I think this is an absolutely reasonable question. We need to provide as few barriers as possible to those who want to play the game. There are plenty of people who like ANR but do not wish to play the game. If those are game reasons (ANR or otherwise), I am kinda okay with that. Most MTG players will say they prefer MTG and that’s okay.
What I believe should happen as little as possible is people not wanting to play the game because they feel uncomfortable in a play situation or think they would feel uncomfortable.
I recently taught a girl friend of mine ANR and she really likes it, she is hesitant to go to meetup and tournaments though, which I kind of understand (I personally don’t know the people in the meetup she would go to). Making new people feel welcome is always important, but I think it’s even more important to provide a good experience to hesitant new people (and this hesitation could be for any number of reasons, language barrier too for example!).
Thanks for all the conversation. Sorry to not continue right now. Non-Netrunner issues require my attention.
FWIW, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that the question is sexist, but I would ask (and I suspect others might feel the same, though I won’t speak for them) what the purpose of the question is. It is often the case that people leap towards explaining differences as ‘innate’ (or genetic or…) as a way to avoid discussions of social stigmas or oppression that would make them uncomfortable by calling into question their own role and/or complicity in those forces. While asking a question is different than making an assertion, you are asking an unanswerable question within our present context. While it is almost certainly true that there would be some difference in interest in different populations of people (just as a question of random statistical variation), we have no way to remove or even seriously mitigate the tremendous social forces which surround, infuse, and infect the larger gaming community that serves as a filter to Netrunner, so we have no way to seriously test what percentage of men or women would be interested in the game in some kind of hypothetical ‘neutral’ environment. While I understand that you’re only asking, and this might seem a purely theoretical question (akin to “do events still happen inside a black hole?”) to you, I would urge you to consider that to many of your readers the context of you asking this particular unanswerable question may lead them to conclude that you are attempting to ‘excuse’ the community or the larger social world within which it exists.
Quick question, who was this directed to? I feel like this is overly harsh and unfair, but without a quote/direct reply it might not be.
Edit: Or to rephrase my question a bit more positively: Is your experience that 90% of ANR players are like that and what does that kind of behavior entail?
QFT and double-posting because I think this needs more emphasis. It’s not as though if Netrunner tournaments somehow became 50% (or 60% or 95%) women, the behavior discussed here would suddenly become appropriate.
Ultimately I think that the question isn’t important at this point in time anyway. I personally subscribe to the belief that there’s no real psychological differences between genders, and as such 50% representation is a perfectly reasonable (if incredibly difficult to achieve) goal. Others such as @FightingWalloon may feel differently, and may think that (for example) 40/60 is a more reasonable split to aim at.
I think we can all agree, though, that we’re nowhere near what anyone would consider a healthy balance at the moment. If we ever get to the happy place where the tournament attendance for Netrunner is routinely 40% female or non-binary players and 60% male players then we can have a debate then about whether that’s the true equilibrium or not. For now we should probably all just accept that we’ve got a long long way to go and start taking steps towards improving matters.
A question for our female and non-binary community members - what more could we as a community do to be more welcoming - both online, and in real life? Are there any other do’s and don’ts should we know about, based on your personal experiences?
I meant that as in if you’re a white man and your meetup/event is 90% white men, it will likely be much easier to fit in.
Oops, I completely misunderstood your comment then.
This sounds like quite the Catch-22 to me.
You want a diverse field of players in order to attract players from diverse backgrounds. If the playerbase consists of only a subset of the general population, you’ll mainly attract newer players from that same subset. We’re in situation B… How do we get to situation A?
There’s a word for it: “outreach.”
Organize events that are explicitly not for straight white men. Women of Netrunner meetups, other sorts of non-standard format events aimed at attracting new players & kitchen table players who don’t normally participate. Some communities have been doing this already.
Our small local community consists (sadly) only of white men. What impression would it give if we as exclusively male players organize events for women only? Idk about America or the UK, but here that would be interpreted as very weird at best…
In the UK it would be interpreted as exactly that: “outreach”.
@FightingWalloon: You seem to be spending a lot of time insisting that people explain things to you that are not all that relevant.
What is the exact percentage of players we would expect to be female if we were doing everything perfectly? It’s probably impossible to say right now. But we know that we have a lower participation rate by women than some other geeky communities, and we have anecdotes suggesting women who are interested in Netrunner are less likely than men to go to events out of concerns about what the community might be like, and we know from recent events that there are issues with our community’s immediate reaction to sexist things being said. We have plenty to work on without setting an exact goal.
How much of the difference between men’s and women’s interests is intrinsic? We don’t know, because it’s impossible to say without removing all societal influences, and that’s also impossible. We do know that that other topics have seen vast shifts in the gender balance of who is interested in them based on changes in those societal influences. We do know that societal pressures discouraging women from participating in this kind of community exist. We can definitely work on reducing those pressures within our community and in the way our community reaches out to potential players and kitchen table players.
Why is it offputting to use “females” as a noun for people, even if you also use “males” as a noun for people? It’s complicated. Google can probably find you an explanation. The important point is that it is offputting, and it remains offputting whether or not you have an comprehensive understanding of what makes it offputting.
Wrong:
My apologies, I had missed grogboxer’s post. I’ve corrected my post by removing that paragraph.
My main point remains that I think the question of “what exact percent should we aim for” is unanswerable and not super relevant, and so debating it in detail is not useful or on-topic.
Thanks for the response. Actually someone did specifically raise thhe 50% threshold, so that was not my invention. My intention was not to divert the thread but to discuss and seek to understand. I’ve noticed that conversation here often branches off into related topics and thought my questions were doing no more than that.
A couple of people have questioned my motives or suggested I have a hidden agenda. That is not the case, but I do not wish to overstay my welcome or create further offense by continuing the line of conversation.
As for the use of the word “female,” you may be shocked to discover that this is not a universal reaction among women, so please forgive my lack of comprehension. Again, it was genuine confusion given lack of any prior experience with people in my life who have that feeling about the way I was using the word. I will abstain from using “female” as a noun henceforth.
Good luck and have fun everyone.
I’m sorry about having missed the suggestion to aim for 50%.
I think a large part of the problem is that the specific branches you’ve started in this topic are branches that come up in many discussions of gender issues, and often end up crowding out the actual topic. The result is that people who’ve discussed them before in other contexts can definitely have a “oh, not this again” reaction. I am glad to hear that you didn’t intend to derail the congregation.
This does also mean that Google really can find you explanations about these things, written by people who don’t mind explaining them but don’t want to re-explain them constantly.
Thank you for changing your use of “female.” I am not at all shocked to learn that women don’t universally react to it in the same way; women are as varied as any other group of people. But I am certain that the number of women who react negatively to “female” as a noun is decidedly non-negligible.
I held off commenting exactly this but will chime in. I agree whole-heartedly. The aims of the ANR community (and any game community) should be to:
a) lower the barriers of entry as much as possible. The economic barrier can be ameliorated by hosting learning nights where decks are provided. In this way, people can experience the game without investing any money. The social barriers can be combated by hosting nights catering to non-white/cishet males.
b) foster an inclusive, safe community. Language is one of the biggest factors in this, and means not only changing the ways we speak (I use “we” here as a white cishet male representative of the majority of the ANR playerbase), but the ways we act (and don’t act). Incidentally this is a good practice for life in general!
I personally believe these are the only two responsibilities a game community has. I disagree that we should be concerned with the number of non-WCHM. I disagree that we should actively try to recruit people to the game. Both of those reek of colonialism to me, which is problematic for a host of other reasons. Think about what you say, how you act, and lend your time and resources when you can to include others who don’t have the privileges you do. Our job isn’t to make sure more people like the game; it’s to make sure more people have the chance to find out whether they like the game or not; and ensure no one interested in the game is kept away for reasons within our control.
Just my WCHM opinion.
If you’re referring to my post – just to clarify, I wasn’t suggesting that you had a hidden agenda. I was trying to let you know why, in this particular context, some readers may find that kind of question offputting.