Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming

This book examines gender attitudes in Reddit's popular video gaming communitysubreddit, r/gaming. Video gaming has long been understood as a masculinised socialspace and, while increasing numbers of girls and women now engage in the pastime,boys and men remain the predominant social actors. Furthermore, the gamingcommunity has been widely identified as a prime case study in broader concernsaround 'toxic' masculinity and gendered online harassment. However, there is alsounderexamined evidence of a growing movement in the community coming forwardto voice its collective opposition. Utilising an innovative combination of computationaland qualitative methods, the research undertaken here exposes this fuller picture,revealing significant contestation and a spectrum of attitudes that mark out thispopular gaming community as a battleground for gender (in)equality. Students andscholars across a range of disciplines, including gender studies, media studies, culturalstudies, sociology, games studies and computer sciences, will find this book of interest.