Just on the Right Side of Wrong: (De)Legitimizing Feminism in Video Game Live Streaming

Introduction

The norms of live streaming culture, as well as the features of live streaming platforms themselves, support sexist, misogynistic, anti-feminist beliefs and behaviors that have carried over from video game culture (Cullen and Ruberg 2019; Ruberg et al. 2019). This article presents an analysis of conversation threads from several subreddits, dating back to 2014, that were selected for their references to feminism and streaming. These conversations reveal common responses to feminism and feminist attempts at intervention in the sphere of live streaming culture—responses which are dictated in the broader streaming and gaming communities according by misogynistic and anti-feminist ideologies inherent in both subcultures. Analysis of these conversations on feminism and live streaming revealed three patterns of concerns: undue influence from the wrong kind of feminists (as opposed to the “right” kind); the harm that feminists and feminism does to gamers and gaming; and the consequences experienced by women for being, or being perceived as, feminists in live streaming.

Analyzing r/Twitch

To understand the discourse around feminism in video game live streaming, I performed a qualitative analysis of comments posted on several Twitch subreddits, including r/AskFeminists, r/gaming, r/GirlGamers, and r/Twitch. I have previously used a similar method of data collection and analysis for Reddit on threads from r/Twitch to understand how and why terms like “titty streamer” are used to belittle and police the participation of women in video game live streaming (Ruberg et al. 2019). For this present study, I visited Reddit periodically between November 2019 and September 2020 to perform keyword searches for “feminism” and “feminist” paired with words like “streamer,” “streaming,” and “Twitch.” After reviewing every thread result from these searches, I narrowed my focus down to ten Reddit threads that I felt spoke to prevailing attitudes toward feminism and feminists in video game live streaming. The oldest thread I identified for analysis was created in September 2014 and the most recent thread was made in June 2020. These threads varied in length, ranging from five comments on one original post up to approximately 4,000 comments on another. These threads represent participation from thousands of individuals in conversations about live streaming culture. During the time frame of these ten threads, video game live streaming experienced a period of incredible growth and change, Twitch came to the forefront as the leading video game live streaming platform, and cultural events like GamerGate happened in and around the social context of live streaming.

To analyze the selected Reddit threads, I read through all comments on each of the ten threads and identified a series of recurring themes. I next selected comments according to these themes for a close reading to explore both complex details in the discourse on feminism in live streaming and to sketch out the broader implications for being a feminist in games and in streaming. I chose to focus on Reddit threads for this analysis because they offer a documented, text-based record that is more suitable for analysis than actual Twitch chats, which are inconsistently saved on Twitch for only short durations. In addition, analyzing comments about feminism and streaming from multiple subreddits gave me the opportunity to examine how different communities on Reddit and in streaming approach these topics. While Reddit is commonly acknowledged as a “toxic technoculture” that best supports particular forms of masculinity (Massanari 2017), women have also carved out spaces for fostering community and dialog on that platform, like r/AskFeminists and r/GirlGamers. However, most of the threads I selected for analysis in this research come from r/Twitch because the focus with this paper was to understand the continued objections live streamers and their viewers have to the overt presence of feminists and feminisms on the Twitch.

Feminism in Games and Streaming

The resistance to feminism seen in video game and streaming culture is not unique and can be observed more broadly as the popularity and presence of feminism grows across all types of media and platforms. This growth is often met with fear, aggression, and even violence as feminists confront patriarchal structures and highlight inequalities (Banet-Weiser 2018). Banet-Weiser (2018) has argued that feminism is often framed in media as a set of risks to society because “feminism threatens conventional definitions and performances of masculinity” (p. 3). In video games and live streaming, women who play differently, make critiques of the mores of video game cultures, and who perform as streamers in ways that contradict expectations for women in games are often judged as inauthentic or “what is wrong with games” (Ruberg et al. 2019; Taylor 2012). In her book Raising the Stakes, Taylor (2012) described how men who play games have developed their own formulation of masculinity, which she refers to as “geek masculinity,” that exists in tension with more traditional forms of masculinity (p. 112). This tension has led to the development of a form of hypermasculinity in games that encourages sexist and misogynistic behavior as a way of signaling masculine authority and in-group identity (Salter and Blodgett 2017). Although it is well documented that women have been a part of video games since their inception (Chess 2017; Shaw 2014), there persists a harmful masculinity in video game culture that is predicated on “imagined differences between men and women as gamers” (Taylor 2012, 119). The geek or gamer masculinity of the kind that I am analyzing here is rooted in a fear of change and a loss of power represented by the inclusion of feminist ideals. Intrusions from feminine coded objects, people, and ideologies into the spaces of games and streaming (which many consider to be by default both patriarchal and masculine) have been met with resistance for the past several years (Consalvo 2012; Salter and Blodgett 2017) and increased investment in definitions of the “authentic player” that exclude women. Phillips (2020) has reasoned that the community which claims a gamer identity has come to define itself by its resistance to differences and dissent in games, particularly those that are introduced by women and feminists (p. 29). They are attempting to protect a gendered gamer identity that they find valuable due to its powers of exclusion. Perhaps the most infamous case of this resistance is GamerGate, the events of which are discussed in several of the Reddit threads analyzed in this paper.

GamerGate was a series of events in 2014 orchestrated by organized groups using gamified tactics of harassment and violence (in the name of ethics) that were meant to silence feminist critiques of structural issues surrounding games (Cross 2016; Paul 2018; Salter and Blodgett 2017). The ethos of the GamerGate movement was predicated on beliefs that the work of feminists to encourage diversity and equality in video games would ruin their value and authenticity as an experience and a culture. The events of GamerGate were horrible and shocking to the broader public, yet the behaviors and beliefs on display during GamerGate had already been present in mainstream gaming for some time (Gray et al. 2017; Phillips 2020). What is truly notable about GamerGate is how it highlighted the very real consequences that actions taken online can have in everyday life while underscoring how frequently women are forced to grapple with these consequences as part of their everyday experiences in gaming culture (Cross 2016; Gray et al. 2017). Reddit, which has long had a strong association with geek and gamer masculinity, became a staging ground for events during GamerGate and continues to foster spaces that are hostile to feminism (Massanari 2017). Because Twitch’s own infrastructure lacks any place where streamers and users across the platform can interact as an entire community, Reddit and its r/gaming and r/Twitch subreddits often serve that function. Although live streaming is a subculture all its own, it has strong associations with games culture and many of the ideologies underlying video game culture have found new life in the space of streaming. As a result, participating in streaming culture carries the expectation that women must conform to masculine notions of feminine performance in games and the belief that feminism ruins the fun for everyone. ¹

Returning to the previous discussion of toxic geek/gamer masculinity and its resistance to feminism, this research contributes to that body of work by extending its arguments into the space of live streaming. The concerns with gatekeeping and policing video games as a masculine space outlined by Salter and Blodgett (2017) and the subsequent stereotype of the “fake geek girl” (Scott 2019) has found purchase in video game live streaming. The work of live streaming is an embodied one, not only because of the physical effort it takes to play video games while working as an entertainer, but also because most streamers choose to stream with cameras on with their bodies visible to viewers. Live streaming is an economy of visibility, and that visibility increases the potential for experiencing sexism and misogyny (Banet-Weiser 2018). While most women in games may deploy measures for hiding their gender to avoid sexism (Cote 2020), the model of success for streaming pressures women to show themselves while they play. The obvious presence of women’s bodies then prompts concerns that women in streaming adhere to standards that are acceptable to men (Ruberg and Cullen 2020) and that they do not draw undue attention to themselves through inappropriate positioning of their bodies (Ruberg et al. 2019). Live streaming includes a form of toxic masculinity and gamer identity that limits how women may participate and denies any form of feminism that disrupts masculine power.

The Wrong Kind of Feminist

Many of the Reddit threads I analyzed featured a concern with policing the community against a figure described as the wrong kind of feminist. For r/Twitch participants, the preferred form of feminism is a popular feminism that recognizes the need for equality between men and women but conversely does not call attention to any inequalities that may exist in streaming (Banet-Weiser 2018). Throughout this article, my use of the term “right kind of feminist” will be referencing the perception that the only good feminist in streaming is one that accepts the status quo. According to commenters from one r/Twitch thread on “common negative behaviors” seen in streaming, the right kind of feminist does not get offended by the fact that “women are naturally sexually manipulative,” but does get take offense against other women who use their bodies to earn success as a streamer. The right kind of feminist in this conceptualization achieves legitimacy by protecting the meritocracy of streaming. Standing in opposition is the “wrong kind of feminist,” the feminist killjoy who actively denounces inequality, seeks cultural and social changes, and who does not ascribe to a feminism that is more commodifiable to a largely white, cisgendered, masculine audience (Ahmed 2010). But the very idea of a “right kind of feminist” in a post GamerGate world suggests a recognition of the growing popularity of feminism in society on the part of those who previously resisted it. In that sense, supporting any form of feminism is akin to a public relation move on the part of gaming and streaming culture (Cross 2016) to signal that feminists are welcome, but only if they do not seek to change games and streaming.

This perspective is encapsulated in the response to Twitch’s decision in 2016 to promote a Feminist Frequency fundraiser on the homepage. The resulting 4,000-comment thread on r/Twitch was full of outrage as well as commentary on how the event was an outcome of political correctness: “Because if they don’t promote Feminist Frequency the feminazis would accuse Twitch of being a woman hating site.” Despite this reference to the feminazi (the wrong kind of feminist aka the feminist killjoy), much of the outrage on r/Twitch claimed to be motivated by the idea that Twitch would promote any kind of “political view” on its front page when it is a gaming-focused website. A common sentiment in streaming is that games, entertainment, and politics should be separated, as the following Reddit comment illustrates:

A show about Feminism does not belong on Twitch, nor does politics, religious preaching, or anything else that’s not for games or creative, honestly. Twitch was built up as a streaming platform for gamers, I don’t think that it needs to change any more. Adding Creative and Music was a fantastic choice - Feminism and other ideologies just doesn’t belong.

While it is ironic to claim that by promoting any kind of “political agenda” Twitch actively excludes people in a space that had been equal and value neutral, the fundamental belief exemplified by this statement is that feminism is harmful and incompatible with games culture. Many comments in this lengthy thread decried how Twitch’s continued support of organizations like Feminist Frequency would result in an “ideological battleground” that would ruin the platform and community. I will give more attention to the perceived harm done by feminism in streaming in the next section, but for now I want to return to this idea of the wrong feminist by further examining what the streaming community considers to be the “right” kind.

During the 2016 promotion of Feminist Frequency, many comments on the r/Twitch subreddit were expressions of concern that Twitch would so obviously support an extreme brand of feminism that is presumed to be hostile to most Twitch users. The wrong kind of feminism was frequently referred to as “radical” and “extreme,” and “feminazi” was frequently used as shorthand to denote feminists that articulated criticisms. Similar to the policing of who is a “real gamer,” many of these r/Twitch commenters had opinions on who could be considered a “real feminist.” “Real feminists are not obnoxious about their preaching,” said one commenter. Another stated, “Real feminists don’t go around screaming they are feminists. They only speak out if there are true injustices.” The catch is, of course, that speaking out against injustice is likely to get someone labeled as the wrong kind of feminist, because for many gamers and streamers the only acceptable feminist is a silent one. And this has not gone unnoticed by others in the community. As someone pointed out on a r/Twitch thread, “women speaking their mind = feminism.” Again, streaming culture and practices appear to prefer a popular form of feminism that is performative and harmless to the patriarchy. But this does add another layer of complexity to Phillip’s (2020) conclusion that feminists cannot be “real” in the space of games; while it is true that feminist killjoys can never be real streamers, popular feminists can perhaps be real. ²

Feminism is Branded as Harmful

As illustrated in the Feminist Frequency example above, a related theme and concern found throughout these Reddit threads is the belief that the type of feminism that seeks change and draws attention to inequality harms people and communities in games and streaming, both directly and indirectly.

One major topic raised in these threads concerns the consequences of attempting to harm feminists. The public-relations-centered strategy of GamerGate (Cross 2016) evinces a concern with how far some will go to protect the community and how those efforts may backfire. Clearly, feminists are not conceived of as legitimate parts of the community or wrongly injured in these concerns. But those against feminism and feminists in games and streaming are aware of the growing popularity of feminism and the consequences for being obviously against its values. In one r/Twitch thread dated September 2014, a user pitched the idea of creating an anti-feminist themed Twitch channel for playing games like Depression Quest to “take a dump all over it.” ³ This was overwhelmingly panned as a bad idea; not because it would not be popular—many mused that it would be very popular—but because, “we really don’t need this kind of shit storm right now considering all the crap gamers are getting right now for being labeled as bigots and sexists and racists.” The concern of many in these communities is not that harm would be visited on women and feminists, but that there would be consequences to the community that they believe they are defending. Feminism and any backlash against it therefore represents a potential public relations problem in games and streaming that could be harmful to the so-called legitimate or real gamers.

But the most significant form of harm that users attributed to the presence of feminism was the overall defamation and degradation of men and gaming culture by the mere presence of feminism. Feminist killjoys are not seen as members of a larger community trying to improve the media that they love; instead, they are described as an outside group solely motivated by their hatred for men and games. Feminists were described in these Reddit threads as a “hate base bigger than any other hate base” that is “fueled by a sexist hatred of men.” The most damning critique of feminists were that they ruin games for fun; an indirect callout to the figure of the feminist killjoy who they presume has no love of real games and instead has made a game out of killing the joy of others. One r/Twitch commenter on the 2016 Feminist Frequency thread summarized this belief thusly:

The issue is that a loathsome, radical feminist “gamer” group has continuously shit on gaming culture. That they, and many members of the media, have continuously slandered gamers as misogynists, much like people used to call gamers psychopaths and wanna-be murderers for enjoying Grand Theft Auto. They have repeatedly shown they do not care about gaming culture. They do not have any interest in portraying any game with any elements that are deemed remotely offensive to the hivemind of their feminist mentality in a positive light in the slightest.

The emphasis the poster places on “gamer” in the first sentence underscores their belief that the kind of feminist who would point out sexist tropes in games could not possibly be a part of the culture. Feminist players and streamers have come to be perceived as intruders in a space where they are uninterested or even incapable of being properly invested in a love of games. Asserting that feminists do not care about games and that they want to hurt “real gamers” denies them legitimacy as participants in the community with a stake in the future of games. While this attitude has been demonstrated repeatedly in the context of video games, I want to briefly highlight how it has extended to streaming.

In the 2016 thread on Feminist Frequency, one r/Twitch commenter suggested that feminists do not belong in streaming because they do not invest in the streaming community: “I wonder how many feminists were there to help Justin when Twitch was a fledging start-up? How many took on a portion of the financial and personal risk that goes hand-in-hand with creating something out of nothing?” Another replies, “Do feminists ever actually build anything? Or do they just show up after others have taken all the risks and performed all of the hard work and then begin making demands?” These questions are rife with presumptions about the (lack of) feminists working at the corporate level of platforms like Twitch and cast doubt on the legitimacy of any claimed involvement from feminists in the development of streaming culture. It also suggests that the sole intent of a feminist is to take undue credit for, or destroy, the work of others. And furthermore, comments like the ones highlighted here obscure all the meaningful contributions being made by feminists in games and streaming every day.

Feminists are Being Harmed

The final theme revealed by these Reddit threads concerns the ways in which both the right kind and the wrong kind of feminists are treated in streaming communities and highlights the differing consequences of their participation. Despite the harmful forms of masculinity and sexist standards which exist on Reddit, in games, and in streaming, many of the anti-feminist discussions I analyzed in these Reddit threads featured contributions from individuals who identified as the “right” kinds of feminists who had the goal of showing how feminists did in fact make valuable contributions to streaming culture.

A 2017 r/gaming thread about titty streamers introduced the idea that feminist killjoys are doing harm to other kinds of feminists by creating environments where other forms of feminism are oppressed or by promoting behavior that was judged as counter to the feminist agenda. Several users commented that they identified as feminists, but that they also believed that forms of feminism that support “girls who know they are getting attention from their cleavage and still hate when they get called out for it” delegitimize the presence of all feminists in streaming. This concern is similar to the prevailing thought that titty streamers (and the anger they cause) will result in backlash directed at “legitimate” women streamers (Ruberg et al. 2019). However, these popular feminists in gaming who speak out against the wrong kinds of feminists or decry any comparisons are often derided for not taking responsibility for a “flawed movement” filled with “terrible people” with which they are associated. The ironic double standard in this case is that many individuals in the gaming and streaming communities similarly resist taking responsibility for the behavior of their more vocal and violent peers. This is another example of how the streaming community appears to be enforcing a standard of silence when it comes to any kind of feminist critique, even when it comes from the so-called right kind of feminist.

Given this clear preference for more popular forms of feminism on Reddit, it cannot be overstated that being the wrong kind of feminist in games is risky. In one thread from March 2020 a user asked for advice on r/GirlGamers about dealing with possible harassment as a woman and feminist streamer. Several responders commented that being a feminist or a woman in streaming means dealing with and accepting harassment as part of the experience. These women described being stalked, receiving strange packages, and being doxxed in their Twitch channels. While they stated that this is the reality for feminists and women in streaming, they also offered advice on how to avoid being hacked and being doxxed. Some suggested taking measures to hide your appearance, like streaming with no camera, but this advice was accompanied by a rueful acknowledgment of how the dictates of streaming visibility and the Twitch path to partnership encourage streamers to be visible. Hiding personal details and developing a streaming persona for protection were described as essential, even though these measures puts one at odds with the dictates of authenticity in streaming. Feminist Reddit users acknowledged that it was unfair for women and feminist streamers to be expected to “grow a thicker skin,” but as one commenter sadly said, “people are just like that, it’s just the internet.”

The true harm being done in streaming is directed at women, feminists, and anyone who challenges the status quo. Nonetheless, despite these harms there continue to be calls from some in the community to raise the visibility of feminisms that seek to make a difference in streaming. One such voice is Kaceytron, a streamer noted for her controversial performance of a stereotypical titty streamer (Consalvo 2019). Directly commenting on the Feminist Frequency thread on Reddit, Kaceytron said, “I think that we need more feminists on Twitch . . . and I hope that we can make Twitch great again by showing the community that girls can be good at games, too.”

Conclusion

Analyzing these subreddit conversations about feminism in streaming reveals several ironies and double standards. While some of the comments shared here seem to suggest that one form of feminism, popular feminism, is welcome in games and streaming, more still appear to support the belief that feminism is incompatible with games and streaming culture. Feminists are often denied legitimacy as members of the gaming community precisely because of their attempts to make games more inclusive and confront hegemonic masculinity. Even feminists who claim to represent the “right” kind of feminism are expected to be silent and not raise any issues, because vocal criticism denotes the wrong kind of feminist and only “true injustice” deserves attention. It is clear that in the general streaming community the everyday mundanity of harassment faced by women is not perceived as injustice. In many cases, feminist discussions of inequalities and the calling out of bad behavior are framed as being at odds with the gaming and streaming culture, where the whole point is to build an audience, not to hold people to account for their bad behavior.

While for some feminism is what is wrong with games, for many others feminism represents the right way to build community and confront the problems in games and streaming that affect everyone- including those that would deny that feminism has any place in the past, present, or future of streaming.