Queer WoW

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Miranda Aragon 2.22.10 / 1pm

What happens, then, if our orientation turns our bodies in ways they are not supposed to be turned, toward the objects that are not supposed to be there?

I loved this quote. It allowed me to discover that these gaming guilds are more of an outlet for the GLBT community. In a sense, these games are an outlet for any type of community.

The essay explored the dynamics not only between the fantasy characters but the player behind the screen as well. I found it interesting that within “The Others” how they switched on and off between their characters lives and their own personal lives. I wonder if this is common to the other guilds created in WOW.

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1. Phil McMichael 2.22.10 / 6pm
  
  The question I had when reading your post was is it straight people acting out their fantasies or desires in game such as world of warcraft, and is there a difference? Do your fantasies, if they are of a gay nature imply that you are gay? I’m not sure on this one. I would answer it’s one thing to think something, but a whole another thing to act on something.
  
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  1. Holly Arnold 2.22.10 / 6pm
    
    It is interesting to me that the game is a way to “act out fantasies”. While playing as a character though, I feel like one becomes attached to the character, as though it is a manifestation of yourself in a way. At what point does game play go from being an act to some sort of self expression of sexuality?
  2. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 8pm
    
    It definitely strikes me that gaming (and the Internet more generally gives us a space to try on sexualities). And, in response to Phil’s question, maybe the word “queer” opens up a space for more complicated thinking about sexuality, i.e., a person might be straight in the world but might still be queer because they play with their sexuality in WoW. I think the words “gay” or “bisexual” are too fixed in their definitions to do this kind of work. What do you think?
  3. Kate Autera 2.22.10 / 10pm
    
    I like the idea that these gamers don’t necessarily need to be making a statement about who they are or who they wish they were, but instead gives them the opportunity to explore other options which transcend the limitations of their own lives. Isn’t that own of the perks (and maybe the scary parts) of this technology / the use of the internet?
Demy Tabangcura 2.22.10 / 4pm

I think it would be interesting to also ask questions about how these users of WOW view themselves outside of the fictional realm of WOW. I understand that this gaming world is a world in and of itself, with its own rules and lingo, but it is also a product of societal standards and norms that have been inscribed via the creators of the game. However, what can be interesting to focus on is how the development of an online identity serves to reflect the individual him or herself. Reading through this ethnographic study I continued to wonder, how do these individuals see themselves outside the gaming world? If they feel most comfortable coming out online in a “fictive” reality, what impact does this have on coming out in reality? Perhaps people are choosing seemingly less confrontational methods of coming out. Maybe the queer community online does offer some shelter from the repercussions of disclosing an “alternative” sexuality offline. And I would like to examine the real life negative consequences that emerge from such disclosure. How does the gaming world leak into the real world. Or where does the real world end for these individuals, and where does the gaming world begin? Are we allowed to pose the boundaries for them, especially if this gaming world is a real prominent portion of their lives?

I think WOW serves to undermine the common notions sexuality and gender, but also reinforces it with the limitations that are imposed on the players. An individual must either join the GLBT friendly guild or disclose openly his or her sexuality in order to be identified as so. Although it does cause some confusion of whether a male can be using a female character or a feminized character, I think that the game relies on a lot of stereotypes that are reinforced. Why can’t a gay guy use a masculine character? Maybe this is just stemming from my lack of familiarity with the game itself, but this argument can be carried into other online sites that seemingly play with sexuality. On Facebook, you are allowed to choose your sexuality. You can choose whether or not to disclose certain information that can be a giveaway. What this leads to is an examination of why we perform the way we do. Why do we have to consciously think about sexuality and our portrayal of it? The dynamics between self-identity and the identity we wish others to perceive is most notable online. We construct an image, a symbol, of who we view ourselves to be in relation to how we expect others to view us. We assume symbolic representations of our selves because there is a certain expectation of others’ perceptions of ourselves.

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1. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 8pm
  
  After reading your post, Demy, I’m left thinking about the very limited options WoW gives characters for gender identification. Of course, it’s not surprising that the game only allows players to be either male or female, but it limits things even further through choices of hairstyle, facial features, etc. While the player can resist traditional gender conformity within the game or by choosing a sex different from their own when they start, the interface nevertheless influences how they play out gender scripts once in the game. To what extent, can we resist these scripts? Does the online environment make it harder or easier to resist? I think that the Internet is so dependent on language, which seems to limit representation, as you suggest when you talk about “symbolic representation.”
  
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Heather Ray 2.22.10 / 4pm

I don’t know exactly how I feel about this piece. On the surface I found it to be somewhat confusing because I am very unfamiliar with gaming culture and practices. I did, however, find it interesting how the author talked about being perceived as a gay male within the confines of her “The Others” online guild. This struck me as interesting because I feel that queer culture in general tends to be oriented towards gay men. Even in the queer community on campus gay man tend to be the ‘norm’ and queer women are often overlooked or simply absorbed into hetero culture. I’m not sure if this has to do with the culturally different views of female homosexuality vs. male homosexuality, or if it stems from a sort of deeply rooted patriarchy. Either way I think it is something that is interesting to look at.

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1. Kevin Spitznagel 2.22.10 / 6pm
  
  What do you think of her implied reconciliation of it as simply a matter of the “ideal gaymer” being male, since “gaming is habitually coded as a masculine activity”? Is this illegitimate?
  I honestly see it as a more likely rationalization, as, rather than being symptomatic of a deeply rooted patriarchy, the assumption that a gamer is male seems that it has more to do with the codification of activities as masculine or feminine. While this in and of itself does to an extent hearken to a greater class/gender structure (‘leisure activities’ being classically defined as upper-class white male past times) if we’re to take a meta- view of it, I don’t think that it’s necessarily relevant within the precise GLBT rhetoric presented by the article.
  
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2. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 8pm
  
  Heather, isn’t female sexuality made more invisible by culture generally? As an example, would you agree that the sex in most Hollywood movies is designed for primarily male titillation?
  
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  1. Heather Ray 2.23.10 / 4pm
    
    I guess I hadn’t really thought about that much. I suppose generally women are made more invisible in culture. I don’t know that I agree that sex in Hollywood movies is only designed for male excitement, but that it frequently is. I guess that goes to show how patriarchal our society still is today.
3. Austin 2.22.10 / 10pm
  
  It seems to me that if queer theory is more often oriented towards gay men, it’s being used wrong. If self-identified “queer” people are more oriented towards (gay) men, that’s more of a failing of those persons’ understanding of queer than of queer theory on its own. Queer theory, and its ability to whitewash away not just women, but trans people, people of color, the poor and everyone else marginalized by that business we call (white, moneyed) patriarchy is being abused, not utilized.
  
  Queer as an umbrella term, for all of its help alleviating the ampersand problem (like black & gay & female, or G & L & B & T [& I & A]), can’t be useful if by defining itself against homogenization by the culture at large (and largely heteronormative) it, itself, homogenizes.
  
  For that reason, I’m skeptical of the idea of a queer community oriented towards gay men justifying the title OF a queer community. Precision in language is a virtue, and looking to name a community what it isn’t is decidedly not. A GLBT-friendly guild isn’t queer, it’s GLBT friendly. A GSA isn’t queer, it’s a Gay-Straight alliance. A GLBT resource center isn’t queer, either. Even the Queer Initiative doesn’t require queer members, it just seeks queer goals.
  
  I’m not going to argue that GLBT groups don’t trend towards gay men; surely they do. (The pause that results when a woman identifies as gay – only to amend it as lesbian – is representative of this.) But the queer interrogates the very nature of gender, and identifies and exploits privilege. At least in my view.
  
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  1. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 10pm
    
    Agreed, Austin, I’m glad you brought this up. I wondered about this article using “queer” in its title. My brain found queer implications for some of the points raised, but I think this article is using the word “queer” not in a nuanced way but because it’s trendy. I will also say that there is, strangely, not a lot of radical writing on this subject. If anyone’s got a link to another more radical perspective on queer gaming or online cultures, add it here. 🙂
Kevin Spitznagel 2.22.10 / 4pm

Incidentally, I just reactivated my account a few days ago to play with friends and start a new character, so this article couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. While it does seem like some parts of the article are more of an advertisement for joining a LGBT guild in WOW (not saying it wasn’t convincing), I feel that it did still manage to bring up a few interesting topics.
One of the things I came out of it most interested in was not only the performative aspect of play but the associative consequences of that performance. What does it mean for someone who is traditionally masculine to play a female character, or vice-versa? To what degree does the player/avatar distinction blur itself in the process of creating the character itself? Further, in injecting your own personality into the character through in-game interactions with other players, does your character gain some degree of license over your pronoun “I” (Ex: “‘I’ got some new gear) and what does it mean when this happens?
It’s something I’ve always been curious of, as I’ve found that after a while in almost any game I start referring to the main character as “I”. While it certainly only means I the player opposed to I the character in the game, the fact that the association is being made is curious enough. To answer Miranda’s post in part, nearly all of the time that I’ve played, other players are spoken of specifically in reference to the person playing the character, but the sign used is the name of their character in the game. There are some cases where I notice people referring to their characters as autonomous entities, and while these are rare they also outline a necessary set of players. Sunden was spot on when she noted the creation of communities (units of exclusivity based on a homogenous trait, it must be noted. Another curious point of contention) within the game where people interact on a personal level. It’s inevitable, really, and when it comes to the personal aspect, it’s something utterly necessary to the game for it to survive.

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1. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 8pm
  
  To add to these questions, what happens when a player spends most of their free time (or most of their lives) in the WoW. Does the “I” in the game subsume the “I” in the world?
  
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Holly Arnold 2.22.10 / 6pm

I thought that it was especially interesting – the interaction between “playing the game” and “being played by the game”. There is still some of the same stigmatisms about the queer community within the game, yet the game opens up a place for people to experiment with sexuality. Because the queer element bans together it is interesting that any non-queer person can feel strangely out of place and in the minority if they unknowingly ask to join a queer guild.
I feel like because the game has more simple rules than reality, it especially opens up the door to have a queer interpretation. It is easy to deviate from the norm in a game with limited options. This is a two way street, because the queer interpretation, is in turn, limited by the game rules. Chats etc have more of an opportunity to bend rules farther while characters, etc seem more limited in their gender bending.

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1. Jesse Stommel 2.22.10 / 8pm
  
  Maybe, to be truly “queer,” we can’t just break the rules but have to dismantle them… Is this possible in a game like WoW?
  
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Phil McMichael 2.22.10 / 6pm

The idea of anonymity is what I think draws so many people to games like World of Warcraft. It’s much easier to be bold when you don’t have to show your face. When you’re hiding your identity you’re free to do whatever you want (part of the reason Halloween is so huge). My mind is drawn to former Senator Larry Craig. He was caught being a bathroom queen and it ruined his career. Now, if he had played World of Warcraft he would fine because no one would have been the wiser. So, are games like this taking the place of secret sexual meeting places? Are people today able to find the same satisfaction from anonymous sex with a computer screen as with a stranger in a bathroom? I hope not, because when we lose touch with each other, we lose ourselves.

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1. Marian 2.22.10 / 7pm
  
  It seems to me that it can’t be the same satisfaction (anonymous sex with a computer screen and sex with a stranger in a bathroom). But I think the draw is that it can be much simpler and easier. One can definitely hide behind their computer screen and in some way fulfill the desires that seem too scary or unattainable in the real world. Games like WOW easily become an escape. Coming out in the “real world” cannot be a piece of cake for anyone. But online, who is it that is actually coming out? It may be a sort of relief for oneself to think that all of the other players accept this coming out, but I don’t think it can ever really mean the same thing as coming out to your friends IRL.
  
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2. Leda Juan 2.22.10 / 11pm
  
  “So, are games like this taking the place of secret sexual meeting places? ”
  
  No, not taking the place. Hard-core republican senators will still meet in airport bathrooms to receive blowjobs. People will still crave 3-dimensional sexual attention. The computer will never suffice.
  
  “Are people today able to find the same satisfaction from anonymous sex with a computer screen as with a stranger in a bathroom?”
  
  You cannot have sex with a computer screen. It’s not possible. After reading your post, we’ve been trying for several hours and have deemed it extremely difficult if not impossible. And the computer screen is a mess!
  
  But of course, there doesn’t need to be a penis or an orifice or even humping for true pleasure. Sometimes fantasy confined to the imagination is just as gratifying as sexual intercourse in its various forms. Even if the levels and types of satisfaction derived from virtual computer sex (essentially masturbation) and stranger sex are different, both can still satisfy.
  
  “I hope not, because when we lose touch with each other, we lose ourselves.”
  
  By having sex with others, whether virtually, anonymously, casually or intimately, we inevitably increase touch with Each Zhuther. So, no risk there of losing ourselves.
  
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  1. Lyndsey Weiss 2.23.10 / 5pm
    
    No, not taking the place. Hard-core republican senators will still meet in airport bathrooms to receive blowjobs.
    
    I thought this was great, just saying. Moving on, I agree. I feel that people really like gaming on computers because it increases anonymity and there is a risk of getting a little too in touch with only the web world, but physical contact will always be necessary too.
3. Heather Ray 2.23.10 / 4pm
  
  I think it is an interesting point you make about loosing ourselves when we lose touch with each other. Isn’t that sometimes the allure of online anonymity? We are free to be whoever we want without feeling tied to who we actually are. Additionally we are able to do and say things much outside our normal ‘comfort levels’. We are quite literally encouraged to create an alternate persona.
  
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Marian 2.22.10 / 8pm

The most intriguing bit of this essay was the game’s seemingly intentional playing with bisexuality in the “Love is in the Air” Valentine special. Opening up the idea that attraction can be based only on scent is absolutely queer. From flipping out about a GLBT-friendly guild to explicitly allowing gender/sexuality play, Blizzard crosses a big bridge. My toes squirmed in delight at the idea of Xarro’s making out “with each and every male Stormwind guard” just by (apparently) wearing a good bit of perfume. If only day to day life at school were so simple, right?
In this way the internet definitely opens up more options for queerness. The rules can be bent. On Facebook, for example, you can “marry,” “be in an open relationship with,” “be complicated with,” etc anyone at all except yourself (I just tested this theory and was slightly bummed that I couldn’t marry myself). I suppose one option it doesn’t give is to be in a relationship with more than one person at once. Even so, one will see nowhere near as many experiences in real life where a friend will go up to his/her parents and say, “Mom. Dad. I’ve decided to marry my best friend. No, we’re not gay; it just sounded like fun. We pressed the button, so it’s official. But don’t worry, if I find a boyfriend it will quickly end.” That might lead to some fairly complicated situations in reality. But online, it offers just one of many ways of making sexuality something to be played with- something that doesn’t need to be so limited or taken so seriously and black and white. Thus I do believe that online communities open up some of the doors to playing with sexuality and queerness.

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Logan 2.22.10 / 8pm

I’ve gotta say, I actually really didn’t like this article, which is surprising, since I’m a sociologist and a person who does a lot of work with queer theory. The author definitely brought up some good points and made some good connections to queer theory, but it was kind of excruciating…

The transcripts of the chats between players and then her sort of translating them for us non-WOWers really bothered me for some reason that I can’t quite pinpoint. It was really hard for me to get through the article, and I’ve read some pretty painful ethnographies before…

I will say something I do find interesting that there is always the constant assumption that a player is in real life a man, and that the author find herself having to try and prove that she was actually a woman in real life. I think Jesse said his character is a female elf. I wonder what kinds of things the author has to say that actually “work” to convince these people that she’s a woman. And, of course, there’s the question, why does everyone care so much? but I know, I mean, it’s totally different and this whole own subculture that I don’t get. I thought that reading this might make me understand it a little better but it didn’t.

I do think that things like twitter/facebook/myspace and the internet in general have given people the opportunity to play around more with identity and presentation of identity to others. you can create whatever name you want for yourself on things, and you can pick which of the gender designations to select, or if you are on facebook, you can leave the gender boxes unchecked. I think there’s definitely something to talk about there, and this researcher is onto something, it’s just not holding my attention.

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1. Austin 2.22.10 / 10pm
  
  I’m thrilled you said you didn’t like this article. My own dislike for it I had to temper with the knowledge that I don’t study sociology, and perhaps its form turned me off in a way that it wouldn’t have if I were differently inclined. Thanks.
  
  And the transcripts bothered me, too. The author seemed more intent on breaking down the jargon/innuendo than giving any real analysis. It was more of a protracted “listen to this funny thing that happened to me” story, as if told by a friend of a friend whom you’ve never liked and doesn’t understand the nature of funny things.
  
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2. Kevin Spitznagel 2.22.10 / 10pm
  
  Honestly, it feels like there were a lot of interesting issues that could’ve been brought up like identity, anonymity, etc, but they were all ignored in favor of what ultimately felt like a forced argument with no real purpose. Pretty much hit the nail on the head here.
  
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  1. Ryan Rheingold 2.23.10 / 3pm
    
    I totally agree with you…I feel like she could have at least intermingled the ideas or touched base on a few of the topics. Although the article definitely made you think of those issues, so in a way maybe they are apart of it.
  2. Lyndsey Weiss 2.23.10 / 5pm
    
    I 100% agree with you! I always felt like she was getting somewhere good and then her argument just stopped.
3. Jesse Stommel 2.23.10 / 12am
  
  You’ve probably read more sociological writing than I have, Logan. Does it generally have this feature that Austin mentions? Does it often attempt to describe the world without offering much in the way of analysis? It makes some amount of sense given how new WoW is. Perhaps, people haven’t really figured out *how to analyze it yet? And so, the article could be seen as a (very small) first step.
  
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  1. Logan 2.24.10 / 5pm
    
    “”The self … is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented” – Erving Goffman
    
    In general, I would say that most sociology articles do describe things and attempt to analyze them, like Austin was searching for. I kept waiting for her analysis or framework to show up, but like Lyndsey said, she just kind of got cut short each time. There wasn’t really a framework or lens that I could identify that she was looking at things through, which usually comes first in a socy article.
    
    You may be right, she may be in the beginnings of developing a new way to look at all of this, but there are certainly plenty of theories she could have drawn on. I think she’s pretty into social constructionism, she touched on deviance, and I would be curious to see if she had any thoughts on the translation or lack thereof in work like Erving Goffman and “The Presentation of Everday Self” – symbolic interactionism, ritual, life in opposition and performance to those around us…he writes about people acting/performing as actors in our daily lives… i think his work could definitely be used to look at WOW.
    
    I’m also pretty sure there are a number of WOW articles, but I may be wrong. I should look into it.
4. Demy Tabangcura 2.23.10 / 3am
  
  Well, to answer your question Jesse, this ethnographic study cannot, and should not, be used to make any generalizations about the greater society simply because I don’t believe that the researcher used random sampling in picking her research participants. What I learned in my field methods class for sociology is that when using convenient sampling, the findings should not be used to make overarching statements about society, but can only be used as a glimpse into a specific area of study for a specific group. She used people with whom she found a relation, and therefore theorizing about larger society, and having this small sample stand in for the a greater portion of this supposedly “queer” gaming guild is a “violation” of sociological rules. Haha! But I conducted my own research on online gay identities as my assignment for the field methods class so I can identify with the sociological writing she puts forth. It is boring to me though, simply because I felt she was giving more of a lesson in online jargon than actually giving me a glimpse into the world that is WoW.
  
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Sofia 2.22.10 / 9pm

I thought the article was quite informative to me, because I really dont know anything about internet gaming in general.
The only thing about it that is iffy to me is that when you are taking on a role of a character, is it really you? or what you want yourself to be?
I think that these groups are good to have because it makes the games more every-one friendly and anyone has a group that welcomes them, but I still find it quite interesting.
Part of me thinks its good to be able to express yourself in different ways and expiriement with different roles that might intrigue you. But the scary thing about these games, to me is that it seems so easy for someone to lose touch with who they really are.
I think it just has two sides,a very good one, but also somewhat bad if it turns into an obsession with the avatar vs. the actual gamer.

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Leda Juan 2.22.10 / 10pm

Greg! Why haven’t you posted yet? Are you feeling alright enough to post? We look forward to your post. We’re about to post. In fact we’re posting now. Your post will be post our post. This is our post.

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Kate Autera 2.22.10 / 10pm

I would definitely agree that this article was a little bit tough to get through as a non-WoWer. Guilds? Red quests? Is it a game that focuses more on the social aspect than a competition? However, I still see the focus on queering ideas of gender and sexuality in this anonymous format that leaves room for so many assumptions. This made me think back to internet chatrooms for AIM. As a middle schooler I was able to be who ever i chose with just a few clicks… a girl who likes boys, a girl who likes girls, a boy likes boys, a boy who like girls. There was no need to follow through on an sort of curiosity, but I had definitely took the opportunity to explore- and I assume I was not the only one. Should this freedom to act without consequences be encouraged? Or are we, as previously mentioned, forming a shy and dishonest culture with fewer and fewer personal connections?

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Leda Juan 2.22.10 / 10pm

“The objects of our orientations matter to how we turn and to whom, they matter to how we move through and inhabit the (game) world.”

This sentence is perhaps referring to sexual orientation and the people you are attracted to. Or it could be referencing celestial bodies, except for the pronoun our, which alludes to the author of the text and to her respective group included in the ‘our’ – namely the people in the (game) world. But if it is an allusion to the celestial bodies, it indicates some laws of physics, or a constancy which doesn’t necessary correspond to a fictional world programmed according to the imagination of humans. But it’s not.

One striking feature of this sentence was that game was in parenthesis, almost as an afterthought. Since her entire study finds its basis in the WOW community, it seems quite an extrapolation to make references to the world at large. The game world affords people with an alias free of danger, or consequences. In contrast, the world doesn’t allow you to assume mythical identities at will, or sexual ones for that matter. So it would seem that the game world and the world would be two entirely different places, yet “the (game) world” fuses them in an inextricable unity.

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1. Jesse Stommel 2.23.10 / 12am
  
  Great points here. Love the analysis in your second paragraph. Do you think she might be suggesting that the “game world” is (or can be) the “world” for some people? Are some of us spending so much time online that our “world” is now online? Or, maybe, is she suggesting that what we do in (and how we shape) the “game world” becomes a metaphor for how we interact with the “world” more generally? Is there a way in which we are all becoming more anonymous, a way in which our (real) world identities are becoming more and more like an alias? But, yes, the (real) world certainly has a different set of consequences from the (game) world.
  
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  1. Demy Tabangcura 2.23.10 / 3am
    
    But don’t those users of the game world view its use as a part of their reality? Who is to say that we can define for them the boundaries of reality and unreality. How serious do some people take this game exactly? Maybe, these users of WoW identify so much with their “characters” that it is an extension of themselves. And who is to say that being reprimanded or ridiculed in a fictional realm cannot have real consequences in the “real” world? I mean, there are real people behind the aliases. Is one really free of danger, especially with the conflation of a game-self and a real-self?
Anna Neefe 2.23.10 / 2pm

The first thing that struck me was the straightening devices. This made me think of a question that I think about a alot: if I am not straight am I somehow crooked? or squiggly?

Also, i like the idea of social dimensions becoming more a part of gaming online. I think it is good and important because the more people acknowledge queerness, the more acceptable it will be. I think the WOW scene isn’t all that different from real life. When it comes to discrimination anyway. Its a shame that queer gamers dont feel able to come out even online where they may not even know the other people.

It is very interesting that after the uproar about the GLBT friendly zone, the makes made bisexuality possible. I think it shows progressiveness.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this article. It really opened my eyes to all the various ways queers are treated differently. Also, it introduced me to transgressive play, something I have never thought about.

*Sorry this is a day late, I was very slow at checking my email 🙂

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Ryan Rheingold 2.23.10 / 3pm

What really stuck out for me in this article was the duality between the player and the person. Which is your true self? Are you a person acting out a fantasy, or a player acting out your reality? The greatest part about this, is that you no one will ever know unless you tell them; and even then they’d have to believe you. Is a person who they are…or who they want to be? The article brought up a lot of interesting questions that I would love to see explored.

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1. Anna Neefe 2.23.10 / 4pm
  
  Ryan, I like the questions you ask. I think that the gamers online self is a mixture of who they are in reality and who they want to be. For example, the cologne/purfume thing allowed the elves to get the attention of either male or female elves based on what they smelled like. This allows the real person to express themselves, but in a way different than how they would do it in reality.
  
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Lyndsey Weiss 2.23.10 / 5pm

This article confused me a lot. Never having played WoW, I may as well have been reading Gertrude Stein again for a lot of the time. I found what the author was saying about the GLBT community within WoW really interesting, but every time I would start getting into it she would say something very technical and I would lose my train of thought. I just feel like a little more description could have been helpful for those readers like me that had no prior knowledge of the game.

I definitely agreed with her as far as the stereotypical gamers’ identity. I love playing video games just on Nintendo systems but no one ever believes I would be good because I’m a girl. (Which I really don’t get because I don’t see why being a boy would help you move your thumbs in a particular way?) Anyways, so I found her point interesting that no matter what gender your character has, you’re assumed to be a boy anyways. I feel like she was making pretty good points throughout the article, I just feel like if I knew a little more about the game to begin with I would have liked the whole article more.

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David Ryan 2.24.10 / 1pm

When I was watching ‘hedwig and the angry inch’ last night many of these contradictions stood out (helpful article to anaylze the movie). Is hedwig really a male or a female? Either way, she/he possesses both male and female qualities. Maybe the people in WoW who make themselves different sexes identify with those genders more than their true genders. Even though some people may change character’s genders for fun, they will still be seeing the world through a different perspective, or is that the perspective that they already see or sometimes see themselves as? I like the dynamic of not having to be just either female or male, but instead everyone could be a little bit of both. It could be just like a ratio and only portions of personalities are male/female. Other parts may be neither, but we all have the right to express both.

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Rebecca Preston 2.26.10 / 12pm

Reading this article was interesting, partly because I have never played video games, but also because the arguments raised seem to be real world references manifested in interactive form.

I was kind of disturbed in the second page upon reading how depending on what a character comes in contact with will queer it because it almost backs up the notion of “recruiting” or “creating” gay/queer people. The line, “New lines of direction are formed when bodies make contact with objects that are not supposed to be there – such as (other) queer bodies. Pulled by desire, and through their contacts with other objects, the orientations of bodies shift,” is the one that distinctly triggers this emotion in me. This is being described though queer actions and reactions via this online gaming resource, but this is how real people build their characters.
I also thing it is really interesting, the idea, of how the gamers get played by the game making it not only a play on the interactive actions, but the sexual and relationship connotations that the game promotes.
Another terminology at the end of the reading talking about “queer leakages” is one of the most interesting and very quickly talked about passages. I think the idea of a queer leak is very intriguing as it talks about how in any society, though there will be groups of people formed based off the commonality of being “queer”, that there will be people that will exist and live in the “normalized” world as queer leaks. I love that. I think that is very telling to how a lot of people exist presently and how to survive in communities where have a gay guild isn’t always an option.

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Demy Tabangcura 2.28.10 / 11pm

Though this was funny. It reminded me of the article. Simply because of the topic. But because the video is queer. But you should watch it regardless of its irrelevance to the topic.

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1. Demy Tabangcura 3.1.10 / 2am
  
  So I just noticed all the mistakes in my post…
  
  Thought this was funny. It reminded me of the article. Simply because of the topic. But you should watch it regardless of its irrelevance to the topic.
  
  Here’s the grammatically correct version…
  
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