A Spoken Word Poem/Montage on Hegemonic Play and Gatekeeping Game Culture
A Spoken Word Poem/Montage on Hegemonic Play and Gatekeeping Game Culture
This spoken word poem and montage goes through how women have historically been portrayed with very specific aesthetics that conform to dominant, Western ideals of beauty. The poem also covers the subsequent waves of backlash (2014-2015 Gamergate, Anti-Woke Video Games currently) against critiques of, and changes to, how women are portrayed in video games.
The first critique clip I shared was from Anita Sarkeesian, who began critiquing media (including video games) depictions of women through a feminist lens in 2009 on her Feminist Frequency Youtube channel. She has a series on female character tropes in video games and became one of the main targets for harassment by the Gamergate movement, which begain in 2014. The video I clipped from her Feminist Frequency channel was from 2017 because that was the video that best fit the theme of my poem. The videos are not exactly in chronological order, but the section on women's depiction in video games does reflect the general order in which critiques, movements, and backlash happened.
References
Choi, Y., Slaker, J. S., & Ahmad, N. (2020). Deep strike: Playing gender in the world of overwatch and the case of geguri. Feminist Media Studies, 20(8), 1128-1143. doi:10.1080/14680777.2019.1643388
Tassi, P. (2024, August 28). The Woke War: Why the right believes it’s dominated gaming and TV in 2024. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/08/28/the-woke-war-why-the-right-believes-its-dominated-gaming-and-tv-in-2024/
Witkowski, E. (2018). Doing/Undoing gender with the girl gamer in high-performance play. In J. Cassell & Y. C. Su (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of digital communication and society (pp. 185-203). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_11
Woke Content Detector. (n.d.). Woke Content Detector [Steam curator page]. Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44927664-Woke-Content-Detector/
Video Clips in Order of Appearance
This use of copyrighted material is made under the fair use doctrine for purposes of criticism and comment, which constitutes transformative use.
ESPN Esports. (2018, April 4). Just how good is Geguri, the first female professional Overwatch player? | Esports | ESPN [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN2n6V_4Hy0
Feminist Frequency. (2016, September 1). All the Slender Ladies: Body Diversity in Video Games [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbqRtp5ZUGE
NowThis. (2021, June 11). Gamergate: The Sexist Side of Fandom | Bad influence [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33u2JExlGwQ
FunkyFrogBait. (2023, June 23). Incel MELTDOWN over video game character [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lgWdMiPZFY
Jenna Zimmer. (2025, April 8). POV: being a girl playing video games. [Video]. Tiktok. https://www.tiktok.com/@jenna_zimmerman/video/7491057477451042091?q=girl%20gamers&t=1755402025128
Jubilee. (2022, July 22). Do All Pro Gamers Think The Same? [Video]. Tiktok. https://www.tiktok.com/@jubilee/video/7123303780833283374?q=misogyny%20in%20gaming%20&t=1755402154447
Tiffae. (2021, February 26). Call your friends if they’re being shitty. [Video]. Tiktok. https://www.tiktok.com/@tiffae/video/6933595117097848069?q=sexism%20in%20gaming&t=1755402309917
AI Usage Statement
Claude. ai (Claude Sonnet 4) was used to help with formatting the citations of references and video clip sources.