'That's so Gay!' Sexuality and Gender Based Humor in Online Gaming Communities

With an increasingly online world people are easily brought together by their interests. Whether it be cooking, social justice, or gaming, people from around the world interact and share experiences in ways that were previously unimaginable. However, not all these spaces come equal – gaming is notorious for its problematic exclusion of women, queer people, and other minorities. This exclusion is highlighted by the humor contained within hardcore gaming communities and the reasons behind this ‘problematic’ behavior.

Despite the fact that 42% of Americans spend at least three hours per week playing games there is a certain sub-section of gamers that consider themselves to be‘hardcore.’ While the hardcore tag is often self defined, there is a certain standard that hardcore gamers try hold each other to. These standards range between what kind of games a person plays to how skilled they are. Unfortunately another part of being a ‘hardcore gamer’ is accepting the type of humor that is encountered within the community. An example of this behavior occured on an online reality show called Cross Assault, which followed two teams in the professional fighting game scene. During a practice session competitor Miranda Pakozdi, the only woman on her team, was verbally harassed by her coach while she played. In jest the coach made comments suggesting that other members of the team should “play for her thighs” and that “loser[s] take their shirt off.” When the coach was called out on his behavior he defended it by saying that “sexual harassment is part of a culture. And if you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community.” The idea that the community’s identity relies on jokes that harm marginalized groups is partially correct as it ties in with one of gaming’s biggest problem - trolling. Defined as “the posting of inflammatory, extraneous, or off topic-messages in an online community…which [has] the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response…” trolling is a blanket term for one of the most common types of humor used in gaming communities.

While there are many examples of why gaming communities are hostile towards women, there are very few examples of why they are hostile towards LGBTQ+ people. However, the hostility towards both groups come down to a common factor - the necessity of a performance of masculinity within the gaming space. This is where trolling comes in as a hostile type of humor. Trolling sorts people into two camps, those that show a “cool-headed rationality” when confronted with the inflammatory behavior and those that “take the bait [and] are imagined as overly emotional.” Or, more bluntly, trolling sorts people by their ability to maintain a masculine “cool headed” facade under pressure. This poses that trolling is a way to police masculine expression and silence those that do not fit within the aggressive masculine culture of gaming. This embodiment of toxic masculinity within gaming communities is the main cause of why the community tends to be exclusionary of queer people, especially to those that do not fit within the gender binary.

So why is this issue so prominent in the gaming community? The way women and queer people are treated in online gaming comes down ultimately to the community’s roots as a space for “geeks and nerds.” This group has a history of marginalization due to a combination of “social awkwardness, socially inappropriate interests, and physical weakness” which are all traits associated more with femininity than with masculinity. Male gamers make a patriarchal bargain, “[an acceptance of] some of the costs of patriarchy in exchange for receiving some of its rewards,” where, in exchange for pushing women away through sexual harassment, they are able to retain their identity as a man. As a result gaming has been associated as a hypermasculine space which embraces the more aggressive rules of masculinity.

As a result of the gaming community being a hypermasculine place qualities associated with femininity and homosexuality are marked as undesirable. Women in gaming are often silenced and mocked on these grounds because showing emotion is feminine whereas with queer people showing any deviation from the heterosexual norm gets them mocked for not being hypermasculine. After all, “heterosexual desire is commonly listed as one of the most important ingredients of hegemonic masculinity. This leads to a culture within gaming spaces where the sexualization of women is exclusively focused on and anyone who does not participate in the sexualization is labeled as ‘gay’ or a ‘fag.’ Those within gaming communities enforce this behavior by disciplining each other through joking relationships where anyone can become ‘gay' in a given social interaction. Anyone who stands up to this kind of behavior will immediately get marked as over-emotional, leaving few options for people to handle the problematic behavior. Beyond that gamers have been shutting down these protests by claiming that their free speech is being infringed. This rhetoric of offensive things being protected under free speech is relevant today and is something that has extended past gaming culture.

However, there is hope for the gaming community when it comes to the hypermasculine trolling rampant within it. There are companies, communities, and individuals that are trying to help reshape the gaming community to be more inclusive and are breaking down the walls that often keep queer people out of certain games. Blizzard, the developer of the previously mentioned Overwatch, has created the Overwatch League. This league is made to mimic the structure of the NFL and apply it to e-sports where there are teams associated with certain cities and play against each other to be the crowned as the best. With it Blizzard has put their foot down against toxic behavior and regularly enforces the rules of conduct for players. Unfortunately that means that the conduct of the players has been in the press constantly as Blizzard is giving fines and suspensions regularly. However, on the positive side, this means that Blizzard is trying to change gaming culture from the top down by enforcing conduct for their professional players. Having accountability for the top players sets a precedent that toxic behavior in gaming is not accepted and hopefully that precedent will trickle down through all of gaming culture.

As a gamer myself I have experienced plenty of sexism and homophobia while playing games that I love. I was lucky that I found a community that has accountability for toxic behavior where I am protected against discrimination and, in the case that I do experience it, actions are taken against the perpetrators. It’s rare to find a community that cultivates this culture as it ultimately excludes a lot of good players that want to participate in a standard hypermasculine culture. That being said the standard trolling humor still occurs though it’s severity is decreased. In one case there was someone who started to use ‘gay’ as a way to demean other people or as a way to describe something that was negative. Knowing the way trolling works I knew that if I were to get emotional about the comments it would not bring them to a stop and most likely empower the troll. Instead I started using ‘gay’ myself. When they would try to use the word to describe something negatively I would come back enthusiastically saying “Hell yeah that’s gay!” As a result I did out myself, but it was a liberating experience that caused the comments to come to a grinding halt. I played the metagame of trolling and won. That being said not everyone is in a position where they are comfortable or safe enough to do what I did. In those cases I find that there is still a gaming space for everyone and the key to finding them is to find good friends who share a sense of non-trolling humor. However as more communities and companies adopt policies that have no tolerance for bigotry the walls that keep queer people out of gaming will disappear and lead to a future where gaming is more diverse, inclusive, and fun.

---

Campbell, C. (2015, April 14). Here's how many people are playing games in America. Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/14/8415611/gaming-stats-2015

Condis, M. (2018). Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture. University Of Iowa Press.

Fox, J., & Yen Tang, W. (2016). Women’s experiences with general and sexual harassment in online video games: Rumination, organizational responsiveness, withdrawal, and coping strategies. New Media & Society, 19(8), 1290-1307. doi:10.1177/1461444816635778

Hill, N. (2017, December 5). The Overwatch Videogame League Aims to Become The New NFL [Newsgroup post]. Retrieved from Wired website: https://www.wired.com/story/overwatch-videogame-league-aims-to-become-new-nfl/

Wade, L., & Ferree, M. M. (2015). Gender: Ideas - Interactions - Institutions. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.