More Gamer, Less Girl: Gendered Boundaries, Tokenism, and the Cultural Persistence of Masculine Dominance JENNA DRENTEN ROBERT L. HARRISON NICHOLAS J. PENDARVIS How do exclusionary boundaries persist in consumption subcultures amid increased progress, representation, and inclusion? In video gaming, women have come to repre- sent nearly half of the market; yet, this is a limited indicator of gender-based progress. A culture of masculine dominance persists. Extending previous research on boundary work, the authors employ a cultural perspective of tokenism to examine how gendered boundaries in consumption subcultures persist despite efforts to transform or even eradicate them. This qualitative study draws on interviews with 23 gamers who identify as women (ages 19–29 years), coupled with data from social media platforms, news media, and industry reports. Empirical findings capture the recursive process of malad- aptive boundary crossing: how women’s efforts to subvert gendered boundaries at the micro level (e.g., through response enactments) get churned through the structuring tokenistic mechanics of boundary work at the meso level and result in the inadvertent cultural persistence of masculine dominance. The analysis offers a conceptual frame- work that explains how micro–meso level dynamics perpetuate and conceal inequity in consumption subcultures. Implications address the precarious promise of progress and the cultural legacy of tokenism in the marketplace with particular relevance to broader systems of domination. Keywords: consumption subculture, video gaming, gender inequity, boundary work, tokenism, masculine dominance I n March of 2019, Chiquita Evans became the first woman drafted into the NBA 2K League, the premier professional video gaming league co-organized by the National Basketball Association. Fellow NBA 2K gamers complimented Evans’s boundary-breaking achievement but with caveats. “She has (high) basketball IQ for a girl,” said one gamer. “Most people would be like, ‘I’m playing with a girl. She’s not going to know what to do.’ She knows what she’s doing. You can tell.” The she-is-good-for-a-girl descriptor signals deeply rooted gendered structures that underlie gaming. Indeed, Evans reports experiencing gender-based harassment from fellow gamers. “I’ve had sexual remarks put toward me,” she said. “I get told I should be back in the kitchen. ‘2K is not for women,’ I’ve had that. There’s no question about that” (Associated Press 2019). It is not Evans’s skillset or knowledge that makes her unique among her fellow players; it is her gendered posi- tion of being a woman in gaming. Jenna Drenten (jdrenten@luc.edu) is an associate professor of marketing at the Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Robert L. Harrison (robert.harrison@wmich.edu) is a professor of marketing at the Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA. Nicholas J. Pendarvis (npendarvis623@gmail.com) is an independent researcher, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. Please address correspondence to Jenna Drenten. The authors thank the editors, associate editor, and reviewers for their outstanding and con- structive guidance. In addition, the authors wish to thank David Crockett, Jim Gentry, Mary Ann McGrath, Ann Veeck, Linda Tuncay Zayer, members of the Chicago Consumer Culture Community (C4), members of the Southern California Consumer Culture Community (SC4), and members of Gender, Markets, and Consumers (GENMAC) for their thoughtful feedback throughout the preparation of this article. Editors: Linda L. Price and Markus Giesler Associate Editor: Zeynep Arsel Advance Access publication 3 October 2022 V C The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com  Vol. 00  2022 https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac046 1 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jcr/ucac046/6747192 by guest on 03 January 2023