World of Warcraft as a Male Dominated and Hostile Partriarical Society

[lodessa]

So as some of you know... I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft in the last months. Everyone knows that the video game industry is a male dominated space. Regardless of people's gender, one default assumes that the player is male, unless given a reason to believe otherwise. They do outnumber us be a large margin after all, although I play with probably half a dozen other female gamers on a regular basis. The assuming people are male on WoW thing didn't bother me much, because I do the reverse in fandom. Although there are male fans (spectralbovine springs to mind), most of the people involved in fannish dialog on livejournal are female. I've obviously thought about what kind of societal assumptions lead to these mirror communities on the internet, and I certainly have a lot to say with thy way that being made up of women informs the way in which fandom operates, but recently I've started thinking about more hostile sort of gender issues manifest in my MMO world.

It is largely acknowledged that certain girl WoW players, or men pretending to be women, use the rarity of female players to gain special treatment in the game. I've always scoffed at both, although I do take pride in playing the game with other women and do not think gender as irrelevant as we might like to pretend in this circumstance. But recently, I guess the feminist critic within me has started making comments. And I feel torn, because I love a lot of things about this online community I've become a part of but I also feel I am a traitor to a lot of things I believe in by going along and participating without questioning.

In the current game expansion, there are three different group sizes used in dungeons/raids. Although nominally called regular and heroic dungeons (5 players) and raids (10 people for regular, 25 people for heroic), even on the official forums in posts made by Blizzard employees they are mostly known as
"5 Mans", "10 Mans", and "25 Mans". Back in the old days there used to be "20 Mans" and "40 mans" rather than the current raid groups, and I believe (based on my boyfriend's comfort with the terminology that the "X Man Raid" as a description dates back to Ever Quest). I've found myself using the "man" terminology and feel disgusted with myself. Recently I've been consciously using the other nomenclature, because the common one is clearly patriarchal in the extreme, but I hold my tongue and I don't say a word to those I play with about their usage of these terms. I don't want to be "that girl" and truth be told I haven't even brought it up to Jeremy (the last time I brought up gender issues in something he liked when I pointed out women's power being the taking away of free will in one way or another in Legend of the Seeker... well it was a long and interesting conversation but we was a wreck the next day from sleep deprivation).

So I'd been thinking about this terminology, but not really holding Blizzard accountable for it, because technically it's not their term and internet culture comes up with a lot of stuff without prompting from the host site or server (I think we can be pretty sure that livejournal developers never imagined what fandom would do with it). But then a new announcement came down that they are combining three different attributes (armor penetration, spell penetration, and haste) into one new one: potency. As a mechanic this change is consistent with their current trend and I have no problem with it... but the word choices... well it gives me pause. Because potency to me really invokes a connotation of virility... masculinity, manliness. Which pretty much becomes explicit and sexually aggressive in some sense when you link it to PENETRATION. Then you add haste and basically I am seeing a ninja fast assailant, asserting his dominance over the world.

And of course I am building sandcastles, or dungeons as the case may be, in the sky. Of course the whole concept and mechanic of the game is about dominating an invented world and proving your untouchable skill and prowess. Of course the developers probably weren't trying to invoke the image of rape into their new attribute. But doesn't that really make it more to the point? Isn't that insidious understanding, the unconscious reaction, really our biggest hurdle?

And yet... I have no idea what I am going to do, if anything, about these things. I guess it never hurt to think, but I feel like my hands are dirty and I need to scrub at them.

Comments

[syderia]

It's been a long time since I listened to it, but this is a podcast about sexism and WoW. You can find her other podcasts on Podiobooks, btw.

The problem I see with sexism is that in circumstances where guys outnumber us greatly (such as in MMORPG or in engineering schools), if you react every time something sexist is said, you'll be reacting all the time, be branded as an ultra-feminist, and at least half the time they'll say that they were joking, or didn't mean anything by it, and that you can't take a joke, or that you should chill out. It's not easy.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely have to listen to that podcast when the boyfriend is not sleeping next to me.

That is precisely the problem, and we girls who have developed skills in navigating these kind of spaces... we are trained to laugh instead, and hell if I said something the other women I know in game would as likely take the opposing side as support me.

[zoeiona.livejournal.com]

.... that sounds pretty unpleasant. Also sadly sounds somewhat par for the course, given a number of discussions I've had lately on Westeros. (Apparently R Scott Bakker was trying to be cool and progressive when he made women objectively inferior to men in his fantasy world, in order to highlight the absurdity of female subjugation. Sadly his point, if any, was lost in the white noise, and the tenor of his responses on the subject is lost on anyone who doesn't have a PhD.)

As for what you can do, or should do? Firstly, remember that 40% of Warcraft players are women (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7796482.stm) and they are more likely to spend more time on the game. Secondly, and this would be the trickier part, make the developers aware of this - that they're right royally pissing off a larger subset of their consumers than they might think.

There's the whole problem with gender context and subtext in geekdom that I'm trying not to get sucked into further than I am already, and it is a big and pervasive problem, and I can't type this reply for too much longer as I'm at work and about to go into a meeting and am pretending I'm not online. But... yes. I get the feeling, knowing nothing about specific Warcraft issues until I read this post of yours (am not a Warcraft player), that it's part of the same overall image that serious geekdom is "supposed" to be a place for white straight men, and that women should be content with chick lit, paranormal romance and playing The Sims. I mean, I like one from that set of three and can stomach a second. But still.

(And you watch Legend of the Seeker? Please don't tell me you like the books...)

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Apparently R Scott Bakker was trying to be cool and progressive when he made women objectively inferior to men in his fantasy world, in order to highlight the absurdity of female subjugation. Sadly his point, if any, was lost in the white noise, and the tenor of his responses on the subject is lost on anyone who doesn't have a PhD.

Ugh.

It's hard because women who are into things like gaming, which are seen as male space, have been conditioned to go along and buy in with this kind of stuff. There are different approaches, some women do the damsel act, some act like one of the boys, and others just let people assume they are male... but none of those is being a woman and an equal. Blizzard actually does do a lot of non-gender biased stuff, or attempts to work on equal representation. Many of the non-players characters are female. What gender one plays has no effect on what class options one has. But at the same time 3/4s of the faction leaders are male and the same is not the same as equal.


Yes, geekdom as "white straight male" is definitely a problem (although WoW is possibly the most homoerotically charged community I have even been in). Like the fact that Sci-Fi made special previews with no speaceships for Battlestar Galactica to pull in women... because women apparently hate spaceships and sci-fi. It's a problem, but one that's hard to address. Part of the difficulty is that if you make yourself seen in such a venue you get co-opted by the claims that you are special and unique here as a woman and it hard to lift those golden chains and say no, there is nothing extraordinary about my being here as a woman... because we all want to be special.

(I've been watching is as fluff. The boyfriend actually read and likes the books, but from what I've seen of the show and what he tells me about the books... no interest whatsoever)

[sainfoin-fields.livejournal.com]

I guess it never hurt to think

Well, there's your problem right there if you honestly believe that's true.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

What? The bad grammar of typo? Or do you actually take issue with thinking about things?

[sainfoin-fields.livejournal.com]

Yes, taking issue with thinking about things sounds just like me.

I am saying that "it never hurt to [blank]" is rarely true in the best of cases and "it never hurt to think" in particular is so patently false. Thinking about things in an honest way very often hurts; these things are designed to be accepted without question and when they are examined they fall apart and cause the thinker to lose faith in the institution, feel implicit guilt, and more. Whether that institution is WoW, patriarchy, white privilege, something overtly political, or something apparently innocent. That is why criticism is shut down with defensiveness instead of received with debate and that is why it remains important to be the person brave enough to deal with the pain of consciousness anyway, because most of us don't want to have to think about those things.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to believe that you actually thought I meant "it never hurt" as in "it was never painful". Obviously it's not the most accurate phrase, but I somehow doubt you are incapable of understanding that I meant "it is never counterproductive". So I am sort of at a loss as to why you feel the need to have made a vague and negative comment when it seems like you would and do agree with what I was actually attempting to say.

[sainfoin-fields.livejournal.com]

It wasn't meant to be negative, merely a philosophical reflection on something that jumped out at me, rather than the generic and meaningless "that sucks guy" I would have otherwise come up with. Sorry I did not get that across.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

It's okay, it happens a lot with the internet as I know we are both aware. I think probably if the second comment had been the original one it would have made a lot more sense to me.

[novin-ha.livejournal.com]

I'd say all your points are valid - and it's just such a drag, being the one to point stuff out. I know how my friends who love BSG react whenever I point out race issues that are handled less than brilliantly, or mention that women's deaths are entirely different on this show then men's and that I'm uncomfortable with the girl sacrifice thing. I'm "oversensitive" and "look for issues where there are none".

And the fact that I've done some literary theory and cultural studies is in no way proof that I might be right - it just means that I'm overly academic and doubly wrong ;D

(Legend of the Seeker? I've read a bit of the books in my very early teens, gender there is a huge can of very ugly worms. I have no idea about the TV thing, though.)

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the trap of the situation. You're always going to get that kind of the reaction from some people who cannot be a fan and a critic of the same thing because they don't understand the concept of analysis really. They think you are being negative and ruining the fun instead of understanding that it is part of your way of enjoying/digesting things.

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

I am a representation of male fans everywhere!

I forget, have you seen The Guild? It...doesn't actually address these issues, but I just realized that the gender split of the main cast is 50/50. Female gamers aren't treated as anomalies.

[lodessa.livejournal.com]

lol. I am not saying you (male fans) are all the same, just pointing out, hey you do exist.

I have not seen it. Should I watch it for any reason?

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

You should watch it (http://www.watchtheguild.com/) for MANY reasons!

A) It stars and is written by Felicia Day.
B) It is about online gamers playing a WoW-esque game and is based on Felicia Day's previous WoW addiction.
C) It is very funny.
D) Only half the cast is white. There's an Indian dude, a Japanese girl, and I'm not sure what ethnicity Vincent Caso is.
E) The first season was funded entirely on fan donations.
F) It was an inspiration for Dr. Horrible's existence.
G) The characters are all entertaining.
H) And funny.
I) I love it so that means it's awesome.