FEMININITY
Passive, cooperative, and expressive are constructs traditionally associated with females, and by extension, femininity in western culture (Stets & Burke, 2006). Gender identity develops over time and relates to the extent to which a person perceives themselves as conforming to socially-constructed ideals and expectations of masculine or feminine in the world (Stets & Burke, 2006). Cultural expectations have changed such that people are more tolerant of males and females each performing roles and meanings associated with femininity and masculinity in different situations and different points in their lives. Thus, the socially-constructed ideals of femininity overlap with but are no longer synonymous with the female gender.
Video games intricately intersect with gender identity and act as a lightning rod for internal and social negotiations about appropriate portrayals and performance of femininity. Video games emerged as an obscure, novel form of play for adolescent males and have evolved to become a major form of entertainment. Today, almost all teens play games and nearly half of video game players are women (Electronic Software Association, 2012). However, as we know, many game genres remain male-oriented (Lenhart et al., 2008) and the industry male-dominated. In this essay, femininity is considered in regard to video games themselves, video game players, and video game creators. Surprising social media conflagrations occurring in 2012 that could transform the industry in the direction of greater diversity and inclusiveness are also discussed.
Femininity in Games (Game Characters)
Like other popular culture media, video game characters potentially shape players’ perceptions of social groups and gender roles through indirect messages. Specifically, players learn societal expectations of appearance, behavior, and role-related behaviors for men and women (Miller & Summers, 2007). The predominantly male sensibilities of conquest and battle continue to abound. Console and PC game worlds are still largely about epic struggles and portray women in stereotypes.
Male characters greatly outnumber female characters in video games, contributing to the characterization of gaming spaces as masculine. A large-scale multiplatform analysis of more than 8,000 characters across 150 video games found that only 15 percent of video game characters were female, and that number drops to 10 percent for female main characters (Williams, Martins, Consalvo, & Ivory, 2009). These results are consistent with earlier studies (Dietz, 1998; Downs & Smith, 2010).
Sexualized female game characters are common in many game genres. Downs and Smith (2010) analyzed 489 characters across 60 games and found that women in games were more likely to be portrayed as partially nude or dressed in a sexually revealing way, with unrealistic body proportions, wearing clothing inappropriate to the in-game activities they were performing. Forty-one percent of all female characters were shown wearing sexually revealing clothing compared to 11 percent of males. Further, 28 percent of all females, compared to 2 percent of all males, were depicted with inappropriate clothing for the task at hand. Female characters were ten times more likely to be shown nude (partial or full) than male characters (43 percent of females vs. 4 percent of males). One-fourth of the female characters was shown with an unrealistic body image.
Game designers at an Austrian game design company working on a male character in a World War II adventure game exemplified this trend. They aimed to represent “the average guy” based on photographs, anatomically correct in proportion, but for a female character they did not use photos as they do in designing male characters, because photos were not “sexy” enough. They used computer-generated images from the Internet and the female character was not anatomically correct (John, 2006). Often when a powerful female game character appears in a game, her appearance is hyper-sexualized. Such a character’s power is transgressive (a strong female in a male world), but hyper-sexualization reinforces their status as objects of male sexual desire (Kennedy, 2002).
It is important to note that not all game genres portray hyper-sexualized female characters. Wohn (2011) looked specifically at portrayals of females in casual games and found that females were overly represented as primary characters, but neither males nor females were depicted in a sexual manner. In other words, representation of females varies dramatically depending upon the video game genre.
Pop culture critic and videographer Anita Sarkeesian (2012) proposed and has been funded through Kickstarter to produce a series of feminist-critique videos about “tropes”—ways females are commonly portrayed in video games. She plans to create videos about 10 tropes: Damsel in Distress, The Fighting F#@k Toy, The Sexy Sidekick, The Sexy Villainess, Background Decoration, Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress, Women as Reward, Mrs. Male Character, Unattractive Equals Evil, and Man with Boobs.
The backstory of Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter project exemplifies the sexism, turmoil, and perhaps signs of social progress that characterize femininity and video games in 2012. In May, Sarkeesian initiated a Kickstarter project, requesting $6,968 to develop short online videos that explore five common and recurring stereotypes of female characters in video games. Her premise was “with a few notable exceptions, basically all female characters in video games fall into a small handful of clichés and stereotypes” (Sarkeesian, 2012). Within 24 hours the initial funding goals had been met, but the project, before production had even begun, was also subjected to coordinated online harassment ranging from hate speech on Sarkeesian’s YouTube video, vandalizing of the Wikipedia page about her, and threatening messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Kickstarter, which included “everything from the typical sandwich and kitchen ‘jokes’ to threats of violence, death, sexual assault and rape” (Sarkeesian, 2012). She was subjected to “image-based harassment” including “vulgar photo manipulation and pornographic or degrading drawings of rape and sexual assault” with her likeness (Feminist Frequency, 2012).
As news of the harassment spread, people began speaking out in support of Sarkeesian. By December, her Kickstarter project has raised $158,922—nearly $152,000 more than she had originally sought. She added one, then two, and finally a third set of “stretch goals” (to add more videos), all of which were funded. The developments drew attention to hostile, harassing behavior rampant in some parts of the gaming community and they stimulated conversations, spurring blog posts and videos about “why dudes need to tell other dudes to stop making asses of themselves on the Internet” (Smooth, 2012).
This bizarre, intense, hostile, misogynist series of attacks was a response to Sarkeesian’s intent to produce the proposed videos. One cannot see or read about this story and fail to assume that females engaging with video games in other ways—simply playing them, or even designing them, risk similar harassment.
Femininity in Gaming (Game Players)
Unlike broadcast mass media such as television, movies, and radio, video games raise the specter of harassment related to gender in part because games are not merely consumed, they are played. For example, like games, there are differences in the kinds of television programs males and females typically like to watch, but there are relatively few gender role expectations regarding how males and females are supposed to watch once they start viewing a program. However, childhood play serves as a mechanism for socialization and internalizing gender roles (Dietz, 1998; Kidder, 2002). Socialization through play extends to gender role expectations about playing video games, and about interacting with other players in video games. The myriad choices players continually must make in a game present opportunities to encounter and consider one’s own and others’ expectations about femininity. According to Chess (2009, p. 2), “cultural assumptions about feminine styles of play naturally become enfolded into expectations of how women are expected to play.” Gender maps onto game genres. The average social network game player is a 40-year-old female, whereas the average console game player is a 37-year-old male (Casual Connect, 2012). Eighty percent of MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) players are male (Williams, Consalvo, Caplan, & Yee, 2009). According to a Pew Foundation study of teens and gaming (Lenhart et al., 2008), teenage boys play for a longer time and they play more different genres of games than teen girls do. Boys play more action, strategy, sports, adventure, first-person shooter, fighting, role-play, survival horror, and multiplayer games. Girls play more puzzle games. Girls and boys are equally likely to play racing games, rhythm games, simulation games, and virtual worlds. Even among players of the same genre, there can be gender differences in players’ motivations for playing. Male MMOG players reported being primarily motivated by competition and achievement, while female MMOG players were more motivated by social reasons (Williams, Consalvo, Caplan, & Yee, 2009).
Females may be under-represented in certain game genres not because they don’t like those games, but because male players who dominate many physical and social access points actively discourage women from entering (Yee, 2008). For example, the physical space where people play MMOGs affects who can play and for how long. Games played on high-end PCs with Internet access bars access for many demographics (Lin, 2008). Public cyber cafes facilitate access for young males to play MMOGs but are unwelcoming or even dangerous to females (Lin, 2008).
As has previously been described, games regularly include hyper-sexualized female non-player characters. In addition, players are themselves are often represented as a character in the game. Players choose which gender to appear as, and customize their representation within the limits of available choices. Studies have shown that females prefer to play as female rather than male characters (Glaubke, Miller, Parker, & Espejo, 2001; Reinecke & Trepte, 2013). Both females and males avoided choosing avatars that “showed too much skin,” preferring a “fully dressed” avatar to a scantily clad one (Barlett & Harris, 2008). Female players, after playing a video game that emphasized the female body, felt significantly worse about their bodies after a game than before playing (Barlett & Harris, 2008).
In multiplayer games, players encounter and interact with other players. The gender of the character they have chosen to play factors into those interactions. Playing an online game while appearing to be female, either due to a feminine name, female avatar, or voice that sounds female, results in different reactions from other players than does playing an online game while appearing to be male. When anonymous players encountered a female conversation agent/avatar, they were more likely to chat about her sexuality, rape, or other aggressive/violent acts against her while advances on male agents were significantly less violent and sexual (De Angeli & Brahnam, 2006). One contributor to a collection of stories about harassment in games pointed out that harassment happens more when VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) is present, because it is harder for potential harassers to be sure they’re actually harassing a female when text chat is only way to communicate (Meaningful Adventure, 2012).
The harassment Sarkeesian experienced is all too familiar to many female online gamers. Four female online gamers, fed up with frequent suggestive, insulting, or otherwise offensive comments from other anonymous online gamers (“you play video games? So are you fat, ugly, or slutty?”), started the web site Fat, Ugly, or Slutty to collect these comments. According to the site, “some players like to send creepy, disturbing, insulting, degrading and/or just plain rude messages to other online players, usually women” (Fat, Ugly, or Slutty, 2012). The web site classifies offensive statements into categories including: Crudely Creative, Death Threats, Fat, Jealous, much?, Jeepers Creepers, Lewd Proposals, Pen15 club, Repeat Offender, Sandwich Making 101, Slutty, Stepford Mentality, Ugly, Unprovoked Rage, Wait, what?, and X-rated.
Female MMOG players often report their female personas are subjected to sexual harassment (Hussain & Griffiths, 2008). Rudman and Fairchild (2004) experimentally tested a model of how harassment can be a form of backlash against violations of cultural norms. Harassing deviants creates strong, social barriers, discouraging deviant behavior. Sadly, in the research, those who sabotaged deviants had higher self-esteem after doing so. In the case of video games, harassment plays a role in maintaining cultural gender stereotypes (such as the notion that first-person shooters are for males only).
Many female players respond to concern about in-game harassment by either trying to disguise their gender, quitting the game entirely, or only playing with known friends online. In online gaming contexts where harassment due to gender is common, such that females are a devalued, stigmatized group. Being female in an anonymous, MMOG is a “concealable stigma” in so much as female players can choose a male avatar and name and try to hide their biological gender. Smart and Wegner (1999) showed that trying to keep a secret (such as being female) may succeed at first, but quickly leads to intrusive, unwanted thoughts about the secret as well as anxiety, distraction, and preoccupation with trying not to think about it. Being female and pretending to be male is likely to impair gameplay performance and enjoyment.
It is not uncommon for males to choose a female avatar, appearing to belong to the devalued group. In fact, male players playing female avatars report being treated better by other male players when they appear to be female than when they play as male characters (Hussain & Griffiths, 2008; Yee, 2006, 2008). Bosson, Prewitt-Freilino, and Taylor (2005) conducted a series of experiments that helps explain why males pretending to be female are less disturbed by harassment. Males playing as a female in a game are pretending to belong to a devalued, stigmatized social group. Knowing they can undo their stigmatized status by a simple disclaimer (revealing their true biological gender) reduces preoccupation with keeping the secret and diminishes distress about being harassed, since they are being harassed based on a fictitious identity.
Femininity and the Game Industry (Game Creators)
Regardless of concerns about representations of female characters, player self-representation, and issues of gender-based harassment, experts in the underrepresentation of women in IT careers express dismay that video games targeting girl players tend to be less likely to include the kinds of features best associated with developing IT expertise (Hayes, 2008). Despite a social context of increased gender and gender role fluidity, video gaming is “culturally coded” male (Ito & Bittanti, 2008). This cultural coding is restrictive beyond immediate implications for recreation because gaming provides an accessible entry point, more so for males than for females, to geek identities and practices such as game modding and customizing that have a side effect of developing technological expertise (Ito & Bittanti, 2008).
Boys’ early and sustained experience with gaming gives them an advantage in building competence and confidence with computers (de Castell & Jenson, 2006). Research by Hayes (2008) confirms that video gaming gives youth practice with digital tools, increasing comfort and basic skills, preparing them for many occupations, and connecting them to larger communities. These benefits are more likely when players go beyond simply playing a video game, and instead also engage in game-related activities such as contributing to an online community blog about the game, producing machinima (video captures of gameplay designed to tell a story), and even developing mods of a game (such as adding new items or other content to a game) (Hayes, 2008).
Despite pervasive gaming by females and males of diverse ages, and a majority of female players in some genres, females are an extremely small minority of game industry professionals, regardless of game genre. Game Career Guide’s annual salary survey found females only comprise 3 percent of programmers, 11 percent of game designers, 13 percent of artist and animators, 13 percent of QA testers, and 16 percent of producers in the game industry (Game Career Guide, 2012). Pratt (2007) argued that women are discouraged from the game industry because of the negative portrayals of women and strong anti-female bias in popular games. Fullerton et al. (2008) suggest that creating more games that appeal to women would help to create a virtuous cycle to draw more women into game creation. They call for “a “regendered” or “degendered” poetics of games that is more egalitarian and acknowledges a wider range of spatial and cognitive preferences.
Unfortunate parallels exist between gender-based harassment in online games and the sexism and misogyny many females working in the male-dominated game industry experience, except that concealing one’s gender is not an option. Females in the game industry experience stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995; Osborne, 2006)—heightened awareness of their minority, outsider status and concern about confirming or being judged in relation to negative gender stereotypes.
On November 27, 2012, Kickstarter employee Luke Crane tweeted “why are there are so few lady game creators?” The hashtag #1Reasonwhy exploded on Twitter as female game designers offered reason after reason, such as Jane McGonigal: “because there’s not enough investment in AAA games about something other than war, cowboys, football, cars. Sorry, but it’s true” and Kim Swift: “because I get mistaken for the receptionist or day-hire marketing at trade shows.” Conversations erupted. A female game designer started the hashtag #1Reasonmentors to recruit mentors to begin to address the problems. Males and females spoke out against sexism in the game industry (Raja, 2012; Grayson, 2012; Shapiro, 2012). Gamasutra Editor in Chief Kris Graf (2012) listed “resounding calls for diversity and inclusiveness” as one of the top five trends that defined the game industry in 2012, arguing that the industry seemed to have reached a turning point on diversity and gender inclusiveness.
As author of this essay and a female who has been involved in speaking and writing about gender and games as well as studying and designing games for more than a decade, I too perceive 2012 as a transitional year, and anticipate that perspectives on femininity in video games written several years from now will describe very different trends and topics as this industry transforms.
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