Punching Up the Patriarchy - I don't care if you laugh, I amuse myself

I resemble this teacher.

I would like to start this post with a disclaimer: I am not a comedian. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone. I am not very funny - to most people. I am that dorky lecturer that will drop jokes and references that none of the teenagers in front of me gets. "That's ok, I amuse myself," is the cue I follow jokes with so that the students know it won't be on the test (I mean if I gave tests, but that's another post).

To a certain extent, I also approach streams this way. This is not to say that I don't want to entertain my viewers, I do, but I want to enjoy myself first - or I won't continue to stream anyway. Playing The Witcher is great for me because I absolutely love this game (seriously, I haven't had this much fun playing a game since I had an actual raiding guild in WoW many years ago) and the extreme and obvious masculine point of view of the game allows for one of my favorite past-times - satirically behaving stereotypically macho.

This is not a new pass time for me. I noticed early in life, being raised in a fairly traditional Catholic household, that being a girl in America was not the best character creation roll I could've made (certainly by no means the least privileged, but that is also a topic for another day) and even as an elementary school kid, I remember pushing against the gender roles adults were trying to enculturate me into. At first, this was mostly born of frustration, but as I got older and I learned those boundaries and expectations better, I also learned that I am both amused by and feel empowered when I subvert such cultural expectations with this sort of satirical role-play.


I am Geralt. Sometimes this is because I immerse myself in that role while playing, but other times it is because I am playing at being a comically toxic version of Geralt. And, of course, nowhere am I more likely to start playing at being, rather than being, Geralt than when it comes to the sex cards.

I have already written about the sex cards, and so anyone who's been following along will know that when it comes to sleeping with women in the game I am not always poking fun at toxic masculinity. This past week, however, I most certainly was.

My final sex card of ch3

Last Sunday I was coming to the end of chapter 3 in The Witcher and so I made a point to finish anything I would want to in Vizima before finishing the main quest line and possibly getting thrown out of the city. The stream before this one there had been some joking between me and chat about the sex cards not being Pokemon - ie I did not in fact have to catch them all. Remembering that exchange I decided chat was wrong and made it my imperative to collect all of the cards possible in this chapter - as my highest priority for that day. Unlike when I slept with Abigail in chapter 2 - when I slept with her because I wanted to sleep with her - this time I was focusing on the cards, the metaphorical notches in my bedpost, and not the women. This was about conquest on 2 levels. On the one hand, it was a conquest of a game mechanic and on the other, it was me playing at sexual conquest within the game.

There were 10 possible sex cards to be collected in chapter 3 and I got them all. I didn't bed 10 women during 1 stream, I actually had most of them already, but I finished off the remaining 3, taking up over an hour, or more than a quarter of the stream. I found the whole endeavor immensely amusing. I don't know if chat did though. One person assisted me in the conquest, but everyone else was quiet for the most part - or talked about life outside of the game.

Later that evening, after stream had ended, I spoke to someone who was in chat that day about all of this and his take was that most men will not find this humorous because I am making fun of them. Honestly, I hadn't thought about in those terms before, but he is right. Yes, I am "punching up" which is generally accepted, but that doesn't mean that it will be funny to those with the privilege being made fun of. I don't know if this is the case, but it does fall in line with my experiences and seems logical. No one likes being made fun of after all. Now to be clear, no one in chat expressed any problems with what I was doing or how I was doing it, but neither did most of them engage with this play.

Interestingly, this had actually been my second encounter with my satirical play getting mixed results that week. And although the other example was not from stream, it still involved the Witcher.

I play in a weekly ttrpg (tabletop role-playing game) online (because of Covid19) called Pathfinder. Often after game, we hang out and chat for a bit, at which point the following exchange occurred (from memory, so the wording is not exact, but close):

Player 1: Hey Krista-Lee, filming for the 2nd season of the Netflix Witcher series is scheduled to begin soon.
Me: Oh ya I know. I follow Henry Cavill on Instagram and have been seeing those hot gym pics now that he is back to training for it.
Player 1: laughs
Player 2: uh ... what ... wow ... I kind of feel sorry for that guy being objectified like that. (In the shakiest, most uncertain voice I had ever heard this man use.)
Player 1: laughs some more

My first instinct to this was to reply, "lol, welcome to my world," but I didn't because I realized that player 2 was taking me seriously, and that is not how I meant my comment within that exchange at all. In fact, my comment wasn't even true - or at least it was exaggerated. I had actually seen a single photo Cavill posted himself that showed a silhouette of him in an empty gym that someone else then tied to training for Witcher season 2 - that's how I got the idea. Then I made the comment to sound like those I have heard men make about women celebrities - you know, objectifying them. Player 1 knew this because he knew me and also because we had recently bonded over mutual frustrations over patriarchal ideas about sex and relationships (in addition to binging Witcher together 2 weeks prior). Player 2 however, had never spent time with me outside of game and so doesn't really know me... at all.

Even with that pixie
I still looked very feminine, no?

At this point, I figured I didn't want to give in to my initial instinct because I didn't want to upset this group needlessly, but I also didn't have the energy to delve into an explanation of the joke that would have to include deep-diving into punching up, satirical roleplay, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy. Also, the humor here for me - and those that find this funny, because there are some - requires one to know me more than in passing and to have seen me. See, this is not just about punching up, it is also about subverting expectations. I am a woman and look very stereotypically feminine - I have a soft voice, slender features, longish hair (now at least), and even my style, though unmistakably geeky, is also very feminine. When I then act in or say things that are stereotypically masculine - when I act decidedly unladylike - I find the dissonance and people's reactions to it - entertaining. Player 2, however, has almost exclusively interacted with me in character. Technically, he has seen me in person, but that was quite a while ago and I was in my pjs and growing out a pixie cut at the time, so he also has never seen the way I publically present myself normally, thereby ruining his ability to grasp the incongruent nature of my role-playing.

All of this is fine though. I amuse myself. I am not here to entertain the men in my life. If they are entertained then they are welcome to stay and continue to be so, but if not they are welcome to leave. Will this be a problem for streaming? In a space that is male-dominated? 🤷We all deal with struggle in our own way and subverting gendered expectations has always been what gets me through - even as it becomes more extreme. I lost all my fucks about 2 years ago and there is no reason for me to rekindle them now.