STS 485: GENDER, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY Week 14: GENDER IN CYBERSPACE Dr. Maral Erol maralerol@gmail.com

EKLUND How gender and sexuality is constructed in cyberspace, especially in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Research on eight Swedish female gamers who play World of Warcraft (WoW) WoW is a classic MMORPG set in a Tolkien-inspired fantasy world where players get together or play solo moving around the world in quest of monsters to kill, treasures to find, and honour to gain.

STARTING TO PLAY: AVATAR Avatars are the tools with which players interact with the game, and they also represent the player to other players. In WoW you can choose your avatars sex, race, and class. All informants in the research chose female avatars, expressing a need for identification. Men playing female characters is normalized in games, and is seen as an aesthetic choice rather than gender-bending.

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STARTING TO PLAY: CLASS AND APPEAREANCE The informants mostly chose healing or supporting characters such as Priest or Paladin, reflecting the traditional roles of women in real life warfare. Through their choice of class, women perform and recreate a traditional femininity in the game. The informants also chose to make their characters good- looking, which affected their choice of race. Despite their feminine characteristics, the women made their avatars as powerful as possible.

STRATEGIES OF MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY There is a strong male norm in WoW that affects the gamer’s experiences. Informants have two ways of using and relating to their gender: Taking advantage of it to gain items or help from male gamers Fighting to be treated equally By being good gamers women try to prove their value, but also make themselves appear harmless, through making their writing distinctly feminine, or taking on traditional mediator roles.

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POLITICS OF SEXUALITY Informants see performing sexuality as flirting. Since it’s not possible to know the sex of the gamer, the sex of the avatar becomes the guideline in flirting. The heterosexual is positioned as natural and as such invisible for the most part. Almost all informants face unwanted advances when they disclose they are a woman, and have different strategies to counter this, such as lying about their age and nationality, or ignoring the people who disturb them.

FEELING FREE Women describe the game as a free space, free from the limitations of real life: A place where they can create an identity on equal basis with everyone else. The discriminations they face are about the game culture rather than the game structures. By gaming, women claim a certain position and create themselves as gamers. Women who play WoW bring their offline gender identity into the game, but construct their femininity by picking and choosing different characteristics.