Male MMO Players Choose a Female Avatar for the Booty -- But Then Start Expressing Themselves "Like Women" Too

MMO expert Nick Yee highlights a new study on male World of Warcraft players who play with a female avatar -- and matches that with his own research:

The researchers found that the men were more than three times as likely as the women to gender-switch (23 percent vs. 7 percent). When selecting female avatars, these men strongly preferred attractive avatars with traditional hairstyles—long, flowing locks as opposed to a pink mohawk. And their chat patterns shifted partway toward how the real women spoke: These men used more emotional phrases and more exclamation points than the men who did not gender-switch. In other words, these men created female avatars that were stereotypically beautiful and emotional.

Curiously, Yee goes on, the men in the study all chose female avatars not to gender bend per se, but for heterosexual reasons. Despite this, they unconsiously start gender-bending anyway:

Because players see their avatars from a third-person perspective from behind, men are confronted with whether they want to stare at a guy’s butt or a girl’s butt for 20 hours a week. Or as the study authors put it in more academic prose, gender-switching men “prefer the esthetics of watching a female avatar form.” This means that gender-switching men somehow end up adopting a few female speech patterns even though they had no intention of pretending to be a woman. In my own research in virtual worlds and avatars, my colleagues and I have found that people will conform to the expectations of their avatars without consciously being aware of it. For example, we found that college students given subtly taller avatars will negotiate more aggressively in a bargaining task than students given shorter avatars. Of course, people can only conform to stereotypes that they know. Perhaps this is why we see gender-switching men conforming to stereotypes of how women talk, while not conforming to the more nuanced movement patterns.

While not a traditional MMO, I see a similar pattern with Second Life, where (I'd roughly estimate) about 20-30% of the female avatars have male users. They too tend to act stereotypically female in Second Life. At the same time, reading comments by these users on this blog and other forums, I'd also make this generalization: Outside the virtual world, these same male users with female avatars tend to "write male" (also in the stereotypical sense), to the point of mansplaining.

Image via I Touch the Sky

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Comments

[Adeon Writer]

I have never bought into the "Because I'd rather see a girl butt than a guy butt"
story. Not even once.

It's not socially acceptable for a guy to want to be feminine. So when prompted in a survey, the butt excuses manifests itself.

It is a defensive fabrication, and ways has been.

[melponeme_k]

I agree with Adeon.

Many Guys, for whatever reason, like playing as female characters.

Oh and the gender by writing examples is bogus. I remember way back on Livejournal, there was a test online where you submitted your blog and the test would give the writer's gender. All of us gals were deemed honorary males by that test. We had a good laugh over it for days.

[Ezra]

I've heard this explanation since I was a teen playing Ultima Online and "booties" were like four pixels.

In MMOs and SL, I've had male friends of all types choose female avatars for no obvious reason. I don't think I've ever cared or paid too much attention. Maybe because I've been playing MMOs since an early age and that's just how things are. Not sure its anything worth bearing study.

[Pussycat Catnap]

The short article is a comment on a study, but not the study.

What are some of the other reasons and observations found among the sample?

The note about jumping and walking backwards was... funny... I tried WoW at one point and it was bouncing female elves everywhere... all up in your screen.

When I combine the butt motive and the bouncing elves... maybe Miley Cirus is on to something. Maybe she's some guy's avatar?

I also noticed that most female characters played ranged options and stayed at a distance from 'the group' - so they were all men, even the ones who sounded female in voice applications?
- Or I misread the article that is itself just an opinion of a study I've yet to see.

And I wonder... is the article the opposite of mansplaining. It reads like a conclusion in search of a proof rather than the other way around.

One curious thing I've found living in diverse communities is that gendered behavior can be very tied to class and ethnicity. Especially as it ties to taking on aggressive traits and group leadership roles. Particularly in communities that have 'lost their men' to violence, incarceration, or other causes. If you come from the hood (which includes a trailer park), you're going to be 'tough' and maybe even guarded - because being 'catty and social' gets you and your children trampled.
Yet men from these same backgrounds can be more sly, cunning, and skilled in social manipulation, because the tough and direct guys are put away by age 20.
- And that flips when you hit the middle class world.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Yes, trying to determine gender by writing examples is bogus. Even doing it in SL by thinking every female avatar who is dressed slutty has a male "driver" is bogus.

The only thing that I'm fairly sure of is that SL is a "chick-centric" world. I use that term because of the alliteration, meaning that SL is rather "women-centric", at least as it is now.

[Shockwave yareach]

If you are going to play a character, try to play it right. This is true regardless of race, sex, etc - if you want to RP then RP.

[irihapeti]

@melponeme_k

you maybe wrote "around"

apparently "around" is a guy word. Apparently it comes from: When you going do actually do it??? Answer: when I get around to it

apparently only guys say this

so if you was explaining in your blog about your guy who is getting around to it then the "you a dude" software gets a bit confused apparently

i did read that the dude who made the software is gunna fix it one day. like when he gets around to it

(: