My extreme Dorkitude... Let me show you it.
Yes, I'm a gamer. I play pen and paper, tabletop RPGs all the time. I have several bags filled with funny dice. I spend hours pretending to be other people or creatures for fun.
Over at Geek Girls Rule! I just did a piece about why it isn't hypocrisy for me to encourage guys to game with girls, while running a women's only gaming group. Every so often somebody thinks they've caught me in the greatest of punk rock sins, hypocrisy, and calls me out for it. Which usually leads to me explaining that I've never said they can't have all-guy games, nor have I ever called them dumb for having all-guy games. When this happens in forums, I invariably ask if they can point me to where I've said it and they can't, because I didn't. But that isn't what I want to talk about here.
What I want to talk about here is something I state towards the end of that piece, and which I will quote here:
"But it can be intimidating being the only girl at the table. Particularly in a convention setting where you will probably be outnumbered at least ten to one. Not only is it a little nerve-wracking to be roleplaying with strangers, but being surrounded by guys they don’t know well also tends to trip the internal alarms that have been societally conditioned into most women."
The majority of men just don't get this. That putting yourself into a venue where you are surrounded by the gender society tells you that you have to constantly be on guard against, can be in and of itself intimidating, particularly for younger women. Even if the guys involved are nerds. Ok, nerdy guys have a better chance of getting it than other guys, but a lot of times they don't. I'm sure that many other gamer women can relate to seeing a new woman walk in the door at a convention, watch her scan the room, and then visibly relax when she sees other women, whether she realizes it or not.
Society constantly hammers women with messages of how we're responsible for protecting ourselves against rape or assault. And putting yourself in a situation where you're one of only a very few girls surrounded by many, many guys goes directly against a lot of those messages. On a very subconscious level, I think every woman who finds herself surrounded by a sea of guys at any event feels the occasional twinge of, I don't want to say fear exactly, but anxiety. I mean, media outlets constantly shriek about how all men are ravening, sex driven beasts just looking for a warm wet hole, and if you don't give it to them, they'll take it. And nothing tweaks the lizard brain like realizing that if "they" are right, you have just surrounded yourself with the enemy, and what happens if they all unite as one to go after the pussy?
Now, reasonable human beings like myself and I'm assuming you, anonymous internet masses, realize that this is crap. Men are no more a hivemind than women are, nor are they ravening, unreasoning libidos with no control over it which is what makes a lot of rape defenses so incredibly reprehensible. But breaking conditioning on a subconscious level is hard, very hard, doubly so if you've already been victimized by someone of the opposite gender. Someone who, when you look at the odds, you most likely knew and trusted before they assaulted you.
So, here's the deal. If you don't want to game with girls, don't. But don't go out of your way to be an asshole to them either. It took a fair amount of bravery to go out among strangers to want to play our funny reindeer games, as it does for some guys. However, it also takes a lot of bravery to place yourself in a situation society says is dangerous to you, even if it isn't actually. Seriously, it costs you nothing to keep your mouth shut.
I swore off gaming cons for years, because I just got tired of being the only set of boobs in the room, if not the convention. Then the Husband What Rules and I discovered the Independent and Story Games communities, and got drawn back into gaming conventions. And you know, honestly, when I went to gaming conventions before, it wasn't that the majority of guys, or even a sizable minority of the guys were rude or mean or anything. But the ones that did make sexist or rude comments, or even said openly hostile things made it so uncomfortable, I just left.
But that was then, this is now.
Most of the time now, I'm pretty much a hate-seeking missile looking to "fuck back" with anyone who fucks with me. With age comes confidence and, in my case, a razor's edge to my already rapier wit. However, in my teens and early 20s, I was a mess. Sure I'd speak out initially, but I'd cave pretty easily, too. And let's face it, who wants to feel attacked when they're just trying to have fun? Which would be one reason I did NOT call out Jonathan Tweet at GoPlayNW last month. So, when I'd catch shit, I'd whip out one witty rejoinder, and if they continued the fight, I'd just go away and leave them to "their" space. But it's NOT "their" space, it's gamer space, and gods damn it, I'm a gamer, too. And so are Lesley, Jilli, Julz, Staxxy, Loree, Tammy, Lisa and Marcy, as well as Ping, Kate, Dawn, Lori, etc... We have just as much right to be there as the guys. And we should feel just as comfortable as they do.
Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.
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