I am, with great trepidation, addressing this prior comment because I see it as being a fundamental divide that tends to preclude agreement about many things. I understand the impulse, but I think that when it's said categorically (like here), it subsumes a great deal of the nuance that should be implicit in the statement. For example, much earlier in this thread someone gave a good list explaining why the Satanic Panic was different than the current situation; that requires more explanation that just, "If someone says that they're hurt by something, you shouldn't ask questions, you immediately stop doing that thing."
With the understanding that I am not trying to be an authority on this, or anything, here are my thoughts as to why I'm not sure I can agree with that. I apologize for the length of this reply, but I am not going to start another contentious thread on this topic!
PLEASE NOTE- THIS IS A LONG POST AND COMES AROUND TO A POINT DIFFERENT THAN HOW IT LOOKS AT THE BEGINNING.
A. Good faith, no faith, and bad faith.
We assume that people, at all times, are operating in good faith, both because it is the right thing to do, and because it's a better way to live you life. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Sometimes people say that they are offended for reasons .... political reasons, getting even, because they think they are showing some type of hypocrisy in other people, whatever. I don't want to be forced to list examples, but I know that we can all think of them.
The reason I say this is that for this reason, I think that there is an uncomfortable tension; on the one hand, "offense" is a subjective measure. What offends one person (our group, etc.) is often different than what offends another person (or group). On the other hand, since we can't ever truly know what people think, we have to accept that there is some, objective standard of offense that we can look at or we can never weed out the (hopefully exceedingly rare!) cases of people raising offense in bad faith.
Not to mention the so-called "mixed" cases. Where people target people they don't agree with and try to find something in their past that might be offensive to their current beliefs or supporters, and then use that. In that case, the subjective motivation was in bad faith (the person wasn't offended) but once the thing is brought to light, it might be objectively offensive.
Oof.
B. "Everyone lies. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice."
I don't want to dwell on this, but people (sometimes) lie. To use a quick example that recently made the news, someone set up multiple twitter accounts to (apparently) lie about certain Riverdale actors. During the Satanic Panic, there were occasions when people lied (for profit, publicity, pressure, or other reasons) about things they purportedly saw regarding D&D. And so on.
C. "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy."
If you've ever been to a meeting of your local government, or even had to deal with homeowner's association, or got in a spat with a neighbor about the tree on the property line, you know that people don't agree about everything. People have all sorts of bizarre, terrible, and weird opinions, and even worse, some don't agree with me!
People are idiosyncratic and messed up and not monolithic. And not just people, groups of people, too. This is important when it comes to art and literature. The very same comedy, or horror, that one person finds stimulating, exciting, and transgressive might be offensive to another person, because tastes are not always the same. A blanket statement such as the one I bolded, taken literally, would require that almost all comedy, all horror, all drama, all irony, and so on be reduced to the blanket level to pablum to ensure it does not offend anyone. And I am sure that there is someone, somewhere, that could be offended by that.
But ... but ... but ....
1. Systemic and structural issues do need to be addressed.
I shouldn't have to write this, but D&D should be a game that is inclusive. There shouldn't be outdated racial (or racist) stereotypes in the game. Maybe (
maybe....) there is some confusion about an absolute alignment system and humanoids, but I don't think there can be any confusion about the portrayal of Vistani and the historic issues with the portrayal of the Romani people.
2. Traditional Power Imbalances are Often Codified.
D&D (and a great deal of nerd culture) traditionally reflected a white, male, straight (cisgender), Eurocentric paradigm. Greyhawk, for example, had the mysterious "jungles" to the south of the map where there were, and I quote from the '83 version, where civilized traders would get "rare woods, spices, ivory, and gold which they wrested from the jungle savages." Not just savages, "cannibal savages" with "blowguns."
Many of this early material, by the way, did not mean that the creators were overt racists, or sexists, but it simply reflected that mindset; of course there were dark jungles to the south with cannibal savages with blowguns! Of course the evil elves were dark-skinned (because living in caves makes you ... black?)! Of course the art in early D&D featured attractive and scantily-clad (or unclad) women, because, you know, fantasy art! Of course the NPCs in Curse of Strahd were just called gypsies and reflected terrible stereotypes of the time because it was 1984 and no one in America was seriously thinking about the depiction of the Romani people! And so on.
To the extent that these materials are brought forward, they need to be examined from time to time. And there can be an issue with people (usually, but not always, part of the traditional power) who simply don't understand what the problem is. Because of course they wouldn't! It was always going to reify their own outlook.
3. Eternal debate is tiring. And just as offense can be in bad faith, so can debate.
Look at this thread. Look at every thread. Sometimes, you just want to say, "ENOUGH." It is a truism that people will argue, just for the sake of argument. They will whatabout until the cows come home. And then there will be trolls, and then there will be other people who join in and ask the same questions, and it just gets tiring.
TLDR: I don't agree with the part I bolded. But I understand the impulse to say it. I think in this case it is preferable to say that certain stereotypes are a legacy that the game does not need, makes the game less inclusive, and hurts people by continuing to perpetuate negative stereotypes.
