (2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, none of the definitions mentioned includes video game skill as feature by which to identify hard-core gamers, even though assumed lower skill is an important part of the prejudice against casual gamers (Juul, 2009, pp. 39-45;Salter & Blodgett, 2012;Vanderhoef, 2013). This oversight might be due to difficulties in assessment.…”

Section: Are Gamers Predominantly Male?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The gamer stereotype description by Kowert et al (2012) is negative on both axes, describing gamers as lacking both competence and warmth. However, self-descriptions of gamers often highlight competence and skill, as well as competitiveness, as important characteristics of gamers (Royse et al, 2007;Salter & Blodgett, 2012;T. L. Taylor, 2012;Vanderhoef, 2013).…”

Section: The Mechanics Behind the Male Gamer Stereotypementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

Paaßen¹,

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Women and men play video games in approximately equal numbers. Despite this similarity, video gaming is still strongly associated with men. A common justification for this stereotype is that, although women might play games, they should not be considered "true" or "hard-core" gamers because they play more casually and less skillfully compared to their male counterparts. In this contribution, we review the existing literature on gender and gaming to investigate the male gamer stereotype in terms of its accuracy, persistence, effects, and future perspective. We conclude that the stereotype varies in accuracy depending on the definition of "gamer." We further argue that the persistence of this stereotype can be explained by the fact that almost all professional and highly visible figures in gaming culture are male. On the other hand, female players who achieve a moderate level of competence are rendered invisible or are actively marginalized. We argue that the effects of the male gamer stereotype can be harmful to women, precluding them from the positive outcomes of video game play such as enhanced access to fields of science, technology, and engineering.

show abstract

Section: The Mechanics Behind the Male Gamer Stereotypesupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are Gamers Predominantly Male?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Mechanics Behind the Male Gamer Stereotypementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

Paaßen¹,

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Approximately one-third of the WoW population is female 1 and most game servers are located outside of the United States, yet these populations are frequently erased or overlooked because many members of these groups of players do not want to admit to their identities for fear of identity-based repercussions. This silencing is part of a historic trend in gaming culture that occurs in many different forms; for example, Anastasia Salter and Bridget Blodgett's (2012) analysis of the silencing of female voices in gaming blogs and forums shows the vitriolic and multimodal quashing of protests from women about the casual use of the word "rape" in game culture.…”

Section: Ethnographic Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“At least I’m not Chinese, gay, or female”: Marginalized voices in World of Warcraft

Collister¹

2016

English in Computer-Mediated Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG), is a virtual world set in a fantasy-style environment where millions of players from around the world can interact with each other through avatars and in the game's multiple text chat channels. The game has existed since 2004 with multiple game expansions and additions to the story and world, which has created an ongoing gaming experience for the players. Because of its relatively long history and international player base, World of Warcraft provides an interesting site for analysis of player interaction and identity; by acting through an avatar and text chat, players can remain relatively anonymous, which can provide an element of identity leveling and play (Paasonen 2005).However, the setting of World of Warcraft is not immersive due to one particular aspect of player interaction, which is the widespread adoption of voice chat to facilitate communication. Because much of the control of the avatar is done with the keyboard in addition to using the same keyboard for typing in text chat, players have adopted voice chat using various voice-over-IP software programs to facilitate communication while playing the game. This use of communication technology intersects with a widespread stereotype of the identity of the average player of online games. The use of the voice adds additional information to the communication context and removes part of the anonymity of communication in the game, leading to identity-based repercussions for players who do not fit the stereotype of the average player. This chapter investigates how communicative mode -the use of text versus voice chat -interacts with certain stigmatized identities in World of Warcraft and how players develop strategies of communication to mitigate the negative repercussions of revealing their identities. Furthermore, this work explores the implications of silencing the marked voices and identities in the game.To illustrate how communication type and identity interact, I will first provide an example in the form of a narrative of an event from my ethnographic study of World of Warcraft. Following this narrative, I will explain the methodology used to collect such narratives and experiences from players of the game, and then provide some background information about the research on language use in virtual worlds that informed this study. The subsequent analysis section first presents background and observations about two groups of players who do not fit the stereotype of a WoW player: players who are not male and/or not heterosexual, and players who are not American or not American-sounding. To conclude the analysis section, the strategies employed by these two groups when communicating in World of Warcraft are presented. The chapter ends with discussions of implications of these strategies on perceptions of the voice and identity of the player base. Ethnographic introductionYou are an average player of the online game World of Warcraft, and you log in one night to ...

show abstract

Men's harassment behavior in online video games: Personality traits and game factors

Tang

Fox

2016

Aggressive Behavior

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Online video games afford co-play and social interaction, often anonymous, among players from around the world. As predicted by the social identity model of deindividuation effects, undesirable behavior is not uncommon in online gaming environments, and online harassment has become a pervasive issue in the gaming community. In this study, we sought to determine what personality traits and game-related variables predicted two types of online aggression in video games: general harassment (e.g., skill-based taunting, insulting others' intelligence) and sexual harassment (e.g., sexist comments, rape threats). Men who play online video games (N = 425) participated in an anonymous online survey. Social dominance orientation and hostile sexism predicted higher levels of both sexual harassment and general harassment in online games. Game involvement and hours of weekly gameplay were additional predictors of general harassment. We discuss implications of online social aggression and online sexual harassment for online gaming. We also apply our findings to the broader understanding of online harassment, cyberaggression, cyberbullying, and other forms of online hostility in computer-mediated communication contexts. Aggr. Behav. 42:513-521, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

show abstract

Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public

Cited by 181 publications

References 28 publications

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

“At least I’m not Chinese, gay, or female”: Marginalized voices in World of Warcraft

Men's harassment behavior in online video games: Personality traits and game factors

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About