Insult Swordfighting: Gendered, Competitive, and Transgressive Communication in Gaming Culture

This paper examines gendered, competitive, and transgressive communication in gaming culture, arguing that toxic trash talk and gatekeeping cannot be attributed to games alone but must be understood as part of a longer historical tradition of competitive oral play. Its central thesis is that gendered slurs and aggressive language in gaming spaces form a deeply rooted cultural practice, one that is ingrained in play itself and therefore resists simple removal through condemnation. The author positions the work as a complement to existing critiques of toxic gamer culture, adding historical depth and empirical nuance to scholarship that has largely focused on how such behavior pushes women and other marginalized players out of games.

The empirical component is an ongoing study of two large gaming forums, drawing on previously collected data and using an approach aligned with Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis. The analysis aims to identify the predominant forms of aggressive language, the contexts in which they appear, and the varied meanings they carry. Preliminary findings suggest the forums are a contested space. Although gendered slurs are an established feature, they are often deployed sarcastically to evoke misogynist speech rather than to express misogyny directly, though the author notes this still reflects an entrenched gendered culture reliant on competitive and aggressive discourse.

The paper situates this discourse within a broad historical frame, tracing it to Anglo-Saxon and Norse traditions of competitive poetics such as flyting, and linking it to rap battles and the dozens in racialized street culture. It also draws a comparison with insult swordfighting in The Secret of Monkey Island, and references the revival of flyting in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Methodologically, the work is presented as ongoing and preliminary, relying on a corpus analysis of forum data rather than a large survey or sample. The author concludes that the discourse cannot easily be removed from gaming culture simply by naming its toxicity, and that engaging its historical and cultural roots is necessary for a fuller understanding of gaming's darker dynamics.