Author: soze (---.rr.com)
Date: 05-15-2002 01:37
I haven't read all the messages on the board, but I've browsed a goodly number of them. And what seems to be the main fault in these discussions is...
*drumroll*
IT'S NOT THE BLEEDING NUMBERS!
Guess what kids? We (the players with boobies, uteruses *and* dicebags) could give a fuck about the ratio of female to male portraits in the players' manual! The number one complaint does not rest on how many women gamers there are; it rests upon how those women gamers are *treated*.
Having three chicks and three guys at a game table is worthless if the three guys won't treat them seriously as players.
I had the great fortune to attend a con last year (Genericon at RPI, to be exact) where I was treated as an equal, even though I was usually the only female playing a particular game. I didn't care whether another girl was going to sit down at the table so we could gossip about the latest Cosmo makeover kit, I cared that I was having a good time (well, and winning the board games).
Honestly, I don't care if you stare at my tits. If you touch them, I'll make sure you're shitting blood for a week. But if staring at my tits is interfering with *your* game, that's *your* problem so long as it doesn't affect mine. If my character gets marginalized because someone's thinking with their little head, however, I will become an Unhappy Soze(tm).
To sum it up, the problem of gamer chauvinism is always the worst type of sexism: a bunch of guys who think they're too smart to be sexist. I suppose we just have to keep beating it into them that prejudice manifests in the subconscious. Shock therapy, anyone?
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