Fighting Gendered

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research-article2019
JCEXXX10.1177/0891241619864405Journal of Contemporary EthnographyMcKinnon-Crowley
Article
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
2020, Vol. 49(1) 118–142
Fighting Gendered © The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0891241619864405
https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241619864405
a Woman in a journals.sagepub.com/home/jce
Contemporary Gaming
Community
Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley1
Abstract
This scholarly personal narrative (Nash 2004) draws on the author’s
experiences as a woman in a male-dominated gaming community. In
such a space, being a woman who plays the game problematizes notions
of gender for both the author and for her most-often male opponents.
When playing the game, she operates in a liminal space between expert
and outsider because of her gender identity. At the same time, her gender
troubles her men opponents. She discusses her struggles for acceptance
in this community and how her notions and enactment of gender have
changed as a result of her experiences. In the article, the author explains
the social norms of the game and the demographic breakdown of the
game’s players; to accomplish this, the author shares stories from her
time as a player.
Keywords
gender, gaming, community, scholarly personal narrative
1University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA
Corresponding Author:
Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, Stop D5000,
Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Email: saralyn@austin.utexas.edu
McKinnon-Crowley 119
“I’d love to be known primarily as a good player with my gender being

secondary; unfortunately that’s not how it works.”
―Jessica Estephan, Meet Jessica Estephan, Magic: The Gathering’s First Female
Grand Prix Winner (Orsini 2018, para. 20).
It’s Friday night, and approximately forty people (thirty-nine men and one
woman—me) have come to our local game store in order to play in a tourna-
ment for the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering1 (hereafter Magic).
The tournament begins, and pairings are posted, meaning that we know our
opponents for the first round. I remain seated, away from the pairings, rea-
soning that if my opponent does not know me personally, he will quickly
identify me because I am the only woman present. “. . .[Author Name]?” I
look up to see a twenty-something white man I do not recognize. My heart
sinks slightly. “I think we’re playing,” he says. “Great,” I reply, trying not to
sound downcast or sarcastic, striving for a polite tone. New opponents might
come with preconceived notions about women in Magic, and if they have not
heard about me, may think I will be an easy opponent. We introduce our-
selves, and I go through the complex motions designed to prove that I am not
an opponent to be taken lightly, despite my gender presentation.
I find it important to demonstrate my game knowledge early and often.
The game begins, my heart full of hope that my opponent will be polite and
friendly, but my brain wary that he may be trying to manipulate the rules to
his advantage, assuming I do not know them, or he may be unpleasant or
upset if he loses. If he wins, he is one of many men who win and lose at
Magic on a regular basis, and my loss could be seen as proof that women are
inferior players. If I win, it may be blamed on my “feminine wiles,” a com-
ment made to me in the past that I will unpack below, or contribute to a posi-
tive stereotype about women Magic players.
In this Scholarly Personal Narrative (Nash 2004; Nash and Viray 2013), I
discuss the data collected from my four years of lived experience playing
Magic in competitive tournament settings. I examine my time playing Magic
and what I have learned about performing gender as a woman in a male-
dominate environment. I begin by discussing my methods, describe my own
positionality, discuss Magic and its demographics, review previous research
on the topic on gender in gaming in general, and share stories about how my
gender performance shaped and is shaped by my interactions with the com-
munity. This article engages with literature about women and gaming, spe-
cifically women and Magic, and theories of gender performance more
broadly. Through this Scholarly Personal Narrative, this article presents an
answer to a commonly asked question in the community: why are there so
few women in Magic?
120 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 49(1)
Introduction: Opening Hand

The narrative from the introduction reconstructs many similar events I have
experienced over four years of playing Magic in a tournament setting, though
each aspect of the narrative has occurred exactly as described at some point
in my Magic career. While in the field, I presented as a cisgender, white
woman in her late twenties. Since approximately January 2013, I have played
Magic at least once a week in a competitive tournament setting at a variety of
game stores around the world, often in the company of my husband, who is
also a competitive Magic player and introduced me to the game. I sincerely
identified as a feminist when I began playing Magic, I did not truly under-
stand how gender discrimination operates even in casual settings until I began
spending time in this gaming space dominated by men.
Playing Magic further cemented my interest in women’s and gender stud-
ies and contemporary gender issues and made me feel gender troubles in a
way I had not yet experienced. Though I interact with the Magic community
through four primary modalities, in-person, on the MagicTCG “subreddit,”
an open-access online community forum hosted by reddit.com, Twitter.com,
and through chatting with observers while watching people play Magic on
Twitch.tv, this piece will primarily focus on in-person interactions with the
game and the community. Magic is my primary hobby, on which I conserva-
tively estimate that I spend 12 hours each week.
Methods
Scholarly personal narratives (SPN) are “each writer’s deliberate attempt to
create a life by imposing a series of narrative-specific meanings on it” (Nash
2004, 9). They are academic works, grounded in theory and in a careful
examination of one’s own life, which communicate true stories (Nash 2004).
As Nash said, “your own life has meaning, both for you and for others. Your
own life tells a story (or a series of stories) that, when narrated well, can
deliver to your readers those delicious aha! moments of self and social
insights that are all too rare in more conventional forms of research” (2004,
24). SPN differs from autoethnography in its more diffuse focus and tech-
niques for research (Ng and Carney 2017).
Though SPNs may draw on the techniques of ethnography in their
research, their methods are not “grounded in the techniques of ethnographic
(anthropological) analysis and interpretation” in the way that autoethnogra-
phies are (Nash and Viray 2013, 46). Nash and Viray explain autoethnogra-
phy as concerned with “the self’s ongoing relationship with the culture. The
ideal outcome of autoethnographic research is to use the self as a lens primar-
ily to understand the socio-cultural context that forms the background for the
emergence of the self. SPN, however, is unconstrained by any specific

research method or perspective” (2013, 46). In this study, I use some ethno-
graphic elements in my methods, but I am less concerned with my relation-
ship with the societal norms influencing my experience and focus instead on
my interactions with the culture.
In this regard, this study resembles a “carnal ethnography” (Hoang 2018,
230), a study that requires the researcher to physically engage and participate
in the community practice she studies. Carnal ethnography goes beyond par-
ticipant observation by subjecting the researcher’s body to the “symbolic vio-
lence” endemic to the field site, which I describe below (Hoang 2018, 233). I
informally collected data for this SPN from January 2013 until July 2018. I
did not join this hobby with the intention of conducting research, but conver-
sations with friend and colleagues about how gender operated in the Magic
community inspired me to do so.
In March 2017, I began to systematically collect field notes after signifi-
cant events, and checked my memory of events against other people who
were present and whom I told about these events. I have made every effort
to disguise the identities of people discussed in this article and have only
included their gender. Quoted verbal material in the body of the article
comes from my field notes. One person present during many of these events
or told about them soon after they occurred read this article to confirm its
accuracy. This article, however, solely reflects my experience and my inter-
pretation of events and does not claim to represent any other point of view.
I also archived material posted on the Internet relevant to the project that
was publicly accessible.
A SPN best captures the narrative experience of a woman participating as
an “outsider within” this subset of the gaming culture, fluent in the norms but
never quite belonging due to gender identity (Hill Collins 1986, S15).
Incorporation of Internet material allows me to discuss community-building
aspects within the Magic culture that outsiders would not know how to find.
Magic celebrities, for example, are not usually famous outside of the subcul-
ture. Indeed, this community would be impenetrable and incomprehensible to
someone who did not play the game and did not participate physically in
game spaces. I concluded data collection in July 2018, and left the field in
October 2018.
Meet the Author

A little bit more about me: I come from a family that gave me conflicting
gender socializations. My mother, a strong second-wave feminist, is an
attorney who is frequently told in an uncomplimentary fashion that she is a
“bulldog for her clients,” which is intended as a critique on her femininity.

She, too, struggles with gender norms and societal expectations that women
are supposed to be quiet, polite, and nice, and shares my difficulties with the
unwritten rules of gender behavior (Sue 2010). We played many card and
board games growing up, and my mother is fiercely competitive.
I, too, was very competitive growing up, and teachers and authority fig-
ures frequently told me that I should not be so upset when I lost. Like many
other girls, I received messages to stop being “bossy” and encouraged to be
quiet, polite, and nice. It took me years of immersion in the almost all-male
sphere of Magic players to realize that this was a gender bias unfairly imposed
on me. As Mayock stated, women steep in “the fear of being visibly and audi-
bly smart, of being noticed, of being too ‘out there’ . . . [this] starts early in
the school system, where it finds an easy training ground for later silences
and acceptance of gender shrapnel” (2016, 96). Playing Magic helped me to
understand how gender shrapnel can exist outside of the workplace, and how
even unintentional discrimination hurts. Though I always espoused a feminist
identity, it took me until my mid-twenties to realize the insidious ways in
which gender bias operate in the workplace and in social settings. Magic
inspired this awakening. I inherited feminism from my mother, but I came by
it honestly once I started playing Magic. The experience of playing Magic
created opportunities for me to struggle with and articulate the difficulties of
performing gender in a men-dominated space.
More on Magic: The Gathering

Magic is a collectible card game, containing more than twenty thousand indi-
vidual cards printed over the twenty-six years of its existence. Though there
are many different ways to play Magic, I primarily play in one-versus-one
“sanctioned” events at my local game store. Wizards of the Coast (WoTC)
designated sanctioned tournaments as acceptable ways to play Magic that
awards players points for participating in tournaments using these criteria. In
sanctioned events, players are allowed to use cards ranging from a few hun-
dred recently printed cards to a large swathe of Magic’s card pool in which
almost every card from Magic’s history is permitted with the exception of
fifty or so strange or unusually powerful cards.
Though many players participate in sanctioned events, quite a few Magic
players play exclusively outside of tournaments, without any restrictions on
card inclusion. These players are often dismissed by competitive community
members as “casuals” or—more derogatorily— “scrubs” and “kitchen table
players.” Though the community does not always associate the term “kitchen
table players” with women Magic players, this is a gendered term because of
the link between the domestic sphere coupled with the lack of respect most
competitive players have for the subgroup. Out of the approximately 12 mil-
lion Magic players active in the game either digitally or in person during the
time of data collection, between 25 and 35 percent are women (Rosewater
2017b).2 WoTC market data shows that the large majority of women players
in the game, estimated at 38 percent of the total Magic-playing population in
June 2017, prefer casual play to competing in tournament (Rosewater
2017a).3 Very few women enter tournaments at either the local game store or
on the regional or national level, as I have done. The literature on gender and
gaming and Magic more generally offers some explanations for this fact.
Review of Literature
In what follows, I write about women in Magic generally, review the litera-
ture about women in (mostly digital) gaming, and previous research about
Magic.
Why Are There So Few Women in Magic? Preliminary Answers

Jessica Estephan, a recent woman winner of a large Magic tournament called
a Grand Prix, explained her thoughts on the lack of women representation in
the tournament community in the following way:
When women my age [23] grew up, we weren’t really allowed to like “boy
things.” So if I started [playing games] through my own independent will at 19,
but my male counterparts have been playing and thinking about games since
they were young, there’s a significant disadvantage there. Women are
competitive, it’s just hard to compete at something you’re [sic] opponents have
a 10-year head start at. (Orsini 2018, para. 17)
Though I did grow up playing strategic board and card games, Estephan’s
explanation provides a useful, if gender-essentialist (Schrock and Schwalbe
2009), method of understanding why there are so few women who compete
in tournaments. Magic personality Thea Miller’s (2018) post about women
in Magic argues that for women who participate in tournaments at local
game stores without men allies, covert sexism and unspoken exclusions
from the local community require too much effort to make the game fun, and
implicitly but forcefully encourage women to exit the tournament scene. In
an unwelcoming environment, learning the game and expending the consid-
erable time and energy required to get better at it becomes exponentially
more challenging. Anecdotally, out of the thousands of games I have played
in sanctioned events, I have played against a woman perhaps twenty-five

times in total; that number is likely an overestimation.
Women and Gaming

A popular stereotype about (mostly digital) gaming holds that it is the prov-
ince of men (Jenson and de Castell 2010). Research about gender and gaming
tends to focus on the experience of men and women with digital games rather
than collectible card games such as Magic, namely video, computer, and con-
sole games, including but not limited to games played on mobile phones
(Crawford 2005; Jenson and de Castell 2010; Taylor 2008; Winn and Heeter
2009). In general, research indicates that men play digital games more fre-
quently and for longer periods of time than women (Crawford 2005; Jenson
and de Castell 2010; Winn and Heeter 2009). Women tend to prefer casual
digital games, such as so-called Flash games played using an Internet browser
that require a less sustained time commitment and fewer hardware compo-
nents (Andersen et al. 2012) than other digital games.
Possible explanations for these differences in digital game consumption
could be the lower amount of leisure time afforded to women as compared to
men (Crawford 2005; Winn and Heeter 2009), gendered patterns of socializa-
tion (i.e., cultural norms that dictate video games are the province of boys)
(Winn and Heeter 2009), or the topics of games themselves. Crawford stated:
“Themes and goals of digital games do not reflect the interests of many
women,” which he considered to be violence, sports, and lack of active, non-
sexualized female characters (2005, 261).
Jenson and de Castell (2010) observe, however, that research on women
and digital gaming tends to make the gender-essentializing assumption that
all women or all men share common orientations and perspectives on gam-
ing. Setting aside the absence of gender-nonbinary gamers from the litera-
ture, all women and all men do not hold the same opinions about anything.
Writing meta-analytically, Jenson and de Castell identify a discourse among
gamers and the gaming industry and in the literature about gaming in which
“the powerful association of masculine subjects as gamers and game design-
ers as well as the presumption (through technologies generally) of (male)
competence and ability have positioned women and girls unerringly as ‘less
able,’ ‘less competent,’ and as ‘casual’ gameplayers” (2010, 54).
This deficit orientation in the discourse encourages both gender essential-
ism and puts the onus on women to be better in some way in order to gain full
participation into the gaming community. I would also argue that access to
game equipment and safe, harassment-free spaces to practice games strongly
influence women’s gaming decisions. Taylor (2008) observed that based on
the structural barriers to accessing game cultures—especially if women do

not have a trusted friend or family member to introduce them to a particular
game and culture—women gamers who do succeed in joining game cultures
are especially committed to gameplay. Research on Magic specifically indi-
cates that the game’s steep learning curve influences the gaming experience.
“Magic”al Research
Previous scholarly research on Magic about the gaming experiences have
focused on a dyad of non-tournament players learning how to interact with
the game (Dodge and Crutcher 2018), an ethnography of an all-male gam-
ing enclave (Kinkade and Katovich 2009), and the experience of using
Magic as a way to actively interact and create what Martin terms a “fantas-
tic imaginary” realm (2004, 36). These experiences differ from my own.
Dodge and Crutcher (2018) discuss an informal setting in which a man
teaches a woman how to play the game. In the article, Dodge, a woman,
learns Magic literacy in a casual environment, becoming familiar with the
specific language patterns unique to the game (Dodge and Crutcher 2018),
similar to the “kitchen table” experience I mentioned above. The setting is,
however, removed from the formal, rule-bound tournament setting in which
I interact with the game most frequently. Even when I do engage in casual
Magic play, I dedicate myself to improving my skill at the game; it is nearly
identical to tournament play. I practice with other players to get better in
tournament settings. Kinkade and Katovich’s ethnography of three Magic
gaming stores identifies four types of players; women, by contrast, are rel-
egated to observer status, or what they term “gathered groupies” (2009, 16).
In their narrative, these women are silent. They describe the “gathered
groupies” in the following manner:
Gathered groupies are female companions of Magic players, seemingly tied

exclusively to male competitors. Their tie signs to specific male players include
the simultaneous acts of intense attention to the player’s accomplishments and
pointed aloofness toward other competitors and socials. They rarely talk to any
one [sic] in the group and, owing to their aloofness, receive few initiators.
Although groupies do pay attention to their gaming companions, these
companions rarely reciprocate. Competitors avoid groupies studiously, except
when seeking congratulations for some accomplishment or asking for food.
When Playa’ [one of the article’s authors] asked “Sticky,” a competitor, about
the value of having a supportive audience, Sticky stated without looking up
from the game: I love an audience when I kick ass. . . . Sticky’s female
companion, watching his play, said nothing. (Kinkade and Katovich 2009, 16)
I cannot see myself in their narrative because I take an active and engaged
role in Magic and do not exist solely to provide implicit support for a man
Magic player.
In Martin’s description of interviews with 15 Magic players in New
Zealand (2004, 138), one participant explains his interactions with the game
in the following manner: “it’s escapism from the real world. You forget about
your worries and woes and concentrate on something else” (2004, 140). This
aspect of Magic is closed to someone like me, whose identity is marked on
my body in a way that differentiates me from the typical white, man, cisgen-
der Magic player; I likely share this experience with others who do not fit
those identities. I cannot disguise my body enough to play the game in a
purely escapist fashion. I can minimize the physical attributes of my gender
through clothing—a choice explored below—but my gender is always there
and conditions my interactions with other Magic players. This article adds to
the scholarly literature about women in gaming, specifically those who play
collectible card games, as well as the literature about Magic.
Theoretical Framework
Mayock’s (2016) work on gender shrapnel in the academy influences my
thinking. Writing specifically about incidents taking place in academic orga-
nizations, Mayock defined gender shrapnel as
a series of small workplace explosions that occur when no one person or

organization is purposefully discriminating against women based on sex, but
when the gender norms of our homes and of our public interactions that
consistently follow a patriarchal flow are replicated in the workplace,
entrenched in the workplace, and then become the fabric of a pattern of sexual
discrimination. (2016, 196)
While Magic players are not formal members of an organization in the same
way that faculty and staff are contractually tied to a university, the patterns of
discrimination Mayock (2016) described resonate strongly with my experi-
ences in the community.
Results
Why Are There So Few Women in Magic? My Interpretation
In what follows, I talk about my attempts and my failures to be a welcomed
and valued member of the community. I describe my experiences with the
men and boys who play Magic, focusing on how I dealt with my own liminal
identity and embodied state in a near-homosocial environment and how I
learned to adapt to community norms. I then trouble my process of adaptation
by discussing my own communication style and failure to fit in, coupled with
the problem of an angry woman. Next, I describe the most overt examples of
exclusion from the community as demonstrated through others’ sexist acts. I
internalized my exclusion by distancing myself from other women Magic
players. Despite my efforts to educate potential allies about my experiences
and the negative consequences of their actions, I describe how I remained an
outsider in the community.
Babes in Guyland
I would estimate that most of my Magic opponents are between 18 and 30
years of age. These players fall squarely into the age bracket described in
Kimmel’s book Guyland. “Guyland” describes an age range and a mindset
possessed by men (or “guys,” in Kimmel’s terms) between 16 and 26 years
old (2008, 4–5). Men who inhabit Guyland are influenced by shared, unstated
rules governing behavior called the Guy Code, such as “it’s better to be mad
than sad” and “it’s all good,” meaning that guys are encouraged to be stoic,
and anger is the only acceptable emotion to experience (Kimmel 2008, 45).
One feature of the Guyland experience is the social self-selection to spend
time in guy-only spaces, like sports bars or local game stores (Kinkade and
Katovich 2009). Guys are encouraged to prove their masculinity through
competitive endeavors.
Many (though not all) of the players I encounter are looking for a girl-
friend/wife/partner, and few seem to have ever socialized with a woman who
is neither a family member nor a potential romantic partner. I present a prob-
lem, because I am neither and yet still exist in a mostly men, nearly homoso-
cial space. In addition, even if I were considered to be romantic partner
material, my husband also plays Magic and is known in the community. Most
people know both of us, and we make no effort to disguise our relationship.
Some friends deliberately or accidentally downplay our relationship, not
remembering that we are legally married or attempting to flirt with me seri-
ously or nonseriously. As above, many Magic players’ social awkwardness
makes their motives tricky to determine.
Owing to gender socialization and the manifold difficulties I face as a
woman in American society, I do encounter extra difficulties when deter-
mining how to act in common Magic social situations. Because I am a
woman, I am afraid that being friendly to a stranger or an acquaintance could
be interpreted as flirting and that I would be blamed for anything bad that
happened to me as a result. Being friendly, a cornerstone of American social
interaction (Moffatt 1989) and a privilege that men Magic players can exer-
cise unthinkingly, presents difficulties for me even as a wedding ring–wear-
ing married woman. For that reason, I likely present as cold or rude when
interacting with people I do not know well.
Stuck with the intractable problem of my woman presence, most of my
friends from Magic consider me to be a “bro” like them, further effacing my
gender and making my own camouflage more effective, though I am aware
my “bro” status is only provisional (Kimmel 2008, 15). Because of this treat-
ment, I find myself encouraged to operate like a “bro” and learn the codes of
speech and behavior on the fly (Kimmel 2008, 250). It is a bit like being an
anthropologist who has previously learned about a culture solely from sec-
ondary sources, only to be suddenly placed into it. Kimmel (2008, 250) wrote
that the “bro” identity is one way for women to escape being either a “babe,”
a possible romantic partner, or a “bitch,” a woman who is neither a babe nor
a bro. Some men have difficulty determining whether to give me a hug, which
seems to be the preferred greeting strategy for meeting a woman, or giving
me a handshake, the seemingly preferred greeting strategy for men. In one
typical tournament, I was playing Magic casually with a group, in which I
was—unsurprisingly—the only woman. One of the players referred to us as
“bros,” paused, and added “and [Author Name].” I did not even notice my
gender exclusion until he inserted my name. Though I am considered a “bro,”
I do not always follow the speech norms.
Sometimes, I only learn that I have violated the guy code after I have said
something considered inappropriate. I do not perceive it to be my responsibil-
ity to preserve the illusion of my “brohood,” and often gleefully violate the
guy code to remind them of my own difference (Kimmel 2008). For example,
one of my acquaintances asked me, I assume in jest, “[Author Name], what’s
wrong with ‘Adam’?” I replied, honestly, “He’s [expletive] depressed, you
idiot.” This was both true and inappropriate to the guy code, I suspect because
of the reference to mental illness and therefore a perceived weakness. I also
comment on things that are apparently considered taboo in guy interaction,
like cleanliness and hygiene. Once, I was complimenting another player,
“Joel,” to my opponent, “Carl,” about how I respected his ability to disregard
what other people thought. The third player, Adam, asked me if he, too, did
not care what other people thought. I told him “if you did, you would shower
more,” a violation of the Guy Code. My opponent, Carl, informed me that I
said what everyone else was thinking but would not say. Ultimately, I choose
when to express my difference and when to try to blend in (Mayock 2016).
My outsider gender status gives me permission to express myself honestly

and openly to a fault without being bound to the community’s speech norms.
Adapting to other community norms was a more complex process.
Aggressively Embodied in Real Life

A popular conception of Magic players, and indeed of gamers generally,
envisions sweaty, unwashed, socially awkward, white men who are incapable
of talking to women, frequently described in Internet parlance as “neck-
beards.” Kinkade and Katovich’s ethnographic study of Magic players found
that especially enfranchised players within their sample used this language to
describe themselves, making statements such as, “‘I am such a loser’ and “If
I could get a date, do you think I would be here [playing Magic]?’” (2009,
20). They note that these kinds of statements “were uttered nightly by those
who seemed most committed to the game” and extended to other, homopho-
bic statements, which they characterize as “emasculating attacks occurred
simultaneously during the same period, often emanating from similar play-
ers. Calling one’s opponent a ‘bitch’ or ‘gay’ represented standard jibes
reflecting a minimum of effort put into deriding other players” (Kinkade and
Katovich 2009, 20). The types of players and conversational environment
abounding in homophobic slurs Kinkade and Katovich (2009) described are
familiar to me, but mercifully absent in my particular context. Social hierar-
chies and language within Magic operate differently than outside the walls of
a local game store.
Men who might otherwise be considered lower on the social hierarchy
outside of the game store can use proficiency and competence at Magic as a
social shortcut to recognition and approbation within the community, no mat-
ter their status outside of the game. On the other hand, failure to win accep-
tance within the Magic community might mean social suicide in a space
otherwise welcoming of “nerds.” Though I have certainly met my fair share
of “neckbearded” men and boys, the social stereotypes associated with Magic
players do not always hold true. Nevertheless, when I started playing Magic
I dressed in ways that accentuated my body. Always competitive and trying
to win, I viewed my body as a way to gain a small edge in tournament play.
Dressing in this manner highlighted my physical differences and attempted to
reclaim it for Magic gain. I loudly proclaimed my otherness.
In the last two years in the field, I moved to the opposite extreme and tend
to wear baggy T-shirts, shorts, or jeans, trying to blend in and disguise my
body rather than stand out. I opt for invisibility rather than presence. Mayock
viewed women’s attempts to be silent and take up less of an overt presence in
the workplace in the following way:
Every time we choose to “shut up”—and there are many good, self-preserving
reasons to choose to—we are silencing ourselves and indulging our
environments in the practice of gender inequity. . . . This concept of a woman’s
decision (or reaction) to occupy as little space as possible so as not to draw
attention to herself and not to attract unwanted [gender] shrapnel is at the core
of the identity questions raised by women’s and gender studies. It is the result
of gender socialization so firmly inculcated that many of us don’t recognize
[the phenomenon]. (2016, 102)
Mayock called this phenomenon “rhetorical anorexia” (2016, 198). Though I

view my sartorial camouflage in a more positive light that Mayock would,
negating the presence of my body may indeed emphasize my outsider status.
Sometimes, I wear T-shirts or accessories emblazoned with Magic symbols to
indicate my familiarity with the game’s culture or indicating my tie to the
game store that sponsors me. As I became more comfortable in the commu-
nity and secure in my knowledge and ability in the game, I tried to minimize
the aggressive presence of my own female body, attempting to camouflage
my uniqueness. I also attempted to fit in by learning jargon and becoming
more proficient at the game.
Learning Subcultural Norms

When I initially began to play Magic, I felt my difference most keenly
because of my inexperience at the game. Naïvely, I thought that once my
opponents got to know me, any gender differences would be minimized. I
knew that I would be seen as different, but I did not believe that even after
years of playing, I would continue to be seen as other, special, and marked.
Though I experience difficulty when talking to Magic players because of my
gender identity, I am well versed in Magic’s speech norms. Like any other
subculture (Hebdige [1979] 1988), Magic has its own language, codes, and
jargon, which can be completely impenetrable to outsiders; Dodge and
Crutcher refer to Magic players as members of a “community of practice,”
linked through shared understandings and norms, who are required to spend
a substantial amount of time learning the “discourse” of the game through
careful mentorship by more enfranchised players (2018, 174).
Players of the Legacy Magic in which I specialize will perfectly compre-
hend the following sentence: “LED, ritual, ritual, ritual, infernal tutor, main-
tain priority, crack LED for black, tutor for tendrils, tendrils you for lethal.”
This sentence describes the winning turn of a popular “Storm” deck that can
defeat its opponent quickly using a minimal amount of in-game resources.
Jargon from other gaming communities influence Magic, such as “newb” or
“n00b,” short for “newbie,” referring to a player who has only recently begun
to play the game. Other terminology specific to Magic includes “cracking
packs,” opening fifteen-card packs of random Magic cards, “mulliganing,”
shuffling initial opening hands of cards back into the deck and drawing one
fewer card, “mana-screwed” and “mana-flooded,” meaning not enough or
too much of an in-game resource (GhostofEnlil 2014),4 and common card
keywords indicating that the card has a particular ability in the game, such as
“vigilance,” “shroud,” “haste,” “trample,” “lifelink,” and many more (Dodge
and Crutcher 2018, 177). Though I am fluent in Magic terminology, this does
not always protect me from the specter of difference. As evidenced from the
conversation above, I employ a mode of conversation that violates norms of
both Guyland and feminine conversational style.
Polite to a Fault?
Though I try to be a polite and pleasant opponent, I am often ruthless, aggres-
sive, and operate by the mantra “my opponent’s fun is not my responsibility”
within games. Though women “are socialized to behave obediently and gra-
ciously,” in gameplay I am anything but ladylike (Mayock 2016, 113).
Sometimes I feel bad about this. On one occasion, I lost a frustrating game,
and my opponent took the opportunity to tell me that he thought the matchup
was a poor one for him. Angry and disagreeing with his faulty conclusion, I
replied, “do you know what your deck does?” I have often said that I am my
truest self when playing Magic, because I am free of constructs about how
women are supposed to behave in society and can focus on the game. In many
ways, Magic acts as wish fulfillment in my life, allowing me to escape soci-
etal norms about appropriate feminine behavior and just play. Though I try to
forget my marginalized identity when at Magic, I am sure others are con-
scious of it for my sake. My focus on being polite is likely tied up in my
gender expression. Though I always try to be polite when playing Magic, I
am not always nice, and this has become acceptable. Expressing anger is a
different story.
The Problem of an Angry Woman

I do get angry when I lose, and I try for politeness’s sake to keep that feeling
contained and not express it in frustration, but I am not always successful.
Anger that I do express often makes my men opponents uncomfortable; one
of my friends takes extra steps to be nice to me while playing games because
my anger unnerves him. Writing about anger in the workplace, Mayock stated
that “men can express anger and gain points; women who express anger lose
status” (2016, 99). I become especially frustrated when I lose a game due to
variance or luck rather than especially skilled play on my opponent’s part or
a mistake on mine and work hard to quash my anger in those scenarios. Anger
expressed by women makes people nervous in a way anger expressed by men
does not (Mayock 2016). In reality, however, these norms can make playing
competitive Magic more painful than fun for me. My feminist identity was
awakened through anger. I agree wholeheartedly with Tompkins, who wrote,
“It was this anger—the anger of someone whose intellectual position grew
out of her own life—that enabled me to write a book” (1996, 107) and also
enabled me to write this scholarly personal narrative. In Magic, however,
anger is usually seen as an undesirable overreaction to a game, or as Magic
players often facetiously call it, “a children’s card game.”
Outside of individual games, however, I am one of the few people who has
a full working knowledge of what my regular opponents do outside of Magic.
For added context, I possess this knowledge in an environment where any
question along the lines of “how are you?” is generally interpreted to mean
“what’s your win/loss record in this tournament?” I know who works where,
who is in school, where, and studying what, who has children, and who has
recently begun or ended a relationship; I remember and ask about these topics
each week. I do not tolerate bullying or inappropriate behavior. If I believe a
player is being bullied or misinformed by their opponent, I will step in (within
the bounds of the game) and I will say something. Friends of mine have joked
that I am our “social chair” for Magic, and I have difficulty determining
whether that is a comment dependent on gender bias. As Mayock said,
“Greater social sensitivity and politeness are the burden of subordinates in a
climate when one has to pay attention to the nuances of the struggle for equal-
ity” (2016, 63) and I experience this burden even when facing overt sexism.
The Times When I Experienced Overt Sexism

Though I frequently encounter covert sexism while playing Magic, I have
only encountered overt sexism a few times. In the first instance, which took
place in 2014, I beat one of my friends in a matchup I was not favored to win.
In other words, the seventy-five-card deck I had brought to play Magic was
considered to lose more often than not to my opponent’s seventy-five-card
deck. When discussing the match afterward, an acquaintance of mine said
that my opponent had only lost because I used my feminine wiles. I responded
to this comment by telling him “that’s sexist, ‘Oswald’” and storming out of
the room. My husband told me later that he had replied indignantly, “What?
I don’t have feminine wiles.” Oswald’s use of the term feminine wiles, here,
indicated that I used some sort of manipulation based purely on my gender
presentation to influence the outcome of the game; otherwise, the assumed

superior, man-identified player would have won the game. My gender iden-
tity trumped any identity I might claim to him as a good player. I did not
report this incident to store authorities until August 2017, when I began writ-
ing this SPN.
Mayock reminded us that gender norms encourage women to be silent
about their harassment to, paradoxically, avoid causing pain to others. I
reported this incident to store management only in August 2017, creating a
silence that Mayock describes as “a sign of oppression and the creation of
oppression” (2016, 100). I still see this player relatively frequently, and am
barely polite, and sometimes actively hostile. When I play against him, I
experience stereotype threat in which I “face the threat of confirming or being
judged by a negative societal stereotype” regarding my “ability and compe-
tence” at Magic, which “interfere[s] with . . . intellectual functioning” during
gameplay (Steele and Aronson 1995, 797). Though Steele and Aronson
(1995) wrote about the performance of African American students on tests
and I am a white woman, like this group, I may become subject to inferiority
narratives and conclude that the game is not for me. I have difficulty concen-
trating, because I am trying to prove more than my skill at the game. The
following story is an example of my effort in this regard.
In September 2016, I was at a “Limited” draft event in which players both
pass and receive cards from players sitting on either side of them. In this
format, all seats are assigned in advance to prevent players sitting next to
each other in the draft from playing each other in the first round of the tourna-
ment, as they may have special knowledge about their opponents’ decks
because of the information obtained from passing and receiving cards. This
man, with whom I had previously been acquainted, was sitting in my assigned
draft seat. I informed him of this, and he gestured toward his lap as if I should
sit there. I flipped him off, told him that was inappropriate, and immediately
informed the store manager.
Sue describes this gendered microaggression as “sexual objectification,”
treating a woman only as a body (2010, 170). The same evening, this person
and I played against each other, and I was so nervous during the match for
fear of possible gender-based repercussions that I was shaking. Thankfully, in
a triumph for women gamers everywhere, I played well and won the match.
Though the store manager told me that he had talked to the man, I never
received an apology, and still see the man around the store often. When I
discussed this event with a different store employee in December 2017, he
told me that “he liked both of us,” an unhelpful and alienating response. What
has been the most upsetting to me about each of these incidents is the lack of
ally behavior I encounter from anyone who is not a store employee.
Women Magic Players: Us and Them

Because women are such a rare sight in competitive Magic, each encounter
is memorable—even for another woman! For this reason, I remember most
of these encounters and the match outcomes. A now-defunct Magic podcast
called The Girlfriend Bracket, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the suppos-
edly poor tournament performance of women at Magic tournaments, terms
the memorable presence of women Magic players the “mantle effect”
(Campbell et al. 2017). As the only woman in a Magic event, there is an
extra burden to represent all women when playing, since my actions reflect
upon the entire gender. In Magic, it is considered a breach of etiquette to ask
women certain questions because it highlights their marginalized identity,
even when these questions are acceptable to ask men opponents. These
include “how long have you been playing Magic?” “Who taught you to play
Magic?” or the worse version, “Did your husband/boyfriend teach you to
play Magic?” Even if, as in my case, my husband did teach me to play, the
implication that men are gatekeepers to the game and the only way in is
through them reifies a particular understanding of the game as a male-only
space. Though I rationally know all of these things, when playing against
women opponents I have internalized these stereotypes and have to struggle
not to ask these questions.
There are prominent women in the Magic community who occasionally
write about their often-negative experiences in the community based on gen-
der (Baum 2017), some of whom are also members of the trans community
(Handy 2017),5 and certain groups such as the Lady Planeswalker Society
(Lady Planeswalker Society n.d.), designed to welcome women and people
of all genders to the game, but I find myself interacting with these groups as
“them” not an “us.” Though I am supportive of other women Magic players
and will defend their right to play the game and be welcomed, I distance
myself from these groups. Paradoxically, though I want to be treated like any
other player, it is difficult for me to treat my women opponents in the same
way I treat my men opponents. Hegemonic gender norms insidiously creep
into my conversation, and I find myself behaving like a man opponent. For
these nearly unconscious assumptions, it is “their invisibility that makes them
so powerful and potentially lethal” (Sue 2010, 169). The power of gender
norms is “a machine in which everyone is caught, those who exercise power
just as much as those over whom it is exercised” and I am no exception
(Foucault [1977] 1980, 156). The complex intertwining of my own feelings
of marginalization and desire to belong makes it hard for me not to marginal-
ize other women. I both struggle to be an ally and yet do not perceive ally
behavior in other players.
On Allies, Education, and Male Anger

I have never experienced a man player stepping in to defend my position,
remind someone of my rules knowledge and game experience, or tell some-
one else that their behavior is sexist. They refrain from acting as allies.
Based on what I know from conversations about this topic, men are worried
that if they intercede in situations like this they will be part of the problem
rather than part of the solution. I believe most of them think they are well-
intentioned, not sexist, and do not hold sexist attitudes. Sue defined “mod-
ern sexism” as “characterized by denial of personal bias and prejudice
toward women, a general conscious belief in equality of the sexes, but
unconscious attitudes that foster nonsupport for programs and legislation
helpful to women” (2010, 168). My friends worry their speech would be
considered sexist if they intervene.
The silence of potential allies further isolates me and creates gender shrap-
nel (Mayock 2016). Silenced and experiencing the burden of others’ silence,
I feel alone and unsupported in public spaces, though quite a few players
assure me that they are not sexist. These men are confident that gender shrap-
nel and discrimination will not reach them, and use the expression of compas-
sion to the victim, me, in a way that unintentionally cements my otherness
(Mayock 2016). Perhaps they wish to avoid confrontation above all else and
would rather not grapple with gender issues in their hobby, forgetting that it
is the privilege of the dominant group to ignore marginalized identities. One
man player told me that he would never be able to treat a woman Magic
player the same as a man player because the identities are just too different.
Because I want to work for gender equality, I find myself in an educative
space and forced to explain not only feminism and sexism to this group, but
also homophobia (Kinkade and Katovich 2009), transphobia, racism, and
other unpleasant realities.
Though many of the players I regularly encounter are between eighteen
and thirty years of age, there are some younger players who experience age-
ism in the community. I find myself having quite a bit in common with these
players, because their opponents assume that they do not know how to play
the game, doubt their expertise, and assume they possess less-than-optimal,
cheaper cards because they are young. We have often commiserated about
our shared experiences as outsiders in the community. Because of their age,
though, and because I identify as a socially conscious educator, I find myself
in the position of explaining why they should not use certain terms and words
teenagers use for dramatic or comic effect, or sometimes lose patience and
simply tell them not to say certain things. Most of the time, they apologize to
me, but I operate in a delicate space as neither their relative nor their teacher.
Because of the aforementioned stigma against a woman’s anger, even

when speaking to older players, I try to frame my critical inquiry about terms
or assumptions they have in reason-based rather than emotion-based words,
hoping that they will take me seriously. Sue described the double bind of
women in leadership roles, saying that women: “are told to be wary of show-
ing emotions or social sensitives to others or they will be perceived as being
‘weak’ or ‘too emotional’ to deal with the rough and tumble of logical deci-
sion” (2010, 163). I, too, try to be logical rather than emotional in the com-
munity, but sometimes it feels like yelling into the void.
Besides encouraging my fellow players to use more inclusive language, I
am often on the receiving end of male anger, while social norms discourage
me from expressing it myself. Most people dislike losing, and Magic players
are no exception. Many nonprofessional Magic players seem to view it as an
opportunity to prove their intelligence, perceiving that the world has failed to
meet their expectations and Magic is their last chance to achieve greatness.
As a result, Magic games can be quite high-stakes, as players might view
games as a way to demonstrate their superiority. For me, Magic games are
about defying gender stereotypes; for other players, however, they serve as
definitive manhood acts, defined by Schrock and Schwalbe as “involv[ing]
displays of heterosexual appetite and prowess” used to prove masculinity and
belonging (2009, 288). Men who work in white-collar professions often feel
the need to demonstrate their masculinity in the workplace by spending
extensive time in the office and holding their professional commitments
above any other responsibilities (Williams 2010).
Many men who play Magic do not often hold jobs dependent on their
physical prowess and use the game as a way to demonstrate mental rather
than physical superiority, or alternately they do work in blue-collar jobs and
believe they deserve something different. Manhood acts (Schrock and
Schwalbe 2009) can also extend to high-risk, high-reward tournament play,
such as refusal to equally split cash prizes in an event and instead insisting
on competing until one person attains victory and an unequal share of prize
money. This instrumental use of Magic can lead to uncomfortable situations
for me.
Once, when playing at a casual “pre-release” event for an upcoming Magic
set of cards in which I was part of a team of two with another woman player,
we played against two men whom I had previously defeated in another pre-
release. We won, but one of our opponents became increasingly angry over
the course of the game, to the point that he was practically throwing cards and
making inferior plays due to his rage. After we had defeated them, and once
they were out of earshot, I turned to my partner and said, “welcome to the
sub-game of Magic: managing male anger.” Though I was partially joking,
there have been many times where my—usually male—opponent is acting

immature, rude, or overreacting to a situation in which they are losing. If I am
not scared of them and sometimes I am, I usually try to diffuse the situation
by responding politely and calmly to their anger, and not escalating the situ-
ation by reacting with my own anger.
I try to avoid being the target of blame and respond with neutral noises
when my opponent says something like “nice topdeck,” implying that the
luck required to draw one card from the deck was solely responsible for my
winning a game or a match. As detailed above, I am not always successful at
quenching my anger, though gender norms indicate that I should. In the last
year, I have tried to reclaim my anger as an appropriate response to an unjust
society rather than an unfeminine expression of inappropriate emotion.
Perennial Outsider
When playing Magic, I operate in a liminal space between expert and out-
sider. I have excellent working knowledge of the game’s rules. My local
game store sponsors me, meaning that I receive financial support from them
when I play in large tournaments and can borrow cards directly from the
store. Those who are not regular players at my local store, however, do not
know my credentials; if I offer an opinion or answer a rules question, they
ignore me or assume I am wrong. This creates a bind because demonstrating
my expertise through past accomplishments is not gender-appropriate, but
nonetheless, bragging is one of the few ways available to gain Magic social
capital. According to Mayock, “it is culturally acceptable for boys and men to
brag about real and perceived accomplishments” but “it is unacceptable for
girls and women to do the same” (2016, 116). “Mansplaining,” assuming that
I need to have concepts explained to me simply because I am a woman,
abounds (Rothman 2012; Solnit 2012).
I frequently experience gender microaggressions, described by Sue as
“brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioral indignities, whether
intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or nega-
tive gender slights and insults that potentially have a harmful impact on
women” (2010, 164). It hurts to be on guard all the time. It hurts every time
my Magic friends ask my husband’s opinion instead of mine, listen to me but
disregard my thoughts on an issue, card choice, or match analysis, or worse,
ignore me entirely. It hurts when my opponents of all genders “mansplain,”
doubt my knowledge of the rules, or explain something I said in their own
words, as if I am incomprehensible because of being a woman (Solnit 2012).
Buck (2018) describes her experience working in the video game industry in
a similar manner:
Being a woman in stereotypically men’s spaces means that some men will be
threatened by you. Men you don’t expect will suddenly be threatened by you.
And because toxic masculinity encourages them to hide these feelings, chances
are . . . THEY WILL TAKE IT OUT ON YOU. [emphasis in original]6
It is impossible to fit in while constantly sticking out due to my gender in a

man-dominated space like the Magic community. Even if I am incorrect in
my statements, which of course happens sometimes, it hurts to always be a
second rather than a first opinion.
These many small slings and arrows are mitigated for me for two reasons:
my husband was an established local player before I entered the competitive
scene, giving me an “in,” and my local game store has the distinct advantage
of being woman-owned. The owner and the employees regularly identify me
as an excellent player, and one employee asks me rules questions as a way to
support my position in the community. Employees often give me small com-
pliments such as asking me to be “draft captain.” In draft, a “Limited” format
of Magic in which players create their decks of cards based on cards received
at the store rather than assembled prior to the tournament, draft captains
explain and enforce the rules of the draft and answer questions about the draft
experience. Though I am almost always chosen as draft captain, sometimes
people ignore my instructions and seem to fail to comprehend them until a
man explains what I said. This too hurts. I tend to assume that these microag-
gressions are due to covert gender bias, but when participating in the Magic
community in real life, bias can be overt and rooted in gender.
Conclusion: End Step

Why do I play Magic? When asked this question a few months ago, I replied,
“because I like beating dudes.” Though this is still true, I have come to realize
that Magic represents more than that for me. Magic gives me the opportunity
to wage war on gender norms and demonstrate that women are not in any way
inferior to men. In Magic, because I am a “bro” in a thinly veiled disguise, I
can participate in an all-male space as a woman or as a bro, depending on my
own feelings in the moment. I reap the benefits of the bro code without hav-
ing to follow it at all times. Sometimes I feel like a spy in Guyland. After a
particularly difficult recent tournament, I decided that though I have a ven-
detta against unfair gender norms, it is not solely my responsibility to prove
my skill. If other players assume that my gender is responsible for my losses,
that is their—and society’s—fault, not mine. For now, I can do my part to
challenge the culture, and continue winning as much as I can and losing as
politely as I am able. This article and its discussion of my experiences in the
community provides one explanation for the paucity of women in the Magic
community during the time of data collection.
As of now, April 2019, I no longer play Magic competitively in person.
After a lengthy discussion in October 2018 with two men players at a tourna-
ment, whom I had known for years and had beaten in games many times in
which they refused to listen to me and argued with each other about how two
cards in my deck functioned, I realized that if I could not convince these two of
my prowess after years of play, there was nothing further to prove. My outsider
status was permanent. Since January 2019, I am playing more Magic than
ever—at least an hour a day—but online and from the safety of my home. The
“outsider within” has become the outsider without (Hill Collins 1986, S15).
The findings of this article indicate that access is not the same as inclu-
sion. When attempting to diversify a community, even one focused on leisure
like Magic, my experience indicates that learning jargon, selective accep-
tance on the part of some members, and even the presence of verbally sup-
portive allies is not sufficient to ensure belonging. Years immersed in this
community did not guarantee my belonging. Individual outsiders must make
choices for themselves about whether the effort taken to join the community
is commensurate with the outcome they hope to receive. This article also
reinforces the need for allies in action rather than allies in words only. A truly
welcoming community requires allies and members of the in-group to notice
and disrupt the exclusive actions of other members. This is difficult work, but
necessary for a truly inclusive space.
Limitations
I collected data for this SPN and crafted the narrative based on my experi-
ences in one particular game store over four years of participation in one
corner of the competitive Magic gaming community. As a cisgender, able-
bodied white woman who often engaged in this hobby and participated in the
community in the company of her husband, other SPNs or autoethnographies
from the vantage point of someone with other identities historically marginal-
ized in the Magic community could add a different perspective in an analysis.
The experiences of transgender players, players of color, players with dis-
abilities, and men players would contribute a different perspective and add to
our understanding of this community. An outsider perspective could shed
new light onto aspects of the community I have taken for granted.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Beth Bukoski, Leia Cain, Aaron Voyles, and Aren
Wilson-Wright for their conversations and comments about this manuscript. A
previous version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth International Congress
on Qualitative Inquiry, May 2018. The author would also like to thank the audience
members at that session for their feedback and the anonymous reviewers for their
thoughts.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
ORCID iD
Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5553-1744
Notes
1. Magic: The Gathering is a registered trademark owned by Wizards of the Coast
LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
2. Rosewater, Mark. 2017b. “Shekelsteinberg Asked: Greetings Mr. Rosewater,
May I Ask Why Spike Is Portrayed as a Female, When Only About 1% Of
Professional Players are Girls, It’s Not Honest to Make People Feel Included in
a Representation of a Player Base They” (Tumblr post). Blogatog, November 16.
Retrieved July 10, 2018 (http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/167547562988
/greetings-mr-rosewater-may-i-ask-why-spike-is).
3. Rosewater, Mark. 2017a. “Ru-Ron Asked: I Think One of the Reasons the Community
Argues with You Is That You Defend Points That Are Contrary to Our Experiences.
I Agree That You Have No Reason to Lie to Us, But as an Example, the” (Tumblr
post). Blogatog, June 22. Retrieved July 10, 2018 (http://markrosewater.tumblr.com
/post/162137383148/i-think-one-of-the-reasons-the-community-argues#notes).
4. GhostofEnlil. 2014. “/r/magic TCG’s List of Terms, Slang and Jargon.”
Reddit.com, December 10. Retrieved July 10, 2018 (https://www.reddit.com/r
/magicTCG/comments/2ox0iu/rmagic_tcgs_list_of_terms_slang_and_jargon/).
5. Handy, Emma. 2017. “Being a Trans Woman in Competitive Magic” (Facebook).
Facebook.com, April 22. Retrieved July 10, 2018 (https://www.facebook.com/notes
/emma-handy/being-a-trans-woman-in-competitive-magic/1694014020892995/).
6. Buck, Emily Grace. 2018. “Being a Woman in Stereotypically Men’s Spaces
Means That Some Men Will Be Threatened by You. Men You Don’t Expect Will
Suddenly Be Threatened by You. And Because Toxic Masculinity Encourages
Them to Hide These Feelings, Chances Are. . . THEY WILL” (Tweet). Twitter.
com, June 26. Retrieved July 10, 2018 (https://twitter.com/emilybuckshot/status
/1011697596572655621).
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Author Biography
Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at
Austin in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. Her work focuses on
gender in the academy as well as informational inequities in higher education in finan-
cial aid and community college transfer. She is also a dedicated gamer.

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1University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA

“I’d love to be known primarily as a good player with my gender being

Introduction: Opening Hand

emergence of the self. SPN, however, is unconstrained by any specific

Meet the Author

“bulldog for her clients,” which is intended as a critique on her femininity.

More on Magic: The Gathering

Why Are There So Few Women in Magic? Preliminary Answers

in sanctioned events, I have played against a woman perhaps twenty-five

Women and Gaming

the structural barriers to accessing game cultures—especially if women do

Gathered groupies are female companions of Magic players, seemingly tied

a series of small workplace explosions that occur when no one person or

My outsider gender status gives me permission to express myself honestly

Aggressively Embodied in Real Life

Mayock called this phenomenon “rhetorical anorexia” (2016, 198). Though I

Learning Subcultural Norms

The Problem of an Angry Woman

The Times When I Experienced Overt Sexism

presentation to influence the outcome of the game; otherwise, the assumed

Women Magic Players: Us and Them

On Allies, Education, and Male Anger

Because of the aforementioned stigma against a woman’s anger, even

there have been many times where my—usually male—opponent is acting

It is impossible to fit in while constantly sticking out due to my gender in a

Conclusion: End Step

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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