I wanted to write an article about Sexism in Gaming, because that seems to be the big theme at ENWorld this week with @morrus and his newly launched video series from UK Games Expo. It seemed like the thing to do and is a fairly hot button topic across the gamescape. So, let's talk about this sexism thing.
Except I can't. Apparently, I lack experience in the field. I've neither knowingly been sexist, nor been told at any point that I have unwittingly been so. Similarly, I've never been the target of sexism, possibly due to the fact that I am a white, middle-age male with more than a few pounds around the middle. Which might possibly disqualify me to talk about a whole host of social ills.
What I am, though, is a gamer. If you follow this column with any regularity, you are likely to be aware that I don't really care if you are male or female, black or white, or whatever other distinction you want to place on people. I only care if you are a gamer and interested in playing whatever game is on offer. Thus, my world is neatly divided into those who can play games and people who don't really exist at all.
And this is where I get in trouble, because I don't really understand the whole sexism in gaming bit. I can't even begin to imagine why it would matter if the person sitting across the table from you is male or female and why, if it did matter to you, you would be so foolish as to alienate that person who wants to play games with you, by being a jackass to them.
It turns out though, that the issue is bigger than that and I had to get some outside advice and a different perspective on things than just my own. So I asked a young lady of my acquaintance to help me understand the situation a little more thoroughly. I figured she must be more qualified than I, simply for being female and, perhaps, having experienced this sexism first hand. Which, as it turns out, is a pretty sexist thing to think. It is worth knowing that her qualifications extend beyond that, of course. She's been a gamer for several years and is, in fact, a former ENnies judge.
Before we get to that, though, we have to have something of a history lesson. Back in the bad old days, before D&D (any edition), before TV and movies and most sorts of public entertainment, we – as human beings – had very little to entertain us in our idle moments. In fact, we had very few idle moments. What we did have, in those times around the campfire when we weren't actively sleeping, eating, or mating, was stories.
Those stories, when we could be bothered to listen to them, generally concerned themselves with trying to explain the world around us. Those bits of it that existed outside the little circle of light we'd managed to build for ourselves, anyway. What are those fires in the sky, how did they get there? What are those noises I hear in the dark of the night, and should I take my spear to bed because of them? Where do little Cro-magnon come from and are they contagious? Those sorts of things.
So we made up stories to explain those questions and many more besides. Carry these on down through the years and you get a bundle of stories told without consideration of scientific fact or logical explanation. As time passed, many of these stories became what we like to call myths and fables. The more we learned about how things really worked, the more myth and fable suddenly started to appear out of what was once considered to be cold, hard fact.
Eventually we got the bright idea to start writing these things down. We also began, although earlier than this, to define concepts like heroes and villains and a regular cast of characters started to emerge. Pretty soon – relatively speaking – we had the Greek Pantheon and more incest, sycophancy and secret bestiality than you could shake a reasonably large stick at. It went both ways though, the female heroes were just as goofed up and over bearing as most of the male ones. If you were a god, well, all bets were off and you pretty much had free reign. Other pantheons were like this as well, the well known ones like the Norse and the Egyptians, right on down to the obscure ones observed by a half-dozen people who all hunted the same patch of ground in the jungles and only existed right up to the point where the panther snuck into the tent at night and trimmed the population by half.
Why am I on this historical detour? Because it is stories like these, handed down through generations upon generations, then written down and passed on to wider and wider audiences, that began to inform the brand new art form known as fiction. People wanted to read stories like these so much that new ones had to be invented. At first, they were invented in the same mold as what had come before, but, after a time, people experimented and soon enough, clever clods that we are, whole new forms were invented.
And from those stories we get the forms that our current stories and books and TV shows and Movies and so forth fall into. In effect, the patterns laid down thousands of years ago still influence every story we tell ourselves today in whatever medium we care to name. And, incidentally, the same applies to art.
Now, we return to games. Sexism in games exists because, over the course of thousands of years, the art of the story, and the art of the art, has enough cultural inertia to impress itself on those who design and tell the stories of the games we play by necessity. The stories that get told in the games use the same concepts first developed by our little friends around the campfire and handed down to us by mouth and by book. It is a massive amount of inertia and, if you are going to change the way people look at traditional roles in gaming, or in any other media, you are going to be fighting that inertia every step of the way.
Is it wrong to do so? No. However, railing against the past through the lens of the now isn't moving things forward. We have, in a certain sense, to forget what has gone before and start afresh. This is not to say that none of that matters, because it clearly does, but the tighter we cling to the offenses of the past, the harder it is to let go and move forward.
How are we supposed to deal with what appears to be rampant sexism, both from the players and the publishers of some games? While speaking with (not her real name) Jennifer, she made a few suggestions about some of the popular approaches to dealing with sexism in gaming:
Refusing to purchase product you find offensive is, if we were dealing with a brick and mortar store for example, called voting with your feet. You do not patronize publishers that have made a clear statement about their products and their views if you find those views and products offensive. If enough people do this, it can send and effective and clear message about what the public wants as the bottom line drops out from under these producers.
Item 2 is all about self-policing. No one at my game is allowed to abuse someone else either verbally, mentally, physically, or emotionally, for any reason. I've walked off of games where the person or persons involved in them were being jackasses, just as I've sent people away from my table for inappropriate, disrespectful behavior. I was just kidding is not an excuse, as, nine times out of ten, you weren't kidding until you upset them. If someone doesn't understand the reasons for their being dismissed or you leaving, then take the opportunity to, briefly, explain. It is possible they don't know what they've been doing, but general experience suggests that they do.
Item 3 represents the general tone of a certain demographic of the population when confronted with a piece of information which might endeavor to suggest, however obliquely and politely, that there may just, if you look close enough, possibly be the beginning of a situation in which the probability exists that there is the potential for there to maybe be a problem of some sort with someone's treatment of someone else. You know the guy, you may even be the guy; the one who says everyone else is over reacting, or that the problem doesn't really exist, certainly not as much as people claim and certainly not to the degree that anyone should have to do anything about it. This is a lovely and wonderful perspective to take on the problem in that it denies such a problem exists even in the face of massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, thus allowing the holder of such thoughts to happily exist in the land of unicorns and lollipops without so much as a twitch. If you need to see this attitude in action, go look at the comments on Kotaku regarding the Microsoft Press Conference earlier in the week.
In terms of reasonableness, it seems like some combination of 1,2, and 4 are the way to go. Make your feelings known, vote with your feet, and make sure you run a good table. Couldn't be simpler.
It's not that simple.
Sexism, as Jennifer points out, is in the eye of the beholder:
In my next installment we'll continue with the interview with Jennifer and look at what the gaming industry itself can do to help mitigate the problem. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on Sexism in Gaming below and let us know what you think. Is it a valid concern? Have you experienced it yourself? And what, if anything, do you think can be done about it?
Except I can't. Apparently, I lack experience in the field. I've neither knowingly been sexist, nor been told at any point that I have unwittingly been so. Similarly, I've never been the target of sexism, possibly due to the fact that I am a white, middle-age male with more than a few pounds around the middle. Which might possibly disqualify me to talk about a whole host of social ills.
What I am, though, is a gamer. If you follow this column with any regularity, you are likely to be aware that I don't really care if you are male or female, black or white, or whatever other distinction you want to place on people. I only care if you are a gamer and interested in playing whatever game is on offer. Thus, my world is neatly divided into those who can play games and people who don't really exist at all.
And this is where I get in trouble, because I don't really understand the whole sexism in gaming bit. I can't even begin to imagine why it would matter if the person sitting across the table from you is male or female and why, if it did matter to you, you would be so foolish as to alienate that person who wants to play games with you, by being a jackass to them.
It turns out though, that the issue is bigger than that and I had to get some outside advice and a different perspective on things than just my own. So I asked a young lady of my acquaintance to help me understand the situation a little more thoroughly. I figured she must be more qualified than I, simply for being female and, perhaps, having experienced this sexism first hand. Which, as it turns out, is a pretty sexist thing to think. It is worth knowing that her qualifications extend beyond that, of course. She's been a gamer for several years and is, in fact, a former ENnies judge.
Before we get to that, though, we have to have something of a history lesson. Back in the bad old days, before D&D (any edition), before TV and movies and most sorts of public entertainment, we – as human beings – had very little to entertain us in our idle moments. In fact, we had very few idle moments. What we did have, in those times around the campfire when we weren't actively sleeping, eating, or mating, was stories.
Those stories, when we could be bothered to listen to them, generally concerned themselves with trying to explain the world around us. Those bits of it that existed outside the little circle of light we'd managed to build for ourselves, anyway. What are those fires in the sky, how did they get there? What are those noises I hear in the dark of the night, and should I take my spear to bed because of them? Where do little Cro-magnon come from and are they contagious? Those sorts of things.
So we made up stories to explain those questions and many more besides. Carry these on down through the years and you get a bundle of stories told without consideration of scientific fact or logical explanation. As time passed, many of these stories became what we like to call myths and fables. The more we learned about how things really worked, the more myth and fable suddenly started to appear out of what was once considered to be cold, hard fact.
Eventually we got the bright idea to start writing these things down. We also began, although earlier than this, to define concepts like heroes and villains and a regular cast of characters started to emerge. Pretty soon – relatively speaking – we had the Greek Pantheon and more incest, sycophancy and secret bestiality than you could shake a reasonably large stick at. It went both ways though, the female heroes were just as goofed up and over bearing as most of the male ones. If you were a god, well, all bets were off and you pretty much had free reign. Other pantheons were like this as well, the well known ones like the Norse and the Egyptians, right on down to the obscure ones observed by a half-dozen people who all hunted the same patch of ground in the jungles and only existed right up to the point where the panther snuck into the tent at night and trimmed the population by half.
Why am I on this historical detour? Because it is stories like these, handed down through generations upon generations, then written down and passed on to wider and wider audiences, that began to inform the brand new art form known as fiction. People wanted to read stories like these so much that new ones had to be invented. At first, they were invented in the same mold as what had come before, but, after a time, people experimented and soon enough, clever clods that we are, whole new forms were invented.
And from those stories we get the forms that our current stories and books and TV shows and Movies and so forth fall into. In effect, the patterns laid down thousands of years ago still influence every story we tell ourselves today in whatever medium we care to name. And, incidentally, the same applies to art.
Now, we return to games. Sexism in games exists because, over the course of thousands of years, the art of the story, and the art of the art, has enough cultural inertia to impress itself on those who design and tell the stories of the games we play by necessity. The stories that get told in the games use the same concepts first developed by our little friends around the campfire and handed down to us by mouth and by book. It is a massive amount of inertia and, if you are going to change the way people look at traditional roles in gaming, or in any other media, you are going to be fighting that inertia every step of the way.
Is it wrong to do so? No. However, railing against the past through the lens of the now isn't moving things forward. We have, in a certain sense, to forget what has gone before and start afresh. This is not to say that none of that matters, because it clearly does, but the tighter we cling to the offenses of the past, the harder it is to let go and move forward.
How are we supposed to deal with what appears to be rampant sexism, both from the players and the publishers of some games? While speaking with (not her real name) Jennifer, she made a few suggestions about some of the popular approaches to dealing with sexism in gaming:
Jennifer: There are 4 things you can do about it individually:
- On the extreme end, refuse to purchase any materials that you feel perpetuate sexism.
- In the middle ground, purchase games that you like, but refuse to allow sexism at your table, whether you are a player or a GM.
- Refuse to acknowledge it, and assume that people only say there is sexism in gaming because they are over-sensitive and/or trying to get laid.
- As a customer, you can also write to / email companies who produce games with content you find offensive and ask them to stop.
Refusing to purchase product you find offensive is, if we were dealing with a brick and mortar store for example, called voting with your feet. You do not patronize publishers that have made a clear statement about their products and their views if you find those views and products offensive. If enough people do this, it can send and effective and clear message about what the public wants as the bottom line drops out from under these producers.
Item 2 is all about self-policing. No one at my game is allowed to abuse someone else either verbally, mentally, physically, or emotionally, for any reason. I've walked off of games where the person or persons involved in them were being jackasses, just as I've sent people away from my table for inappropriate, disrespectful behavior. I was just kidding is not an excuse, as, nine times out of ten, you weren't kidding until you upset them. If someone doesn't understand the reasons for their being dismissed or you leaving, then take the opportunity to, briefly, explain. It is possible they don't know what they've been doing, but general experience suggests that they do.
Item 3 represents the general tone of a certain demographic of the population when confronted with a piece of information which might endeavor to suggest, however obliquely and politely, that there may just, if you look close enough, possibly be the beginning of a situation in which the probability exists that there is the potential for there to maybe be a problem of some sort with someone's treatment of someone else. You know the guy, you may even be the guy; the one who says everyone else is over reacting, or that the problem doesn't really exist, certainly not as much as people claim and certainly not to the degree that anyone should have to do anything about it. This is a lovely and wonderful perspective to take on the problem in that it denies such a problem exists even in the face of massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, thus allowing the holder of such thoughts to happily exist in the land of unicorns and lollipops without so much as a twitch. If you need to see this attitude in action, go look at the comments on Kotaku regarding the Microsoft Press Conference earlier in the week.
In terms of reasonableness, it seems like some combination of 1,2, and 4 are the way to go. Make your feelings known, vote with your feet, and make sure you run a good table. Couldn't be simpler.
It's not that simple.
Sexism, as Jennifer points out, is in the eye of the beholder:
Jennifer: The closest thing to sexism I've personally experienced in role-playing was in a game where werewolves were attacking my character because she was pretty. Did I find it offensive? No, because it made sense for the NPCs. Was it sexist? Probably, yeah.
Fiddleback: Should that not have happened then?
Jennifer: I don't think so. But, if I had been offended and asked for it to stop, then it should have stopped.
Fiddleback: So, essentially, it is a giant mine field of potential offense depending on who is involved, what they are and aren't sensitive to and how they choose to take whatever is going on?
Jennifer: Yep. Just like real life.
Fiddleback: There is no litmus test?
Jennifer: Nope. To have a litmus test implies that everyone has the same judgment. The only thing close to it I can think of is "Would you do the same thing if the character or person in question was the opposite gender?” Meaning, would you say that to me if I were a guy? Or if my character was?
In my next installment we'll continue with the interview with Jennifer and look at what the gaming industry itself can do to help mitigate the problem. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on Sexism in Gaming below and let us know what you think. Is it a valid concern? Have you experienced it yourself? And what, if anything, do you think can be done about it?
