“I bet she’s ‘not like other girls’”: Discursive Construction of the Ideal Gaming Woman on r/GirlGamers

Aug 29, 2026

Research on women and hostile behaviour in video games has largely treated women as victims rather than as participants who perpetuate hostility. Using discourse analysis, the study investigates how hostile behaviour by women is discussed within the subreddit r/GirlGamers and how these conversations discursively construct an “ideal gaming woman.” Findings focus on normative expectations, gender-appropriate conduct, and how such ideals are reinforced or contested in online gaming discourse.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Women’s position in gaming cultures

Background

Media and Communication 2025 • Volume 13 • Article 8802 [https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.8802](https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.8802) ARTICLE Open Access Journal “I bet she’s ‘not like other girls’”: Discursive Construction of the Ideal Gaming Woman on r/GirlGamers Maria Ruotsalainen 1 and Mikko Meriläinen 2 1 Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland 2 Tampere University Game Research Lab, Tampere University, Finland Correspondence: Maria Ruotsalainen ([maria.a.t.ruotsalainen@jyu.fi](maria.a.t.ruotsalainen@jyu.fi)) Submitted: 5 June 2024 Accepted: 8 August 2024 Published: 13 February 2025 Issue: This article is part of the issue “Digital Games at the Forefront of Change: On the Meaningfulness of Games and Game Studies” edited by Felix Reer (University of Muenster), Teresa de la Hera (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and Salvador Gómez‐García (Complutense University of Madrid), fully open access at [https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.i460](https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.i460) | Abstract
Research on women and hostile behaviour in video games has largely focused on women as victims rather than perpetuators of hostile behaviour. In this study, by utilizing discourse analysis, we examine how women’s hostile behaviour is discussed in the subreddit r/GirlGamers, and how the ideal gaming woman is discursively constructed in these discussions.
Keywords
female gamers; gender; hostile behaviour; online games; Reddit | | --- | | 1. Introduction
Women are active game players and participants in digital gaming cultures, yet their position is often challenged. Although women are steadily becoming more visible in gaming, they often encounter not only direct gendered harassment (Fox & Tang, 2017), but also belittling, gatekeeping, and erasure (Salter & Blodgett, 2012), especially in masculinised gaming cultures such as those around competitive gaming (Friman & Ruotsalainen, 2022) . They are constantly positioned as the other in game cultures, with very little room to navigate their presence, gender, and gaming expertise (Ruotsalainen & Friman, 2018; Witkowski, 2018) . Women employ a variety of strategies to navigate these contested spaces, such as forming their own communities, honing their gaming skills to claim space for themselves through gaming expertise, and altogether hiding their gender (Fox & Tang, 2017) . | © 2025 by the author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4 .0 International License (CC BY) . 1 Because of the commonly shared difficulties, there is often solidarity between gaming women, seen in both everyday informal exchanges (Dye & Williams, 2018; Ruotsalainen & Meriläinen, 2023) and communities for women in gaming (Zhang et al., 2023), such as the not‐for‐profit organisation Women in Games and the popular subreddit r/GirlGamers, the latter examined in this study. However, women are obviously not a homogenous group, with individuals differing in their personal histories, their relationship with gaming, gameplay preferences and motives, and many other variables (e.g., Friman, 2022) . Some embrace a strong“gamer” identity (Howe et al., 2019), others reject it altogether (Shaw, 2012), and most presumably fall somewhere in between or do not consider it a relevant positioning. There are several prominent discourses on women’s gaming, such as that on women’s contested role in gaming cultures, that influence gaming women’s experiences of gaming either directly or through more indirect mechanisms. Whether through personal experience, friends and family, or the media, gaming women often encounter these discourses and either willingly consider or are forced to consider their game culture experiences in relation to them. They also often become participants, reinforcing or contesting notions that are put forward. In this study, we explore several interlinked discourses as they appear in discussions in the subreddit r/GirlGamers on the discussion platform R

FAQs

What does the study examine in the subreddit r/GirlGamers?

It examines how women’s hostile behaviour is discussed in r/GirlGamers and how an ideal gaming woman is discursively constructed in these discussions.

How do the authors approach the analysis?

The study uses critical discourse analysis to determine how gender and gender-appropriate behaviours are constructed through discussion threads, mainly among self-identifying women.

Why is women’s gaming positioned as controversial in the wider gaming culture?

The article explains that digital gaming has historically been constructed as a masculine space, and gaming women often encounter sexism, misogyny, harassment, belittling, and exclusion.

Aug 29, 2026

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