This paper scrutinizes the feminization of backseat gaming by examining the successful YouTube gaming reviews channel, Girlfriend Reviews. As video games are considered a male-dominated hobby, this channel, which provides the perspective of a male gamer’s girlfriend offers a compelling case study to explore the ways in which women can access the gaming community. Through analyzing the opinions and sentiments expressed in the comment sections, we explore how viewers engage with the channel and why they support or condone it. We argue that viewers gravitate toward the channel for three significant reasons: the girlfriend being (1) a supportive backseat gamer, (2) who holds no prior knowledge on gaming, and (3) does not engage with feminist discourse. We argue that the position of “the girlfriend”/“backseat gamer” provides women an alternative pathway into the gaming community. However, moments of pushback demonstrate the fragility of women’s position in such presumed male-dominated communities.
AronsonJ. (1995). A pragmatic view of thematic analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2 (1), 1–3.
2.
AssunçãoC. (2016). “No girls on the internet”: The experience of female gamers in the masculine space of violent gaming. Press Start, 3(1), 46–65.
3.
BoyatzisR. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
4.
BryceJ.RutterJ. (2005). Gendered gaming in gendered space. In RaessensJGoldsteinJ (Eds), Handbook of computer game studies (pp. 301–310). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
5.
ChessS. (2020). Play like a feminist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6.
ChessS. (2017). Ready player two: Women gamers and designed identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
7.
ChessS.ShawA. (2015). A conspiracy of fishes, or, how we learned to stop worrying about #GamerGate and embrace hegemonic masculinity. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59 (1), 208–220.
8.
CondisM. (2018). Gaming masculinity: Trolls, fake geeks, and the gendered battle for online culture. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
9.
CoteA. C. (2020). Gaming sexism: Gender and identity in the era of casual video games. New York, NY: NYU Press.
10.
CoteA. C. (2017). “I can defend myself”: Women’s strategies for coping with harassment while gaming online. Games and Culture, 12 (2), 136–155.
11.
DickeyM. D. (2006). Girl gamers: The controversy of girl games and the relevance of female‐ oriented game design for instructional design. British Journal of Educational Technology, 37 (5), 785–793.
12.
EklundL. (2011). Doing gender in cyberspace: The performance of gender by female World of Warcraft players. Convergence, 17 (3), 323–342.
13.
FoxJ.TangW. Y. (2017). Women’s experiences with general and sexual harassment in online video games: Rumination, organizational responsiveness, withdrawal, and coping strategies. New Media & Society, 19 (8), 1290–1307.
14.
GrayK. L. (2012). Intersecting oppressions and online communities: Examining the experiences of women of color in Xbox Live. Information, Communication & Society, 15 (3), 411–428.
15.
GriffithsM.LewisA. (2011). Confronting gender representation: A qualitative study of the experiences and motivations of female casual-gamers. Aloma: Revista de Psicologia, Ciències de l'Educació i de l'Esport, (28), 245–272.
16.
JensonJ.de CastellS. (2011). Girls@ Play: An ethnographic study of gender and digital gameplay. Feminist Media Studies, 11 (2), 167–179.
17.
KubikE. (2012). Masters of technology: Defining and theorizing the hardcore/casual dichotomoy in video game culture. In GajjalaR.OhY.J. (Eds.), Cyberfeminism 2.0 (pp. 135–152). New York, NY: Peter Land.
18.
KubikE. (2009). From girlfriend to gamer: Negotiating place in the hardcore/casual divide of online video game communities (doctoral dissertation). Bowling Green State University.
19.
LiuB. (2011). Web data mining. data-centric systems and applications. Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer.
20.
LoreckJ. (2018). Pleasurable critiques: feminist viewership and criticism in Feminist Frequency, Jezebel, and Rosie Recaps. Feminist Media Studies, 18 (2), 264–277.
21.
MaloneyM.RobertsS.CarusoA. (2018). ‘MmmI love it, bro!’: Performances of masculinity in YouTube gaming. New Media & Society, 20 (5), 1697–1714.
22.
McKeeH. A.PorterJ. E. (2009). The ethics of internet research: A rhetorical, case-based process. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
23.
McLeanL.GriffithsM. D. (2019). Female gamers’ experience of online harassment and social support in online gaming: A qualitative study. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 17 (4), 970–994.
24.
MohammadS. M.TurneyP. D. (2013). Crowdsourcing a word-emotion association lexicon. Computational Intelligence, 29 (3), 436–465.
25.
MortensenT. E. (2018). Anger, fear, and games: The long event of# GamerGate. Games and Culture, 13 (8), 787–806.
26.
NakandalaS.CiampagliaG. L.SuN. M.AhnY. (2017, May). Gendered conversation in a social game-streaming platform. Proceedings of the 11th International AAAI Conference on wWeb and sSocial Media. Montreal, Canada.
OrmeS. (2021). “Just watching”: A qualitative analysis of non-players’ motivations for video game spectatorship. new media & society, https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444821989350
29.
OrmeS. (2016). Femininity and fandom: the dual-stigmatisation of female comic book fans. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 7 (4), 403–416.
30.
PaaßenB.MorgenrothT.StratemeyerM. (2017). What is a true gamer? The male gamer stereotype and the marginalization of women in video game culture. Sex Roles, 76 (7), 421–435.
31.
PhillipsA. (2020). Gamer trouble: Feminist confrontations in digital culture. New York, NY: New York University Press.
32.
R Core Team. (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Retrieved fromhttps://www.R-project.org/
33.
RatanR. A.TaylorN.HoganJ.KennedyT.WilliamsD. (2015). Stand by your man: An examination of gender disparity in League of Legends. Games and Culture, 10(5), 438–462.
34.
RubergB.CullenA. L.BrewsterK. (2019). Nothing but a “titty streamer”: Legitimacy, labor, and the debate over women’s breasts in video game live streaming. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 36 (5), 466–481.
35.
SalterM. (2018). From geek masculinity to Gamergate: The technological rationality of online abuse. Crime, Media, Culture, 14 (2), 247–264.
36.
SalterA.BlodgettB. (2017). Toxic geek masculinity in media: Sexism, trolling and identity policing.New York, NY: Springer.
37.
SalterA.BlodgettB. (2012). Hypermasculinity & dickwolves: The contentious role of women in the new gaming public. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56 (3), 401–416.
38.
ShenC.RatanR.CaiY. D.LeavittA. (2016). Do men advance faster than women? Debunking the gender performance gap in two massively multiplayer online games. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 21 (4), 312–329.
39.
ToddC. (2015). Commentary: GamerGate and resistance to the diversification of gaming culture. Women's Studies Journal, 29 (1), 64–67.
40.
ValentinA. (2020) Real love? Authenticity as capital in Let’s Play culture. In PandeR. (Ed), Fandom, now in color (pp. 250–264). Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
41.
VossenE. (2018). On the cultural inaccessibility of gaming: Invading, Creating, and reclaiming the cultural clubhouse (Unpublished doctoral dissertation or master's thesis). Canada: University of Waterloo.
42.
WilliamsD.ConsalvoM.CaplanS.YeeN. (2009). Looking for gender: Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers. Journal of Communication, 59 (4), 700–725.
43.
YeeN. (2006). The labor of fun: How video games blur the boundaries of work and play. Games and Culture, 1 (1), 68–71.
