Representing the Community: Learning from the European Championship

Because that´s what @BardofSnow was talking about. Relax, I hope it´s still ok to call humans of the male sex “men” and humans of the female sex “women”. I´m out of here …:fearful:

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Ever thought about the idea that some people just don´t want to play Netrunner? Or any kind of games for that matter? Ever got funny looks from your colleagues when you try to talk them into trying your hobby?
Maybe I was misunderstood here but what I am trying to say here is just have some fun with something irrelevant and leave the serious stuff somewhere else. But you know, it´s like, just my opinion I guess…

Come on, I was talking about my wife´s opinion on my excessive gaming ok, I guess this is just the right thread for me, bye bye…

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You’re obviously more than welcome to share anecdotal stories about your relationship with your wife.

The issue is when you then extrapolate those stories and the characteristics of one person and assume that it must apply to all, or most, people of the same gender.

The equivalent (but exaggerated to show just how ridiculous it is) would be a line of thinking that went:

“Huh, not many men go to the sewing club. My friend Dave has a phobia of needles. I bet most men have the same phobia, and that’s why none of them go”

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This is a luxury that is not available to everybody.

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The word female, used as an adjective, as in ‘female players, female gamers etc’ is perfectly normal and is being used as an appropriate descriptor. Used as a noun, as in ‘I played netrunner against a female’ or ‘there were several females at the tournament’ sounds like you are narrating a nature documentary or are an alien describing an unfamiliar species. I’m not assuming this, I know for a fact that this is language that makes women uncomfortable and/or makes them write you off as someone whose opinion is not worth further consideration.

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It is fascinating to me how much begging the the question happens in this discussion.

I started a while ago by asking a simple question. In response to the assertion that we have a problem in our community because women are not represented enough, I asked what our benchmark should be for sufficient participation should be by women (and girls). Someone replied that it should be 50%. The reason behind this claim – as I understand from what has been written here – is that because anything less than 50-50 means there are social pressures preventing women from playing the game.

That is an interesting claim and hypothesis, but saying that anything less than a 50-50 split is proof that society pressures women not to play is not the same thing as actually demonstrating that is true. And I would argue that asking for evidence to support that claim is not sexism – although that has been suggested in some of the responses.

People have raised some interesting articles regarding the way women regard themselves when playing chess and the drop off in women’s involvement in computer science. The computer article itself claimed that it had no clear or simple explanation for why participation rates by women had dropped off and the chess study is about how players perform when aware they are playing vs men or women is interesting but not exactly on point since the study itself is not trying to explain whether women enjoy chess but why they perform more poorly than men. (Yes, the two may be related.)

The chess example is interesting. In the article linked above and [this one that argues a different hypothesis](Explaining male predominance in chess | ChessBase} it is pointed out that women comprise fewer than 10% of participants in most chess events. The two articles investigate why women tend to perform less well than men in chess, which is not the same as asking why so many fewer women actually play competitive chess than men. Both articles – and I assume a related literature – note the fact that women comprise 10% or less of the competitive chess-playing population. And the question I am asking is whether part of the difference in participation rates in organized competitive game play might be simply because men tend to enjoy such games – on average, as a whole, but not exclusively – more than women.

I recognize that my question has vastly different answers if you deny that there are any psychological differences based on sex. And I suppose this forum is not a place where we can hash out that argument.

I agree with the quote above that having more people play Netrunner is good for the game, and it is something I support as actively as I can – talking up the game, organizing three online tournaments in the last couple months, and teaching the game to anyone who will let me do so. I also decry behavior that demeans or belittles players of this game based on their sex, identity, orientation, race, or beliefs.

I merely wanted to inquire what the reasonable target market for this game is among women. Setting that number irrationally high or low are equally unproductive. I will leave the argument at this point, as I suspect we are not actually persuading each other of anything.

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Maybe keep in mind that you are arguing that we don’t have an issue with sexism in the netrunner community in a thread about an article written following an actual high-profile instance of sexism.

At a tournament where ~5 out of ~225 players were female (adjective!), sexist comments were made about 20% of those players on the stream, and made a lot more people uncomfortable.

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Wow.

So in the initial post for which you call me out for using the word “female,” I use it as both an adjective and a noun. I similarly use “male” as both an adjective and a noun. I also use “men” and “women.” As I stated before, I used “male” and “female” because I wanted to include non-adult human beings in the groups to which I was referring. At least in my understanding the terms “women” and “men” refer to adults and so would not be appropriate to refer to children and young teen-agers.

So are you saying that simply because I used the word “female” as a noun in the post that my opinion is not worthy of consideration?

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I am saying that using ‘females’ in your post is dehumanising, is language that makes women uncomfortable and will undermine your opinion.

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The use of ‘female’ as a noun is off-putting to many women. See for example … The Problem With Calling Women 'Females'

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How do you separate “enjoyment” from exactly the kind of societal pressures and barriers that have been discussed at length in this thread?

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I am aware of the origin of the thread, but I am not arguing that we do not have a problem with sexism in the game.

I asked what a reasonable level of participation by female players might be. It seems rational to me that if we want to address a perceived problem in the game, we should have a clear idea what our goal should be. When someone said it should be 50-50, that struck me as rather high given the apparently vastly different levels of interest shown by men vs. women for competitive games. I understand that some people see the question itself as sexist.

I will keep trying to promote the game online and in person as best I can to every person who shows some interest.

How would we tell the difference between an innate lack of interest from women, or an interest that exists but doesn’t materialise into event or meetup attendance due to the existence of barriers to entry or other disincentives to attend?

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I find it weird when men refer to women as “females”. I also find it depressing when discussions like this are reduced to “but women just don’t like these hobbies/are too sensible for it”.

It’s very easy to say there’s no barrier to entry when 90% of people at events or meetups are like you.

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This whole article/thread was started because the ‘serious stuff’ was part of a livestream of a major community event. It wasn’t left elsewhere – it was raised within the community in an extremely public and derogatory way. If you think that the articles and the responses here are raising an issue that didn’t exist, that’s only because you had the luxury of ignoring the relevant ‘serious stuff’ in the first place, not because it wasn’t there. As others have suggested, that is a more-or-less textbook example of how one’s privilege can lead one to minimize the gravity of a situation.

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I don’t understand your argument, which is essentially begging the question. ‘Because the levels of interest are so vastly different, there must be an underlying reason which is not societal pressure’. My personal experience is that if the gaming space is sufficiently welcoming and safe, the gender difference essentially vanishes - we have a local gaming group in my city which is basically 50:50 - but this took a huge amount of work to achieve. Given a choice between ‘a) women are genetically predisposed not to be competitive, and b) as in much of society, the social environment is prejudicial against women’, b) is by far the simpler explanation.

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People (almost typed guys =p), the goal is not a headcount. The goal is 0% interested women quitting or never starting in the first place because the community feels exclusive to them.

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There are many dimensions to the issues of demographics being discussed that makes it very difficult to arrive at clear and satisfying conclusions. For instance, even for totally voluntary choices there are aspects of social pressures that may be incredibly difficult to pinpoint and, even if we could, would not be viable for a card game community to address.

What I find more important in the immediate term is making sure as a community we keep the barriers of entry as low as possible, and make the atmosphere as inviting as possible, so the game can be made available to as many people as possible. Netrunner is a great game, and I think the merits of it would attract a great many more people than it currently does. Conversations like this (which are by their nature contentious even in the best circumstances) should be geared towards taking away as many barriers as possible, and the use of certain language is one such barrier. I think by and large that’s what’s taken place, but it’s work that needs to continue.

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