Second-hand masculinity: Do boys with intellectual disabilities use computer games to pursue a masculine ideal? By David Charnock & Penny Standen

1. Second-hand masculinity: Do boys with
intellectual disabilities use computer
games as part of gender practice?
David Charnock and Penny J Standen

2. Introduction
• Mainstream (normalised?) masculinity.
– Frosh et al (2002) ‘Popular
masculinities’
• Disabled masculinity.
– Gerschick and Miller (1994) The three R’s
Reformation, Reliance and Rejection.
• Intellectually disabled masculinity.
– Care staff and segregated environments.

3. Aim
• To explore whether boys with ID
have a culturally normative idea of
what it means to be a boy, what
influences this and what ideas the
boys have about their futures as
men.

4. Aim
• To focus on the boys’ use of games
as a potential space for gendered
practice and their experience of
second hand masculinity via the
hyper-masculine characters typically
found in many commercial games.

5. Method
• Participants.
– 21 boys with ID in transition from school
to the adult world
• Procedure.
– Initial observation.
– Group interviews.
– Individual interviews.
• Analysis.

6. Results: Games as space for gendered
practice.
• Console games are used by boys
with ID as an opportunity for
gendered practice, which appears
directly to contrast with their
experiences in the real world.
– Opportunities to try out culturally
normative ideas.
– Opportunity for choice and control.

7. Results: Games as space for gendered
practice.
Chris: These fights, you know these bullies at
(names mainstream school) they had a
fight with me, just… and all the time I get
into trouble. And you know the other time
right in this lesson I accidentally wacked
my hand on the teacher’s face like
that…because (names two other boys),
those two dimwits got me into trouble and
they had to put me out.

8. Results: Games as space for gendered
practice.
Chris: These fights, you know these bullies at
(names mainstream school) they had a
fight with me, just… and all the time I get
into trouble. And you know the other time
right in this lesson I accidentally wacked
my hand on the teacher’s face like
that…because (names two other boys),
those two dimwits got me into trouble and
they had to put me out.
John: So I just Log in and there’s all those people
that you’ve got you can’t go on single
player mode now.

9. Results: Games as a construct of hyper-
masculinity
• Boys with ID use games to embody
an identity of hyper-masculinity, in
direct contrast to their lives.
– Opportunities to embody an
exaggerated form of masculinity.
– Opportunity to be free of Intellectual
Disability (ID).

10. Results: Games as a construct of hyper-
masculinity
Andy: I’ve got some fighting games. I’ve got
Prince of Persia, South time for the PS
2, halo 2 for the X-Box, for the normal
X-Box, and I’m hoping that I might get
my X-Box 360 to get Halo 3 and
Assassins Creed.

11. Results: Games as a construct of hyper-
masculinity
Ian: I’ve finished Ironman.
Int.: Oh have you?
Ian: Yeh. So I’ve got to wait to get the
Incredible Hulk now.
Int.: Yeh? So you like things that are real
action that you have to work through.
Ian: The Black Knight’s coming soon as well.
Int.: The Black Knight? What’s that?
Ian: Batman.

12. Results: Games as a construct of hyper-
masculinity
John: …so I was in this instance and all of a
sudden this creature we killed it of
course and then something happened
it just went off and then on and then
she was there again and of course we
were at full house so we had to kill her
again.

13. Results: Games as a construct of hyper-
masculinity
John: There was like two dead bodies there
when we came back and then we went
there again it didn’t happen again but
with other ones it did and we were
quite annoyed at it. We weren’t
annoyed ‘cause we got extra things
with it, but we were annoyed that it
actually did happen when we were
resting and everything.

14. Conclusion
•Understanding ‘the way we do boy’.
– idiosyncratic, sometimes culturally
normative for them, but never
dominated by their impairments.
•Gaming as…
– a place for gendered practice.
– a catalyst for the questioning of positive and
problematic images of masculinity.

15. And so…
•Should games be specifically designed
to help us engage with boys about
their developing identity?
or
•Should we engage better with the
games boys love to begin a dialogue
about their developing identity?

16. Thank you!