Where did those #s come from? I’d be surprised if D&D had a demographic split like that. That picture I posted above from a game night at my FLGS? Pretty typical. When Vampire tM came out, with a heavier role play vs combat emphasis, more women came to gaming. But I’m guessing it’s a still a very heavily male dominated hobby.
I didn’t make my post to imply we shouldn’t be more welcoming, or more encouraging to get women and other minorities into gaming. Quite the opposite. I think we should. But only that we need to acknowledge how certain hobbies one gender dominated over the others. For example, no matter how inclusive or welcoming a quilting club is, it’s going to be more female dominated. That’s what I was getting at with my conversation with my girlfriend. No matter how inclusive we are, a fantasy combat heavy rpg just wont be interesting to girls as much as boys. If I were to guess, it’s because a combat game is tied to aggression, which in turn is influenced by testosterone.
It’s kinds like a conversation I had the other day with a child psychologist (no reason for the conversation other than just hanging out having a general conversation). My girlfriends son just turned 4. He loves TMNT, superheroes, legos, and wearing dresses. We’ve always said, “boys and girls can wear whatever they want to be happy.” But he’s always expressed problems when wearing a dress in public, sometimes disagreeing and saying, “but boys wear pants”. The conversation with the CP was illuminating. We were handling it wrong.
That is, what we were telling him wasn’t jiving with his experiences, or what he was seeing. His brain isn’t developed enough to handle that nuance. So hearing something from a trusted adult that didn’t “appear” to be true from what he was seeing was confusing. A much better way to handle it is to say, “most boys wear pants, and most girls wear dresses. But if you want to wear a dress, that’s OK too and nothing is wrong or strange about it.” Acknowledge the norm as something that he sees all around him, but reassure how there is nothing wrong with he being an exception.
Same with gaming. I think that’s where we fall flat. There is this feeling that if you acknowledge how ttrpg are historically male dominated, that means it’s badwrong or you’re tacitly approving sexism. There are a lot of things that push away women and other minorities from our hobby as mentioned above (by myself as well). But there is nothing inherently wrong with admitting we are a male dominated hobby, and no matter how inclusive we get, we will probably always be a male dominated hobby. (But being inclusive is very much a goal we should be striving for regardless and toxicity should be fought against)
