D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?

[Shasarak]

If you live in the West and are white, you live on the stolen inheritance - through slavery and colonialism - of others. Period. Your ancestors took the labor, land, and resources of people from all over the world and you have inherited it.

That is just typical isnt it? You conquer the world for someone and then they complain that they dont want it because it is a bit manky.

 

[Sunseeker]

I like how "white guilt" collectively punishes the Poles, Slavs and Irish as equally as it punishes the English or the French. Considering whites enslaved whites long, long before whites enslaved people of other colors, I get a kick out of how white-guilters are just as quick to dismiss the notions of white sub-groups and that claim white is white and all whites have privilege equally shared and are equally responsible for its creation, as they are to regale us with the finer details of the seemingly infinite cultures "whitedom" has destroyed that would never hurt a fly even if that fly was radioactive and 100 feet tall and devouring their children.

It's all politics and it's all a game that people are out to win. The people don't really matter.

 

[Mistwell]

Thank you for your kind welcome!

And I think my earlier post to Lanliss and Tia's bit of generous navigation on the last page pretty well sum up why I think the "lots of people do lots of evil everywhere" argument is derailing nonsense.

Didn't read those posts, I am responding to yours, so speak for yourself and don't play tag-in on others.

Not that it isn't true, mind you, just that it's both utterly obvious and completely beside the point.

It's not beside the point. If it's common to all humans, then calling someone out for particular chastisement for it is ridiculous and your point becomes meaningless. The point only has meaning if you're addressing something unique or particular to the race you're demanding humility from. Otherwise you're just saying "humans should be humble," which again begs the question of why you're not demonstrating it.

for my position to pass judgement, setting aside the fact that I'm obviously a silver-tongued demigoddess who you all ought to be bowing down in worship of anyway, I'm a reasonably intelligent human being with an education in history and about as competent a person to identify who in history has covered themselves in shame as anyone

Who? Unless you're saying the person you were replying to has personally committed some sin, then you're just once again saying they're human and should be humble, which given your tone is not a virtue you demand of yourself.

One of the perks of being a sovereign, self-willed person is getting to exercise one's moral judgement when and how one wishes, and I'll go on doing so regardless of how preposterous (great word, I love that word) you might happen to find it.

Sure, but you suffer the consequences for foolish judgement. Like, in this instance, the accusation that you're behaving hypocritically by demanding humility from others before demanding it of yourself.

And I don't know about original sin, but I certainly have a lot of noticeable passive benefits in my life for being Caucasian (greater probability of even modest family wealth, greater safety, greater access to networks of prestige and advancement, freedom from a whole variety of fears and judgement that I don't have to face from other people), and a lot of those benefits are the logical outcomes of the shadow my ancestors cast on the history of my country. A certain amount of gracious awareness of that, combined with humility, and a commitment to use those advantages to help others who aren't so fortunate seems like the least I can do for my fellow human beings.

First that's a cop-out. Almost all people have problems, you don't know what problems they might have, and you can't make such hasty generalizations about entire races of people, and make demands of people based purely on their skin color, and expect to not get called on it. The guy you're attempting to shame may well be so disadvantaged in other ways that you could be harming someone you claim to be committed to helping. If you feel you've been advantaged and want to be humble about it (a trait you have yet to demonstrate even a scintilla of, so far), great. But you don't get to demand it of others unless you know them.

It always amazes me that people persist in conflating humility with being afraid to take, hold and defend an opinion

Well let me help un-amaze you, as I was not doing that, and I find your silly attempt to play the victim to be a total strawman. It's not you defending and holding an opinion that caused me to observe your lack of humility, it was you anonymously attacking a peer who you know nothing about aside from a very brief opinion on a gaming board and the claim they are Caucasian, and thinking that was sufficient information for you to conclude they needed to be told by you that they should express more humility due to the color of their skin. In other words, it's not that you held an opinion firmly, it's that your opinion sucked as you had no good basis for it, and so I decided to hold you to the standard you're holding him to.

, especially people who presume to know what my faith does and does not dictate.

The "Faith" part was a joke. Or more like a suggestion you had taken social justice to a level where it serves a similar purpose to Faith for religious people. But I don't know that, and couldn't (at least not based on just three posts from you), and so meant it as a joke. Sorry if it came across as a serious comment...but given you laughed at it, I thought you got it.

Your opinions and judgement are your own, and of course you have every right to them, but I have no obligation to pretend to uncertainty in mine or display a respect I don't feel toward your logic just to make you comfortable.

You feel no uncertainty at all in the wisdom of calling out a peer anonymously online for being white and therefore obligated to a higher standard of humility than the standard you apply to yourself, even though you know nothing else about them and their background? No doubt at all that perhaps they don't fit your stereotype?

Besides, vanity is definitely my favorite sin.

Great. Then why are you judging someone else for, in essence, being vain?

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

I like how "white guilt" collectively punishes the Poles, Slavs and Irish as equally as it punishes the English or the French. Considering whites enslaved whites long, long before whites enslaved people of other colors, I get a kick out of how white-guilters are just as quick to dismiss the notions of white sub-groups and that claim white is white and all whites have privilege equally shared and are equally responsible for its creation, as they are to regale us with the finer details of the seemingly infinite cultures "whitedom" has destroyed that would never hurt a fly even if that fly was radioactive and 100 feet tall and devouring their children.

It's all politics and it's all a game that people are out to win. The people don't really matter.

Actually, I don't really care about whether people are guilty or not, and I don't really care about winning. Making things right is what matters.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

Didn't read those posts, I am responding to yours, so speak for yourself and don't play tag-in on others.

Wait.

Rather than read the whole thread, you intend to drag someone into reposting things that others have already said? Really? Do you see just how ridiculous this is?

And that the presence of this line, in and of itself, makes clear the exact game of wording and misdirection the entire rest of your post is playing?

 

[billd91]

I like how "white guilt" collectively punishes the Poles, Slavs and Irish as equally as it punishes the English or the French. Considering whites enslaved whites long, long before whites enslaved people of other colors, I get a kick out of how white-guilters are just as quick to dismiss the notions of white sub-groups and that claim white is white and all whites have privilege equally shared and are equally responsible for its creation, as they are to regale us with the finer details of the seemingly infinite cultures "whitedom" has destroyed that would never hurt a fly even if that fly was radioactive and 100 feet tall and devouring their children.

It's true that the Irish have gotten a shorter end of the stick than the Britons, but, here in the US, us Irish-Americans are a lot whiter than a whole lot of other ethnic groups and we do benefit from that. I don't have to worry about being stopped by a cop for DWB or DWH (Driving While Black or Driving While Hispanic) - there doesn't seem to be a Driving While Irish thing going on. I have an easier time getting a non-predatory mortgage. I don't particularly worry about being shot by a cop or having my car searched when I get stopped for a moving violation. There are massive parades and festivals celebrating my heritage. There have been several Irish-American presidents over the years.

We may not be quite as white as WASPs but we're pretty damn white when it comes to white privilege. Other groups may have perpetrated more than us, but thanks to the nature of white privilege, we still benefit. And therefore, we should acknowledge that and work to extend the privilege we have to everyone.

 

[Sunseeker]

And I don't know about original sin, but I certainly have a lot of noticeable passive benefits in my life for being Caucasian (greater probability of even modest family wealth, greater safety, greater access to networks of prestige and advancement, freedom from a whole variety of fears and judgement that I don't have to face from other people)

As we are all hopefully RPG players, let me remind everyone about probability.

Even if I have a +5 to my roll, or am rolling with advantage, there is still a 1 on that die. In fact, there's a 1, a 20 and every number between those. Advantage my double my probability to not roll a 1, it could also result in me rolling two 1's.

Statistically, there's an incredibly valuable card in every box of MTG cards, however the probability of actually opening that card is exactly the same in every single pack. But statistics are quirky, they overlook details, they assume things and generalize. Statistically there's a valuable card in every box. Realistically, you could open a whole case and never get it.

That's probability folks. Having a higher chance of a better outcome doesn't negate the ability to get a bad one.

Actually, I don't really care about whether people are guilty or not, and I don't really care about winning. Making things right is what matters.

"Right" as defined by the ideological system you follow, so, in order to make things right, your ideology would have to survive and beat out all the competition.


I'll reiterate for those who missed: I'm a political scientist. If you're not out to win, you're going to lose. So don't tell me you don't want to win when you tell me you want to use your ideology to set things "right" as defined by your ideology. The only way to do that is to win.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

I like how "white guilt" collectively punishes the Poles, Slavs and Irish as equally as it punishes the English or the French. Considering whites enslaved whites long, long before whites enslaved people of other colors, I get a kick out of how white-guilters are just as quick to dismiss the notions of white sub-groups and that claim white is white and all whites have privilege equally shared and are equally responsible for its creation, as they are to regale us with the finer details of the seemingly infinite cultures "whitedom" has destroyed that would never hurt a fly even if that fly was radioactive and 100 feet tall and devouring their children.

It's all politics and it's all a game that people are out to win. The people don't really matter.

I'm really, really trying to get off this topic, but I just have to say something about that point. You are absolutely correct - to a point. The expanding, assimilationist quality of "whiteness" (from which, for instance, Italians and Eastern Europeans and the Irish and Welsh were once excluded and to which we seem to be on our way to admitting people of certain Asian descents as honorary members) is one of the nastiest problems in sociopolitical analysis, and it does make the whole of idea of 'white guilt' particularly tricky. For instance, my ancestors were oppressed by the English and then cheerfully took promotion into the ranks of the 'white' population and got down the business of oppressing African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc.

So, basically, don't ascribe a parody of my viewpoint to me. I'm perfectly aware that every culture is problematic, that a lot of the cultures that colonialism wiped out were not cultures I would have voluntarily chosen to live in, and that 'white' culture and behavior is anything but monolithic. None of those perfectly true statements, however, removes the fact that the colonial empires of the 15th-20th (and one might argue 21st, in the case of America) centuries did evil on a scale and to a destructive degree that is simply unparalleled in human history. That the people who led and primarily benefited from those empires have been and remain primarily 'white' by their own definition, specifically in exclusion to the racial 'other,' and that we are still living with the damage that they did in the name of God, country and - yes, they actually believed this and we have to bend over backwards to try to deny it - race.

The living legacy of those empires hurts people - real, actual, flesh and blood people - today. The prejudices they helped burn into our collective psyches kill people - real, actual people - every day. So I don't really care what you get a kick out of, shidaku, because your argument is a hollow collection of straw men and truisms masquerading as truth. This is the world we live in, and it is built on the bones of other peoples and other histories, and I am not interested in being passively complicit in the perpetuation of those blood-soaked shadows. Because we took from them lives, futures and histories that they never got a chance to write - better, worse, who can know? But our ancestors (some of mine, anyway) snuffed them out and built this in their place for our benefit - those of us who get to walk around today enjoying the label 'white.' 'Normal.' Not Other.

You can take that inheritance while refusing to look at the blood on it if you like. I don't. That's my position, and I would appreciate you addressing it (if you do so) for what it is and not as the farce you would like it to be.

 

[Mistwell]

If you live in the West and are white, you live on the stolen inheritance - through slavery and colonialism - of others. Period. Your ancestors took the labor, land, and resources of people from all over the world and you have inherited it.

Well, not true for my ancestors, and not true for the ancestors of a whole lot of white people. Indeed, not true of a majority of white people in fact. That's an incredibly misinformed hasty generalization that ignores huge swaths of people and groups them under a single category of color while ignoring all variations in history.

Yes, people of all races have done evil. People of all races have done systemic, mass evil.

White people, and white people alone, have done GLOBAL evil

Baloney. Most races have doe global evil. That's another rather misinformed opinion. It sounds like you took time to study evil done by people of one race, and ignored or simply were never informed of the evil done by people of other races.

and now live on wealth stolen from generations upon generations of the people of other races.

Speak for yourself. The wealth of my ancestors was stolen by other white people, ruthlessly, in an attempted genocide which successfully slew almost all my relatives and left those very few left of my family totally penniless and standard in a foreign land where they didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language or have many applicable skills or translatable education. You want to try and shame me for the color of my skin? No thanks. You presume too much by judging all people in such sweeping generalizations based on the color of their skin.

Plus, back to my original t-shirt related point...

Hey, you were replying to me, about a reply I sent to someone else. I know you want to focus on your own rants from before, but I hadn't been involved with them, I have no idea what t-shirt idea you're talking about, and you jumped into someone else's conversation here. It's not all about you.

 

[Mouseferatu]

That's probability folks. Having a higher chance of a better outcome doesn't negate the ability to get a bad one.

Sure. Nobody's claiming that being white guarantees a life of sunshine and roses. It's not an advantage that everyone will benefit from equally. Some won't benefit at all. But it remains an advantage.

Here's a solid example: Here in America, it is possible I might get shot by a cop under a variety of circumstances. But as a white guy, I will almost assuredly never be shot by a cop specifically because of the color of my skin. That is not an assurance that other people have.

That's an advantage based on cultural perception of race. That's privilege, and questions of how good or bad, how easy or hard, my life has been have absolutely no bearing on it.