Gamer Community's Ownership of a Medium Causes Sexism in Video Game Culture

This post was originally published on capableape.blogspot.com 

The most recent batch of sexism toward women in video game culture has become popular enough to be discussed by Forbes and The New Yorker, as well as five articles on Time in two days. But why do some gamers hate women enough to send violent and detailed rape and death threats, harass their families, and drive the women from their homes? I asked Doctor Rosa Mikeal Martey, an associate professor at Colorado State University in the Department of Journalism and Media Communication who researches identity and gender in online social interactions.

Martey explains that "gamer" is a label reclaimed by a community that was once stereotyped as having a low social status and no relationships with women. Like all communities, they also defend their boundaries, so if a woman threatens the gamer community by trying to enter or change it, the community retaliates. In the case of gamers, the threat is handled like a boss fight in a raid, where people team up and strategize how to take her down. 

"The fact that there's a human being who might actually have personal consequences as a result just wasn't part of the thinking in any way, because she became the object, literally the object of their attack," Martey describes. "It was a name and a set of linkages that they were trying to sever in their mind, not a person." 

Martey suggests that the open dialogue between developers and players has created a more solid sense of ownership over the medium than fans of other media have, likely because developers listen to player feedback and make adjustments, especially for online games. In the case of BioWare, enough people voiced their dislike for the ending of Mass Effect 3 that the developer released downloadable content with a new ending. PlayStation users KillaBlaze and Mayhem_24_ agreed that changes could happen in a game if the community of players is persistent and vocal about its ideas, suggestions, or complaints. 

But as more people play games, the label of gamer means nothing more than one who plays video games. Now the industry has to cope with and respond to criticism from varying perspectives, as any new form of media has while it adjusted to becoming mainstream. Early adopters of the medium likely struggle to hold onto the old boundaries of their community once they find they are no longer the sole demographic of their medium. Perhaps this is why some gamers are reacting so violently to feminist cultural critique.