Oppressive Heteronormative Frameworks

Rebecca Reyes

Pulos, Alexis. “Confronting Heteronormativity in Online Games: A Critical Discourse Analysis of LGBTQ Sexuality in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2013, pp. 77-97.

Summary:

Alexis Pulos examines the ways in which gaming environments have affirmed the heteronormative framework that we see in non-online environments. The oppressive atmosphere off-line is reflected online but in a much more hostile way. In World of Warcraft (Wow), the actual gaming does not have any use for constructed sexual binaries, however, it is strictly embedded in its rules, characters, and players. For example, characters fulfill the stereotypes of males being hypermasculine and female characters are hypersexualized. Already, the game is limiting to how women and men are portrayed, both to the player and fellow gaming community. In addition, any talk referring to LGBTQ is quickly put to a stop, whether it is offensive or non-offensive. Players are given a warning and then banned from the game completely if they continue to discuss LGBTQ matters. This, while stopping offensive language, also causes issues when players want to be supportive of each others’ differences in sexuality. For example, one player made a group for LGBTQ players which was founded on offering players a community in which acceptance, love, and peace were encouraged and anything insulting, prohibited. The game moderators banned the group and gave the creator a strict warning. Lastly, WoW, along with other online games, is largely known for the ways in which players bad-talk each other. Most commonly used are phrases such as “that’s gay”, “faggot,” “stupid queers,” and other hateful language. This is a deep problem because all these descriptors are used to isolate the LGBTQ community into thinking that being gay or queer is a negative thing and something outside of the “normal”.

Response:

I found this article extremely interesting. I found how the game moderators banned a positive LGBTQ group very odd. Their motto was: “peace and unity without judgments or intolerance of others, what they may be” (78). Their reasoning was that they were trying to prevent harassment of players before it occurred. That is completely ridiculous to me. How could they have known whether the group would have been harassed or not? And aren’t they allowed to formulate an environment where they feel respected and connected to others? How can the LGBTQ players feel welcomed if they are not even given the chance to validate their community through online forums?

Pulos makes an interesting argument when he refers to online games as an opportunity to breakdown barriers of race, gender, sexuality, etc. However, the author also states that it appears as though games are not taking advantage of this opportunity. Instead, they are assimilating to the heteronormative and oppressive framework of offline society. By banning this group of LGBTQ players from creating a safe environment to talk and play, they affirmed the intolerant structure that exists.

“Gamer lingo” only adds to and makes it harder to come out of this heteronormative structure that we are currently in. Many comments in the game forums, Pulos writes, are intolerant of the LGBTQ community. Many players are very young and impressionable. Using “gamer lingo” is affirming that being gay is a bad thing since it is used as an insult. If the younger community becomes accustomed to its negative connotation, will they not grow up thinking it is abnormal, bad, or unacceptable?

The last point I thought was interesting was that many people blame the LGBTQ community for the abuse and discrimination they experience. “You can do 2 things to prevent abuse: either do not provoke them by not advertising as LGBTQ friendly, or just ignore the bigots” (87). What effect does that have on someone’s identity? To be disregarded or blamed for the abuse experienced? For them, this user is saying that they must either hide who they are or just accept the comments made as normal without taking offense. That kind of mentality is not progressive. It is ignorance.

Quotations:

“The creation of a LGBTQ guild is not to make a spectacle of queer sexuality but to create a ridicule free environment where ‘minority’ does not imply ‘abnormality’” (89).

“The restructuring of the LGBTQ communities as responsible for their abuse takes responsibility away from perpetrators and works to ignore the systematic issues of oppression at work in this forum” (88).

“If we take seriously the queer potential of digital environments such as WoW, where individuals can simultaneously confront the discursive practices and disrupt the structural powers that resist LGBTQ communities, then we can recognize digital games not as a forum to perpetuate pejorative viewpoints but as focal points to foster a commitment to equality and antisuffering that can transfer to experiences outside the digital spaces” (92).