Over the past several days, I've reached out to several people and looked back at those who knew him best. Most everyone agrees. Gary was a sexist. Even for the times. He was not a misogynist (a lot of folks seem to think misogynist and sexist are the same thing and freely intermix the two, they're not). There isn't any evidence he actively hated women (David C Sutherland, OTOH...). There are several examples of him actually trying not to be a racist. That is, he signed off on things we certainly consider racist today, but when editors came up to him and said, "Hey, you might want to change this because it might come off as bad." he actually listened and made the changes. Personally, I judge someone who is an accidental racist differently than someone who is an intentional racist, while knowing that the impact to those can often be the same. These things are really complex and include a lot of nuance.
And I think that's the key. Recognizing that someone tried to avoid problems but just didn't know better at the time while also acknowledging that even if someone tried, they still had an impact to those marginalized groups. It's about realizing nuance while holding accountability. It's the difference between "You're a horrible human being" and "You made some mistakes that had this impact on people." On these internet forums, I see too much "He was horrible in every context" and too much "He did nothing wrong so you're offended by nothing."
It seems the racism in D&D from Gary's side was accidental while the sexism was intentional, if that makes sense. Any racism was embedded into cultural norms that weren't recognized or thought of as racist. Take orcs for instance. Evil orcs are racist because they are dark skinned? D&D pulled orcs directly from Tolkien, so Gary nor anyone else would even think they are racist. However, at the same time, putting most of the dark skinned humanoids as evil did have a real impact to people of color who noticed that trend. Both can be correct. I cannot overstate enough how just because someone didn't intentionally mean to do harm, harm wasn't done. Listen to those folks who are saying harm was done. Ignoring or invalidating them is more often not coming from a position of privilege.
I don't think it's really debatable re: sexism. That's pretty clear, even by his own words.
All this means is that Gary was X, but not necessarily Y or Z. People seem to jump to "if he was bad here, then he was obviously meant to be bad there too!" On the other side, I hear a lot of "Gary wasn't really bad here, so he wasn't bad at all! Sign of the times! You're just getting too offended!" Gary could be a sexist and also be sarcastic in another statement. Gary could be influenced by the sign of the times and also be accountable. These conversations seem to embrace mutual exclusion when the reality is not.
But really, the important question is, why does it matter? I understand why WoTC has disclaimers on products that reproduce old material because they want to avoid the impression they are endorsing that material that includes problematic themes. But for the rest of us, what does it matter? Too many people assume those disclaimers are calling them racists or sexists and it doesn't. Outrage over made-up offenses. Like I said the other day, if Universal Studios said that 16 Candles had racism and sexism that wouldn't be appropriate today, that doesn't mean Universal Studios is calling John Hughes or people who enjoyed the movie back then all racists and sexists. Throwing fits by saying they are is immature and irresponsible IMO.
On the same note, Gary is dead. Why is it important to keep pointing out, every couple months, that he was sexist. What does that do? Who are you convincing that doesn't already have an opinion? Like I said, I get why WoTC does it, but why do we do it? Gary isn't here, but his kids are. Has anyone asked how they feel to keep having this argument over and over and over again? Is hurting them (of who most are good people) worth proving to someone rando on the internet that Gary was sexist?
That's the question I think we need to ask before we have this conversation again.
