Gaming: Avatar, Gender-swapping, Sexualisation of Avatars
In this section I would like to study the interactions between Humans, Technologies and Drag. Indeed, in the gaming world there is a whole history of performing gender in an exaggerated way with the avatar and I would like to see how this works, how the character that we create is a form of performing drag sometimes. As a queer person who has struggled a lot to define his gender, video games and platforms have been away to escape in somebody else's body for me. Most of the time, when I use to play any Role-play games in which a gender had to be chosen I would choose to play a girl. Not because I wanted to be a girl, even though because of that I have been confused with my gender for a moment, but because it was an escape and escape from my reality where being a boy, according to society was not being who I was because I loved classical dancing, horseback riding, dolls, music, 'girls' movies, I have always had more girl friends then male friends so being a girl sometimes in my imagination could be relieving because I could escape the reality where being a 'feminine' boy was wrong. Thus, I dressed up sometimes but I mainly expressed it through video games because it was easier not to be judged by my family, I was just playing with an avatar. I started on World of Warcraft and then I went on unto a RPG platform which was a like a online Hogwarts where you had the opportunity to be a student, complete homework and create stories with other members using a character you created yourself. I chose to play a girl on this first RPG platform. Time went by and I continued to exclusively play with girls characters it felt more fun and confortable, as if I was really leaving an disembodied experienced in a fictional world. At the time I didn't understand at all the power that drag could have over the performer and the audience, however I think I had a slight idea of what kind of reactions performing as another gender would receive because I usually didn't display the fact that I was a boy behind the screen because I was scared of judgement. I knew that gender-swapping wasn't accepted in public and in society so I wouldn't see why it would be accepted on an internet platform.
I would say that gender-swapping in video games or RPG platforms is not as much as a fight against society that finding a sense of comfort online: "cisgendered females sometimes choose male avatars to avoid misogyny within the game and cisgendered males sometimes choose to play female avatars to attract attention and elicit more positive responses from other players (Jenson et al, 2015; Chou, Lo & Teng, 2014). In addition, gender- swapping has also been found to be popular for players who want to experience an identity they cannot experience in their non-virtual life, also known as playing in fantasy" (111). While it offers an opportunity for transgression and to protect oneself from sexist comments, gender-swapping isn't always a good thing on platform as sometimes some men would use it because they would prefer watching a woman's body for hours than a man's one while playing for hours, supporting the male's gaze: "Posts like these accept the idea that the female body is an object to be looked at." (116). However, I would still consider it a performance depending on the game, but because it is fiction I think it works like stage drag, people accept it because they feel like it is controlled and still very unreal, if it comes to the street way more people are going to be against it. The only thing that could work maybe is making a female role-lead character in a 'male' action video game like for Lara Croft: "The insertion of a female avatar, Laura Croft, into the typically masculine storyline of looting, killing and adventuring, puts the character of Croft into a sort of “drag” in order to transgress dominant ideas of masculinity and femininity." (112) However her character, even if it stands against the fact that women must be feminine, it is complicated to say that people perform drag through it, however the character itself is performing a sort of drag.
Matviyenko gives another example about gender performance in video games with Second Life in which genital parts are attachable and removable, which make avatars interact with immaterial objects, this can be linked to the Objects as Part of the Drag Persona part :
I think it is really interesting because it means that sexuality is also played on the platform, which was truly also for my RPG experience and something that is sometimes forgotten in a drag performance and can be an integrant part of the drag persona. The fact that the avatar, performing as a subject performs its gender in different way that are essential only to the platform (through instant messages and graphics). In my own experience the way that my characters developed their gender was through graphics too, with the image of the star I was giving to represent my character and that the other saw when I interacted with them. My characters gender was also represented through their biography post that was useful to present them and through all the collective short stories I was making with other players on the forum."Second Life offers the default male and female avatar patterns without genitals. In Second Life, the subject performs a gender identity in several ways—discursively (through instant messages) and by means of representation (through graphics). [...] Second Life offers the default male and female avatar patterns without genitals. In Second Life, the subject performs a gender identity in several ways—discursively (through instant messages) and by means of representation (through graphics). [...] On Second Life, one meets ‘shemales’, cross-gendered char- acters, ‘genderqueers’ who identify themselves as straight in real life, and vice versa." (43)
As I wrote it above, I never really had the feeling that I was performing a type of drag until I really started getting into RPG and writing, while I wrote more and played more with people on the platform, the characters I used to embody would become more and more a part of a who I am, and it is still really hard for me when I abandoned one of them because I got really attached and I definitely grew by performing them through my writing. Most of it usually started by creating a story and choosing a star to represent my character, it is often a long process to create and have a character in a corner of your head that you can get out when you want to write from times to times. I really like it because it allows me to experience my gender while still being protected from any repercussion and just play with words and my imagination. I did some male characters too, sometimes I really like to make them hyper masculine so that I explore another part of me that I don't know. I think it was a gender performance that challenged the fiction-reality binary, because sometimes when you perform as another person it is hard to distinguish what they are for you and what you are to them: "cyberspace has been often described as either a realm where users can discover their so-called ‘true Selves’, or where users acquire new identities through whose performance in the virtual realm they may eventually become in reality what they have created on-line." (39) I know that video games definitely changed my way to see gender and helped me see gender as a spectrum rather than a binary through the gender performances I had.
