Tipping Points: Marginality, Misogyny and Videogames

Authors

  • Jennifer Jenson York University
  • Suzanne de Castell University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Abstract

In this paper, we detail the conditions of precarity that women face as marginal subjects in the video games industry and as sexualized objects in its creative and cultural projects. We do so through the documentation of recent examples of violent, vitriolic, and hate-filled speech that has been targeted at women who have either spoken out from those margins, or who have been made the object of ridicule from with within the industry’s ranks. These examples demonstrate a form of extreme gender norm reinforcement that has been challenged through feminist activist work in a number of locales in North America. We also recount two activist projects in Canada that reveal how women remain precarious subjects even as they work to overcome their entrenched conditions of precarity through activist, women’s only groups, concluding with an accounting of a governing social and political order that ontologically re-inscribes women and their potential, actual creative capital and labour as peripheral.

Author Biographies

Jennifer Jenson, York University

Jennifer Jenson is Professor of Pedagogy and Technology in the Faculty of Education at York University, Canada. She specializes in gender/technology studies, media and cultural studies, has done extensive educational technology policy research and writing, and has published widely in these fields.

 

Suzanne de Castell, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Suzanne de Castell is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. She works principally in literacy, new media and educational technology studies as these are informed by critical deconstructive analyses of gender, sexualities and ‘social justice.’

Published

2013-12-06