I’m a gay woman and I play video games. I don’t call myself a gamer, or a gaymer, or a girl gamer–not because I think any of those terms are in any way invalid, but because that is just a minefield I do not feel nearly equipped enough to navigate. Marginalized people who do? Kudos. Kudos kudos kudos. There aren’t enough in the world for you.
The gaming community is, to put it sensitively, terrifying. It looks a bit like if you took society and pressure cooked it until it exploded. Because as much as we’d love to say that these sorts of things–fandom communities or the gaming community or what have you–are separate beasts from society, they absolutely live within them. The gaming community is our social community. You have probably met somebody in The Real World™ who’s launched a gendered slur into the terrible void that is Zoe Quinn’s mentions on Twitter. It’d be great to look at the gaming community and say “at least the rest of society isn’t like that!”, but unfortunately, that’s just not how it works.
If society’s Dr. Frankenstein and the gaming community is his creation, well, they’re both monsters in the story.
Calling myself a gamer or by any other title is an inherently political move, being who I am. Calling myself a gamer is cause for an immediate interrogation into my credentials, skills, and even my identity and femininity. So, I’m a gay woman and I play video games. That’s as far as I’m willing to take it for now.
As a gay woman who plays video games, I have a complicated relationship with diversity and, specifically, how the industry seems to assume I want it. I’m gay, which means I like women, which means I want to see them sexualized, right? I’m basically just a straight guy but a woman. Except that’s just the thing–I’m a woman. I can’t speak for all queer women, but oddly enough, seeing women being reduced to sex objects just doesn’t do it for me as a woman attracted to women. There’s a fundamental disconnect between what straight men think queer women want–which is basically considered to be exactly what straight men would want, if it is considered at all–and what queer women do want.
Video games, then, become rather difficult to navigate. I love a game where I can play a queer character, but there’s the constant worry of gaze. When I’m playing a game like Mass Effect–my admitted game of choice–I have to be really careful in how I play it. If there is a relationship possibility between queer women, I have to worry about whether it’s going to be solely portrayed as titillating to the male gaze or a fully realized relationship. I have to worry about things like costuming, camera direction, changed dialogue, music, setting, acting… At any point there is the threat of a romance between queer women being framed as something for male consumption. My relationship as a queer woman gamer to these romances is secondary or negligible at best. I’m fortunate with Mass Effect: I find the main queer romance palatable. But it’s by far the exception, not the rule.
Interacting with gaming as a gay woman is complicated. I’d imagine that interacting with gaming as anyone other than a straight cis white man likely has similar complexities and challenges. Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to just shut my brain off and enjoy–and believe me, I would love that–it’s just patently impossible for me being who I am.