"A brief observation of casual Sexism and wargaming" Topic

Y'know, people here toss "politically correct" around like they know what it means, so I looked it up.

Did you know it was originally a term the left used to poke fun at their own zealots?

Now, I happen to think " you Rick Priestly" is a bit harsh. But saying "Look, the universal 'he' is really outdated because it ignores half the population and it can easily be fixed," how in any rational world is that zealotry?

To say "Keep the universal 'he', no matter that it offends to no good service to the English language", that is easily as fanatic as the position that the universal "he" should be dumped.

And to what good purpose, exactly? It seems to me that making the hobby more welcoming to women at no cost is a win propositon for everyone. What exactly does the hobby gain by not doing this?

And don't say "rules clarity": that is a red herring. There are plenty of rules companies that have dumped the universal "he" ages ago (Wizards of the Coast springs to mind) and they write better and cleaner rules than anything Ricky-me-lad has ever come up with.

So: dump the universal "he" and make gaming more welcome to half the planet -- gaming being a hobby that is dying, at least from what I read here.

Or keep the universal "he" in defence of a rules clarity it does nothing to promote.

Which of these two positions is more fanatical, less logical, more likely to be politics driven and thus "politically correct"?

I'm a minority (a card-carrying member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) and I will say political correctness is the bane of America. If you want to call me Native American, fine. If you want to call me an injun, well, okie dokie. I'm not offended nor do I look for reasons to be offended. Chris, apparently your life is pretty sweet if you can actually get worked up about the term "he" being used in reference to gaming.

Who is worked up? :) Trust me, Chockie: you've never seen me "worked up", nor do you want to.

If a woman is playing wargames (a 95% male hobby, if not more), one would hope she has thick enough skin to read "he" in place of "the player" and not have an emotional breakdown. How else would she survive the friendly trash talk of a competitive male hobby?

I'm not sure it's so easy to change language as our esteemed Chris would like us to believe. Most people who default to "he" mean no harm and I think it's a little unrealistic to expect them to change that mannerism to appease the language police.

Ho-hum. Clearly a "first world" problem…

"Friendly trash talk of a competive male hobby" …I have no idea what that means, but the language used by our local group doesn't change depending on who is in the room. Any banter is teasing but not sexist or insulting and could be said in the same room as your wife, mother or daughter. It's about manners and respecting the people you are with.

More likely to be bored to death by the discussions of how ancient cavalry really tough to be fair.

As for not being easy to change well that's no reason to try, no one is saying there is language police going to lock you up in language jail.

I'm mean is this really a "thing" ? How many females play wargames ? I'm guessing very few …

So is anything bad happening to the few women that play wargames ? I'd doubt it …

Are some male gamers not letting females play wargames ? Maybe ? The card carry members of Female Women Haters Club started by the Little Rascals in the 30s has gone fundamentalist ?

I don't think it even deserves as many posts as it got here.

What's next ? Males are not allowed at a mostly females hobby ? Whatever that would be ?

Who cares !

Wizards of the Coast has been doing it (the language change) for decades, DesertBox. Last I heard, they were pretty successful as a games company. At least as successful as, oh, TMP. I hear they make almost as much money, at any rate, so apparently their games are popular. I also hear a lot of women and girls play their games, too. Might just be a coincidence, but….

Y'know, frankly, I am not concerned with whether or not someone is "good" or "bad" for doing this or that. This isn't a "police" issue -- language or otherwise.

What I am saying is that for a hobby that moans and groans about dying, a lot of people here are resisting small changes that can definitely improve the hobby's attractiveness for half the population of the world.

Y'know, potential customers? Most industries take quite a shine to them.

Women love boardgames, cardgames, roleplaying games… "Gaming" in general has a large female base and it is growing all the time.

But for some reason, women "just won't" like miniatures wargames because… Oh, it must be the little dears' menstrual cycles or something. It certainly couldn't be the attitude of many of the men in the hobby – as it was with every single other sport and hobby that was supposedly "naturally male dominated".

As for "Who cares?" Legion4, you certainly don't, I take it. Then again, you don't need to,, because the hobby is built to cater to people just like you. That doesn't make you a bad man, but it does make you the last sort of person who could really say how women in gaming feel about it or what they experience.

A few things:

Should wargaming publications be gender neutral in their use language? Of course, why shouldn't they? (Btw, that was also the position explained in the book that started this discussion, but many people apparantly read otherwise).

Should the hobby as a social space be more inclusive to women? That's more difficult, because it's a chicken and egg problem. Any social space which is dominated by a single gender invariably is shaped towards that gender. That's quite natural, and inherently, there's nothing wrong with that. Except of course when this would result in sexism or other discriminatory practices. E.g. an open club that would ban women from becoming members is simply wrong, as would be using language in publications that is discriminatory in tone or meaning.

Btw, I think wargaming as a hobby has other problems that go largely unadressed, which are subconsciously more discriminating. Such as the focus on Western military history. Just take a look at colonial wargaming and the emphasis on western military powers of the time.

There's got to be a motive and agenda. There's always a motive and agenda…

There's a motive and agenda to both sides of this issue, but only one of those sides gets labled as "political". The other side is the way things have always been, so it gets to pretend that it has no motive or agenda and is not the slightest bit political.

The original positon, Phil, said "use he as a collective pronoun", although it also said that gender neutral language was preferable… the authors guessed… if you must… occasionally.

it was hardly an endorsement for gender neutral language.

Perhaps its time to get a little perspective on this :
As far as I know none of the posters have been elected to represent women in gaming /female gamers SO None of you are in a position to say what they want/like/dislike or anything .
until that election happens -you are just blathering when you talk about anyone but yourself and the people you game with .

I asked my ersatz grandkids about this. I say ersatz grand kids because I have no children of my own and these (four of them) are the children of my best friends who I have sort of "adopted" as my grand-kids. Two of them are females (one in each pair). I sent them the article. They have been gamers for years, one is 28 and the other is 23. Both gamed since about 9. I asked them THEIR opinion. I cannot tell you what they said as I don't repeat such tings coming out of nice young ladies mouths. However they did say that they've seen stuff like this all the time and in fantasy games too, and that this is primarily a problem that energizes males in the hobby, not females. Their exact words were "some girls like to game, some don't, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Learn to live with it. "He, she, it, etc." doesn't enter into it at all. I sent it to another good friends daughter and she was even more rambunctious, but did add that she thought this was primarily a male obsession. Her words were "People like that guy are the problem. Rather than just accepting girl gamers as they are, they make us feel like freaks, which is a definite turn off.

I also sent it to Cleo Leibl who has been a gamer for over 30 years. Her comments were a well executed derisive snort.

You have grandkids that are "copied from something else and not as good as the original", Otto?

Shudder.

Remind me to never accept an invitation into your basement "gaming room". :D

But following your methodology, I sent the article off to a half dozen of my homegirl gamers. All of them thought the " you Rick Priestly" bit extreme. All of them also found Priestly and Lambshead's tone and content on pronouns to be condescending gibberish.

As Fredericke Sachenslicer put it, "If they want to promote inclusion, they should use neutral pronouns or switch them up from time to time. If they don't want to do anything of the sort, they should follow tradition and use the generic 'he'. Why all this BS about neutral pronouns, followed by an injunction to use the generic pronoun? That's what I don't get. Then again, I am a girl. Tee hee."

And my good gaming BFF, Hannah Arsenbeiter, who used to paint H.G. Wells figures for him and was a playtester for the original edition of Little Wars, guffawed and had this to say:

"What a pair of cowardly nebbishes! They want to get kudos for contemplating the right thing, but not actually implementing it? Talk about your gormless wishy-washy fence-sitters! And you say the greying old boys crowd in wargaming has their Depends in a twist over this? Jesus wept!"

So, considering my sample was fifty percent larger than yours, I'm pretty sure it wins in the "methodology" category and will be cited much more often than yours in scientific publications. :P

Oh, one more thing: you might want to tell your "other good friend's daughter" that "that guy" is actually a transwoman: she made that point blindingly clear in the article.

Not that I think your "other good friend's daughter" cares about any such SJW nonsense, but she's going to be sorely disapointed in life if she makes her romantic choices based on the same logic she uses to make her pronoun choices.

Oh, hell. Maybe she just didn't read the article.

But I'm touched that you actually scoured the bushes to find female gamers to report on this one for us, Otto. I am sure that it is just a happy coincidence that they all agree, 100%, with you.

Unless, of course, Frau Leibl was derisively snorting about something else.

By the way, Otto, a lot of gaming women have already weighed in on this issue, including my personal Goddess, Annie Norman. So if you REALLY wanted women's opinions on this subject -- attached to faces and names one might actually see at a con -- all you need to do is go out and read them. They are a lot more diverse and nuanced than your sample would lead us to believe.

How many pages can this rant fill?

Not as many as the discussion regarding drummers in the Napoleonic age, surely.

The funny thing about that is that I actually read it for information and got none.

I like the accusation that men can't have an opinion on this. Seems a bit bigoted to me, but to each their own.

I think it's safe to assume not all women have a problem with "he" as a generalization in rules and not all women think business as usual is fine either.

I also feel no guilt in saying that a women who expresses such disgust at something so trivial has no place at my gaming table. Note I did not say "a woman has no place at my gaming table". While I'd be polite, she would not be invited back nor would I agree to a match at a FLGS again. The female gamers I do game with are much more reasonable.

As for "Who cares?" Legion4, you certainly don't, I take it. Then again, you don't need to,, because the hobby is built to cater to people just like you. That doesn't make you a bad man, but it does make you the last sort of person who could really say how women in gaming feel about it or what they experience.

Again … who cares … Most females I can think of would think it is pretty darn silly grown men playing with toy soldiers. I didn't think there was a huge amount of females feeling left out or abused because they can't play wargames ?

Is there some underground grass roots movement that is now going mainstream, the Women's Wargaming Liberation Movement ?

Seems like another "problem" that isn't ?

If it truly bothers you that much to have gender neutral pronouns in your rules systems you could always write your own…10's of people would flock from nowhere to buy them…

Good point …

Well, now that things here have calmed down, maybe there is a chance for a rational discussion where we all think more and judge less. The problem, as I see it, is not the use or rejection of gender-neutral pronouns, the inclusion of new gender pronouns, or the words and language of gender politics. If someone chooses to use such language, fine, and they deserve kudos for promoting politeness, common courtesy and inclusivity. However there is a tendency in our society to demand such gender-neutral language. From the HR departments of companies to the courts of law and the halls of legislation, gender-neutrality and gender accommodation is becoming dangerously politicised. Such demands may be well intentioned or not. These demands do however constitute a real threat to freedom of speech and expression. People are being put in a position where not only what they say can put them in legal jeopardy but now what they don't say can trigger legal action.

In Canada's largest province, Ontario, the provincial human rights commission there has decided that not using the gender pronouns and descriptors which a person of non-traditional gender wants used is on the same level as a hate crime and made such behaviour actionable under the law. The Canadian Federal Government has amended the Charter of Rights and the Criminal Code to make sexual/gender discrimination illegal and a criminal offence as well as a consideration for special punishment in other crimes where the court believes sexual discrimination has occurred. This and other related changes have had a very chilling effect on the freedom of speech and expression here in Canada. Now it is possible to be disciplined, fired or even prosecuted for what you don't say, rather than for what you utter. That is madness to my mind, a Kafka-esque assertion of newspeak gone horribly awry.

To illustrate this madness, I include a link to a nearly hour long debate on gender pronouns, the false social and scientific "facts" being used to advance this cause and the legal jeopardy that one University of Toronto professor has had to endure because he will not play ball with those who have militant gender politics on their agenda. It is a bit long but is nonetheless useful to watch in order to see just how far down the rabbit-hole of gender politics an entire nation can be drawn due to the misapplication of good intentions on issues of free speech. Caveat legitor!

youtu.be/kasiov0ytEc

Rod Robertson.