This thread keeps on showing exactly why we have a problem in this community.
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Isnât it painfully ironic that any post talking about womenâs issues in gaming (or specifically netrunner) tends to blow up? Looks like we still have a lot of work to do :\ these sort of discussions shouldnât have to be limited to certain places (like the Women of Netrunner group etc) but unfortunately, as everyone can see here, itâs still somehow so âoffensiveâ to discuss in places like a general forum. Which is messed up.
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In my experience, the only thing that ends that cycle is moderation. Unless the mods say that they donât want a debate over whether the problem exists, and back that up with warnings and post deletions and so on as needed, Iâd be pretty surprised to see this stop. Our chances of convincing every Stimhack forum reader who hasnât noticed the existence of sexism up until now that sexism exists are slim.
And of course, that kind of mod intevention would require a fair bit of work from the mods. Theyâd need to spend more time on moderating this thread, decide how to handle the inevitable complaints about âcensorship,â etc.
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I really hope what youâre proposing doesnât happen.
We are having a very civil discussion here. Because people donât agree, doesnât mean we should censor them.
Whatâs to stop you from being censored.
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Donât worry, I donât really expect it to, so Iâm sure youâll be able to continue civilly debating whether suggesting that people be considerate is the real discrimination.
If the mods were to delete my comments, that would of course be their prerogative. Itâs their website, they can decide what they do and donât want published here.
It wouldnât be censorship, though, because I would be free to publish my views myself elsewhere. Declining to provide someone a platform isnât censorship.
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This is not productive. Youâre painting with a broad brush when weâre talking about a very specific problem. Everyone has felt excluded from something at some point in their life. Thatâs as useful a contribution to this conversation as saying the sky is blue.
People finding Netrunner too hard, overly technical or not interesting is not a gendered issue. Iâve sat next to male Magic players, in the middle of a Legacy tournament, that said they found Netrunner too complicated. Itâs not a design issue causing women to not play this game in the same numbers as men. Therefore it must be a cultural issue, either as part of greater Western culture or as a part of the more specific gamer culture weâre a subset of. We donât have the power to address a greater cultural problem. We do have the power to address a specific problem within our own community.
Specific examples of things within the Netrunner community that exclude people have been bought up in this thread. Specific solutions have been suggested. Thatâs where this discussion lies, not in âI donât see a problem and I will set these arbitrary goals of what I consider a problem to beâ.
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Itâs hard to have a civil conversation about a problem when one side disagrees that a problem even exists. âletâs set caps on emissions to reduce global warming.â "Why bother? It was cold yesterday and itâs the middle of summer!â
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Just a few things why this is just like, you know, just your opinion really:
Sexism is about looking down upon or discriminating someone because of his sex. Accepting or asking the question if men and women might just be different and have different tastes is not sexism. So don´t put me into that corner. And really: If you want to change sexism in society, you should probably care more about why women don´t get paid enough for the same work and âreal lifeâ stuff like that. As I said, I´ve never been to a tounament where I had the impression that anybody who wanted to play this great game was excluded, being felt bad or any of that. For me, all of this is creating a problem where there is none.
The part about my âfaultâ, ours or whatever is just really strange to me. To be honest, I don´t feel at fault or anything at all. I´m just stating the obvious: There are two sexes: men and women, females and males, whatever you like to call it. Just spot the difference looking at two nudes from both I guess to find out what I meanâŚ
If youâre going to suggest that there is a gendered reason why men like games like Netrunner and women do no, you have to provide that reason. âAcceptingâ men and women are different without articulating those differences is at best intellectually lazy.
Sexism isnât just the big issues that cause inequality. Itâs the little things too. I canât do anything about children starving in Africa but I can do the dishes at home.
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Yep, that´s exactly what I would call extremist. Not accepting the fact that some people just refer to a group of men and women as âguysâ? Not even thinking about that this could just be their term for âpeopleâ? And then stating that you would rather exclude those people from the Netrunner community which is based around a game we all love? Seriously, who are you to decide who belongs to that community or not? Why do you think the people have to share your (rather weird) views to play some game and share that experience with others?
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Look, I´m not suggesting anything. I just posed a question, that´s something different. I also wanted to express my disbelief how things evolved just because some drunk guys talked bullshit on some stream. You know, I went to that tournament, had a great time with lots of people from different countries (women included), talked lots of shit, got drunk and all that. Frankly, I don´t get most of the stuff that is being said here. Also, I don´t care that much. Yeah, I might be intellectually lazy. Or you might be just completely off-track.
See, here you are conflating two separate approaches. Asking said question is not sexist (even if it may be misguided and/or not necessarily appropriate, depending on the context); âacceptingâ that men and women are different is something else entirely, as it presupposes something to be a given. I do believe that, generally speaking, there are differences beyond merely biological ones between men and women. However, with respect to why gaming spaces are typically male-dominated, there is much more at play than simply âwomen and men having different interests/predilectionsâ.
People are allowed to concern themselves with issues across multiple spheres. Others have stated as much already, but I feel like your repeated emphasis that we ought to focus on âreal lifeâ issues only undermines more insidious social influences, which, while invisible, may be impactful or harmful in other ways.
Sadly, thatâs the thing about impressions - while they can indeed be useful in gauging rough ideas, they are inherently based on our own personal perceptions of the world, and are thus fairly limited in scope. I have had numerous impressions of situations in my life, only to subsequently find that my initial assessment was incorrect, as there was either more beneath the surface that I had failed to notice or I misinterpreted key mannerisms/gestures/paralanguage, etc. Furthermore, I find that it is especially easy to miss things when dealing with issues that one has little experiential knowledge of. Theory and practice do not always perfectly align.
And hereâs the real kicker. Others do. You are upsetting others and causing yourself annoyance in the process by claiming that people are creating problems where none exist. If you genuinely do not care about the issues highlighted in this article and by various individuals within this thread (which is your prerogative), then it probably is for the best of all involved parties (yourself included) that you withdraw from the conversation.
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Iâm late to the thread here, but all Iâm seeing is people who donât think it was a big deal telling people who did think it was a big deal that it wasnât a big deal. This thread is for people who think itâs a big deal. If you donât think itâs a big deal, there are plenty of other threads on the forum for you.
Stimhack has made a priority to treat discussions of feminism or sexism as essential to maintaining a healthy community. We canât just âignore politicsâ because any position, even the one of inaction, will inevitably exclude someone. Historically, tabletop/board/card games have erred too far on the side of the status quo, and thatâs why we are still so male-dominated today. So we are trying to make up for lost time.
The discussion so far has been healthy, but from this point on, Iâm going to remove any posts which downplay the significance of the stream incident as it reflects on sexism in our community.
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Also, taking off the mod hat, I want to give a big props to the three casters involved for their excellent apologies. You all handled the fallout very maturely and made me very proud.
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At the risk of wading back into this â because it looks like an otherwise generally productive conversation might go off the rails â I think itâs probably worth clearly (re)stating a couple of points for anyone wanting to weigh in on the âI donât see the problemâ end of the spectrum should understand:
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No one in this thread is trying to control, restrict, or censor you in any way. Within the bounds of whatever game store or convention center is holding your tournament and within FFGâs tournament rules, you can behave however you like. The conversation is about how to represent and grow a more inclusive community: if you donât want to do that, if thatâs not a priority for you, and/or if you are actively opposed to that idea, then none of this really concerns you. I canât speak for the OP, of course, but this reads to me as an effort to educate, not legislate. If you prefer an analogy â I donât know of any jurisdictions where you would be jailed for wolf-whistling at a woman on the street, but in 2017 most of us recognize that itâs generally a poor way to behave if you are at all concerned about other peopleâs comfort. You can still do it, and I canât stop you, but you shouldnât be surprised if I call you an ass for exercising that freedom.
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This thread is not inventing a problem or inserting a gendered lens where no gendered content existed (leaving aside for a moment whether such a thing is possible). It was a response to a very real and very specific situation in which these issues were directly raised in a very public setting (and in a rather insulting fashion, no less). Saying something like âGender should not be a factor in Netrunner communitiesâ sounds fine as an abstraction, but it is clear that it already is a factor (from any number of datapoints â but letâs stick to the very real, very specific situation for the moment). To argue that there is no problem isnât the utopian âgender-blindâ (or neutral or w/e) position you think it is, but rather an assertion that you donât think the gendered forces which clearly do exist are a âproblem.â That belief is, of course, your prerogative (again, no one here can control or restrict your behaviors or beliefs), but suggesting that these forces donât exist at all is somewhere between misguided/naive and duplicitous/malicious.
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This is a real-life political statement. Whether men and women are just different is one of the questions underlying many debates about sexism and what should be done about it. Asserting that people should just accept your answer to that question is not politically neutral.
This is a real-life political statement. If and/or how sexist attitudes cause âreal lifeâ stuff like the pay gap is one of the questions underlying many debates about how to address such things. Stating that people should focus on âreal lifeâ stuff but ignore less easily-measured sexism is not politically neutral.
This is a real-life political statement. Trans rights are a major current political issue. Claiming that there are exactly two sexes, and that sex is determined by someoneâs genitals, is not even remotely close to being politically neutral.
You claim that you want to keep âreal lifeâ and politics out of gaming, but youâre bringing in a lot of real life politics yourself.
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It is important to keep in mind that everyoneâs exposure to gender politics and all other relevant topics vary greatly. ANR is likely a more liberal community than most, but even within this community, the exposure to and experience with these topics varies greatly. Many of the responses in this thread toâwhat I will callâignorant stances have been at-best dismissive, and occasionally confrontational. Neither of these are helpful to the community or individuals who may be seeking to understand what the âbig dealâ is.
That said, it isnât our responsibility to educate people on gender politics; however, responses that demonize or subtly attack ignorant viewpoints are not constructive.
Personally I would like to read more replies by femme- and queer-identifying people, but perhaps we wonât get many due to the problem of saturation being discussed. Their anecdotes and opinions are much more valid and illuminating than the male-identifying echo chamber.
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I donât understand what you mean by institutional barrier then. We are agreed that there is no formal policy of exclusion of women - if thatâs what you mean. But clearly, there is some kind of societal barrier, otherwise we would not have the situation that we observe of a white male dominated community.
Then I canât help you. The empirical evidence is right there in front of us. 2.5% of the players in a major tournament were women. That should be evidence enough. This is nothing to do with the mechanics of Netrunner as a game, itâs common across pretty much all of the board and card gaming community. Of course itâs a human relationship issue, thatâs the point thatâs being made.
LIke ⌠I just donât know how to respond to this. The whole point of this thread is that we have heard from W/NB members in a variety of forums and they have told us loud and clear that the behaviour of men is something that puts them off taking a greater part. The original post speaks to the kinds of behaviours that we are asking people to consider.
You clearly disagree that this is the cause of such low participation rates - ok, so whatâs your rationale? Womenâs brains are too small to cope with the complexity of netrunner?
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To refocus this a little onto the original post - @ajar highlighted some opportunities to change behaviours. Iâm sure there are other things that we could pay attention to - I know from reading some of the WON facebook postings that there are other red flag behaviours which make the gaming space unfriendly - such as patronisation (âdid you come with your boyfriendâ, âlet me know if I can explain anything to youâ) and so on.
I want to know what else I need to avoid and/or pay attention to!
This older boingboing posting is very much worth a read, including these paragraphs, which exemplify points made âŚ
"Dominique Peters is a London-based player whoâs followed the game for over a year now. She primarily plays with friends at work and with her partner, but went to her first organized event this year, a tournament held at a game cafe and bar. She was the only female participant. Though she didnât experience any overt harassment, other playersâ behavior still made her uncomfortable.
âIt was actually the kind of level of, I guess, microaggressions. Just really, really small continuous things that happened all the time,â Peters says. She feels her opponents gave unsolicited deck advice, over-explained the mechanics as they played, questioned her about her gaming background as if to test her geek credentials, and asked if her boyfriend taught her how to play.
She says on the latter, âThatâs a tricky one, because yes he did, but thatâs not really relevant? Like, did your friend teach you to play? âŚItâs kind of a non-question as far as Iâm concerned, but itâs asked in a very particular way.â Her partner, another competitor at the tournament, experienced none of that line of questioning and treatment from other participants. By the end of the day, no one had spoken to Petersâ outside of her matches."
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