Live-streaming, games and politics of gender performance: The case of<i>Nüzhubo</i>in China

Abstract

In the emerging scholarship on live-streaming sites, the role of gender has been relatively overlooked. This article aims to address this oversight by capturing the controversial rise of nüzhubo (Chinese for ‘female casters’) in the Chinese live-streaming platform, Douyu. Through ethnographic research on Douyu over 2 years, we have witnessed female performers who – motivated by both entrepreneurial spirit and creative agency – have embraced new forms of performative practices in, and around, video game commentary cultures. We begin with a brief contextualizing the gendered nature of media in the history of Chinese video sites and how theories around gender – especially gender performativity – might be adapted. While acknowledging the homogenizing effect of the term nüzhubo, we focus on two performers on Douyu – Hani9 and Nvliu – that are challenging conventional nüzhubo tropes. We argue for a situated notion of gender performativity that also engages with the platform-specific social, cultural and technical infrastructures – ‘platformativity’ to use Thomas Lamarre’s word.