Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_statistics Based on known approx # of RPG gamers, I was referring to a representative sampling.
Sexism in Table-Top Gaming: My Thoughts On It, and What We Can Do About It
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_statistics Based on known approx # of RPG gamers, I was referring to a representative sampling.
As to the cut off sentence. I omitted as it is incorrect. And thus, not relevant to the conversation.
Celebrim
Legend
No I'm not. I have never said all women want the same thing. I'm just relating some anecdotes that show that not all women fit the particular stereotypes that seem to motivate this thread. I don't at all claim that these anecdotes relate to how all women act, or want, or what they've experienced - and have said so in my posts. I'm only trying to counter this stereotype that all or even most women are delicate flowers being bruised the cruel touch of bestial and ignorant men, and how therefore we ought to be more sensitive so that we don't inadvertently hurt them.
I'm not at all surprised that back in the day if you showed up at a gaming con, you would have been an object of great curiosity and attraction and that many male gamers would have behaved very badly. I'm a software developer, and female software developers are still such a tiny fraction of the community that if a male developers meets a good one, it's often the first one they've ever met. Is the gaming community more sexist now than the software development community? No, I don't think so, and even among the development community I see prejudices changing. After I referred a female developer, one of my former managers admitted to me that the only reason he gave her an interview was because I referred her and that he was astounded by how well she'd done in the technical interview? Why did he feel that way, was it because he was a particularly ape-like cretin prone to sexism? No, it's just because he'd had only bad experiences with female developers prior to that and allowed himself to draw the conclusion that what was particular to individuals was a trait of the class.
If I could say anything in this thread it would be this. It's always best to treat people as individuals and not members of a class. It's always best to treat problems as individuals and not traits of a class. You want to solve the problem of sexism? One person, one relationship, at a time.
Here is my impression. Is there sexism out there? Yes. There certainly is. But a lot of what is put down as sexism is simply bad behavior, which everyone male and female is subjected to. While I would hardly be surprised if my daughters came back from a gaming con with some story of mistreatment, if I had sons I would also hardly be surprised to here someone had been unpleasant to them. And frankly, if you walking into a convention or gaming story full of single men, if you attract attention and are treated as some sort of talking animal - especially these days - I don't see it likely that sexism is primarily what is motivating that. I think we can just drop the 'ism' and say that sex is probably what is motivating that. It's not that it's most likely men in question have a particularly poor opinion of women's capabilities or don't think you belong. It's that all the blood has drained out of there head at the thought of an attractive women who might share interests in common with them. I'm not sure that that is an entirely curable problem. For one thing, there is no guarantee that the awkward guy that makes you really uncomfortable is the sexist in the room. For another, I still believe that the sad truth is that often the most sexist men, the true cads out there, are the ones that are most charming to women. Simply educating men on how to treat women, doesn't address the real issue. And finally, men are plenty jerks to each other.
I'm not trying to shut down the discussion. I just don't agree with you. This is not the same thing. If I was trying to shut down the discussion, I'd focus on the fact that it is entirely hypocritical to allow political discussions by women - and the OP goes well beyond discussing sexism at the gaming table in her politics - 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? I actually approve of keeping the topic open, and I don't want to shut it down.
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. That while problems have and continue to exist, they are more complex than you want to portray here. That throwing rape in to the discussion doesn't give you blanket moral authority, and for that matter that yes, not all women hold the exact same opinions and maybe perhaps we ought to be treating and thinking of women as individuals and not making presumptions about the dynamics in any particular situation. And no, just because sexism exists you don't get to throw out real issues like free speech, or the fact that people are jerks to each other even without the excuse that the other person is a woman, or that it really is a minority of people who hold sexist views these, or that ultimately this particular model of 'feminism' strikes me as accepting far more of the world view of chauvinism than I accept. It's too congruent with what I see as sexism, and far too ready to base its arguments on arguments that not only are shoddy scholarship but which only make sense as a rebuttal if you accept the chauvinist model of the world. These aren't red herrings to distract people from the conversation. This is what I actually believe, and you don't get to dismiss it because it's a man that says it, regardless of how tiresome you find it. Frankly, the reason I'm in this thread at all, is I'm tired of this entirely self-destructive and unhelpful mode of thought being forced upon my daughters even at their young age.
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I'm curious - what numbers are you using (or approximating) for the total number of gamers and your sample size to determine the statistical relevance?
Basing it approx 3 million players in US. Sample size 500. Confidence Interval of 4.38 and Confidence level of 95%
Yikes, you've gamed with a LOT more people than I have. I'm only at about a dozen (except for a handful of convention games with people I don't know or don't know well enough that I'd know if they favoured gender ability caps). I'm very, very jealous!
But I disagree with your conclusions. Murderers are no doubt a very small percentage of the world population, but we don't allow it to happen. It's still addressed, dealt with by law and policy, and universally condemned - the latter being what some folks are doing right here.
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Well, gaming almost every week for 36 years and living in several HUGE metro areas...
That being said. I can't prove a negative. It is incumbent upon the OP to make a credible case (using data, evidence & logic) to make a case showing a "positive" as it were. That hasn't happened yet on this thread.
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Well, YOU haven't defined what EXACTLY and PRECISELY you are now equating with murder. So, over to you. IF you intend to be taken seriously by intelligent people.
I've been gaming most weeks for 30 years, too. You're pretty fortunate, I think! Your experience jives with what I 'feel' is the case - the problem area is a small minority of people. Unfortunately a small minority is often all it takes; sometimes just one.
So I don't agree that our shared opinion of the number of people involved elevates it to "not actually a problem" levels. As long as women are telling us it's a problem, it's a problem.
The most common form of sexist behaviour I see written about on the internet is not so much gamers, but directed towards cosplayers. I get the impression it can be quite unpleasant there. Again, I've never seen it myself, but I don't doubt for a second that it happens.
