Sexism in Table-Top Gaming: My Thoughts On It, and What We Can Do About It

[Morrus]

IF you intend to be taken seriously by intelligent people.

I beg your pardon? Watch your manners, please, or this conversation will be very short.

 

[Kursk]

I beg your pardon? Watch your manners, please, or this conversation will be very short.

I await your answer. You are the one that equated something with murder that could be as innocuous as opening a door for someone.

 

[Morrus]

I await your answer. You are the one that equated something with murder that could be as innocuous as opening a door for someone.

I'm not equating them at all; perhaps I poorly explained my point but I'm afraid your sudden hostility has brought this conversation to an end. I've no idea what just happened there. It's a shame; I was enjoying the conversation.

 

[Kursk]

I'm not equating them at all;

YES, you did. Very clearly. You compared allowing murderers to run free without action against them to allowing people who commit "sexism" to run around without action against them. SO, please answer my question.

 

[Morrus]

YES, you did. Very clearly. You compared allowing murderers to run free without action against them to allowing people who commit "sexism" to run around without action against them. SO, please answer my question.

I was talking about the relevance of the statistics in this case, not the similarity of the two things being measured. I could have chosen anything. The answer to your question is: they're not similar; and their similarity or lack thereof has nothing whatsoever to do with what I was trying to say.

 

[mythago]

No, the meat of this discussion is you don't apparently want to hear that the whole hobby does not stand convicted and therefore need not pay contrite penitence for its sins.

Celebrim, you're ranting. Period. You're attacking things nobody has said, attributing things to other people's arguments ('women are delicate flowers', 'men are bestial') that they didn't actually say and then arguing as if they did (who, please, other than you, said anything about 'penance'?), falsely claiming that you are being shut down because you are a man, and arguing-while-saying-you're-not-arguing about ENworld's posting policies. You're correct that "red herring" is not the term for what you're doing, and I'm getting old so I don't remember the Latin names for the fallacies well anymore, but I think "strawmanning" is a pretty good fit. If you want to actually have an interactive, civil discussion, I'm all ears. If you just want to do the argument equivalent of looking for your glasses under the streetlight because the light is better there, well, you enjoy that.

Kursk, all the statistical methods in the world don't fix questionable data. "My own anecdotal experience" is informative; it's not scientific. Even assuming that you applied a proper statistical analysis and an accurate confidence interval, all you're saying is that you personally haven't encountered a thing. (Also, respectfully, your echoing Gygax's comment about lady gamers doesn't inspire me to perceive your observations as wholly unbiased.) If I were to count up the number of times that I'd been asked if I were the GM's girlfriend or told "the female GMs I've seen haven't been any good" and so on, and provided a "scientific" analysis showing this was a troublingly large number of incidents over time, I suspect you would not take that as objective proof that your own observations are not the full picture.

 

[MJS]

I've played in a few. As far as D&D type games, there is a scientific aspect often overlooked. Human males are more attracted to activities involving violence than are human females. It is genetic due to evolution of the species.

Adventuring is the draw, IMO, of D&D. Avoiding violence whenever possible is firmly at the root of the adventure RPG. (I just played Temple of the Frog - 2 men, 2 women players)
Personally, I think rules crunch, which is mostly combat, is off-putting to most people who might otherwise be inclined to an adventure game experience, and *perhaps* moreso women, but if true that would be in aggregate.)
I am hopeful that 5E will draw more new players/GMs -

 

[Morrus]

on the grounds that women have charged the moderators with sexism for not allowing politically charge discussions of sexism. Would any other class of gamer be so privileged had they complained the moderators were being discriminatory? For example, if I had complained that shutting down threads about the role of religion in gaming were motivated by anti-religious bias, would this allowed me free reign to discuss religion?

Hi [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]; I'm not familiar with the complaints you're referring to - they certainly haven't been directed to me. Could you drop me an email at morrus@hotmail.com and let me know more so that I can deal with them (if necessary)? Thanks!

 

[Alzrius]

Indeed so. The interesting question is why the GM or the source material chooses to set those particular boundaries, and whether it is in fact the case that those limitations are followed.

In regards to the former question ("why do they choose those") I actually don't find it all that interesting - how do you conclusively determine what someone else's motivations are? Even if they tell you, how do you know they're being honest?

In regards to the latter question, if the person(s) setting the limitations doesn't follow them, then that does smack of hypocrisy...but I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt for at least a little while, in that maybe they have a reason for why they're violating their own rule. Of course, that degree of trust is presumed that the reason will (sooner, rather than later) be made clear.

If they're followed arbitrarily then the players are quite justified in asking whether "we have to do it this way" is in fact true.

I don't disagree, notwithstanding the above caveat about them giving a good reason for it.

For example, imagine that your GM, after telling everyone the game was going to be Gothic Horror, had slapstick comedy and jokey NPCs popping up regularly throughout the session. You might well have frowned at the guys playing luchadores, but then I think you'd probably also be asking why the GM wasn't bothering to stick to the Gothic Horror tone that was supposedly the theme of the campaign. Especially if the GM had banned luchadores and said no, you all have to make characters that fit the Gothic Horror milieu.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this example, simply because that's not at all what my GM would have done.

Simply put, I'll agree that establishing limitations that are arbitrary in their application (which, I'll note, is different than a question of their scope) tends to call into question their reason for existing in the first place. But then, I was raising my initial objection to the idea that limitations are bad without that particular point being applied. In other words, presuming that limitations on what you can play are enforced fairly (or, to use a less loaded term, are applied using a consistent methodology), there's nothing inherently wrong with them, to me.

In general, I'm pro-luchadore.

You are so dead to me, now.

 

[Kursk]

Adventuring is the draw, IMO, of D&D. Avoiding violence whenever possible is firmly at the root of the adventure RPG.

If that WERE the case, it would be reflected in play. It is not.