Always Just a Slut: Sexualized Harassment in Online Gaming

• In Event: The Gendered Contexts of Victimization and Offending

Abstract

Harassment in online gaming has become a mainstream social problem. One of the core elements of this is its highly gendered and sexualized nature. It is also part of the larger conversation about how women are treated in online spaces. While some past research has looked at how players respond to voice-based gender cues in-game, there is limited research seeking to categorize the types, style and language of those responses. Using qualitative content analysis, this study examined two websites where gamers have self-documented the types of comments (in both text and voice based chat systems) they received in response to their in-game gender cues. The analysis demonstrated that many of the comments received by the players were completely unsolicited, often without any clear indication of why they were singled out and contacted. The language and style of the comments themselves are typically focused on gender, with explicit and sexualized content (such as soliciting for sexual favours or making degrading comments about female genitalia). The results suggest that gender plays a fundamental role in how players are treated in-game and that future research needs to explore the underlying sexism that persists in gaming today.

Authors

• Chantal Turpin, Simon Fraser University

• Bryan Kinney, Simon Fraser University