Abstract
Streaming culture is cultivated by numerous members of various online communities formed by similar interests, most common being gaming as gaming and streaming are closely connected. Streamers are able to create a personal space to connect with those who share common interests online. Twitch, a popular online streaming platform which is focused on the gaming community, act as a host to help construct these personal spaces for streamers and viewers. The gaming community is primarily male-dominated and is a misogynistic environment due to its conservative roots of being a masculine sector, meaning that although in recent years it is more common to see women in the gaming community, they are still subject to various forms of harassment aimed to reject them from the community. This form of treatment translates to Twitch, as the gaming community and streaming community are interlinked, meaning that the demographic of Twitch and gender disparity are parallel. This paper discusses the several forms of sexist responses to women on the platform and its connection to how some women turn to sexualisation of their self or commercialising their femininity in which reinforce the existing gender stereotypes of women in both the gaming and streaming scene in order to belong or compete on the same level as men.
Introduction
Traditionally, the generalised concepts that were used to define ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ have been tied to nature, primarily derived from the concepts of gender, sex and their roles in society (Nash, 2016). However, in modern society, the border in which constricts gender have molded to be flexible due to changes in social expectations, as men and women now have the ability to fulfill tasks from one another’s traditional roles. This proves that the concept of gender is not bound by the sex of individual but rather is capable of evolution (Nash, 2016). This affects the criteria of what is considered to be masculine and feminine, thus meaning that there is no clear-cut definition as to what is masculine or feminine in modern culture (Nash, 2016). This means that there is freedom for men and women to mix into spaces that were traditionally created for one gender, as there is no reason for there to be an excessive focus when the social constructs of femininity and masculinity are not restricted. An example of such spaces that are male-dominated is the gaming community, as most women joined much later due to conservative nature and pressure by society (Uszkoreit, 2017). Despite this, it is evident that women continue to face various forms of casual sexist and discriminatory harassment when participating in male-dominated communities such as streaming and gaming. In the case of Twitch, an online streaming platform that is focused on gaming, it connects both the streaming and gaming community together, marking it as a male-dominated community as well. Twitch streamers can utilise Twitch to create a personal virtual space for the streamer and their viewers to connect, breeding opportunities for personalised hostile interaction as it isolates them from the public sphere. The most common type of harassment women tend to experience on this platform is sexual (Uszkoreit, 2017). This behaviour stems from the stereotype that women are not good at gaming and are less capable, needing the help of men to properly progress (Uszkoreit, 2017). Thus, implying that the viewer’s response to the women on the platform is more focused on their sexual being rather than on their ability and skill to participate in games. This stereotype is a reflection of existing traditional stereotypes of women and how they are damsels in distress, needed to be saved by men, thus showing that these harmful stereotypes take new forms as a way for those benefiting to repossess power against minorities. In an attempt to combat the harassment, most women choose to quit games (Uszkoreit, 2017). However, some women turn to other methods, such as self-sexualisation or commercialising their femininity in order to gain a sense of belonging in the virtual community or to be able to compete at the same level of visibility as men in the streaming scene. This reinforces harmful existing stereotypes towards women in these communities and blurs the lines between content creation and pornography as it broadens opportunities for such and prostitution trends in Twitch.
Points of Discussion
Combining space and Intimacy
Twitch allows for seamless creation of a personal space within a large online community of streamers for the streamer to connect with their viewers whilst showcasing their gameplay, personalising their own personal public space as their own small community. In this process, it allows for the streamer’s realm to merge with the audience’s, creating a shared experience in which both parties are now interlinked. It is not uncommon to see streamers broadcasting from the comfort of their own homes (Ruberg & Lark, 2021). In doing so, this creates a sense of intimacy between the streamer and the audience, as it transforms one’s private home into a shared public space and acts as an invitation into the streamer’s personal life. It can be closely compared to how early ‘camgirls’ operated in the 1990s, as they similarly would perform sex work in their own homes, and the familiar stimulation it provides the viewers (Ruberg & Lark, 2021). This could likely act as a motivator for viewers to leave harmful or demanding comments in the streamer’s chat, combined with the benefit of anonymity due to the nature of online identity protecting them from any possible consequences. This means that it can be very difficult for the streamer to have any chance of properly defending themselves against the harmful acts. This leaves the streamer only a few sets of choices to protect themselves, which is to leave, reject or conform to the community and culture.
Motive behind participation and Representation.
In both the gaming and streaming community, women are either underrepresented or heavily misrepresented with hypersexualised visuals which lead to objectifying views on women. Female video game characters tend to be highly sexualised, which can lead to the acceptance and normalisation of these forms of representation by those observing (Uszkoreit, 2017). This can then translate over to streaming culture, as Twitch connects these two communities, in which 35% of its community are women (Anciones-Anguita & Checa-Romero, 2024). This provides a minor explanation as to why women on Twitch are not as easily accepted on the platform due to the views that have been normalised to the audience in combination with existing sexist stereotypes regarding women and their belonging in a male-dominated space. Not only in the digital world, but in the real world are women underrepresented, as in esports there is a very small percentage of female players to represent the demographic. In most gaming communities, women esports are even put aside as their own subcategory separate from men as it is believed to be easier to motivate women to participate (Yabumoto, 2020). As explained by Victoria, a female Overwatch Esports player, “women need to feel comfortable playing online” (Yabumoto, 2020, para.23). It is likely to believe that the motive of women who push to participate in Twitch, a gender-integrated community despite the toxicity and hostility they may receive as compared to being in a comfortable all-women community is for own personal goal whether it is to gather fame, finance or to advance female representation.
Response to harassment: Visibility and Competition
As mentioned prior in the introduction, the most common form of harassment women typically face in the streaming community is sexual harassment (Uszkoreit, 2017). This can consist of many forms, such as commenting on the individual’s appearance, ridiculing them or sending hostile rape threats to the streamer in their chat. There are multiple various ways in which women respond to the countless events of harassment. One type of reaction is avoidance, in which the result of the harassment leads to women becoming afraid to participate or engage further in such communities. With the context of gaming, this means that women would be afraid to join public voice servers of a game, in which would reveal their identity as a female and mark themselves a target for hostility (Patrick, 2018). Another response is rejection, in which some women who face these events do not give in to the commentary. An example of this would be when there were controversies on how certain clothing were provocative, in which female streamers had collectively joined together to reject this and advocate for freedom in appearance (Patrick, 2018). Despite this, even if women were to decide to reject the pressure, it is still found that they would continue to receive sexist remarks regardless of their efforts (Uszkoreit, 2017). Another response to the harassment is to conform to it. Women face a great amount of social pressure to conform to the standards of beauty formed by hypersexualised representation of women in the gaming community as well as to follow invasive demands such as showing skin in order to appeal to the male gaze (Guajardo, 2022). Historical influence plays a role too on these stereotypes, as women in history were expected to serve men (Selemin, 2024). Not only are women the minority of Twitch, making up only 35% of the streamer population according to the company themselves, but after research it is found that their levels of audience are much lesser compared to men (Anciones-Anguita & Checa-Romero, 2024). In an attempt to combat this data and allow women to compete on a similar level of visibility as men, women have turned to self-sexualisation as it was proven that the amount of feedback in which were positive from subscribers had grown when content is as such (Anciones-Anguita & Checa-Romero, 2024).
Content Creation or Pornography?
After discovering that the response women receive can positively change greatly once the content is sexualised, it becomes difficult to properly establish a clear boundary between what is considered as safe content creation versus borderline commercialised pornography on Twitch. Despite the company setting regulations to control the content being created on its platform, creators can avoid breaking these by abusing certain loopholes, such as mimicking pornographic aesthetics but not showing any nudity. This form of content differentiates itself from legitimate pornography as it does not directly portray sexual acts (Anciones-Anguita & Checa-Romero, 2024). As Twitch streamers are able to receive money from a combination of a portion of their subscriber’s subscription payment as well as donations (Anciones-Anguita & Checa-Romero, 2024), this further blurs the line between the boundaries and opens the question of whether or not this sort of content could be considered as an act of prostitution. This form of content may not only reinforce existing gender stereotypes against women, but could also possibly regress women and the efforts made to progress gender equality existing in online communities.
Conclusion
In summary, there are multiple various factors to explain the hostile and unaccepting nature of the online gaming and streaming communities as well as the coping mechanisms and curated representation to audiences in which women resort to in order to defend themselves or survive within the community. Despite being a gender-integrated space, majority the members of the Twitch community still engage in discriminatory sexist acts against the female participants on the platform. This does not speak for all of the community, as the information does not represent those who were supportive of women.
Reference List
Anciones-Anguita, K. & Checa-Romero, M. (2024). Sexualized culture on livestreaming platforms: a content analysis of Twitch.tv. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02724-z
Guajardo, A. ML. (2022, January 1). “It Sucks for Me, and It Sucks for Them”: The Emotional Labor of Women Twitch Streamers [Paper presentation]. 2022: Proceedings of DiGRA 2022 Conference: Bringing Worlds Together, unknown. https://doi.org/10.26503/dl.v2022i1.1339
Nash, J. (2016). Gender Roles in Modern Society. ONE WORLD EDUCATION. https://www.oneworldeducation.org/our-students-writing/gender-roles-in-modern-society/
Patrick, A. (2018) “Ur so Hawt:” The Role of Gender in Online Streaming [Honours Thesis, University of Memphis]. University of Memphis Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/honors_theses/79/
Ruberg, B. B. & Lark, D. (2021). Livestreaming from the bedroom: Performing intimacy through domestic space on Twitch. Convergence, 27(3), 679-695. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856520978324
Selemin, J. (2024). What Are Gender Roles and Stereotypes? WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/ss/slideshow-sex-drive-changes-age
Uszkoreit, L. (2017). Video Game Live Streaming and the Perception of Female Gamers [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southern California]. ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2183258961?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses
Yabumoto, J. (2020, December 22). Tackling the Separation of Men and Women in Competition. Esports For Everyone. https://www.nasef.org/blog/gender-segregation-in-esports
Hi Shannon Kate, You’re right to ask; it is incredibly difficult to police these issues today. Predatory behaviour isn’t exclusive…