Towards a New Paradigm for Understanding Men and Masculinity in Gaming

This paper argues that existing scholarship on men and masculinity in gaming has been too dominated by frameworks such as hegemonic masculinity, hybrid masculinity, and geek or gamer masculinity, and too pessimistic about the possibility of change. It proposes a new research paradigm that foregrounds how men actually encounter, navigate, and perform gender within game cultures, and that accounts for both the persistence of gendered power structures and the substantial diversity among men and across gaming communities. The authors contend that categorical narratives leave out the ambivalences, contradictions, and everyday messiness of men's experiences, and that a focus on individuals' interactions with power structures offers a more robust and more hopeful understanding.

The work draws on interview and qualitative questionnaire data collected from men of different ages in Finland and Norway, two Nordic countries with comparatively high gender equality. The authors describe these studies as ongoing, and the paper uses their findings as a starting point for theoretical argument rather than presenting a fully generalizable empirical account. Examples include men in privileged positions who use that privilege to make room for minority groups, men who identify competition and toxicity as the least appealing aspects of gaming, and men who express ambivalence about masculinity itself. The paper also raises the potential of gaming as a space of liberation and empowerment for trans men.

The authors situate their argument against a backdrop of significant change in game culture, contrasting the sexist environment of the early 2000s with the greater representation and diversity evident in the 2020s, while acknowledging that dramatic conflicts such as Gamergate reflect ongoing tensions. Theoretically, the paper draws on queer and feminist scholarship, including the work of Sedgwick, Butler, and Ahmed, and on critical studies of men and masculinities. The study's scope is therefore primarily Nordic and qualitative, positioned as a counterpoint to the largely North American literature that the authors identify as dominant in the field.