Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9426689" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad. I'm trying to be very honest about my perspective on this.I am familiar with a lot of the stories about Lorraine Williams. All of them? Of course not- I can't know everything! I haven't seen every interview of every luminary on every blog or magazine. I don't know if Zeb Cook ever had an in-depth discussion about her, and I'd love to read it.And for a very long time, I believed the received wisdom about Lorraine. After all, if there a ton of stories about how evil she was, there has to be some truth to them, right? Where there is smoke, there's fire, and all that.But here's the thing- almost all of those stories come off very, very differently now. Some of them are beyond cringe-worthy. Some of them just have those "flag" words that make me realize just how skewed the perspective is. A lot of them aren't first-hand, but are repeating ('fun" or "nasty") rumors other people told them. Over and over again, it's the same thing. Sexist. Hearsay. Unreliable stories that make the (male) storyteller look good and the (female) boss look terrible. Even the constant refrain of, "She wasn't a gamer," sounds very different when we remember what it was like for women in gaming in the 80s and 90s.Times change. I remember that there was a show a long time ago when they were interviewing Hugh Hefner and he explained that when he set up the Playboy Clubs (which are mentioned in Game Wizards AND When We Were Wizards as a place that Gygax frequented ... small world) he had a strict rule that the women ("bunnies") couldn't date customers. But then Hefner stated, "I'm not a customer. I'm the owner. I get my pick." It was played for laughs then.That's the type of comment that plays .... very ... differently now.I keep circling back to the same point- these stories seem different now. Again, I wasn't there. I don't know what really happened. But I am very skeptical of these stories, especially given that a lot of these self-serving stories don't seem to hold up in the light of day, and in light of what we now know about gender dynamics in the workplace.Moreover, when we see serious histories on the matter, they always seem to contradict the received wisdom we have been told. The ouster of Gygax, for example- when we learn the real facts, Lorraine isn't the evil interloper. She is the one that saves the company, and (in addition) tried to give Gary a generous settlement. When it came to issues like that (see also, Rose Estes and the stock options) the actual facts always seem to be better to her than the anecdotes.As I wrote, in the end, you can form your own opinion, and she was the head of the company when it was going bust the second time. But I am no longer comfortable viewing her in a negative light based on the stories I have heard.</blockquote>

Verification