Book Chapter: Not So Straight Shooters: Queering the Cyborg Body in Masculinized Gaming

In N. Taylor & G. Vorhees (eds). Masculinities in Play. New York: Palgrave.

Abstract: This chapter offers a “diffractive” consideration (Barad 2003) of posthumanist and cyberfeminist theory, masculinity studies, and research on gender and gaming, that views digital play between straight white men as a form of homosexual contact via cyborg bodies, one that is mediated by the material and semiotic apparatuses of gaming, but no less real because of that. One goal here is to better understand and account for practices of homoeroticism, homophobia and sexual aggression that transpire between predominantly straight, white male game players, encompassing acts of verbal communication (“rape” and other violent sexual metaphors), in-game actions (teabagging), and ‘gamified’ practices at gaming events described via ethnographic methodologies.

Shira Chess 

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