Visions of degeneracy
Race, gender and sexuality in 'Exalted' sourcebooks
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.25912Keywords:
role-playing game (RPG), Exalted, feminist critical discourse analysis, popular culture, gender and sexuality, fantasyAbstract
Previous research on discourses of gender, sexuality and race in role-playing games (RPGs) finds that they favour a white, heterosexual, cis-male perspective, (re)producing stereotypes that are misogynist, homophobic and racist. This article uses feminist critical discourse analysis to examine a game with a reputation for challenging conventions of the genre and the medium, the fantasy RPG Exalted (2001– ). An analysis of 31 sourcebooks shows how many of the harmful discourses present in wider geek culture are interwoven with progressive ideas in the second edition of Exalted. Specifically, women’s roles are limited to those of virgin, (monstrous) mother or ‘prostitute’; sexual ‘deviance’ is pathologised; and a colonial geopolitics of race, sex and gender is reproduced. Given the importance of gaming culture to contemporary popular culture and politics, the study advocates for ethnographic engagement with actual gameplay to supplement feminist analysis of RPG sourcebooks.
References
Baxter, Judith A. (2008) Feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis: a new theoretical and methodological approach? In Kate Harrington, Lisa Litosseliti, Helen Sauntson and Jane Sunderland (eds) Gender and Language Research Methodologies 243–255. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Beattie, Scott (2007) Voicing the shadow: rule-playing and roleplaying in Wraith: The Oblivion. Law, Culture and the Humanities 3(3): 477–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872107081432
Burnett, Scott and Richardson, John E. (2021) ‘Breeders for race and nation’: gender, sexuality and fecundity in post-war British fascist discourse. Patterns of Prejudice 55(4): 331–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2021.2011088
Caldas-Coulthard, Carmen Rosa and Moon, Rosamund (2016) Grandmother, gran, gangsta granny: semiotic representations of grandmotherhood. Gender and Language 10(3): 309–339. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v10i3.32036
Cocca, Carolyn (2016) Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation. New York: Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501316609
Cross, Katherine Angel (2012) The new laboratory of dreams: role-playing games as resistance. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 40(3–4): 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2013.0026
Daithota, Shilpa Bhat (2017) Indians in Victorian Children’s Narratives: Animalizing the Native, 1830–1930. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Daniau, Stéphane (2016) The transformative potential of role-playing games: from play skills to human skills. Simulation & Gaming 47(4): 423–444. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878116650765
Dhar, Payal (3 November 2020) It’s time for fantasy fiction and role-playing games to shed their racist history. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/nov/03/racism-fantasy-fiction-role-playing-games
Domsch, Sebastian (2017) Dialogue in video games. In Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas (eds) Dialogue Across Media 251–270. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.28.13dom
Du Bois, John W. (2007) The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed) Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.07du
Durham, M. Gigi (2009) The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do about It. London: Duckworth Overlook.
Eddy, Samantha (2023) Interventions in intersectionality: exploring fantastical world-building to investigate feminist and anti-racist strategies. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 9(1): 72–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492221112426
Ensslin, Astrid (2017) The Language of Gaming. New York: Bloomsbury.
Ensslin, Astrid and Balteiro, Isabel (eds) (2019) Approaches to Videogame Discourse: Lexis, Interaction, Textuality. New York: Bloomsbury.
Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fairclough, Norman and Wodak, Ruth (1997) Critical discourse analysis. In Teun A. van Dijk (ed) Discourse as Social Interaction 258–284. London: Sage.
Fanon, Frantz (2008 [1952]) Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press.
Fine, Gary Alan (2002 [1983]) Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fitzsimmons, Kristin L. (2022) Gender rolls: a history of gender, identity, and nostalgia in tabletop roleplaying games. PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/241582
Fought, Carmen and Eisenhauer, Karen (2022) Language and Gender in Children’s Animated Films. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garcia, Antero (2017) Privilege, power, and Dungeons & Dragons: how systems shape racial and gender identities in tabletop role-playing games. Mind, Culture, and Activity 24(3): 232–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2017.1293691
Garcia, Antero (2021) ‘I piss a lot of people off when I play dwarves like dwarves’: race, gender, and critical systems in tabletop role-playing games. Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education 123(13). https://doi.org/10.1177/016146812112301302
Germaine Buckley, Chloé (2020) A tale of two women: the female grotesque in Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. Feminist Media Studies 20(3): 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1583263
Gray, Kishonna L., Voorhees, Gerald and Vossen, Emma (2018) Introduction: reframing hegemonic conceptions of women and feminism in gaming culture. In Kishonna L. Gray, Gerald Voorhees and Emma Vossen (eds) Feminism in Play 1–17. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_1
Griffith, John W. (1995) Joseph Conrad and the Anthropological Dilemma: ‘Bewildered Traveller’. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hamilton, Laura and Armstrong, Elizabeth A. (2009) Gendered sexuality in young adulthood: double binds and flawed options. Gender & Society 23(5): 589–616. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243209345829
Heritage, Frazer (2022a) Magical women: representations of female characters in the Witcher video game series. Discourse, Context & Media 49: 100627. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2022.100627
Heritage, Frazer (2022b) Politics, pronouns and the players: examining how videogame players react to the inclusion of a transgender character in World of Warcraft. Gender and Language 16(1): 26–51. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.20250
Hirschman, Celeste, Impett, Emily A. and Schooler, Deborah (2006) Dis/embodied voices: what late-adolescent girls can teach us about objectification and sexuality. Sexuality Research and Social Policy 3(4): 8–20. https://doi.org/10.1525/srsp.2006.3.4.8
hooks, bell (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
Hopkinson, Nalo (2007) Maybe they’re phasing us in: re-mapping fantasy tropes in the face of gender, race, and sexuality. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 18(1): 99–107. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i24351021
Hurley, Kameron (2016) The Geek Feminist Revolution. New York: Tor.
Hurley, Kelly (2002) British Gothic fiction, 1885–1930. In Jerrold E. Hogle (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction 189–208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Irigaray, Luce (1985) This Sex Which is Not One (Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke, trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kawitzky, Feliz Rose (2020) Magic circles: tabletop role-playing games as queer utopian method. Performance Research 25(8): 129–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2020.1930786
Kinsella, Sharon (2002) What’s behind the fetishism of Japanese school uniforms? Fashion Theory 6(2): 215–237. https://doi.org/10.2752/136270402778869046
Kosse, Maureen (2022) ‘Ted Cruz cucks again’: the insult term cuck as an alt-right masculinist signifier. Gender and Language 16(2): 99–124. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.21079
Kress, Gunther and Van Leeuwen, Theo (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge.
Lawson, Robert (2023) Language and Mediated Masculinities: Cultures, Contexts, Constraints. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lazar, Michelle M. (2007) Feminist critical discourse analysis: articulating a feminist discourse praxis. Critical Discourse Studies 4(2): 141–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405900701464816
Lee, Cynthia and Kwan, Peter Kar Yu (2014) The trans panic defense: masculinity, heteronormativity, and the murder of transgender women. Hastings Law Journal 66: 77–132. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2430390
Lopez, Qiuana (2014) Aggressively feminine: the linguistic appropriation of sexualized blackness by white female characters in film. Gender and Language 8(3): 289–310. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i3.289
Moon, Rosamund (2014) From gorgeous to grumpy: adjectives, age and gender. Gender and Language 8(1): 5–41. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i1.5
Murnen, Sarah K. (2000) Gender and the use of sexually degrading language. Psychology of Women Quarterly 24(4): 319–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb00214.x
Nabokov, Vladimir (1955) Lolita. New York: Putnam.
Nephew, Michelle (2006) Playing with identity: unconscious desire and role-playing games. In J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler (eds) Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games 120–139. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth (2002) Colonial and postcolonial Gothic: the Caribbean. In Jerrold E. Hogle (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction 229–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521791243.012
Rilstone, Andrew (1995) Editorial. Interactive Fantasy: The Journal of Role-Playing and Story-Making Systems 1(3): 4–6.
Russo, Mary (1986) Female grotesques: carnival and theory. In Teresa de Lauretis (ed) Feminist Studies/Critical Studies 213–229. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18997-7_13
Santos, Cristina (2016) Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires, and Virgins. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Schallegger, René Reinhold (2018) The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games: Agency, Ritual and Meaning in the Medium. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Schut, Kevin (2006) Desktop conquistadors: negotiating American manhood in the digital fantasy role-playing game. In J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler (eds) Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games 100–119. Jefferson: NC: McFarland & Co.
Sørensen, Anne Scott (2006) Fantasirollespil som narrativ performance [Fantasy roleplaying as narrative performance]. In Kjetil Sandvik and Anne Marit Waade (eds) Rollespil – I æstetisk, pædagogisk og kulturel sammenhæng [Roleplaying – In aesthetic, pedagogical and cultural contexts] 25–44. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.
Spica, Monica and Cole, Rai Witter (14 May 2020) ‘Fellas, is it gay to play RPGs?’: games with queer themes [Podcast]. Bonus Experience 3, ep. 5. Misdirected Mark Productions. http://misdirectedmark.com/2020/05/14/bxp-3x05-fellas-is-it-gay-to-play-rpgs-games-with-queer-themes
Stamenkovic, Dušan, Jacevic, Milan and Wildfeuer, Janina (2017) The persuasive aims of Metal Gear Solid: a discourse theoretical approach to the study of argumentation in video games. Discourse, Context & Media 15: 11–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2016.12.002
Stang, Sarah M. (2021) Maiden, mother, and crone: abject female monstrosity in roleplaying games. PhD dissertation, York University. http://hdl.handle.net/10315/38644
Stang, Sarah and Trammell, Aaron (2020) The ludic bestiary: misogynistic tropes of female monstrosity in Dungeons & Dragons. Games and Culture 15(6): 730–747. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412019850059
Talbot, Mary (2014) Language, gender and popular culture. In Susan Ehrlich, Miriam Meyerhoff and Janet Holmes (eds) The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality 604–624. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Thomas, Richard and Grabowski, Geoffrey C. (2001) The Making of Exalted. Clarkson, GA: White Wolf Game Studio.
Tosca, Susana (2009) More than a private joke: cross-media parody in roleplaying games. Cinema Journal 48(3): 129–134. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.0.0123
Trammell, Aaron (2018) Representation and discrimination in role-playing games. In Sebastian Deterding and José Zagal (eds) Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations 440–447. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637532-26
van Dijk, Teun A. (2000) Ideology and discourse: a multidisciplinary introduction [Unpublished ms]. https://discourses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Teun-A.-van-Dijk-2003-Ideology-and-discourse.pdf
Werner, Valentin (2022) Pop cultural linguistics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics [Online]. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.999
Willoughby-Herard, Tiffany (2015) Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
