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Superpatriarchy Meets Cyberfeminism: Facebook, Online Gaming, and the New
Social Genocide
By Breanne Fahs and Michelle Gohr
“The revolution will not be tweeted.”—Malcolm Gladwell,
Small Change
“We know the consequences of this instinctively; we feel them. We know that having
two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We know that we are using the
software to behave in a certain, superficial way toward others. We know what we are
doing ‘in’ the software. But do we know, are we alert to, what the software is doing to
us? It is possible that what is communicated between people online ‘eventually
becomes their truth’?... Different software embeds different philosophies, and these
philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible.” —Zadie Smith,
“Generation Why?”
Introduction
As the balance between “reality” and “cyberreality”—or the Internet and “outernet”—
continues to fluctuate, questions arise about how cyberspace will continue to alter social
relationships, politics, leisure, and conceptualizations of selfhood. The power of social
networking alone—seen not only in the ongoing coverage of revolutionaries using the
Internet in Egypt and the Middle East, but also in the powerhouse success of
The Social
Network and in the ever-growing use of sites like Facebook, Twitter, social simulations
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such as Second Life, and MMORPG’s (massively multiplayer online role playing games)
like World of Warcraft—has created mass upheavals in contemporary understandings of
communication, connection, and surveillance. Consider this: Facebook represents the
most widely visited site in the world (Bosker 2010), with more than 500 million active
users, 50 percent of which log on daily, with the average user attracting an average of
130 friends (Facebook 2011). Clocking in slightly lower, Twitter now boasts upwards of
105 million users—with 300,000 new users per day—who collectively produce over 55
million tweets per day on average (Bosker 2010). One of the most widely played online
games, World of Warcraft, has over 11.5 million players (20 percent female)—a sum
that totals more than the population of Cuba or New York City. Players play
approximately 22.7 hours a week and generate $800 million for the company each year
(Jai 2010). Further, U.S. citizens spend more than 28 hours per month surfing the web
and average more time on the Internet per day than any other country (Bosker 2010).
The Internet is so powerful and omnipresent that the revenue of a single online game is
greater than the entire GDP of Samoa (Jai 2010); users spend more than half of their
work lives surfing the Internet (Jai 2010).
Despite this massive investment of time, energy, and social life devoted to online
spaces, little scholarly attention has been paid to the implications of such use,
particularly as it relates to gender and social identities. As such, this paper first traces
existing work on the relationship between patriarchy and language and then considers
the ways cyberfeminists have, in the past, envisioned cyberspace as a utopic project of
selfhood. We next examine the potentially dangerous aspects of two key elements of
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viral reality: nonymous spaces (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), in which users embody and
reflect their actual physical selves and personalities that exist outside of cyberspace,
and anonymous spaces (e.g., Second Life, World of Warcraft), in which users create
and maintain an idealized “fantasy” self completely separate from their “real world”
selves, while also grappling with the existing literature on social networking and
cyberspace. In doing so, we argue that, while cyberspace offers a variety of ways to
subvert, play with, and disrupt traditional ideas of gender, it has also erupted into a new
kind of “superpatriarchy” that results in the erasure of women, intensified (and
fetishized) surveillance of women’s movements and bodies, constructions of a
hypermasculine consumer, erosion of social life, and reduction of strategies to resist
these new manifestations of power. As such, we argue that the Internet has essentially
failed in its task to subvert gendered realities and instead created a hyper-realized
version of men’s patriarchal access to women, intensified surveillance and
cyberstalking, and increasingly obscured ideas about women outside of pre-prescribed,
mainstream conceptualizations of the always-available gendered body.
Throughout this paper we will be discussing how cyberspace offers different sites of
communication (anonymous and nonymous), and how the differences between the two
result in similar, but unique, discourses surrounding women and how they are expected
to perform their gender. The discussion compares social networking sites such as
Facebook to popular online video games such as World of Warcraft as a means to
illustrate how the massive amounts of time and social transactions made online are
simultaneously reshaping and reinforcing societal ideas surrounding traditional gender
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roles. Because the world is now consumed and indeed nearly non-functional without the
Internet, cyberspace has begun to have severe and far-reaching impacts on the way
people worldwide react to gender. Because gender and behavior in relation to online
spaces is relatively understudied, it is critical that we begin to consider how the Internet
is beginning to shape the collective understanding of gender and performance.
Patriarchy as a Dangerously Intangible Idea
Like many forms of social and political oppression, the power of patriarchy lies in the
fact that it is intangible. As a myth, it has the power to exist as an omnipresent force,
much like the idea of a corporation or money. It casts long shadows in the workplace,
social life, sexual exchanges, the realm of domesticity, and, of course, in cyberspace
(Haraway 1991). The set of rules created through the mere
idea of patriarchy has
succeeded in subverting and controlling the most prominent cultures and societies
around the world: “It is because males have had power that they have been in a position
to construct the myth of male superiority and to have it accepted; because they have
had the power they have been able to ‘arrange’ the evidence so that it can be seen to
substantiate the myth” (Spender 1980). Because no recognizable characteristics can
constitute a mere idea, we generally fail to criticize exertions of power that arrive via
intangibility; relying upon corporeal and tangible characteristics of oppression has long
constituted a serious problem for those subjected to mechanisms of power (Butler
1990). Thus, we have unknowingly allowed the force of patriarchy to fester across our
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society for centuries and to extend its grasp into nearly every aspect of our existence
(Spender 1980).
Much feminist scholarship has examined the reach of patriarchy and its influence on
language as written and verbal language dictate reality and, in doing so,
produce
subjects (Butler 2005). If “language is our means of classifying and ordering our world:
our means of manipulating reality” (Spender 1980), this becomes even more true within
cyberspace, where gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized subjects are constructed
and produced through more abstract channels. Unlike the social environment, where
language can rely upon other bodily cues and face-to-face contact (Butler 2005), in
cyberspace we have
nothing but language to rely upon as a reality-shaping force.
To counter this, one can argue that cyberspace instead has the potential to offer users a
creativity of expression far beyond that possible in corporeal realm through popular
applications such as Skype, which allows for voice/video chat; deviantART, which
allows users to create and display unique artwork, and other graphics and projects,
podcasts; and more. Nonetheless, even while cyberspace can be seen as a liberatory
site for expression and communication, it remains a volatile interface through which
users construct new or alternate identities. Cyberspace also reduces much of the
interpersonal dimensions of language present in face-to-face communications. Unlike
voice/video chatting, written language is undoubtedly the most easily manipulated
medium of online communication, making it the most widely used and the most relied
upon. Such language creates new cultures and cybersocieties. Even through Facebook
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users create and maintain their image through writing—whether via posting on a friend’s
wall (which shapes the nature and outside perception of a relationship), commenting on
an uploaded photo (which defines and shapes the perception of the photo), or rewriting
their bio (which shapes and defines the user herself/himself). Although these options
also exist as a part of Second Life’s social network, users generally maintain and
present these two “selves” (the Facebook self vs. Second Life self) in very different
ways (Yee, Bailenson 2007, Dimiccio, Millen 2007). Consequently, while language is
tainted by and formed through patriarchy, racism, and homophobia within the corporeal
realm, it takes on hyper-realized significance when dictating meanings that
only exist
online. This creates a number of different problematic outcomes, particularly from a
gendered lens. First, the homogenization of patriarchal language subverts the very
nature of cyberspace (which is inherently loosely defined, destabilized, and subject to
constant fluctuation) by instead prioritizing the symbolic order of patriarchy. In other
words, the combination of sensory deprivation/manipulation combined with language’s
power to construct reality results in a system of patriarchy far more intense than the one
experienced face-to-face. Cyberspace becomes, most simply, a superpatriarchy.
Additionally, unlike the “outernet,” or the actual day-to-day reality outside of cyberspace,
Internet socialization not only recreates the basic tenants of patriarchy (e.g., “male-as-
norm” ideals), but it also results in the virtual erasure and obliteration of female
existence altogether.
Cyberfeminism and the New Utopia
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Historically, not everyone has seen the Internet as a conduit for “superpatriarchy,” as
cyberspace has long been heralded as a new space of resistance through which
people—particularly those subjects oppressed through traditional interactions—can
transcend the physical and sociocultural biases present in face-to-face interactions. For
women, the Internet has always offered an androgynous environment where they can
pose as men, try on different gender identities, and create new fluidities in gendering
the self. Cyberfeminist founders like Sadie Plant (1997), Susan Luckman (1999), Anna
Munster (1999), and Donna Haraway (1991) have long purported a utopian vision of
cyberspace where gender inequalities would cease as soon as the virtual world became
accessible to women. Writing before the Internet boom and the popularization of social
networking, they argued that, as more people become wired-in, “cyberspace has the
potential to allow communicants to become disinhibited from sexualized bounds and
explore true freedom of expression” (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, and McGuire 1986,
160). In this feminist utopia, online interactions between men and women “transcend the
socialized constraints on their communicative expressiveness and adopt a more
androgynous style of interaction” (Sussman and Taylor 2000, 391).
Although early cyberfeminists like Plant argued more politically radical ideologies,
particularly that women could naturally and intuitively use the Internet and must
therefore immerse themselves in the technical realm, Luckman and Munster argued that
“this approach reduces complex technological systems into mere tools and ignores their
historical contexts of production and use” (Consalvo 2002). Plant argued that what
women brought to the Internet would destabilize men’s dominion over them:
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“Cyberspace is out of man’s control: virtual reality destroys his identity, digitalization is
mapping his soul and, at the peak of his triumph, the culmination of his mechanic
erections, man confronts the system he built for his own protection and finds it is female
and dangerous” (Plant 1996, 181). Because women could insist upon anonymity,
cyberfeminists labeled the Internet as “an idealized public sphere; a space epitomizing
the heralded ‘level playing field’” (Luckman 1999, 41). She also argued that critical
interrogations of the Internet must continue in earnest, primarily because access to the
Internet remained gendered, classed, raced, and geographically located (Luckman
1999). Additionally, speaking of the potential to destabilize
all identities, Haraway (1991)
warned that “the socialist feminist cyborg does not need to be young, Western or well-
educated to be able to utilize her position to pry open the fissures in the hegemony of
the white, capitalist patriarchy. Rather, the socialist feminist cyborg recognizes not only
difference in aesthetic and social senses but, more importantly, she does not take for
granted a particular set of ostensibly privileged class locations” (44).
Cyberfeminists collectively argued that cyberspace, rather than creating a hyper-
masculine reality, actually frees women to choose gender more consciously, present
themselves in ways unimaginable in the physical realm, and experiment with gendered
personalities in a relatively safe and constructive space that wards off traditional policing
of gender. If women choose to perform as “men,” they can do so freely and without
restraint. Women can try on power (Plant 1997). They can assume different identities,
races, genders, sexual identities, classes, locations, and nationalities. They can enter
and exit virtual spaces previously denied them. They can access information about, and
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become, middle-gendered/ androgynous beings free from traditional gender norm
constraints. As Suler (2002) argued, “people choose a specific communication channel
to express themselves” (459). Perhaps cyberspace offers an infinite space for
development and resistance to traditional gender roles, as women continually choose
different “channels” for expression. “Cyberfeminist authors contend that it enables a
transgression of the dichotomous categories of male and female, constructing
transgender or even genderless human identities and relations” (Zoonen 2002, 6).
Contemporary cyberfeminists recognize the inherent value in a potentially genderless
online space for the development and growth of women’s social selves (Burgess 2009),
also noting that the Internet has inherited a vast number of gendered problems due to
its inception within a patriarchal culture (Terry, Calvert 1997; Daniels 2009; Brophy
2010). Still more, embracing androgyny has the power to destabilize gender as a
totalizing category of experience (Luckman 1999); if people can recognize gender as a
performance (Butler 1990), this may undermine patriarchy’s ability to promote unspoken
and unseen hierarchies and “truths” about women and men.
Dystopian Jaunts into Cyberspace
Given the strength of cyberfeminist analyses of cyberspace—particularly in highlighting
its potentially libratory power—cyberspace still remains relatively unscrutinized and
uncritiqued in its current manifestations. Perhaps now more than ever, cyberspace must
be conceptualized as a
new discriminatory space. Though the Internet offers freedoms
from some of the oppressive hierarchies found in the “outernet,” cyberspace is still
“modeled on the power structures and hierarchies of the dominant discourse in the
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‘outernet’” (Carstarphen and Lambiase 1998, 121). Such a relationship—where the
“outernet” and Internet compete to both define and themselves
dominate each other—
functions as a sort of mutual parasitism, where one form of patriarchy feeds off of the
other (Foucault 1980a). This form of patriarchal interaction results in a particularly
effective and powerful feedback loop that, in turn, leads to an ever-strengthening
superpatriarchy. As Foucault (1980) argued, the most effective form of power enables
power-holders to “gain access to the bodies of individuals, to their acts, attitudes, and
modes of everyday behavior” (125). In the new superpatriarchy, not only do the
powerful have superficial and tangible access to the bodies of individuals in the
“outernet,” but also the minds and behaviors of individuals at an ever deeper level within
the Internet. Having access to people’s “cyberselves” results in nearly unlimited access
to their language (and how they create language), attitudes, behaviors, and ideas. In
essence, cyberspace
removes the barriers that once allowed individuals to resist in
private spheres and instead grants unlimited access to them at a deeply personal and
perpetually maintained and updated level (e.g., ongoing “status updates”).
As such, the Internet has not become a site of resistance, but rather, an even more
powerful socializing force in our lives; it does so in part by creating deeper and more
lasting ties between individuals and cyberspace, by creating fewer and fewer
mechanisms by which people can “opt out” of online intrusions, and by shaping social
life such that people consciously recognize these intrusions less and less often (Sofsky
2007). Contrary to some of the more utopian visions of cyberspace, Shimanoff (1980)
has suggested that, while behaviors in face-to-face interactions are rule-governed
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through direct, language-based “male power displays,” online spaces only utilize
latent
gendered characteristics of language as status indicators and thus serve to bolster
lopsided power dynamics along gendered lines. Thus, the cyberfeminist assumption
that cyberspace offers a safe, androgynous environment, free from male bias, overlooks
the basic nature and history of how the Internet was born. As discussed by Zoonen
(2002), not only was the “‘actor network’ of human and technical actors involved in the
development of the Internet as a technology is almost 100 percent male” (and military
based), but the information technology (IT) industry itself has historically been and
largely remains a prohibitive and chauvinist culture (11).
Because online interactions are generally limited to text-based communications, these
“pre-existing” gender indicators laced in our language create a culture where users
project ideologies influenced by patriarchal social conditioning onto other users (Jones
1998, Wilson 1992, Rodino 2006, Ames, Burcon 2011). Butler has described this as
democratic censorship or “silencing” (Butler 2005), while Baldwin (1973) wrote, “You
know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if
the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to
yourself.” For example, people often fail to critically analyze the ways that Twitter
accounts eerily mimic the patriarchal fantasy of stalking women, as people (particularly
men) can follow women’s every move, thought, action, or goal throughout their day
(Haron, Yusof 2010, Dowdell, Bradley 2010). Although Twitter allows for anonymity, its
basic use is intended for nonymous interaction with other users. Thus, while Twitter
could theoretically have some subversive qualities (e.g., women assuming male
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privilege or using Twitter in non-personal ways), Twitter users typically engage in use
that involves disclosure of their personal lives. Some women embrace this mechanism
of disempowerment through such nonymity, and thus recreate a cycle whereby their
bodies and actions are watched and followed by “choice.” The rather extensive
literature on cyberstalking has recently identified Twitter as another mechanism through
which people can threaten, intimidate, and control women (Haron, Yusof 2010). Thus,
normative ideas about gender and gendered scripts are communicated via the
technologies that promote the constant monitoring and watching of women by others.
As another example of cyberspace promoting taken-for-granted gendered scripts,
consider the phenomenon of online gamers choosing an “idealized” corporeality—the
body they would most want to inhabit—and how such bodies often conform to the
idealized corporeality of patriarchal society. While this may seem to be a site through
which transgendered individuals find solace from the corporeal constraints of society
(see Hegland and Nelson’s 2002 work on transgender identity manifestations in
cyberspace),“though many of the cross-dressers presented [in the study] are clearly
conscious of the messages they send, they nevertheless prefer to dress to the extremes
of femininity and embrace age-old stereotypes that conflate femininity with an overt
sexuality” (156); “Creating [such] an identity that is meant ‘to be looked at,’ and solely
for the purposes of consumption by the male gaze does little to erase the imprint of
male desire on the female body so deeply-rooted in culture, history, and social
convention” (157). Thus, although the Internet and anonymous spaces theoretically
offer its users liberation, too often participants bring pre-existing biases and cultural
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understandings of gender, further degrading the understanding and conceptualization of
acceptable gender performance. Such moments represent not only individual choices in
using technology, but also instances where the patriarchy of the “outernet” meets the
patriarchy of the Internet with intensified ferocity.
Nonymous Spaces: Facebook and Twitter
Shockingly little feminist writing has addressed the social and political implications of
Facebook—particularly given its global scope, ever-growing number of users, and
multifaceted marketing campaigns. Facebook users spend an average of 30 minutes
per day—more than they spend reading books—using Facebook, primarily as a tool for
“social connection” (Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert 2009) amidst a platform
described by writer Zadie Smith (2010) as “falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting,
slickly disingenuous.” Existing studies of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking
sites cluster around several common themes: the erosion of social life (Morrison and
Gore 2010; Muise, Christofides, and Desmarais 2009), increasing rates of loneliness
and social isolation as an irony of increased Facebook and social networking usage
(Ahmed and Hamilton 2009; Amichai-Hamburger 2003; Caplan 2007; Ceyhan and
Ceyhan 2008; Freberg et al. 2010; Kim, LaRose, and Peng 2009; Young and Rodgers
1998), the creation of different versions of the self (Back et al. 2010; Bargh and
McKenna 2002; Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs 2006), future directions for social networking
trends (Boyd and Ellison 2008), connections between Facebook and social capital
(Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007; Tong et al. 2008), links between narcissism,
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personality types, and social networking usage (Buffardi and Campbell 2008;
Bumgarner 2007; Correa, Hinsley, and de Zuniga 2010; Gangadharbatla 2008; Harigatti
2007; Orr et al. 2009; Ross et al. 2009), and the lack of political participation and
activism inspired by Facebook usage (Vitak et al. 2011; Valenzuela, Park, and Key
2009). Surprisingly few studies have even
mentioned gender, let alone critically
analyzed the clear gendered implications of both Facebook and Twitter, suggesting that
the invisibility of the superpatriarchy in cyberspace facilitates its continued expansion
and growth. Further, with the recent announcement that Facebook would go public,
questions exist about the “corporate personhood” of Facebook and how that might
interface with the already-troubling gender politics embedded within Facebook as it
exists today.
Radical feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s warned of the dangers that occur
when men demand constant access to women’s bodies, emotional labor, and sexual
labor. As Marilyn Frye (1993) argued, “Total power is unconditional access; total
powerlessness is being unconditionally accessible. The creation and manipulation of
power is constituted of the manipulation and control of access” (95). Facebook and
Twitter essentially intensify these concerns, bringing women’s whereabouts into focus
throughout their social networks, providing nearly complete access to their images,
thoughts, and, most importantly,
movements. Even though users can monitor how much
access others have to their pages—which itself generates a false sense of security and
control over this content—women also typically neglect the bigger problems of
corporate monitoring of the self, “friending” those who they do not know well, “friending”
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those who could give others access to their accounts, and assuming ethical use of their
data (particularly photos). One could argue that Twitter represents glorified
cyberstalking, while Facebook generates unconditional access to women around the
clock and in many spheres. Constantly updating one’s “status,” informing others of their
location (and often other details like food choices, clothing, “baby bellies,” secret
longings, and other disclosures), and permitting assessments such as “like” or
commenting on women’s photos and images suggest that these early warnings from
radical feminists remain as relevant as ever.
Facebook also reinforces and intensifies many aspects of patriarchy that occur offline,
particularly the creation of the
hypermasculine consumer who must always “like”
corporations and be a “friend” of big business. While one can also “like” non-profits,
Facebook has become a mechanism for corporate advertisement and big business
power. Indeed, Facebook so adeptly shapes consciousness that people often fail to
realize or effectively challenge or confront Facebook about the fact that no
dislike
feature exists on Facebook; one cannot
dislike a corporation with bad business
practices (e.g., Walmart, Exxon Mobil), just as one cannot
dislike a person’s sexist,
racist, or homophobic comment Some challenge this problem by writing critical
comments or creating separate blogs or pages to critique unethical corporate practices,
but this remains an inherently limited option in comparison to true challenges for the
ways Facebook shapes consciousness by refusing to allow
disliking things. As a key
example, many people confront racist, sexist, and homophobic comments on Facebook
but have few options for how to confront those attitudes aside from (passive-
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aggressively) “defriending” someone. Language is once again geared toward
consumption, particularly around corporate and patriarchal priorities like cars, oil, food,
sports teams, and corporate spaces. By creating a virtual hotbed of uncritical
consumerists within the highly capitalistic framework of Facebook—and then glorifying
this even further through the grotesquely successful
The Social Network—Facebook
has succeeded in becoming the new face of superpatriarchy. Facebook is both noun
and verb—one uses Facebook, just as one can actively “Facebook” another person.
The corporation becomes a medium of use and control, shaping consciousness and
intensifying its efforts for addictive compliance. More and more corporations demand
that we “like them on Facebook,” taking on personhood and demanding a social
relationship (
The Corporation film warned of this). Far from seeing corporations as
sociopaths, Facebook conceptualizes them as allies in shaping people’s behavior,
spending, and social relationships.
Additionally, Facebook also expertly directs people to reproduce, always in a hyper-
managed, hyper-experienced manner, the same political and social priorities of the
“outernet,” all while giving consumers the illusion of agency and choice about how to
use Facebook. For example, women learn to carefully select Facebook photos to
present their best image (often with much agony over such self-presentation), people
rate others’ comments and photos (further objectifying women), and people write on
each other’s “wall”—a kind of graffiti that judges, mocks, supports, or otherwise intrudes
upon one’s own self-expression. The variability in how people use Facebook perhaps
makes it all the more dangerous, as options for hyper-personalization (e.g., users can
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arrange people into groups who can see and not see their material; people have the
option to post or not post; people can block others from writing on their walls or seeing
their profile; one can slyly “defriend” someone else) prevent users from remembering
that Facebook still controls the terms of communication, dialogue, and “options”
available. (Perhaps one of the best strategies to combat Facebook’s dominance over
social life is to practice a healthy mix of sabotage and/or abstention: avoid it altogether,
create fake profiles, lie incessantly on Facebook, or to “like” groups, people, and
organizations that criticize Facebook).
In Facebook, you don’t simply create a self; your self is made by others, within a
patriarchal lens, always with a clear sense of power embedded in each action. For
example, when anyone changes their relationship status, this information is broadcast
publicly. For women, this serves as a further extension of the public insistence that she
broadcast her sexual availability and continues to function inside that paradigm.
Assumptions of heteronormativity are rampant, as outing oneself as gay, lesbian,
bisexual, or transgendered can result in cyberbullying, “defriending” en masse, or
worse. When one attempts to deactivate one’s Facebook account (if one can even
find
the deactivate button!), the available “reasons” for doing so (one must choose one)
include comments like, “I find myself on Facebook too much, with little time for anything
else.” One can choose an “Other” option where they must “write something,” again
signaling the difficulty of leaving Facebook permanently. (Incidentally, Facebook also
puts up images of “friends” who will “miss you” if you leave Facebook—eerily
reminiscent of pressures to remain accessible in other realms). Nothing is excluded
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from the lens of a well-managed reality; all behavior must be accounted for, even
departures. Meeting friends becomes synonymous with “Facebooking them.” Interacting
with classmates often requires a Facebook account to do so (especially in rural
classrooms nationwide). A breakup becomes an opportunity to “Facestalk” an ex-
partner, track their behavior, and suffer through the consequences of such unlimited
access. In the world of Facebook, we are always subject to surveillance. Facebook
never truly
goes away, even when deactivated.
Anonymous Spaces: Second life and World of Warcraft
MMOs present a unique formula that could potentially subvert traditional ideas about
gender and the physical self: They are adventure/quest/simulation games where large
numbers of players interact through an entire virtual world. Similar to the longstanding
idea of role-playing games (RPGs) such as Dungeons and Dragons, players assume
the role of a fictional character in a fantasy world and can control the way they look,
dress, interact, speak, fight, and what powers and skills they possess. Even when the
player exits the game, the game continues to exist and evolve as if in the real world.
MMO environments are highly social spaces that depend upon socializing as well as
building and destroying alliances with other players.
In World of Warcraft, players choose a race, class of fighter, and a faction that they will
belong to and fight for. Each of the two factions embodies a different set of ideologies
and lore that the players explore as they go on quests to “level up” and proceed through
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a story by conquering other races and lands using their unique racial and class abilities.
Players may team up with other faction members to accomplish various goals or defeat
difficult monsters, or progress through the immersive story solo:
Over the course of his or her life, your character will brave thousands of quests,
learn new and powerful abilities, amass (and likely spend) vast fortunes of gold,
and find hundreds of powerful weapons, enchanted rings, artifacts, suits of
armor, and more. Essentially, the core gameplay of World of Warcraft revolves
around fighting monsters and completing quests. Another aspect of the life of a
hero is the constant struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. Even though
there are currently no all-out wars, tensions are high, and small skirmishes
regularly take place all over Azeroth where players from both sides fight each
other. (World of Warcraft Cataclysm 2012)
While similar in principle in that gameplay takes place in an online virtual world between
thousands of people, Second Life is a virtual simulation in which players can participate
and help create and maintain a real online world that mirrors our own, including an
independent economy and commodities. Conversely, Second Life has been well known
to also offer players an environment in which to express more deviant, often sexual
behaviors less accepted in society such as “clopping” (sex between two people of the
My Little Pony fandom) and yiffing (sex between two people of the furry role playing
community). . Both games, however, represent massive online communities of real
people playing imagined personas in limitless fantasy worlds. According to Yee’s (2004)
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
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Daedalus Project, approximately “80% of MMORPG players play with someone they
know in real life…a romantic partner, family member, or friend on a regular basis.” Yee
(2004) reports that players derive gratification from a sense of achievement and
cooperation through the building of social relationships in the game.
While emulating the experience of face-to-face interactions through social networking
sites like Facebook and Twitter evokes ideas about surveying women’s ideas, thoughts,
and movements, anonymous spaces like Second Life and World of Warcraft offer users
a different basis for understanding gendered cyberspace. Although MMOs now require
players to register their legal name and gender when creating an account, these
changes do not affect game play, and have been met with hostility by many female
players in particular and the gaming community as a whole, indicating the underlying
enjoyment of anonymity within the community (Lee 2010). However, while anonymity is
easily obtained and retained in both World of Warcraft and Second Life, there are
options available for public/friend only display of nonymity. Regardless, these two
genres still vastly differ from sites such as Facebook in their basic intended premise and
structure, which is centered on the virtual creation and maintenance of a separate
(fantasy) self and role playing as opposed to the exhibition of an already existing
person/personality. The recently implemented real ID system in WoW “offers a great
way to stay connected with people you know in real life,” (Battlenet 2012) but is not
openly accessible or shared with other players; instead, players preferring anonymity
among strangers use a nickname known as a BattleTag. Similarly, Second Life allows
players to fill out biographies and post images of themselves, but unlike Facebook these
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
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games/simulations are not based on the nonymous foundation of networking and
reconnecting with friends and family, but rather adventuring, roleplaying, and simulating
experiences unobtainable in the real world.
In World of Warcraft, players are immersed in a fully realized world where they create
their own ideal self, or avatar, through which they may choose their gender, skin color,
race (human, elf, dwarf, etc.), powers/abilities, and even create personal character back
stories or associate personality traits with the avatar. Additionally, players explore,
quest, socialize, and battle. Here people can forego realistic, personal physical
indicators and embrace a creative environment that more closely resembles Haraway’s
idealized cyberspace. For example, in Second Life, users can forego all human qualities
altogether and instead inhabit an avatar that resembles a small bulldog, or even a tree,
while in WoW players have the option of choosing to be an olive green Orc, or a cyan
Dranei, which closely resembles a mythical satyr; both significantly differentiate the user
from their true selves outside of the Internet, as opposed to Facebook, which is more
likely to reflect the true self if used as intended. While Facebook theoretically portrays
the “true” physical being behind cyberreality, Second Life masks the “true” physical
being behind a creative, “idealized” self (or avatar). Within the blogosphere, players
learn to advertise in-game achievements for these popular online games in order to
establish social standing both in and out of the game. Second Life and World of
Warcraft each command millions of players/users (Jai 2010) and remain largely
understudied ( as a result of such new and rapidly developing technology), particularly
for gender discrimination and power differentials during game play. While extensive
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literature has documented the gaming industry’s ongoing mistreatment toward and
discrimination against women (Nakamura et.al 2005; Miller, and Summers 2007;
Jenson 2010), particularly in their hypersexualization within video games (Dill 2007),
little research has addressed the lived oppression of women during their online
interactions. Existing studies of these games (typically called Massively Multiplayer
Online games or “MMOs”) focus on adolescent development (Griffiths 1993; Griffiths
and Hunt 1995) and aggression (Irwin and Gross 1995; Kestenbaum and Weinstein
1985; Huesmann 1994), but rarely focus on women’s experiences aside from personal
online blog entries (Lee 2010; Pierce 2010). Additionally, a fair amount of scholarship
has tackled the idea of avatar identities and race/class/gender subversion through such
idealized character embodiments (Nakamura 2001), but generally fail to acknowledge
the real world and/or ideological implications for such actions (Bessiere, Seay, Kiesler
2007).
Nevertheless, women still represent only a minority of online gamers across a majority
of the less casual genres, even with a recent dramatic increase in the number of women
players (Entertainment Software Association 2012, O’Leary 2012). Although accurate
statistics reflecting gender dynamics of all online gamers is difficult to obtain and often
draws from an unrepresentative pool, recent estimates suggest that 42% of online
players are female with an average age of 37 (Sliwinski 2011). However, most current
literature gives little information about the various types of games played and often
makes the mistake of lumping all game play (mobile phone, PC, and console) together
as a homogenous conglomerate (Shaw 2011, Sliwinski 2011, O’Leary 2012). This
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erases the different gender dynamics in different types of games and gamers which, in
turn, alters the discussion around the varying motivational factors and game play styles
each medium attracts (e.g., platform shooters, MMOs, RPGs, etc.) (Williams, Consalvo,
Caplan Yee 2009). One cannot meaningfully compare the gaming culture of an online
role playing game with a first-person shooter (FPS). Although MMOs have begun
moving towards what some may consider a more standard FPSs style “pick-up” game
play (e.g., dungeon finder raids) that allow players to interact outside of their guild,
social circle, etc., difference of communication and community lies in the idea that
individuals actively choosing one game genre over another (i.e. rpg over fps) will have
significantly different styles of communication and indeed prefer associating with
individuals of similar taste (Shaw 2012). Similarly, MMORPGs offer players an
immersive, reportedly addictive play style that is distinct from that of a typical FPS (Halo
franchise) or other gaming genres (Snodgrass et. al. 2012, Zhong 2011) in that this
style overflows into the player’s real life and relationships (Zhong 2011). Furthermore,
even with the massive increase in female players, discrimination within certain gaming
genres has changed little as evidenced through the recent harassment charges among
the fighting game community and resultant backlash against female gamers (O’Leary
2012).
Given this, women often find it difficult to immerse themselves in some of the more
stereotypically “hardcore,” or time consuming, challenging cyberspace gaming cultures
(O’Leary 2012); further, when we consider that the video game industry (and indeed
most technological industries) remains highly male-dominated (West 2009), patriarchal
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24
implications emerge (Shaw, 2011). Because women have historically been
systematically excluded from gaming based on patriarchal notions of male superiority,
this has led to several self-fulfilling prophecies: Men maintain intensely gendered
stereotypes, are regarded as inherently more important and more human in the gaming
world, become primary consumers of gaming, and inspire game designs geared toward
male fantasies and male consumption. While there has been a shift in the gaming
industry toward the development of more female friendly games, these games often
marginalize women and only serve to further reinforce harmful gender roles through
games such as Butterfly Dress Up, or Cooking Mama. Similarly, MMO environments
offer excessive amounts of power to the acceptable collective ideology (patriarchy)
because of the anonymity allowed to players. However, compared to face-to-face
interactions, online anonymity promotes false stereotypes and the degradation of
women, just as it offers users the opportunity to assume and “use” a female body in
order to create and maintain such ideologies. Further, it perpetuates racist,
homophobic, and xenophobic ideas about how bodies move and circulate in the social
economy; in a space where difference could be celebrated, it is reviled. MMOs not only
allow
access to women in this virtual space, but they also encourage men to literally
take over the bodies of women and discard
actual women players (Dill, Thill 2007, Dill,
Brown, Collins 2008).
Similar to Hegland and Nelson’s (2002) research on transgender cyber identity, online
crossdressing communities, while empowering individuals previously excluded to the
fringes of society, also has a deleterious effect on women; essentially, by literally
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
25
inhabiting and becoming the idealized notion of femininity (similar to MMOs), gender
lines and norms are exponentially strengthened, thereby harming women’s ability to
adopt a more androgynous presence while simultaneously bolstering the acceptance of
transgendered individuals as their idealized self. While anonymous spaces have
immense potential for identity exploration, it exists as a double-edged sword, as
individuals inadvertently affect how identities function in the larger social network. This
behavior serves an idealized patriarchal fantasy: women exist only as constructed by
men and in service of men, while actual autonomous, thinking, feeling women are
transformed into irrelevant sidebars.
Gender Hacking
The occurrence of gender-swapping or gender hacking—where male/female players
become women/men in order to receive social benefit—reveals the ultimate
manipulation and patriarchal impulse within cyber-reality (Gregory 2011, Poiso 2010,
Yee 2010). Although research on gender hacking argues that “female avatars are
treated better and more likely to receive gifts and help from other players (who are
mostly men)” (Yee 2004), similar scholarship also argues that “in games where third-
person perspective is used, men prefer to stare at a female body rather than a male
body” (Yee 2004). Research on gender swapping in cyberspace rarely explores the
meaning behind gender hacking, preferring instead to rest with andocentric ideas that
rarely delve below surface-level interpretations. For example, saying that female avatars
are “treated better” not only legitimates male domination and control over the bodies
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
26
and psyches of women, but utterly fails to acknowledge that men (playing female
avatars) still maintain a privileged and esteemed position within cyberspace. While
many feminists argue that gender hacking is just another method for men to maintain
control and power over women’s bodies (Vella 2010; Yee 2004) this argument fails to
explore the larger motivations behind this phenomenon. By playing female characters,
men control women’s bodies, language, and “womanness.” With this power, men not
only literally and physically create and maintain the “female” gender, but completely
erase femaleness and replace it with
their own idealized, biased notions of “perfect
femininity” in a patriarchal environment.
While one could argue that female players also have power over masculine stereotypes
through gender hacking, this often stems from a different motive: Women’s minority
status in the MMO world often requires them to escape degradation by hiding and
blending into the male persona. More than 50 percent of gamers have engaged in
gender swapping, primarily because they received positive social attributes for being
“female” in a male-oriented world (Hussain 2008). Male players reported gender
swapping into a female body as a positive experience, while women reported misery
and ridicule for swapping into male bodies (Cole 2007, Eklund 2011, Lee 2010). Men,
thus benefit far more from their ability to subsume a female persona than do women
assuming a male persona. As in the “outernet,” women take on male bodies and male
roles in part to avoid discrimination and sexism: “many female gamers register under
male identities to avoid stalking, harassment, and the general annoyance of guys” (Lee
2010). Even so, within anonymous spaces one is often required to designate certain
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
27
characteristics when registering for an account. Cyberspace still attempts to maintain
hegemony through standard outernet classification (M or F when registering for a World
of Warcraft account) and simultaneously allows for often harmful subversion and
distortions of gender through flawed and biased representations of chosen categorized
gender. Even though this may give transgender individuals power to subvert their
physical sex in an anonymous online community, such categorization bring with it often
harsh, hegemonic performance expectations and pressures (Laukkanen 2007).
A New Social Genocide: Extermination of Women in Cyberspace
Cyberspace presents several new layers of patriarchal domination that women must
contend with. While Facebook and Twitter allow unlimited access to women’s actual
movements and ideas — all while creating a masculinized hyperconsumer — MMOs
allow men to take over women’s gender for sport, while women must assume the male
gender for mere survival. This closely references Judith Butler’s (1990) politics of the
performative that allows us to “conceptualize digital culture as a resource through which
‘girl’ gamers are mobilized and potentially reformulated, experiencing their gaming
identities in contradictory ways, and fragmenting the category ‘girl’ in the very act of
articulating their place in a male dominated gaming culture” (Beavis and Charles 2007,
691). Female gamers fragment their identity and inhabit a false persona simply for
protection and legitimization from the online community (Jensen 2010). “Each of these
‘roles,’ however, is tenuously maintained within a community that most commonly reads
female participation in sexualized terms: mothers at events describe themselves as
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
28
‘cheerleaders,’ female players risk being labeled as ‘halo hoes,’ and promotional models
become ‘booth babes’” (Taylor, Jensen, and de Castell 2009, 239). The message
remains clear: Women willingly conform and indulge in such patriarchal notions, as
Second Life and World of Warcraft facilitate the genocide of true femaleness online. The
idea of
woman and
female is being completely erased from anonymous cyberspace and
replaced by a mere shadow of the feminine
only as imagined through a powerful
patriarchy hive-mind.
Through this process, an interesting reversal occurs: While women are controlled
through media and advertising in the “real world” and through such outlets are told how
to speak, act, and think, the threat to women
within cyberspace may be even more
real
and intense. Rather than directing women how to speak, men literally speak for women;
rather than tell women how to act, they take women’s bodies and act for them; rather
then tell women how to think, men monopolize women’s minds and thoughts so that
women literally no longer have a voice or even a presence in the virtual world. This
brings up perhaps the most dangerous consequence of all: the near total erasure of
women from cyberspace, and thus, from the consciousness of the Internet.
When reflecting upon these relatively new manifestations of patriarchy, it becomes clear
that, while the Internet offers a variety of subversive and novel ways of constructing
gender—including opportunities to try on new selves, self-publish on blogs, connect with
massive numbers of people, or create new modes of information dissemination and
retrieval—it also remains fraught with new modes of disempowerment that threaten and
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Fall 2012: Vol. 3, Issue 6
29
undermine women’s quest toward empowerment. If the circulation and implementation
of patriarchal ideals goes unchecked in the “outernet,” these ideals pose an even
greater threat when matched with the anonymity of MMOs like Second Life, the
corporate takeover of Facebook, or the virtual stalking of Twitter. Faced with this new
superpatriarchy, we must collectively decide how to resist, whether such resistance can
truly grow within cyberspace, and why it remains essential that we fight hard against the
erasure of women in
all worlds, “real” or otherwise.
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