Gender, power and computer games: Pauline Gonthier

Polis, masculinism, and political opportunism

Pauline Gonthiers Parthenia Parthenia is a rare example of contemporary literature that blends the sociology of the digital, gender semiotics, and political psychology into an aesthetic form that is both analytical and poetic. The novel, in a parable-like fashion, depicts a time when language itself becomes code and gender an interface. In this sense, Parthenia is not merely a place, but a process—a simulation of myth in the syntax of the digital.

Gonthiers Parthenia (2025) is a novel about the dangerous beauty of order: Between the empty screens of an unemployed gamer and the impeccably lit offices of a political consultant, a dual portrait unfolds of a society that reflects itself in myths and algorithms. Baptiste, trapped in the toxic forums of the masculinist "redpill" culture, and Léa, an attaché to a nationalist politician, move in different but uniformly coded worlds: his digital misogyny and her professional cynicism are two sides of the same logic of communication—cold, efficient, and disembodied. Between them, a PartheniaA virtual city in the style of antiquity, transforming the dream of discipline, purity, and male power into a game—thus blurring the line between simulation and reality. Both characters reflect the same ideological climate: one introverted, regressive, and narcissistic; the other extroverted, functionalist, and opportunistic—two faces of a posthuman project that virtualizes body, language, and morality. The novel confronts Baptiste, the uprooted young man who channels his emotions and sexuality into forums and gaming worlds, with Léa, the young political administrator torn between conformity, a fascination with power, and moral disgust.

It is worth noting here that Pauline Gonthier is a graduate of the École normale supérieure and ENSAE Paris; she works as an economist in the French administration, for example, she was appointed Finance Director of UNEDIC. Her first novel, The Wild Oys (Julliard, 2021) addresses the topic of feminism by examining the intersecting fates of two young women in the 70s and the 2010s/2020s. Parthenia This is Gonthier's second novel, which now includes the counter-world of feminism.

Pauline Gonthiers Parthenia This is not a novel about a city, but about the idea of ​​a city as a mythic-technological allegory for gender conflict, linguistic decay, and ideological self-networking in the 21st century. The polis mentioned in the title—a fictional Greco-Roman city within an online game—acts as an architectural projection screen for collective psychological and political deformations. The very first sentence ("Au commencement, un lien posté dans une conversation World of Warcraft") marks the paradox: the biblical In principio merges with the syntax of the digital. In the game world, whose name alludes to the ancient Greek παρθενία—"virginity"—hierarchy, purity, and "virile" order become digital dogmas. Parthenia is simultaneously symbol and system, myth and interface: a political-sexual matrix in which the ancient gender myths of antiquity (Athena, Parthenos, Tirésias) are translated into algorithmic structures. Gonthier writes with the precision of a sociologist and the imagination of a mythologist. Her prose is clear, transparent, permeated by a subtle irony that reflects and simultaneously undermines the ideological seriousness of her characters. Parthenia It is simultaneously a social satire, a gender study, and a digital tragedy: a novel about language as a weapon and about the internet as a mythical space in which ancient demons – control, purity, resentment – ​​return in new code.

Baptiste and Léa

The character Baptiste is introduced as a body in sweat and stagnation. His sphere of movement is the screen; his sensuality is exhausted in the gesture of scrolling. The scene in which he is in forums such as Blackpill or Redpill The study of a toxic language community is based on the fact that it slides down.

This excerpt from a forum post (“[Redpill] La vérité sur les femmes”) stages a text-within-a-text structure in which the hate discourse itself becomes literary—rhythmized, typographically coded, frozen into a litany. The formulas in capital letters (“MENSONGE,” “TOUT EST INTÉRESSÉ”) create a pseudo-bible of resentment. Baptiste reads these sentences not as opinions, but as revelations. His transformation from “gentleman” to online disciple of the misogynist is not a realistic developmental arc, but a metonymic process of infection: language here acts virally. When Baptiste uses terms like VSM, betabox, IRL Deciphered, the novel carries out a linguistic anthropology of the new masculinity: the reduction of vocabulary becomes a psychological economy.

Communication in forums replaces social interaction: Dialogue degenerates into a chain of slogans, memes, and pseudo-statistical fragments. Gonthier shows how communication in communication theories is tipping over – conversation becomes discourse analysis, discourse self-programming. Hate is rationalized, syntax sterile: “Il cherche à en traduire certains.“The ‘chercher à traduire’ is the guiding principle of a man who experiences the world only in translations, never again in encounters.

Baptiste's digital monologue contrasts sharply with Léa's polished parliamentary milieu. Here, language is not uninhibited, but codified. Where Baptiste fails in excess, Léa survives through control—through mastery, distance, and ambiguity. Her relationship with Bourgel, the national-populist politician she supports as an attaché, is characterized by the same coldness that structures the online forums.

This sentence reveals a subtle shift: Léa embodies the ideal of self-optimization – female power as a function of male rhetoric. Her language resonates with the neoliberal paradigm of "indispensability." The form of communication here is performative cynicism: every statement is calculated, every word is currency.

Bourgel's rhetoric—a mixture of Machiavelli, Maurras, and talk-show rants—is the political mirror of misogynistic forum language. Both systems share the same semantic grammar: friend/enemy, purity/corruption, rationality/emotion. The political stage is parthenia avant la lettre. Léa acts within it as a priestess of simulation, so professional in her coldness that the inhumanity appears systemic.

This subtle shift between desire and fulfillment encapsulates the dialectic of the novel: the world never delivers what is demanded; the body remains unheard.

The virtual polis as a metaphor for total order

When Baptiste enters the game world of Parthenia, social utopia and mythological allegory merge.

The city is an aestheticized dictatorship, combining Romano-Greek decor with fascist symbolism. It is the visual embodiment of what the forums theorize: hierarchies, purity, male discipline. The game becomes a metaphysical drug.

Parthenia's symbolic order follows a logic of purity: Parthenos (Virgin) here refers not to woman, but to the ideal state of power—untouched, immaculate, controlled. The name is thus ironically inversive: “virginity” becomes the name of a system that knows women only as absent beings, as symbols of their own erasure. The “Immortels” in Parthenia are the final stage of this ideal: men whose bodies are preserved in digital immortality. Gonthier plays with the religious semantics of the incorruptible: Parthenia is the digital heaven of resentment, a church without God, but with an algorithm.

Communication in the novel is multifaceted, ranging from digital communication (chats, forums, game interfaces), which is fragmentary, repetitive, and pseudoscientific; to political communication (speeches, statements, media interviews), which is rhetorically closed, affectively sterile, and performatively masculine; and finally, interpersonal communication—almost entirely absent, replaced by quotations, projections, and commands.

The economy of language in Parthenia It is therefore not merely a stylistic device, but a world model. Every mode of communication generates a specific ethic: in the forums, the ethic of exoneration prevails ("ce n'est pas ma faute"), in politics the ethic of instrumentalization ("tout discours est capital"), in private the ethic of withdrawal ("il n'y a plus rien à dire"). Even tenderness is functionalized: when Baptiste is reminded of his ex – “S comme salope“–, the graffiti on the mousepad is a sign of language replacing flesh. The body exists only as a surface of discourse.”

Parthenia is a novel about the return of myth in the digital age. The men in the novel project their powerlessness onto ancient archetypes: Tiresias, the man who was a woman; Mussolini as a digital Zeus; Parthenia as a virginal Athena. But these myths are not brought to life, but rather reanimated – as if in a laboratory.

This scene—from the prologue, in which a woman "exorcises" a bound man—is a pivotal moment: female revenge is iconographically encoded but rendered illegible. The ritual, which begins like a revenge fantasy, is simultaneously a reflection of male fantasies of violence. The text does not allow for a clear reversal of perpetrator and victim. The gender relationship in Parthenia It is not dual, but cyclical: each character is the inversion of the other. Léa instrumentalized power, just as Baptiste instrumentalized language. Both are "products of the same code." Their commonality is the loss of body and empathy.

Parthenia is a virtual city that doesn't transcend the real state of society, but rather reflects it. The city's topography—agora, mine, gymnasium—reproduces social hierarchies. Those who work in the mine symbolically play the role of the worker; those who fight in combat become aristocrats. Baptiste's rise in the game is a simulated social ascent that simultaneously underscores his real-world stagnation.

This ironic proof is key: Parthenia becomes a substitute economy for meaning. Work, struggle, order—all these are simulations of a masculinity that no longer exists outside the game. In the broader context of the narrative structure, Parthenia functions as an ideological transduction machine, an instrument for the transfer and transformation of energies: What can be said in politics, conceived in forums, and felt in the psyche merges here into a "system symbol." The game is not an escape, but a ritual.

The novel's ending – apocalypse of simulation

The parallel editing of the chapters—Baptiste, Léa, Baptiste, Léa—creates a dialectical structure: private vs. public, digital vs. political, male vs. female. But Gonthier doesn't resolve this opposition; she shows that both strands are functionally isomorphic. Bourgel's political campaign (“demographic regeneration”) is the official version of the same ideology that Baptiste consumes in online forums. Léa becomes an accomplice, just as Baptiste becomes an adept. Both characters are agents of the same myth of control. The narrative technique—shifts in register, montage of spheres—creates a rhythmic synchronization: the text itself becomes Parthenia, a city of language in which each chapter is a district.

In the final section, the narrative threads culminate in a violent convergence: Léa and Baptiste meet—mediated by Parthenia, which has now become the site of a real conspiracy. The novel ends with the dissolution of the boundary between simulation and reality: digital strategies materialize in the political arena. Without moralizing, Gonthier offers an eschatological twist: the downfall is not a catastrophe, but a fusion. The city of Parthenia "leaves" the servers and "entre dans la chair du monde" (enters the world's core). The final sentence closes the circle back to the beginning, elliptical, eerily calm. The light of violence, which glinted on the knife in the opening scene, returns.

The ending of the novel, especially Act 5: λύτρωσις (Redemption/Liberation), serves to conclude Léa's (now Lya's) development and to comment metanarratively on the central themes of the book – revenge, virtual reality and the consequences of hatred.

Some time after the turbulent election campaign and the violent incident, Léa, who has reverted to her birth name Lya, is celebrated at Africa Games Week in Cape Town. She is the acclaimed creator of an award-winning indie game. Her game is deeply political and thematically complex. Lya speaks about the political nature of video games, the shaping of the collective imaginary, and the significance of "cathartic violence," especially for young women unaccustomed to confronting such issues. She thanks her team, first and foremost Baptiste, who was supposed to accompany her on stage.

The text returns to the prologue scene: Mr. B. (Bourgel) lies bound in bed. Lya unveils the long knife, the thirteen gleaming needles (in reference to the ancient Roman ark). Dagyde or voodoo doll) and the vial. Lya speaks to the weeping, bound man: “It seems you have lost, Mister B. … But revenge is a dish prepared in many ways…”. The narrative freezes, offering the reader (or player) three options for the story's ending: the saber for a spectacular and bloody vendetta; needles for spiritualism and witchcraft (a revenge “à bas bruit” – in silence); a vial to transport Mister B. to the “Land of Chimeras” (“pays des Chimères”). The cursor briefly moves to the saber, circles the needles, but finally tends toward the vial. The novel ends with the prompt: “Press ENTER to continue.”

The ending serves as a redemption (λύτρωσις) for the protagonist and as a metanarrative commentary on the novel's themes: Lya chooses not to seek revenge in physical violence (saber/knife) or mystical destruction (needles), but in the creation of a new reality (flacon/chimeras, "tout un monde à construire"). This symbolizes Lya's victory over Bourgel, as she leaves his world (the politics that manipulated her) and claims the power of narration and the digital realm for herself, in order to create a better utopia that challenges the patriarchal system. Parthenia opposite.

Lya's redemption is contrasted with the tragedy of Jérôme (DeathAngel), who is radicalized into Parthenia (under the leadership of Anton42/Thibaut) is driven to a senseless act of violence. The immediately following postface provides a sobering list of real incel attacks (like Elliot Rodger's), highlighting the deadly reality of the in Parthenia The open ending, presented as a selection menu, directly engages the reader with the theme of moral choice and recalls the game element that permeates the novel. By having the cursor point to the construction option, it is suggested that true liberation lies in breaking free from the cycle of hatred and revenge and designing an alternative world. Lya ultimately utilizes Baptiste's talent for trolling and infiltration to achieve success in her new life as a developer.

Baptiste and Léa are not characters in the psychological sense, but rather functional figures: carriers of two mutually dependent forms of communication. His discourse of hatred and her discourse of power are two versions of the same neoliberal grammar: competition, efficiency, self-optimization. Both move within systems that know no empathy – and both ultimately lose their bodies to language.

The significance of the city of Parthenia lies not in its topography, but in its functional structure: it is the digital temple of the new religion—the religion of rationalization, of algorithms, of quantified fear. That Gonthier opens her work with a quote from Donna Haraway—"Je préfère être cyborg que déesse"—is programmatic. The cyborg aspect here is not emancipatory, but uncanny: the cyborg is no longer the body that transgresses boundaries, but the human being who no longer recognizes them. Parthenia This is thus the tragedy of the polis of our time. The Cité remains standing, blindingly bright, like the knife at the beginning and end of the novel – a final symbol of knowledge that kills.