A few weeks ago I made the mistake (as I often do) of getting into a debate about feminism on Facebook. I’m not sure why I do this. By now, I surely should have learned. But when it starts, I’m like a moth drawn to flame. I just can’t stay away.

Somehow, during the course of the conversation, things shifted from feminism in general to feminist gamers—specifically #gamergate.

“Look at Gamergate. A bunch of girls refused to believe that men and women think differently. They wanted to partake in the predominantly male community and claimed that they felt dismissed because of misogyny.



What happened? They joined in on the “fun” and freaked out when male gamers started treating them with the same competitive condescension that guys typically found to be hilarious.”

This, of course, wasn’t particularly surprising. For anyone who followed the craziness of #gamergate, this was a pretty common argument. The fuss was just a bunch of non-gamers who shoved their way into the boys-only club and then got offended when it wasn’t dressed up in pink with pretty ribbons and unicorns. This was….well…not fine, exactly, but expected. I was prepared.

I pulled up my research, my bookmarks, and my personal experience, armed with statistics that proved that women weren’t a small fraction of the gaming population, and they weren’t all new gamers. This wasn’t a “sudden trend.” We’ve been here for a good long while, and I had proof.

….Except that proof didn’t matter.

“lol @ the gammer community stats. Candy crush saga is not a real game but yet, shitty mobile games are still counted in your statistics.” “I hate arguing with articles from experience because they never make sense. I am more than just a little social for starters… And I was playing Warcraft 1 when it was first released. I am calling 100% bullshit on this. They would have to have hidden a demographic somewhere underground all this time. “ “Go find me ten girls that can go on in great depth about Balder’s Gate, Icewind Dale, System Shock, Black and White, Brigandine and War Craft 1-3, and I will believe 10% of the gaming population are women at best. And that that is a far shot beyond the 4% at best that I had no choice to assume all of these years.”

And here’s what it really comes down to. This isn’t about numbers. It’s about membership….specifically, who gets to say who belongs to the club.

In the introduction to Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, Foucault digs into why we (as humans) are so obsessed with classification. We like things that are ordered, with set places and purposes. This is why we like the idea of utopias…everything and everyone works in perfect harmony, because they all have their roles and never deviate from them. But real life isn’t a utopia. It’s messy, and humans are complicated beings with myriad motivations and overlapping roles and interests. As such, it is exceedingly tricky (read: impossible) to come up with nice, neat definitions that fit.

“Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold; they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the road to them is chimerical. …Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names…heterotopias desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source. They dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences.”

We don’t like it when our boxes get overturned. And so we end up adding qualifications to our lists, because if we narrow our definition enough, it seems like we might actually be able to pin it down. THIS is what a gamer is, and ONLY this.

“Play this game, and then talk to me.” “I bet you only got interested in this after the new movie.” “A real fan could answer these questions…”

The qualifications get piled on higher and higher…until enough evidence has been gathered for the challenger to go “SEE! I knew it. I was right. Girls aren’t real gamers.”

Or if, heaven forbid, the the girl in question actually rises to the challenge, she becomes the token member…the exception to the rule. It’s still not enough to prove that the box doesn’t fit.

Never mind that the guys in this conversation were talking to me (a female gamer doing PhD-work as a participant-researcher with gaming). Never mind that I had played the games listed as “qualifications” even though I am by no means the most dedicated gamer of my female gaming friends. Because qualifying wasn’t the point. The point was that it was necessary in the first place.

I will say this once…you don’t get to dictate someone’s identity.

If someone says they are a Christian or a Buddhist or straight or gay or male or female or a bookworm or a gamer…you don’t get to say otherwise. A person’s identity isn’t a club that needs to be joined. It’s not a job that needs to be applied for. It’s who they are. It’s how they frame themselves and form their worldview, and that’s entirely on them. Not you.

There is a difference between the groups you “belong” to and your identity. I have belonged to many choirs. I love to sing. I have been told I kick ass on Rockband (Expert level, baby)…but I don’t identify as a singer. I am a singer in that I use my voice and I enjoy doing so, but it’s not who I am, in the same way that I don’t identify as a chef or a knitter or a fashonista, or a literature major. I enjoy a lot of those things, but they aren’t me.

I do, however, identify as a gamer. A teacher. A daughter. A sister. A caretaker. A techie. An academic. These are all things that I have built my life around. When we claim an identity, we are claiming our values. Our priorities. And one of mine is games.

So let’s get this straight…if you want to have a club or an organization or a forum group, you are welcome to do that. And in that club or organization or forum group, you can post all your requirements for being a member. You can require applications and you can be as strict or as lenient as you want when you process them. You can call it a gaming group, and I guarantee that all the people who join you will be gamers…

But they don’t define gamers. They are not the be-all and end-all of gamers. And I hate to break it to you…but most gamers aren’t going to care about joining your club or proving their merits to your satisfaction. We have better things to do with our time.

So yes. I will be over here playing Farmville in between classes. I will have board game nights with my friends, do fandom roleplay with my online buddies, and headshot the hell out of the Fallen in Destiny. I’m not embarrassed by my interests, the games I love or hate, or what you Gamer-card-wielding folks have to say about it.

I’ve got my own club…and we’re having fun with or without your approval.