What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Bagpuss]

This is interesting. I'm a cis male, but also a feminist. Many of us are well read regarding the male gaze theories where a woman is constructed as an object for male desire, often with the help of specific mediation, styles of make up (or make up itself), and symbolic clothing attires that may refer to women with affection for hire from a male perspective.

"women with affection for hire" is this the new accepted term for sex-workers now?

On one side I can see how dressing like said women with affection for hire is a symbolic action for reappropriation of clothing, makeup and other symbols kidnapped by the patriarchy for the purpose of objectification of women.

Really love to know what you consider dressing as a "woman with affection for hire" looks like. I mean above you implied that make up itself is symbolic of it. You don't sound much like a feminist to me, if you think a woman wearing make-up implies she is for hire.

On the other side, such clothing, makeup and other symbols are still powerful in attracting the negative male gaze, so from a feministic perspective using said attributes in my humble and probably uneducated view is very contra-productive - in practice it uphold the objectification of women. I would be very happy to be schooled and corrected on the subject.

It's kind of like if I as a socialist would run a stock broker company as a way of reappropriating ownership of production from capitalists.

Perhaps "real" feminist should restrict themselves to hems below the knee? Or something that doesn't attract the "male gaze" like a burka or something out of Handmaid's Tale?

Or here's and idea perhaps a cis male feminist should not put restrictions on how women want to present themselves, or assume anything about a woman by how she presents herself.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The part Hussar mentioned is absolutely and definitely true. I've heard so many first-hand accounts of women who only felt comfortable to play TTPRGs once the amount of sexist art started to drop and you weren't consistently called a frigid bitch anymore for speaking up about some of the degrading illustrations you had to put up with, and that were completely normalized for decades.

Personally, I'm of the opinion the true detractor for women entering the hobby was us (males in general).
I'm not saying it was all of us, I'm not saying women did not play, I'm not saying there were no areas of exception - I'm saying in general there was gatekeeping.
Your example of frigid bitch name calling is more an example of male behaviour than the art.
Hobby has evolved. Silly teenagers have grown up and have become parents. Media and entertainment has changed. Thus we see more women entering the hobby.

Again, this is my opinion.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Re: Beyonce and female empowerment, I always found that argument a little weird. Is she really dressing like that because she wants to and it makes her feel empowered, or is she dressing like that because that's what's expected of her as a woman in the entertainment industry? Is she choosing those outfits herself, or is there a costume designer behind the scenes putting together her ensembles? A lot of times it feels like her and entertainers like her are selling a "female empowerment fantasy" more than they're actually being empowered women. But I don't know, I can't claim to follow any of them close enough to have a strong opinion about it one way or another.

I think these are all fair points - I.e to what extent is an artist in control of their own persona, and to what extent are they conforming to expectation or being curated by a team of fashionistas or being coerced by their manager etc.

Instead of Beyoncé, we might look at Lady Gaga or Madonna or Joan Jett or Billie Eilish or Britney Spears and see different modes of expression, and the cleaving to or diverging from various expectations.

But I think to altogether eliminate their agency in how they represent their sexuality is probably a mistake - although Britney Spears is a bit of a corner case, and comes pretty close.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The part Hussar mentioned is absolutely and definitely true. I've heard so many first-hand accounts of women who only felt comfortable to play TTPRGs once the amount of sexist art started to drop and you weren't consistently called a frigid bitch anymore for speaking up about some of the degrading illustrations you had to put up with, and that were completely normalized for decades.

With your last point I agree though. There is definitely a middle ground for all of us, and respect and good-faith communication are key for that.

Some things to consider though, which I think shows this is more about overall balance than anything else, the 90s Vampire RPG, brought in a lot of women, and that had much more sexuality to it than D&D. Also at that time, vampire novels by female authors were huge (some male authors too, but a ton of female authors were emerging). I used to be very into that genre of horror and so much of it was laden with sensuality, sex, etc. The female writers explored that too (albeit from a slightly different point of view than the male writers). Or take the romance novel. Fabio was a huge celebrity, in part for being a beefcake on the cover of Romance novels, and those mostly have a female readership I believe. I have a cousin who is an artist. She has no interest in titillation or pornography but she often incorporates sexuality and nudity into her art. And it is done in a way that shows a range of things from the beauty of the form, to vulnerability, to power, etc. Most of the time she focuses on the female form, but she does do male images occasionally as well. That is just an artistic choice in her case, which I think is valid.

I think the risk we run in these conversations is tilting the balance too far in the direction of avoiding things that really ought to be on the table as artistic choices. I don't think every or most RPGs should have covers and interior art that resembles a romance cover or Boris Vallejo art. But there is probably an audience for those things, and there are even times when a mainstream RPG might want to veer into that territory (if you are trying to evoke 1970s and 1980s style sword and sorcery, it might make sense to nod to Boris Vallejo and emulate his style.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally, I'm of the opinion the true detractor for women entering the hobby was us (general us males).
I'm not saying it was all of us, I'm not saying women did not play, I'm not saying there were no areas of exception - I'm saying in general there was gatekeeping.
Your example of frigid bitch name calling is more an example of male behaviour than the art.
Hobby has evolved. Silly teenagers have grown up and have become parents. Media and entertainment has changed. Thus we see more women entering the hobby.

Again, this is my opinion.

This is very complicated. One thing I will say is in the 90s, I had about 1/3 to 1/2 women in my groups, and a lot of it probably boiled down to peoples attitudes and the culture of the time. However when 3E came out, I saw a sharp decline in women at the table with the crowd I was gaming with. In my old group we still had women, but as I went out I found more groups, I saw less and less. I also feel like I was seeing a lot less female names in the credits in the 00s than I saw in the 90s (this is just by memory, so I could be wrong, but I do feel like there was a shift of focusing more on things that were aimed at a male audience again in the early 2000s (at least as far as D&D was concerned).

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is very complicated. One thing I will say is in the 90s, I had about 1/3 to 1/2 women in my groups, and a lot of it probably boiled down to peoples attitudes and the culture of the time. However when 3E came out, I saw a sharp decline in women at the table with the crowd I was gaming with. In my old group we still had women, but as I went out I found more groups, I saw less and less. I also feel like I was seeing a lot less female names in the credits in the 00s than I saw in the 90s (this is just by memory, so I could be wrong, but I do feel like there was a shift of focusing more on things that were aimed at a male audience again in the early 2000s (at least as far as D&D was concerned).

Putting aside culture and attitude, 3e was a different experience from 1e-2e.
Do you believe this decline in female participation occurred within the non-D&D sphere too?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I mean, sometimes you just have to appreciate that the male gaze means the male gaze.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Putting aside culture and attitude, 3e was a different experience from 1e-2e.
Do you believe this decline in female participation occurred within the non-D&D sphere too?

That is true. 1E to 2E were very different from 3E which might have been a component. But D&D felt like it moved backwards with 3E in terms of feeling more like a boys club (at least to me)

I think only to the extent that d20 pushed aside a lot of other options, so when you went to the local game store, at least where I was, it was like 90 percent d20 products, which largely felt like they were aimed at a male audience. But I still saw plenty of women playing Vampire. And I still saw women in the hobby (I don't want to overplay the change here). I just feel with WOTC specifically, at least for a while, things became much more about a sort of male math nerd aesthetic (whereas in the 90s you had stuff like Ravenloft which did have a lot of women in the credits, and you had Dragonlance, which was co-written by a woman but also seemed to appeal more to female readers and gamers: I knew a lot of women who read Dragonlance). Maybe some of that was also because WOTC was the company in charge of magic and a lot of magic players were coming into D&D. I don't really know for sure, I just remember there being a pretty stark difference.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, sometimes you just have to appreciate that the male gaze means the male gaze.

Lol. True. There are probably more male pecs than female midriffs in most of the 80s action movies

 

[Umbran]

Some things to consider though, which I think shows this is more about overall balance than anything else, the 90s Vampire RPG, brought in a lot of women, and that had much more sexuality to it than D&D.

So, with that posit, the question to consider becomes: How is that sexuality displayed and handled? What is the way that sexuality is expressed in the game?