Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6423994" data-attributes="member: 4937">I understand the prohibition against discussion of controversial subjects and why it is needed to keep the peace and let us focus on talking about gaming, but the word "inclusiveness" unfortunately is itself a political topic.  It's a word that tends to have been relegated entirely in political contexts, and which tends to have been hijacked away from its original meaning of "open to everyone".  Even your insistence that the word be limited to "identity" as you define it is itself a political assertion - the political theory that goes under the general rubric "identity politics".  If you ask me, "Who are you?", my natural answer is not going to be "a white man".  Perhaps it was growing up in a nation that was 98% African by heritage such that my teachers, doctors, ministers, and friends weren't the same color as me, or perhaps it is simply being somewhat autistic, but I have never felt a special affiliation with or affection for white men as if I belonged to a tribe of "white men" or being "white" or a "man" somehow defined or constrained who I was, or maybe its as critical theorists would have it that I've never needed to think of myself in those terms because I come from the "privileged group".   Whatever the case, I have never thought of myself in those terms.  Among my early answers might be, "I am a nerd."   "Nerd" is my identity, or at least one of the most important.  "Gamer", as a subclass of that, is also my identity.  Other examples of what I think of as my identity can be construed from my prior post.  If you assert that my identity is, "a white man", that's actually your identity for me, not my identity for myself.   My identity becomes whatever it means to you, and not whatever it means to me.  I get put in your preferred box.  All I was trying to do was draw your attention to the fact that by your categories you impose identity on people.  If a book contains images of women or darker skinned characters, it doesn't necessarily follow that that image is the image all women or all darker skinned persons want to see representing themselves or that all women or darker skinned persons see their tribe or identity as being primarily about those things.  Women and darker skinned persons and well, any one in whatever box you put them in, don't have a single identity - there is no discrete category like "Asian" that you can check off as proof of inclusiveness.  What will strike you as "doing a good job" about inclusiveness won't necessarily strike everyone, as doing a good job on their behalf.  More people exist than in your philosophy and I feel its certainly true that all the important things about people are deeper than their skin color.  Insisting that everyone have a certain skin color imposes a viewpoint.  But insisting that skin color or nationality is a persons identity also imposes a viewpoint.I don't know what the law is like in the UK, but in the USA I think you'd have a hard time arguing that something that discriminated against religion was inclusive.   I read The Guardian pretty regularly for its 'out of the USA' perspective.  I think you'd have a hard time convincing me that in the UK, sensitivity toward religious beliefs - or at least particular religious beliefs - is a subject unknown in identity politics.  Certainly in the USA, I know you can be legally liable in certain cases for discriminating against a person for their religious beliefs (or lack there of).   I don't think I'm alone in asserting that my religious identity is more important to me than fluid concepts like my racial, ethnic, or national identity.  I grew up believing that by heritage I was a Scot.  For the first 30 years I was alive, I believed I had some connection at least to Scotland, and that way back when my family had come from there and so there was some - however trivial - mutual claim that could be made between me and Scotland.  However, when my family got on a genealogy kick and started tracing things back, we discovered something amazing.   We already knew that we were the decedents of two brothers that had immigrated to America in the late 18th century.  What we didn't know is that they'd lied on their immigration forms.  Both men were in fact Irish, but wished to leave that identity behind believing (probably rightly) that they'd be more welcome, more included, as Scots.  They told everyone they were Scots, moved in social circles as Scots, and married as Scots.  They told their children they were Scots.  This was so perfectly believed that thereafter, everyone believed the family was Scottish.  So is my identity 'Scot'?  Or is my identity 'Irish'?  What is my national heritage?  Ought I even to care since I could have potentially been wrong for 30 years of my life?  At the very least, can we agree that life has conspired to make my ethnicity even more trivial to me than it was?  If inclusiveness really is to be whatever it means to me as well as whatever it means to you, can I suggest that I prefer games that don't go out of their way to demean and trivialize what people believe or to privilege a certain viewpoint or opinion.  If the game can't be played in some fashion by people of diverse viewpoints and beliefs, each playing from their own perspective, then its hardly 'inclusive'.   Gaming will have devolved into just another contested media in the "culture wars", where everyone is given a political purity test to participate, rather than being one of the bastions of actual inclusiveness.   Hooray for fictional characters which strive to be as interesting and complex as real people.   Hooray for artwork that aids in the imagination of these characters.   But if "inclusiveness" is relative to what it means to person, then its not "inclusiveness" at all but exclusivity masquerading as inclusivity.  How about we actually do what inclusiveness we actually strive for games that do try to be accessible to everyone?   Or, if we really want exclusivity, why don't we just say that and say, "Hooray for games with narrow appeal to only a small number of people, because that's ok too.", rather than calling a narrow appeal "inclusivity" and then being upset when excluded groups don't agree.And if that is too political, well, I don't know what to say because political or not it is on topic.  I've been here for over 10 years now, and lots of things get said that I see as political and steeped in a certain viewpoint, but were discussion of the topic is rendered impossible because that majority belief is seen as apolitical but the minority position is not.  It's your house.  You can decide what rights guests have and what conversations are acceptable.  That gives the guest basically two choices: either affirm the viewpoint or you just keep his mouth shut so he can be included in the community.  At times, that's meant affirming things as trivial as "4e is going to the best thing ever" or else keeping your mouth shut.  Other times it means affirming things less trivial or else keeping your mouth shut.I'm terrible at keeping my mouth shut.Anyway, I'm a religious gamer.  It's difficult for me to entirely avoid mention of that fact.  I try not to offend people too much, but imagine being told that discussion of your race or sexuality was forbidden on the boards.</blockquote>

Verification