Abstract:
Although most massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) remain entrenched in a
binary system of gendered avatars, the limited representational framework of avatar
creation is only one among many different strategies for what sociologists refer to
as “doing gender.” This essay explores how a doing gender approach might be useful
for analyzing the interactive dimensions of gender play in the rich communicative
environments of MMOs. Specifically, this essay explores how players do (or do not)
hold one another accountable to sex category membership through their interactions,
in so doing either reproducing or resisting normative forms of gender. A doing gender
approach, I argue, holds out the promise of being held accountable to a different set
of rules for doing gender—of doing gender differently or, in a more utopian sense,
perhaps doing away with it altogether.