The problem with gaming is subtractive masculinity

by Doctor Science

I made my post about subtractive masculinity because I was thinking about fan and gamer culture -- and lo and behold, almost as soon as I posted "Gamergate" (which has been boiling along for months) leveled up to get covered by the mainstream press. To cut a very long story extremely short, there's been yet another case of self-labeled "gamers" showing that they disagree with a woman ... by inundating her and anyone associated with her with threats of rape, torture, and murder. [1]

Subtractive masculinity is why the prospect of women being associated with video games gets such an out-of-control, violent reaction. I think a lot of the males (boys or men) who play these games are getting their sense of masculinity from them, their reassurance that they are Real Men Who Do Manly Things. But because our culture's construction of masculinity is subtractive, when girls or women are publicly seen to do something, that thing becomes unmasculine.

In practice, what this means is a guy can get mocked for it by other guys, told that he is "girly" (and that's the least offensive term that might be used). The only way a guy can protect himself from that kind of teasing (which can escalate all the way from little comments to harassment to actual murder, depending) is to do something girls don't do. And that means either picking something with physical demands few women can meet, or something that girls don't happen to do -- and then keeping them from doing it by any means necessary.

And the reason it's worth that kind of effort is that, in our society, men are the default value of "people": only (white, straight) men automatically have the status of "full human being". In other words, if you're not masculine, you're not *really* a person. That's why guys who feel their masculinity threatened can go into a violent, toxic meltdown -- because loss of personhood feels like an actual, life-or-death existential threat.

So what I think is going on is:

1. Boys see that video games are associated with guys, and that the characters in many games are hyper-masculine: super strong and/or violent, with exaggerated muscles and powers.
2. Playing these games lets boys (and men) feel as though they, too, are hyper-masculine. This is especially important for guys who aren't stereotypically masculine in physique or actions in real life, guys who don't otherwise conform to a masculine ideal.
3. Gaming becomes not just part of their personal identity, but of their identity as *men* -- and that means it supports their identity as full human beings.
4. If women get associated with video games, the whole thing will come crashing down. If they can't rely on gaming to demonstrate that they are truly masculine, they don't have anything left -- they risk losing their status as human beings, defined as "people who don't deserve to be tormented". That's their world and experience, after all: only masculine men can escape torment, it's open season on everyone else.
5. But though video games *feel* hyper-masculine, they don't actually require any skills at which males have a natural advantage, like physical strength or size. They actual rely on memory, concentration, reaction time, fine motor control, pattern recognition, and planning -- qualities that females share, statistically speaking.
6. So the only way to keep girls and women from playing and creating video games is to *keep* them out, to make games that aren't designed to appeal to them, and to torment any ones who are interested nonetheless. To the guys who do this, it doesn't feel as though they're over-reacting about mere games, it feels as though they're defending their right to *exist*, their right to be treated as human beings.

The good news is that this is in fact a case where #notallmen, because boys who can see through patriarchal nonsense and men who've matured emotionally won't act like this. The bad news is that they don't seem to have much traction against the rest of the guys in gaming. What would it take?

---

[1] The details are tedious, brutal, and IMHO fundamentally unimportant. The serious issue is that women playing online games, talking about them, or working in the gaming industry can expect crushing levels of harassment, and it gets worse the more public they are. As game developer Brianna Wu said in July, there is no skin thick enough to deal with what they often experience -- and just this week the police told Wu and her family to leave their home because the threats have become so serious.

That's not even the worst (so far): Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist video game analyst, had to cancel plans to speak at Utah State University because of emails threatening "a Montreal Massacre-style" school shooting -- and Utah's open carry laws wouldn't let them keep out people with firearms.[2]

[2] Hey you lawyers -- is this for real? WTF? How are people supposed to protect themselves against this kind of terrorism? Because it sure looks like terrorism to me.

Comments

[Countme-In]

That's the funny one.

Here's the sincere one I think Limbaugh and the new House and Senate will have in mind come January, given the tenor of the Republican pig filth rhetoric this here election season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92AmGY8P2po

[pepbut]

OP's thesis is 180º out of phase with reality. The problem is subtractive femininity - the idea that men go off and create a bunch of things, and women then decide which ones are acceptable. Historically men have explored the dangerous periphery (either geographically or culturally) and brought back ideas and artefacts to win the favour and attention of women, who get to decide which ones are worthy of being integrated into mainstream society.

Anyone who has bothered to research the topic knows the GG lines are drawn not between male and female, but between the "art for art's sake" creators and the "art to promote social progress" critics. These however map very neatly onto the traditional gender roles in the first paragraph - so you end up with the spectacle of white male hipsters lecturing nerdy Asian girls about 'patriarchy' and 'structural inequality'.

These roles

[Slartibartfast]

to be honest, i'm not seeing that a correlation between race and intelligence has been established.

To be honest, I hadn't wanted to get into that conversation, because although there does seem to be a correlation, it's not at all clear to me that the analysis was done with sufficient rigor.

Also, intelligence is kind of a so-what metric for me, personally. We're all people, we're all (this is what Christianity is about, after all) children of God, so are we supposed to treat others as less than us because (stipulating, not agreeing to) they as a group fail to rise to some metric that our group has? Would it be ok with mighty whitey were whites to be treated as less than human by e.g. Ashkenazi Jews?

I would guess not.

I have met a LOT of people who would score lower than me on an intelligence test, and also a lot of people who are clearly of higher intelligence. All of these people have something to teach me. All of these people, I at least try to treat with respect and dignity.

I am even having a hard time being completely committed to a wish that mw be stabbed with a sh!t-smeared spear and left to die, because although he is an evil, evil person, not even evil people deserve that fate.

It was but a fleeting fantasy, soon stifled.

[russell]

it's not at all clear to me that the analysis was done with sufficient rigor.

Not to press you into a conversation you don't want to have, and/or beat a dead horse, but what's really not clear to me is how any such analysis could be done with "sufficient rigor".

I'm not sure that it would be possible, in the current-day US, to isolate the effect of an "african" genetic heritage on anything. Or any other race or ethnicity, for that matter.

Not only are we all people, most of us here in the good old USA are, genetically, mutts.

[Slartibartfast]

That falls firmly into "insufficient rigor". Also poverty, which I think is correlated to both race and intelligence.

I am not unwilling to have such a conversation; I am simply ill-equipped in terms of information. Data, if you will.

Agreed, regarding the mutt thing. Nearly everyone excepting perhaps very recent immigrants are quite jumbled up, genetically.

[hairshirthedonist]

Agreed, regarding the mutt thing. Nearly everyone excepting perhaps very recent immigrants are quite jumbled up, genetically.

I am America, and so can you!

Africa 10%

Cameroon/Congo 3% 0-7%
Mali 2% 0-9%
Senegal 2% 0-4%
Benin/Togo <1% 0-3%
Africa So-Cent HG <1% 0-2%
Africa SE Bantu <1% 0-3%
Nigeria 0% 0-2%
Ivory Coast/Ghana 0% 0-1%

America <1%

Native American <1% 0-2%

Asia 0%

Asia Central 0% 0-2%
Asia South 0% 0-<1%

Europe 89%

Italy/Greece 28% 19-36%
Europe West 24% 0-48%
Great Britain 17% 0-39%
Ireland 14% 0-28%
Europe East 3% 0-11%
Iberian Peninsula 2% 0-8%
European Jewish <1% 0-4%
Scandinavia 0% 0-2%

West Asia 0%

Middle East 0% 0-<1%

[the once and future cleek]

people get around

[wj]

cleek,
Perhaps more to the point, people screw around. Especially when they get around, so they have the opportunity.

[Brett Bellmore]

"cleek, say what you will about Mr. Bellmore, but I don't think he'd come back under any name but his own."

Never left. Just found it more entertaining to watch the feces being flung around if they weren't hitting me. [Activates cloaking device again...]

[wj]

Brett! Welcome back (or back to visibility, however fleetingly)!

[Slartibartfast]

The only people who really get nailed, here, are the people who say things to merit it. If you don't say contemptible things, you won't experience much in the way of contempt.

Ok, that may be overstating things some. But I have developed a thickish skin, over the years.

[Ugh]

I thought Brett left because he thought cleek was Humpty Dumpty, not for any poo flinging?

[Brett Bellmore]

Brett left because, while the poo flinging was tolerable as long as I thought I was having a conversation, once you realize you're not having a conversation, you might as well stand on the other side of the glass where the scat can't hit you, and just watch the antics. And you're not having a conversation if the guy on the other side won't let language function.

And, now I'm going away for a while, lest I get sucked back into said antics.

[Ugh]

"'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'"

Not letting the language function.

[the once and future cleek]

yes, it's always hard when someone else won't agree that the manufactured ridiculous outrage du jour isn't actually the most obvious and pernicious instance of malfeasance to ever happen in the history of whenever you want history to start.

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

well, whichever is to be master, it ain't gonna be the GOP outrage machine, that's for damned sure.

[the once and future cleek]

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

and i assert that the GOP noise machine's manufactured outrage du jour will not be the master. no matter how badly Brett wants us to agree to it, 'tain't gonna happen. no matter how many absurd press releases Darryl Issa shits out and Brett presents as holy truth, the GOP noise machine is not going to be the master. no matter how many times he asserts that Lois Lerner is a time traveling demon of corruption and malice who worked her evil in the service of the most-law-breaking SOB who ever occupied the White House, it doesn't make him, nor Issa, Master.

and that still stings, apparently.

but, language boy, tell us all about the "violence" of government and the "slavery" and "theft" of taxation.