Assignment 2: Close Reading Exercise
Andrea Braithwaite’s article “‘Seriously, get out’: Feminists on the forums and the War(craft) on women,” focuses on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (WoW), and its community as a space to explore gender issues. Braithwaite argues that feminism is a danger to the identity and belonging in the WoW community. These online communities need to be understood as an extension of the real world, where social issues arise and develop. I analyze her argument based on credibility, structure, method, types and employment of evidence, and writing style. In 2012, WoW released a beta expansion and sought out feedback from players on their official forums. Braithwaite focuses on the controversy …show more content…
She describes herself as a player and spectator. She plays World of Warcraft and reads its related forums. Her position allows her to analyze the controversy from a broader perspective. She is a credible researcher on WoW because of her past experiences with the game and its community. Furthermore, WoW is a topic of interest to scholars, and feminist critics like Haraway and Nakamura have previously researched gender in online and offline spaces. However, there is a lack of research on WoW as spaces for social issues. Braithwaite analyzes WoW through an unexplored perspective, which makes her research viable.
Throughout the article, Braithwaite uses forum posts, scholarly articles, and current events as evidence to support her arguments. Firstly, she uses forum posts from players discussing the Ji Firepaw controversy. She analyzes forum threads across WoW official forums, WoW Insider, and MMO champion. These sites are popular forums and communities that allow beta and non-beta testers to participate in the Ji Firepaw discussion. Her research includes diverse opinions and it is attentive to a wide audience. This diversity is important due to her focus on gender politics, where generalizations can discredit her …show more content…
The paper is structured around four themes, “feminist killjoy,” “anxious masculinity,” “player agency,” and “virtual reality.” Braithwaite deconstructs these themes using scholarly sources, to show how the WoW community uses these themes to fight feminism and maintain a collective identity. These scholarly sources include Sara Ahmed’s “feminist killjoy” , Martha McCaughey’s “cavemen mystique” , and Katie Ralphie’s “victim feminism.” These concepts point out the problems with comments made by Ji’s supporters. Some supporters claim that feminists ruin the game because they are feminists, but Braithwaite uses the “feminist killjoy” trope to scrutinize the logic of their arguments, “feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists . . .” Braithwaite exposes the supporters’ focus on feminists as the issue, rather than the actual issue itself. These concepts extract depth and meaning from these forums that are deemed to hold no value beyond
Andrea Braithwaite’s article “‘Seriously, get out’: Feminists on the forums and the War(craft) on women,” focuses on the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (WoW), and its community as a space to explore gender issues. Braithwaite argues that feminism is a danger to the identity and belonging in the WoW community. These online communities need to be understood as an extension of the real world, where social issues arise and develop. I analyze her argument based on credibility, structure, method, types and employment of evidence, and writing style. In 2012, WoW released a beta expansion and sought out feedback from players on their official forums. Braithwaite focuses on the controversy …show more content…
She describes herself as a player and spectator. She plays World of Warcraft and reads its related forums. Her position allows her to analyze the controversy from a broader perspective. She is a credible researcher on WoW because of her past experiences with the game and its community. Furthermore, WoW is a topic of interest to scholars, and feminist critics like Haraway and Nakamura have previously researched gender in online and offline spaces. However, there is a lack of research on WoW as spaces for social issues. Braithwaite analyzes WoW through an unexplored perspective, which makes her research viable.
Throughout the article, Braithwaite uses forum posts, scholarly articles, and current events as evidence to support her arguments. Firstly, she uses forum posts from players discussing the Ji Firepaw controversy. She analyzes forum threads across WoW official forums, WoW Insider, and MMO champion. These sites are popular forums and communities that allow beta and non-beta testers to participate in the Ji Firepaw discussion. Her research includes diverse opinions and it is attentive to a wide audience. This diversity is important due to her focus on gender politics, where generalizations can discredit her …show more content…
The paper is structured around four themes, “feminist killjoy,” “anxious masculinity,” “player agency,” and “virtual reality.” Braithwaite deconstructs these themes using scholarly sources, to show how the WoW community uses these themes to fight feminism and maintain a collective identity. These scholarly sources include Sara Ahmed’s “feminist killjoy” , Martha McCaughey’s “cavemen mystique” , and Katie Ralphie’s “victim feminism.” These concepts point out the problems with comments made by Ji’s supporters. Some supporters claim that feminists ruin the game because they are feminists, but Braithwaite uses the “feminist killjoy” trope to scrutinize the logic of their arguments, “feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists . . .” Braithwaite exposes the supporters’ focus on feminists as the issue, rather than the actual issue itself. These concepts extract depth and meaning from these forums that are deemed to hold no value beyond