You said that any media that isn't supporting your position is opposing your position.
No. I said that media which excludes people from representation results in reduced acceptance of the people excluded.
How is that constructively different from 'if you aren't for us, you're against us?' Because instead of 'you' you only meant 'media'?
It's not a claim about taking positions, and it's not a claim about intent or goals, solely a claim about outcomes. Books with no black people in them reduce, however marginally on an individual-book basis, social tolerance of black people. Books with no gay people reduce, however marginally, social tolerance of gay people.
Dittos. But it's a game I play with friends, not something with which I choose to make social statements.
Unfortunately, humans are social animals. We are
always learning about our society, which means that any time you do social things, you
are making social statements. If you do not choose to make social statements, that just means you aren't deciding which ones to make; you still end up making social statements.
I'm sorry, I don't follow. Is this in response to claiming that D&D is too niche to really matter in the broader culture war, or to my saying that defining a problem so that almost everyone is included in the problem is a poor start? If so, what properly controlled studies are there on those topics? That would be excellent reading.
On the former. I would also argue that the correct way to start is by studying what is true, and not by dismissing any question of truth in favor of arguing whether something is tactically advisable to say. Start by learning what is true,
then think about how to approach it tactically.
Realistically, it does appear that by and large, almost everyone is part of most social problems, because that's how humans work.
Again, I'm now a bit confused. I started with that. Plus using designated blank spaces for people to add in their own, if they choose to. You said that wasn't good enough because not everyone would choose to add LGBT, and I asked why that was a problem, D&D isn't a proper vehicle for social change. And then we ended up here. If we agreed to start, what happened?
I was pretty sure your post explicitly said "do not include LGBT people, just add blank spaces so that some people will and others won't".
And it doesn't matter whether you
like D&D as a vehicle for social change. All social activities
are vehicles for social change, or at least influencing the direction of society. They can't stop doing that no matter how much we might want them to, because that is simply not how human societies work.
You've missed the nuance of my proposal. Right now, the blank space isn't really blank, it's just unstated. Most NPCs don't have anything one way or the other. My proposal is to put in a call out that this NPC is unfinished -- no name, no gender, no orientation -- and tell the DM that they need to supply that information. Make it explicit like I just did, and you will have more people have to personally think about gender and orientation than you will just putting in a gay transgender NPC. Many will put down 'cis straight' for sure, but they'll at least have had to think about it for a moment.
That's a neat theory, but it's not actually true in general, because that's not how people generally work; they generally just put in whatever they think is the default
instead of thinking, because that's easier.
But, as I said above, my proposal and specifically including LGBT NPCs aren't enemies.
You presented your proposal as a thing which ought to be done
instead of including them, so far as I could tell.
I love that I have to show citations to refute you (if that was my desire) but you didn't have to show citations to make your point.
Well, that's the nice thing about advocating the position that's generally accepted in the field; you can just point out that in general, studies have consistently shown that representation matters, and be done. If you want to show that it doesn't matter, then you're proposing that I reject the mainstream position of the field, and that's something I am uninclined to do without stronger evidence.
That aside, you did say that any media not on your side is opposing you. It's a very short leap from there to 'if you're not with us, you're against us (so long as you're media).' I omitted the parenthetical to make a rhetorical point.
The point you made was that you were comfortable with misrepresenting what I said.
Media that isn't inclusive doesn't contribute to marginalization -- marginalization is occurring due to other factors and media that isn't inclusive does nothing to combat that. That's not contributing, it's just not helping.
This is an interesting claim, but it contradicts what I know of the state of the art, so I am not willing to accept it without strong evidence.
The thing you may be missing is that people use
all their exposure to things-about-people as part of how they understand what people are like, and what kinds of people are normal/acceptable and what kinds are out of the normal acceptable boundaries. Humans are innately predisposed (mildly) to xenophobia; if something is not depicted as part of your world, it will be received with some degree of hostility more often than not. (More generally, the human brain has a huge bias towards equating "familiar" and "good".)
D&D not having gay NPCs doesn't marginalize gay people. D&D having gay NPC won't unmarginalize gay people. It's not a binary condition. The root of this is the conflict between the theory that media reflects society and the theory that media drives society. You're in the latter camp. I'm in between the two.
No, I'm not in the latter camp. I'm in the camp that thinks that both of these are at least somewhat true.
I just don't see D&D as anything large enough when viewed from at the theatre level of the culture war to matter -- it can't drive anything. It's in the reflection camp. Insisting on tactics useful for media that does have power to drive (movies, music, TV, some internet) for media that's largely reflective isn't a good use of resources. Push your agenda where it makes a difference and it'll show up in D&D. Push it in D&D, and it'll stay there (maybe).
That's simply not how people work. All the things people experience influence them. D&D may not influence all that many people directly, but it can be
hugely influential because the players are so much more immersed and involved in the worlds they create and participate in. Furthermore, it has significant effects on
players of D&D, and as it turns out, I care about that particular category of people because I interact with them disproportionately often.
