On November 1, 2024, we organised a hybrid workshop titled “Feminist approaches to Esports Research”, open to everyone interested in questions related to esports research and feminism. The workshop was physically located in Jyväskylä, but distance participation was also possible. In addition to Finland, we had participants from Sweden, Norway, and Germany. This blog post draws on what we discussed in the workshop and most of the participants of the workshop are co-authors.

Given the ongoing struggles of marginalised groups in esports, and esports’s gendered (Taylor, 2021; Witkowski, 2018) and arguably colonial nature (Falcão et. al. 2020; Macedo & Kurtz, 2021; Zhu, 2018), we wanted to envision ways to bring feminist approaches and esports research closer together in interdisciplinary settings. This workshop was originally inspired by moments of mutual recognition, brought forth by reading feminist texts from the likes of Sara Ahmed. These moments of shared recognition would arise when we, after reading the same text, would let out gasps, having a sense of understanding something more in relation to our topic of research (esports); to how we position ourselves within our discipline; and to the ways in which we construct knowledge. In some ways, these texts would help us see cracks, margins and even absences and silences in both the discourses within esports as well as academic discourses around esports. As such the idea of the workshop arose, and through it we wanted to explore the question “How can we think of esports research differently?”.

Esports is a rapidly growing phenomenon, and in the past ten years, esports have gained increased scholarly attraction. There is not one discipline for “esports studies”, rather, esports is researched from multiple disciplines and with interdisciplinary approaches. This is not too surprising, as esports encompasses a range of different phenomena: from people playing esports games at homesto multibillion industries. Thus, esports varies both in scale and type of engagement. Same is true for esports genres – at the first glance games such as Farming simulator (GIANTS, Software 2008), GeoGuessr (Wallén, 2013), Mobile Legends Bang Bang (Moonton, 2013) and Counter Strike 2 (Valve Corporation, 2023) might not seem to have that much in common, yet they are all understood as esports. Here we have not even touched upon the geographical and regional variety esports has: Esports takes different forms in Global South than it does in Global North (Falcão et. al., 2020).

Despite all the differences in the structure of esports, they have one issue in common: Women and other marginalised groups are consistently sidelined and discriminated against amidst the advancements of esports (Richard & Gray, 2018; Ripetta & Silvestri, 2024). In our understanding, this needs to be taken into account while researching esports. This holds true not only when studying marginalised groups within esports, but in esports research as whole — gender and marginalised groups might be pushed into margins in esports, but the gendered issues are not from the margins in esports, nor are they limited to them.

Setting up the workshop

Through the workshop we wanted to see what kind of new configurations could arise by bringing together some prominent feminist texts, existing research on esports, and researchers interested in esports from different disciplines. With this in mind, we chose some of those texts that had been fruitful for us and asked our participants for additional suggestions and curated the reading list for the workshop:

• Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life. Chapter 3: Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity. Duke University Press. 65–88.
• Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. Chapter 1: Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy. Routledge, New York. 17–39.
• Crenshaw, K. W. (2013). “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color”. In The public nature of private violence. Routledge. 93–118.
• Hooks, B. (2015). “Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness.” Women, Knowledge, and Reality. Routledge, 48–55.

In addition to these texts, we also had a list of applied and recommended texts, recognizing the ongoing research done on esports, including studies from feminist perspectives that focus on marginalised players, as well as ones that examine the gendered nature of esports.

From the texts, we identified a common theme: margins. Margins appeared as the key concept to understand these texts and thinkers in relation to each other. Through discussing the texts, the margins in esports became visible to us as sites. Reading the texts before the workshop suggested that margins are sites where groups of people (especially women, black people, people with disabilities, etc.) are pushed in/out of, contained within, and silenced in. But margins also emerged as a place where voices, new articulations, resistance came into existence: In the words of Bell Hooks (2015): “space of radical openness is a margin—a profound edge. Locating oneself there is difficult yet necessary. It is not a ‘safe’ place. One is always at risk. One needs a community of resistance” (206). As such, margins become a place which is not to be escaped from but perhaps expanded on.

The workshop

The workshop started at 13.00 and was scheduled to last until 17.00. In total, there were seven participants, including the organisers. As the idea of the workshop was to engage with a number of texts from our different positionalities and disciplinary backgrounds, we did not ask participants to prepare original work for the workshop. Instead, we asked them to read the chosen texts and reflect on a set of questions while doing so. These questions included, for example, “How are margins conceptualised and inhabited and re-inhabited in these texts?” and “How can we allow these texts to inform our research practices better?”.

Our discussions touched upon a number of themes, ranging from our relationship with our interlocutors to our own positions as researchers and positionalities we occupy. Thinking about how we can do best by our interlocutors and how we can do justice to them was an important theme in our discussion. Especially as many of them come from marginalised groups and vulnerable positions (from margins), we recognized a duty to protect them and be mindful about their positions and how our actions and choices might affect them. It was also maintained that margins can never be just about gender, but we need to understand them through an intersectional lens (Crenshaw, 2013) — feminist struggle in esports can never be just the struggle of some women, but of all and it requires considering racial, gendered, classed identity positions, amongst others.

Similarly, we discussed our own positionalities as researchers, including the varying level of access and privilege we had in the field: are margins a place we can visit, occupy momentarily, but also leave as we wish? And for whom does this apply? What kind of margins do we occupy and how? What does it mean to talk about margins as a place of empowerment if one does not have to struggle to move outside of margins? What can and should be done from positions of privilege and what kind of responsibility does this bestow on those with privilege? As Ahmed (2017) notes, our positionalities, who we are, affect what we can say or how what we say is perceived. We discussed how the costs (and benefits) of speaking up are tied to different positions we occupy, professionally and structurally. Discussing our positionalities brought to the fore the changing and structural nature of margins: To have margins you need a centre. Margins are thus never independent from the structures and institutions where centres are forged and maintained. As such, examining centres should not be made independently from concerns about margins, but always in relation to them, even from within them, as suggested by Bell Hooks (2015). This also means that feminist approaches to esports should be extended to examining esports as whole. After all, it is the centre where the liveable bodies (Butler, 2004) are made and defined, through choices like game design, representation, discursive practices, and acts of inclusion and exclusion.

Future directions

This workshop has been a step towards creating a community of feminist scholars in esports research. The discussions we have had here will continue elsewhere, in networks, in new iterations of this workshop and in reading groups. Hopefully, some of you who are reading this and could not make it to the workshop, will join us in those discussions. We think the workshop made space for interdisciplinary encounters, sharing knowledge and experiences. We will continue with this in our next steps.

To everyone who participated; none of this would have been possible without you. It was truly a pleasure. Thank you.

Author bios & contact

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Chapter 3: Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity. Duke University Press. 65–88.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. Chapter 1: Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy. Routledge. 17–39.

Crenshaw, K. W. (2013). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. The public nature of private violence. Routledge. 93–118.

Falcão, Thiago, Marquez, D., Mussa, I. & Macedo, T. (2020). At the edge of utopia. Esports, neoliberalism and the gamer culture’s descent into madness. Gamevironments 13, 382–419.

Hooks, B. (2015). Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness. In (Eds.) Garry, A. & Pearsall, M. Women, Knowledge, and Reality (pp. 48-55). Routledge..

Macedo, T., & Kurtz, G . (2021). Who hasn’t dreamed of being a video game player? Coloniality, precariousness, and hope labor in Free Fire. Contracampo—Brazilian Journal of Communication, 40(3), 1–22.

Richard, G.T. & Gray, K. (2018). Gendered Play, Racialized Reality: Black Cyberfeminism, Inclusive Communities of Practice and the Intersections of Learning, Socialization and Resilience in Online Gaming. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39(1): 112–148.

Ripetta, S., & Silvestri, A. (2024) Exploring the Embodied Experience of Disabilities in First Person Shooter eSports: An Empirical Study puntOorg. International Journal 9, (1): 80–103.

Taylor, N. (2021). Kinaesthetic Masculinity and the Prehistory of Esports. ROMChip 3(1).

Witkowski, E. (2018). Doing/undoing gender with the girl gamer in high-performance play. In Gray, K. L., Voorhees, G. & Vossen, E. (Eds.), Feminism in play (pp. 185–203). Springer International Publishing.

Zhu, L. (2018). Masculinity’s new battle arena in international e-sports: The games begin. In Taylor, N. & Voorhees, G. (Eds.), Masculinities in play (pp. 229–247). Springer International Publishing.