by Georgia Kral
Longtime gamer Michael Duff sits at his computer regularly to play "World of Warcraft," the most popular online role-playing game with 11.5 million monthly subscribers. In a Medieval-looking fantasy world of dwarves, gnomes, humans and other assorted characters, players select an online persona to engage in quests for the land with other players who are online at the same time.
In this world, Duff decided to make his character a woman. “I appreciate the idea of a strong, capable female character doing action hero stuff. It’s fun and ironic when the tiny female character is shown tossing around thugs twice her size. And yeah, it’s kind of sexy, too,” Duff said in an email.
How many online gamers pose as a character of the opposite sex isn’t known, but studies suggest that many virtual players freely blur gender lines. At issue is not only gender- identity experimentation, but the gendered exercise of power, engrained visual stereotypes and a male-female divide inside the gaming world.
There are few repercussions for taking on a new role in the gaming environment, said Fran Stewart, a feminist gamer and game-developer. “You’re allowed to experiment with what it’s like to be someone else,” says Stewart.
Raising Cyberspace Confidence
In the virtual communities of "Second Life," participants also create an avatar, that is, a personal character who they inhabit. Participants build their avatars from scratch, choosing sex, build, weight and look. Avatars attend conferences, participate in groups and engage in real-time conversations with other avatars. Since users are anonymous, people -- gender-switching or otherwise -- don’t have to explain who they are in "real" life. The power of users to exercise control over who they want to be is at their fingertips.
Sharon Collingwood, a professor of women’s studies at Ohio State University and a "Second Life" proponent, says that some people discover a "newfound confidence" when building avatars or choosing characters. "It helps you express who you’d like to be," she says. "You’re not restricted by your identity and you don’t have to follow the rules society has assigned you."
Scholars who have studied the online gender-switching phenomenon have uncovered several potential reasons why women pose as men and men as women. Dr. John Suler, a psychologist and professor at Rider University, wrote in The Psychology of Cyberspace , first published in 1996 and continuously updated, that humans, whether male or female, have an underlying desire to unleash opposite-sex attributes.
“Due to cultural stereotypes, it may be difficult for some men to explore within themselves what society labels as ‘feminine’ characteristics,” Suler writes. “These males may rely on the anonymity of cyberspace to express their ‘feminine’ side which they feel they must otherwise hide.”
Looking Hot Matters
For Stewart, a transgendered person, gender rules and expectations were worked through in role-playing games, and gaming even gave her the confidence to change reality. Born a male and now a female, Stewart saw in gaming a way to understand her gender identity more clearly. When she was still living as a man, she found that posing as a female character in online gaming had a therapeutic effect.
In massively multiplayer online games or MMOGs, such as “World of Warcraft,” players choose from an already existing set of characters. Users can further alter the appearance of their characters, depending on what the game allows. The player then manipulates the character.
Dr. Kathryn Wright, a psychologist in Raleigh, N.C. and a consultant for WomenGamers.com , conducted a survey in 2006 of 64 male game players. More than half said they played a female character. While many claimed that the female character gave them a game-playing advantage, Wright said in a news article that some men selected female characters for visual stimulation. "They’d rather look at a character that looks like Lara Croft than a character that looks like Rambo," she said.
Female gamer, blogger and journalist Leigh Alexander confirms this perspective. "Online games feature your character in an ‘over-the-shoulder’ perspective -- you look at the back," she says. "You want something attractive to look at; you can be your own eye candy." Alexander is quick to say that it works the same way for females posing as males; she likes to play a leading man. "I want it to look handsome," she says.
Alexander also says that women sometimes pose as men in games for security reasons. “Girls sometimes don’t feel safe. They will not use the voice chat or a female avatar just so they can play in peace,” she says.
In a 2008 study conducted at the Palo Alto Research Center, "Maps of Digital Desires: Exploring the Topography of Gender and Play in Online Games," author Nick Yee found that female players may choose to be male if they believe that identifying as female will result in their being "branded as incompetent."
“(T)hey must either accept the male-subject position silently, or risk constant discrimination and harassment if they reveal that they are female,” he wrote.
For some, playing a character of the opposite sex offers a sense of power. Dr. Suler interviewed a female gamer who posed as a male to "experience power that she had not been able to experience in real life." She told him, "Donning a male identity allowed me to freely express certain aggressive and powerful actions that I don’t seem able to project when perceived as a female."
Reconsidering the Female Gaze
That a female gamer is not permitted aggressive and powerful action touches a deeper issue in the gaming community, and perhaps reflects the society at large. Simply, games are not made for women, and women often have a hard time “fitting in” with the games they play.
This is so, despite the seemingly limitless possibilities on the internet. For example, an online game with a subversive twist, "Stonewall Brawl," draws upon the historic protests following the police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969. The characters are five queer and transgender bar patrons who can unleash rainbows to knock down the police.
But more typically, games embed the male-gaze and fantasy stereotypes, especially in women characters. A video analysis, "Girl Gamers: Video Games and the Female Audience" made by Alexander and game theorist Daniel Floyd, reviews picture after picture of scantily clad animated women from various games. The duo says that the incessant pandering to teenage boys needs to change in order to retain the valuable market of women who are flocking to the gaming world. "As an industry, we need to seriously reconsider our marketing. We need to examine our habit of manipulatively using women for appeal -- "booth babes" at our conventions, exploitive character design. We need to consider the effect this stuff has on our industry’s image," the video says.
Even men who cross the gender line online can find the experience unsettling. Duff notes that characters in "World of Warcraft" get better armor as they move into higher positions. But for a female character that means becoming sexier and more scantily clad. In a blog post, Duff said he ultimately felt shameful for how the game made women look. "I put on my new magic pants and looked like I was adventuring in a piece of sexy lingerie...My character was walking around with her hips exposed, attracting whistles and catcalls....It got so bad I actually sacrificed some attack power and put on a weaker pair of pants, just so I could cover myself up."
In an email, Duff summarized his feelings: “Gender is a vital part of our identities as real people, and it’s also part of our identities when we play fictional characters. People need the freedom,” he writes.
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"Alexander also says that women sometimes pose as men in games for security reasons."
I don't play multiplayer games anymore, but when I did, that was the reason that I would sometimes pose as a male. I just wanted to play the damn game, I didn't want to deal with the harassment that comes with presenting yourself as a woman.
The part about the female avatars usually being scantily clad does make me mad sometimes. Especially if I have a cool troll warrior or undead warlock, I like them to look scary, having them prance around in nothing ruins the mood, so to speak.
I know that used to drive a lot of us crazy, but it seemed like Blizzard changed that. The level 60 armor was pretty bad, but once expansions started coming out I don't recall ever seeing really absurd armor. So, at the least, they were listening.
Of course, that's assuming I'm right- I played Horde, and it was more common (if hardly universal) for clothes to look normal on those toons. But I only remember getting wonked out about ridiculous some of my characters looked at low levels.
The eye-candy comment is dead-on, at least from what I've heard from males playing as females. Others will pose as real females and flirt with other players for free stuff. Seriously.
Myself, I tend strongly towards playing female characters, but when dealing with others online, you're generally assumed to be male until you correct them, so I sometimes play male characters just to mess with people.
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. I remember in Age of Wonders II all the female characters (sorceresses) were trying to conquer the world in bikinis. Now I mostly play Total War games, which understandably don't really have female characters, but I'm annoyed at the pictures for Starcraft II and how they've sexed up Sarah Kerrigan (and to a lesser extent Jim Raynor).
I dunno, Raynor seems to have had much more of a change, where as Kerrigan seems to just be more detailed and have brighter colors. As for her being sexed up? I guess if spines and bones everywhere are your thing, but I don't really see it.
Maybe it was fan art and not official Blizzard produced images.
Heh I can see that, when you mentioned that I did a GIS and ran into a lot of sexed up fan art. Of course, that is the case with a lot of fan art.
My real concern of course is whether the Nomad will be an effective air superiority fighter, unlike any of the Terran non-capital ships in SC1 and BW. The transformer aspect worries me, not only because Michael Bay made Transformers so uncool, but because I'm worried that its dual-role will hamper its capabilities in air combat. Terrans already have effective ground combat options.
Excuse me, the Viking. The Nomad will be more like an SCV.
Great post. I don't play online games, but I think it can be a valuable, eye-opening experience for men who play female characters. Any insight can help the cause, I think, especially when men are educated on their own.
Can't add much about the article; it's quite good, though I'm curious if they believe or have evidence that a lot of people consciously choose to play opposite-sex characters as a way to experiment with being the "other".
Related anecdotes:
Uno- One of the top PvPers in the world transferred to my WoW server, and it took awhile before it came out that she was female in part because she had a male avatar. The backlash wasn't good, though it could have been worse, but she got some added respect for it too. Of course, she had already proven herself to be a fantastic player, but that was still positive. By and large, for all the idiotic comments you'd hear spoken generically, there was very little overt, direct sexism. I obviously can't speak to the private experiences of anyone else, but for a long time many people thought I was female, and I really didn't catch any shit from anybody. In fact, few people commented on it at all.
Dos- I had an undead female warrior. Because the avatars were probably a 50/50 split and the players more like 90/10 male/female, most people assumed it was a guy regardless of what the character's sex was. But in my case, just about everyone I didn't specifically tell I was a guy believed I was female because- I shit you not- I typed in full sentences. Everyone assumed only a girl would do that. There were other factors that acted to reinforce their beliefs, but that was why they held the belief in the first place.
I find it kind of ridiculous that to pick an opposite-gender character on a game is considered "crossing gender lines". I've been playing video games since I was a kid, and I always just picked the characters that looked bad ass - which, unfortunately, were usually men. This didn't make me want to be or identify as a man, though. He's just the character I chose.
I admit that a benefit of using a dude in online gaming is a whole lot of peace, but I don't believe there's anything crossing/blurring/gender-curious about it.
Not for you or not for anyone?
Not for me. I'm sure it's that way for some people. I don't play WoW, but I do chat and forum role playing using a male character.
In that hobby especially, the assumption that people pick opposite-gendered roles as a way of gender-bending can get problematic. You lose partners that way. I don't think it's right that you lose partners that way, mind you, and I almost always make that argument. But I just don't feel like it should be my job to say "How stupid and transphobic are you that you won't even RP with someone whose player and character genders don't match?" I shouldn't feel forced to fight battles that don't apply to me while I'm trying to engage in a simple hobby.
Unfortunately, gaming communities - even ones that are more like writing communities, and should encourage open-mindedness, creativity and so on - aren't as sympathetic and understanding as they should be. Ideally, I'd say that I don't want to play with someone who's transphobic, but I can't really afford to be that particular. It's already difficult finding people with the same goals in writing, who use the same kind of world setting, etc. etc.. If I start making real life morals a requirement, I'm just not going to find anyone to play with, ever.
Given the choice, I often pick a female avatar when playing games; I played WoW for a while as a (fully clothed) female human priest, and my FFXI character was a catgirl. I usually do it because they're pretty. In general, I simply ignore the gender of the avatar when interacting with another player. On the other hand, I do react to character names that feel feminine or masculine. I don't know what that says about me, though. Maybe I just read too much?
WoW is an interesting case because, as far as I'm aware, and in my experience, it has a lot more female players than is usually expected for video games. I've never had any problems as a female player, because everyone I interact with either A.) doesn't care and/or B.) is also female. In my experience people care about how you play. Also, for a lot people playing WoW, the toon is just a toon, eye candy at best (but less important eye candy than the hot raid gear they've worked their butts off for), so as a general trend it doesn't seem very good for a study of "gender-bending" in games.
I think a more interesting study could be made of non-video game role players. The segment on Second Life seems closest to this. But in live role playing games you not only direct your character's movement, you play that character. I know several people who often play off-gender in various games, but who identify as straight and cis. Since these games have no visual element, there's no real "eye candy" aspect, and since many RP games are about plot, character development, and interaction (not just killin' dudes), gender is a real and important character choice.
That's the kind of RPing that I do, though it's always in some forum or chat or something, freeform. . .as in, I've invented my own character and setting and am on the hunt for people to drag along.
The thing is that a lot of RPers will assume that you approach RPing in the same exact way that they do, which is to essentially take some identity-defining quality of themselves and build their character around it. So they think everyone is "expressing themselves" in a fairly literal way through role playing, which would mean that someone playing an opposite-gender character is "gender-confused" (something thrown in my direction almost any time I decide to show my face in a chat room).
It's ridiculous, really. Yes, I express myself through role play--inasmuch as I express the things that I'm interested in, which are parts of myself. I don't think it's really that strange for a woman to be interested in a man. It's "the norm", isn't it?
I think it's a misrepresentation to mention cross-gender gaming and center the article around any real sense of crossing gender lines. For most of the people I meet who play both genders (or even simply the opposite, and don't play their own gender at all), it's just a character they've made. . .yes, they can sympathize emotionally with that character, but it's not any different than what an author does when they write a book that's primarily concerned with a particular character's experiences. Authors do this all the time. It's called writing.
Now, if people are talking out of character and use opposite-gender pronouns when referring to themselves, and actually tell people they're another gender, sure, make that argument. But being open with your real life gender, or even avoiding the use of gendered pronouns altogether (I used to do that so people didn't read my RP in the context of "this is a woman pretending to be a man, har har!"), doesn't mean someone's actively trying to experience what it's like to be another gender. Often, they're just writing from a perspective other than their own.