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Random thoughts on gaming and women.
Jul. 24th, 2011 02:42 pmBack in the day, I started gaming because I figured that that if I didn't, I'd never spend any time with my boyfriend (who then became my husband). It was his primary form of entertainment and the only hobby he had worth speaking of. I also liked the idea of roleplaying. As a kid, I'd never been able to find anyone to play with in my small town, so I hadn't tried it. It wasn't until I got to college and had a boyfriend who gamed that I had a chance to try it -- and feminism was the farthest thing from my mind at that point, so I found nothing objectionable in it to keep me away, even as I found nothing in it particularly to draw me, as a woman, in (then again, 2nd ed AD&D was hardly the most offensive thing on the planet in any regard).
Fast forward some twenty years (and wow, does that make me feel old).
Now I'm a grown woman and I've learned a lot about sexism and gender relations. I've been out in the world (a sheltered 19 yr old knows a lot of nothing about nothing, let me tell you). I've been in the industry for eleven years now. I still game, only I do it for myself, not anyone else. That said, when I look back across my gaming career... I can tell you that even when I was less aware of my social status as a "woman" and what that meant for me, my gaming took me where I felt welcome, not where I didn't.
After AD&D, what did I play? Shadowrun. And while Shadowrun has had some egregious art committed on its behalf, especially back in 1st edition (Rigger's Black Book, I'm looking at you), even back in the day it was more inclusive than nearly anything else. There were women featured, women shooting and fighting and not always wearing skin-tight clothing and posing for men. There were different body types, different presentations. You couldn't be an artist for Shadowrun if you only had one face for your characters, or one pose, or one body -- it just didn't work that way. The elves and humans and dwarves and orks required more, especially when you had to integrate them into something approaching the modern world, with modern expectations. It hired women as writers, editors, and artists. It featured women in active stories, along with the men. And if the gender mix of the NPCs in the metaplot was not as women-heavy as it could have been... well, art mirrored life, especially back in the 80s. It still does, but the real world is better now. I still think of Rowena O'Malley, though, running the mafia in Seattle, and although she was a bad guy feeling this little twinge of relief that she exists within the world as a complex character. I needed that.
From Shadowrun (or alongside it) there was Vampire and the rest of the White Wolf books. This was the mainstay of my gaming for years, honestly. It's got women all over it, it has its own issues with sexuality, pushing and pulling fretfully at it throughout its books. And yet, it's not a "girl's" game. It's not fuzzy or fluffy or rom-com, as so many things marketed to women are. Again, varying body types, attractive and ugly, men and women woven throughout its metaplot... whether they intended to be inclusive or not, they were: far more so than most of the other games at the time.
That list didn't vary much for a lot of years. I'd tried other things (Aria, GURPS, etc.) but what I found is that, by and large, they weren't designed with me in mind. And by saying that, I don't mean designed specifically for me to the exclusion of others. Some had no real place for me at all: Space 1889, for example. D&D for another. I could buck the trend and make it include me without too much effort, but the fact that the game itself ignored me and female characters in favor of a male-slanted point of view for many years meant that my 5th-level rogue got menaced by rapists and tied to a pole for the rest of the party (all males) to free her, with no chance of escape. The attitudes were there in the players because the game never challenged them or suggested otherwise.
I did find other things to play. Ars Magica, where being a female in a historically patriarchal world barely made the top-ten of the "things we socially shouldn't do" list. Hell, if you were just a woman, the townspeople practically threw you a party. Being a woman didn't make being a magi any worse, really. Loved that. Feng Shui -- loved kicking ass as a girl and not having to make excuses for it. Castle Falkenstein -- loved being able to play with the trappings of a historical time period I loved without having to live with the patriarchy. Buffy rewrote a lot of scripts, and the game continued the trend. It really wasn't until d20 that I and a number of other writers, both male and female, found our way into the industry and started transforming what was expected in a game in a mainstream way (although there were those always fighting the good fight before).
I could go on, but I'll spare you.
I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately given RPGnet's ongoing "feminism" kerfluffle and the H&H Kickstarter issues. I feel strongly about these things, though, because a lot of who I am and what I've been doing the last few years is wrapped up in this. I have sons; I want them to learn that women aren't some strange foreign species. I want them to expect women to be equals, and wonder what's wrong when they aren't treated as such, or aren't around at all. I want my boyfriend's daughter to learn she has so much more to work with in life than just her looks or her body or her relationships to men. This hobby -- this community -- is so much more welcoming than it was ten years ago -- hell, than it was even five years ago. At the same time, it still has so far to go. Even welcoming places like RPGnet remind me of that, and tell me that it's important to be there, as a woman, on the mod staff. It's important for me to stay visible. It's important to let other people see me and remind people that I am here, I am a gamer, and that if someone doesn't acknowledge and respect that, it's their own problem and fault. If, as a publisher/author/designer/editor/artist, you refuse to acknowledge or reach out to half the population as your potential customers, not figures for titilation or amusement... well, that's your problem too, isn't it?
Fast forward some twenty years (and wow, does that make me feel old).
Now I'm a grown woman and I've learned a lot about sexism and gender relations. I've been out in the world (a sheltered 19 yr old knows a lot of nothing about nothing, let me tell you). I've been in the industry for eleven years now. I still game, only I do it for myself, not anyone else. That said, when I look back across my gaming career... I can tell you that even when I was less aware of my social status as a "woman" and what that meant for me, my gaming took me where I felt welcome, not where I didn't.
After AD&D, what did I play? Shadowrun. And while Shadowrun has had some egregious art committed on its behalf, especially back in 1st edition (Rigger's Black Book, I'm looking at you), even back in the day it was more inclusive than nearly anything else. There were women featured, women shooting and fighting and not always wearing skin-tight clothing and posing for men. There were different body types, different presentations. You couldn't be an artist for Shadowrun if you only had one face for your characters, or one pose, or one body -- it just didn't work that way. The elves and humans and dwarves and orks required more, especially when you had to integrate them into something approaching the modern world, with modern expectations. It hired women as writers, editors, and artists. It featured women in active stories, along with the men. And if the gender mix of the NPCs in the metaplot was not as women-heavy as it could have been... well, art mirrored life, especially back in the 80s. It still does, but the real world is better now. I still think of Rowena O'Malley, though, running the mafia in Seattle, and although she was a bad guy feeling this little twinge of relief that she exists within the world as a complex character. I needed that.
From Shadowrun (or alongside it) there was Vampire and the rest of the White Wolf books. This was the mainstay of my gaming for years, honestly. It's got women all over it, it has its own issues with sexuality, pushing and pulling fretfully at it throughout its books. And yet, it's not a "girl's" game. It's not fuzzy or fluffy or rom-com, as so many things marketed to women are. Again, varying body types, attractive and ugly, men and women woven throughout its metaplot... whether they intended to be inclusive or not, they were: far more so than most of the other games at the time.
That list didn't vary much for a lot of years. I'd tried other things (Aria, GURPS, etc.) but what I found is that, by and large, they weren't designed with me in mind. And by saying that, I don't mean designed specifically for me to the exclusion of others. Some had no real place for me at all: Space 1889, for example. D&D for another. I could buck the trend and make it include me without too much effort, but the fact that the game itself ignored me and female characters in favor of a male-slanted point of view for many years meant that my 5th-level rogue got menaced by rapists and tied to a pole for the rest of the party (all males) to free her, with no chance of escape. The attitudes were there in the players because the game never challenged them or suggested otherwise.
I did find other things to play. Ars Magica, where being a female in a historically patriarchal world barely made the top-ten of the "things we socially shouldn't do" list. Hell, if you were just a woman, the townspeople practically threw you a party. Being a woman didn't make being a magi any worse, really. Loved that. Feng Shui -- loved kicking ass as a girl and not having to make excuses for it. Castle Falkenstein -- loved being able to play with the trappings of a historical time period I loved without having to live with the patriarchy. Buffy rewrote a lot of scripts, and the game continued the trend. It really wasn't until d20 that I and a number of other writers, both male and female, found our way into the industry and started transforming what was expected in a game in a mainstream way (although there were those always fighting the good fight before).
I could go on, but I'll spare you.
I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately given RPGnet's ongoing "feminism" kerfluffle and the H&H Kickstarter issues. I feel strongly about these things, though, because a lot of who I am and what I've been doing the last few years is wrapped up in this. I have sons; I want them to learn that women aren't some strange foreign species. I want them to expect women to be equals, and wonder what's wrong when they aren't treated as such, or aren't around at all. I want my boyfriend's daughter to learn she has so much more to work with in life than just her looks or her body or her relationships to men. This hobby -- this community -- is so much more welcoming than it was ten years ago -- hell, than it was even five years ago. At the same time, it still has so far to go. Even welcoming places like RPGnet remind me of that, and tell me that it's important to be there, as a woman, on the mod staff. It's important for me to stay visible. It's important to let other people see me and remind people that I am here, I am a gamer, and that if someone doesn't acknowledge and respect that, it's their own problem and fault. If, as a publisher/author/designer/editor/artist, you refuse to acknowledge or reach out to half the population as your potential customers, not figures for titilation or amusement... well, that's your problem too, isn't it?
