Sherry Turkle’s Tinysex and Gender Trouble – Nottingham Trent University Study Results

Our latest reading about online gaming talked more about gender swapping. In my most recent blog post, I discussed why men chose women identities for their MUD/Second Life characters. Now I will discuss why women choose male identities. This article began with the author’s retelling of her first MUD experience. Her first character in LambdaMOO was an “it” and she felt very uncomfortable. She was instantly receiving sexual advances and innuendos. Turkle then says, “I wondered if playing a male might allow me to feel less out of place.” She later created a new male character and believe it or not she was approached far less frequently, she felt a new sense of freedom, and she felt altogether less threatened. Here we have a reason why women would choose male identities when participating in MUDs. Turkle was more comfortable as a male character because it made her feel less threatened and harassed.

I decided to do some research about female gamers and found this article (Click to enlarge):
The article reviews a study done by the Nottingham Trent University. The study showed that 70% of female gamers choose to construct male characters when given the option by online games. The psychologists conducting the study suggested two reasons for their findings. One was the “sexism and sexual harassment to which women are subjected to online” and the other reason was that “women must face down a whole set of assumptions about their ability to play.” The psychologists are suggesting here that when women play male characters, they have the ability to protect themselves from sexual harassment as well as guard themselves from female gamer stereotypes such as female gamers being lamer and less experienced than male players. This ties into Turkle’s article in that her experience on LambdaMOO corresponds to the study results completely.