TanithT
First Post
It's a subtle gestalt, though some of the pieces of the gestalt aren't subtle at all. It's the overall gaming environment, which definitely does include how female characters are portrayed in the art and the storyline of the campaign. The attitude at the gaming table of the individual players and their expectations of women, both as character depictions in the game and as fellow gamers around the table. Their language when talking about women, again both inside and outside the game.
Different people are going to have different levels of tolerance for some of these things, and maybe even all of these things. But if the overall gestalt of the gaming environment adds up to consistently depicting, treating and talking about women in ways that many of them may consider disempowering or condescending, it's going to have an effect on the hobby.
I don't personally have a problem with explicit. I do have a problem with disempowered and inappropriately sexualized. Porn is cool, but if you take a picture that is supposed to depict fighting on the battlefield, or a representation of the clothes and gear an adventurer wears into the dungeon and make that into porn, you're no longer showing that character as an effective character. At least, not as an adventuring character. Also, you're showing that she's stupid. Because, fighting monsters with no pants on.
Yes, I do. And I did. The price I have personally paid for this is to mostly not game. It's a high price, but the cost of being consistently disappointed and having more bad experiences than good ones has added up for me to be even higher. Your mileage may vary; this has been mine.
The modern media bombards us constantly with how women = beautiful and male physicality isn't so much emphasized. If you were to take a wayback machine to one of many other societies - the Roman Empire comes to mind first - I guarantee that you'd be saying the exact same thing with the genders reversed.
I find nothing of merit in the female form to look at, personally. It's boring to me. No appeal, and weird shapes. Not my thing. It doesn't upset me, but it does absolutely nothing for me. Male beauty in all its forms, however....amazingly esthetic. I like. Not just as porn, but to look at in general, because it's easy on my eyes in a way the female form is definitely not.
So they describe female characters as going adventuring with no pants on, or in a miniskirt and a bra? As the main way to communicate what? That these characters are stupid? That they don't get the same adventuring gear as the men? That they're so different from the men that they can't be adventurers? That they exist only to be cheesecake for the men to look at? Because those things are being communicated pretty effectively.
Once again, it sounds an awful lot like you're saying that Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony and Gandhi solved nothing because they spoke out to tell people that there was a problem with the way things were.
Yes, constructive thoughts are good. I think I've offered some, and mostly they boil down to other gamers just being aware of how the environment of this hobby may feel to us. And listening to us when we say, "Hey, this thing makes me feel uncomfortable."
There is no all purpose final fix for the problem. There just isn't. There isn't one inside of our hobby and there definitely isn't one for mainstream society. The only thing I can really accomplish is to clearly communicate how it feels to be me, and to ask that other gamers simply be aware of how some things about the hobby can be perceived and felt by people who aren't heterosexual males. That's all.
It's not really a good thing that a nontrivial number of the convention going fannish/SCA/anime women I talk to literally will not set foot in the gaming area and say that they feel really uncomfortable around gaming and gamers. If pressed, some will say things like "creepy" and "it's a boy's club and I don't feel like I belong in there."
I don't know whether many of you were even aware of this or not. This is not just the casual social stereotype of "gamers = icky nerds" operating here, because I'm already talking to con-going female nerds, some of whom are (or were) gamers themselves.
Yes, there are certainly female gamers at conventions who are willing to step into the boy's club and play, because the game is just that cool. But if you spent some time canvassing them and asking them about their experiences, you might just hear a few things that would make your toes curl. Yes, we can ignore that stuff up to a point, but that doesn't mean it's fun to pay that price of admission. And past a certain point, you're going to lose the ones who say it's just not worth paying any more.
I think it comes first from people understanding why change is even needed.
I don't have any single solution to the issue. All I hope to accomplish is to give other gamers a perspective on what it feels like to be me, a female gamer. I don't claim that my experiences represent all women, because they don't. Humanity is pretty diverse, and people are not just alike. But it's one perspective from a point of view and a set of experiences that maybe you don't personally have, and it's a starting point.
If you find yourself trying to invalidate or silence someone else's personal experiences and feelings because they are not the same as yours, it might be time to ask yourself why that's necessary rather than just sharing your own experiences and opinions. And more importantly, what you may be contributing to the environment by doing this thing.
