Videogames are for boys: male gaming as an anti-gender identity

Abstract

The videogame industry is the most important cultural and entertainment industry of our times with 3,2 billion players worldwide and with a social and cultural impact in every aspect of our lives. The industry itself has historically been constructed as a masculinist space where geek masculinity was the role model to follow. In this work we propose to analyse how the masculinist culture that developed this space have generated an affinity between a sector of the gaming community and the anti-gender groups from the manosphere. We will study the creation of the gamer identity as an anti-gender identity that it´s born from a rhetoric of victimhood and betrayal that is normal on current far-right wing forces.