I have been following and commenting more on the World Boardgaming Championships Facebook page. There is a large and contested set of posts there surrounding women feeling safe and included in WBC.
One thing I have seen in several posts is the idea that WBC is completely welcoming to everyone regardless of gender, race, culture, appearance, or anything else. In fact it has been pitched as the most welcoming place in the entire world. (Naturally it was pitched this way by men who think that we don't need to do anything to change women's experiences at the con.)
Of course we also, in the same thread, see women talking about all the challenges, insults, and rude or abusive behaviour they have witnessed on many occasions. How do we square these two points of view?
I have a story that may help illustrate.
Years ago I was invited to an puzzle solving event. After the event, all the attendees went to a nice bar to get dinner and drinks. At the time I was living well below the poverty line, and I was regularly skipping events solely because of the cost of bus fare. Everyone else at the party was ordering whatever they liked off the menu and chatting about their homes, their cars, and the vacations they had planned.
I didn't have a house, or a car, and vacations were a dream. If I had ordered dinner at the bar I would have burned through 3 months of entertainment budget in a single meal.
Many people in that group might well have felt uncomfortable in many areas of their lives. After all, they are a group of puzzle nerds. I am sure to all of them, this was an incredibly welcoming environment. I am also confident they thought they were being welcoming to me.
But it is fucking hard to sit and listen to people talk about their financial misfortunes when they are bemoaning how they have to put off buying a cottage, and you have to feel guilty about not tipping the waitress because you can't afford a single drink.
I can tell you without any doubt, people can be extremely comfortable, *think* they are being entirely welcoming, and make someone feel desperately out of place. I left the bar eventually, and didn't get back together with that group. I don't blame them, or think they did anything wrong. They didn't know how it made me feel. I didn't complain. But I wasn't going to go back.
When I first attended WBC I felt wonderful. It was incredibly welcoming to me, and I felt right at home. But I am not every person. My experience is not universal. Just because WBC is extremely welcoming to straight white guys who are good at games does *not* mean it is welcoming to all. Some people at WBC, notably women, have the same experience I had at the bar, but at the con instead.
If you are a white guy who loves to dress in nerdy Tshirts, cargo shorts, and a backpack of board games, WBC is fantastic place. The rest of the world may give you looks and shut you out, but this place is perfect. It is easy for you to fit in, and you are completely accepted. I can easily see how you remember all the places in the world where you weren't accepted, and conclude that WBC is simply accepting of everyone!
But that isn't reality. WBC is super accepting of you, for sure. But that experience is not universal, much as you presumably want it to be.
So if your experience of WBC is one of comfort and acceptance, great. I am happy for you! But when you conclude that everyone else must have had the same experience, you are insisting that your experience is the only valid one, and you will accept nothing else. You are refusing to be the accepting person in turn.
If you remember other places in your life where you got side eyed looks, and people talked as though you weren't there, or assumed you were clueless without knowing anything about you, you know that isn't fun. It doesn't make you want to go back there. Women are telling us all that this is how they often feel at WBC. The men at WBC have a responsibility to try to give them the accepting, easy, comfortable experience we have. The first step is listening to what they say, and *believing* it, even if it strikes us as quite different than our own experience.
I am not saying WBC is the worst. I love it! I think the people running it have good policies in place, and work hard to make it great for everyone. I think a lot of the people attending do the same. But we have room to improve, and the stories women are telling us make that crystal clear.
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Friday, July 24, 2020
Warm welcomes
This is the time of year that I travel to the US to play in the World Boardgaming Championships. It is one of the best things in my year and it is a great disappointment to have to miss it this year. Unfortunately playing board games in a convention hall is only slightly below orgies in the covid 19 risk list, so WBC stood no chance.
Much as I love WBC it has some issues. The official policies regarding inclusion of women, minorities, people with disabilities, and such always struck me as good ones, and my experience has been that the con officials do a solid job trying to make it welcoming to everyone. However, we can't deny that board games are a white male dominated hobby, and the people that come to WBC trend very white, and very male.
Yesterday there was a thread in the WBC Facebook page about how extreme the white male dominance in board game design is. It pointed to this article about the issue, which comes from a woman who designed one of my most played games of the past few years - Wingspan. So far so good.
One of my friends replied to this post talking about her experiences at WBC, and how there have been many incidents that made her feel unwelcome. The problems she had weren't ones that are easy for officials to do something about - it wasn't people saying obviously awful things like "Girls can't play this game! Go away!" Her struggles were more subtle, like people making comments that suggested that she was only there because she had a husband / boyfriend who was at the con, or assuming that she has no idea how to play, with the clear implication that this is because she is female. She likes WBC, and a lot of the people there, but these experiences taint that.
This sort of post is hard to make. I know it was difficult for her because she was struggling to explain the problem while avoiding coming off as whiny. Women are often dismissed when they try to walk this line - they often find there is literally no ground between downplaying the problems they have and being ignored because they are 'too emotional' or 'too pushy'.
A couple of guys wandered in to make excuses. The men just don't know how to talk to women, you see, and they want more women involved in the hobby! I decided I couldn't just let this stand, so I explained that if you want more women involved in the hobby, you don't try to shout down women when they explain the problems - you fix the problems. Claiming that you don't know how to talk to women is just misogynistic nonsense, because you can just talk to them the same way you talk to men. Talk about the con, or the game, or whatever else. Women aren't some foriegn species with inscrutable motives. Just assume they are humans who like games and talk to them on that basis.
Of course there was some tension, as there always is when you ask people to behave better, but the conversation was entirely civil.
And then the WBC official in charge of social media walked in, deleted all the comments, and told us we weren't allowed to talk about this anymore. This was the comment she left
"There are many things we can do to ensure our hobby is welcoming to all people. Arguing divisively is not one of them. Commenting is closed. Read or do not read the article. Talk to your gaming friends. Invite someone new to WBC. Have a nice weekend!"
This absolutely enrages me. This pretends to be about making WBC welcoming, but instead makes it clear that women with negative experiences are not allowed to express those, and anyone asking for change will be summarily ignored or officially silenced.
I assume the goal in this was to preserve WBC's image, but instead what it accomplished is to make it clear that WBC has a real problem and that management's current response is to try to pretend it doesn't exist.
Did MeToo teach us NOTHING?
When a woman says that men having been treating her badly, the solution is not to try to hide her story and pretend nothing is wrong. The correct course of action is to listen and learn. I don't think the WBC officials can actually fix this directly, with rules. I don't expect every paternalistic comment of 'so, is your boyfriend playing this game too?' to suddenly stop just because management says so. (Also heteronormative, as well as sexist, for the record.) But even if you can't directly fix it, you can let women talk about those experiences, and let other people listen.
I am going to contact the board and make it clear that this is totally unacceptable behaviour. If the thread had been full of people calling each other assholes or otherwise making personal attacks, shutting it down would have been a reasonable course of action. It wasn't, at all. The thing that caused the ruckus is that somebody had the temerity to suggest that there might be a problem that needs fixing.
If you go to WBC, I would ask you to join me. Writing to anyone on the board and asking for action is useful. Sharing this to your other gamer friends would also be appreciated. I am not calling for anybody's head here. I don't think that 'silence women' is actually a policy. I think this was a serious error, one that needs fixing, and I am going to ask them to do just that. I would encourage you to be specific and make it clear that talking about the challenges women face in the con should be supported by the administration.
We want our hobby to be welcoming to all. We will never accomplish this if our approach is to pretend is already is, and no work needs to be done. We have to publicly talk about the issues we have, and take steps towards change.
Much as I love WBC it has some issues. The official policies regarding inclusion of women, minorities, people with disabilities, and such always struck me as good ones, and my experience has been that the con officials do a solid job trying to make it welcoming to everyone. However, we can't deny that board games are a white male dominated hobby, and the people that come to WBC trend very white, and very male.
Yesterday there was a thread in the WBC Facebook page about how extreme the white male dominance in board game design is. It pointed to this article about the issue, which comes from a woman who designed one of my most played games of the past few years - Wingspan. So far so good.
One of my friends replied to this post talking about her experiences at WBC, and how there have been many incidents that made her feel unwelcome. The problems she had weren't ones that are easy for officials to do something about - it wasn't people saying obviously awful things like "Girls can't play this game! Go away!" Her struggles were more subtle, like people making comments that suggested that she was only there because she had a husband / boyfriend who was at the con, or assuming that she has no idea how to play, with the clear implication that this is because she is female. She likes WBC, and a lot of the people there, but these experiences taint that.
This sort of post is hard to make. I know it was difficult for her because she was struggling to explain the problem while avoiding coming off as whiny. Women are often dismissed when they try to walk this line - they often find there is literally no ground between downplaying the problems they have and being ignored because they are 'too emotional' or 'too pushy'.
A couple of guys wandered in to make excuses. The men just don't know how to talk to women, you see, and they want more women involved in the hobby! I decided I couldn't just let this stand, so I explained that if you want more women involved in the hobby, you don't try to shout down women when they explain the problems - you fix the problems. Claiming that you don't know how to talk to women is just misogynistic nonsense, because you can just talk to them the same way you talk to men. Talk about the con, or the game, or whatever else. Women aren't some foriegn species with inscrutable motives. Just assume they are humans who like games and talk to them on that basis.
Of course there was some tension, as there always is when you ask people to behave better, but the conversation was entirely civil.
And then the WBC official in charge of social media walked in, deleted all the comments, and told us we weren't allowed to talk about this anymore. This was the comment she left
"There are many things we can do to ensure our hobby is welcoming to all people. Arguing divisively is not one of them. Commenting is closed. Read or do not read the article. Talk to your gaming friends. Invite someone new to WBC. Have a nice weekend!"
This absolutely enrages me. This pretends to be about making WBC welcoming, but instead makes it clear that women with negative experiences are not allowed to express those, and anyone asking for change will be summarily ignored or officially silenced.
I assume the goal in this was to preserve WBC's image, but instead what it accomplished is to make it clear that WBC has a real problem and that management's current response is to try to pretend it doesn't exist.
Did MeToo teach us NOTHING?
When a woman says that men having been treating her badly, the solution is not to try to hide her story and pretend nothing is wrong. The correct course of action is to listen and learn. I don't think the WBC officials can actually fix this directly, with rules. I don't expect every paternalistic comment of 'so, is your boyfriend playing this game too?' to suddenly stop just because management says so. (Also heteronormative, as well as sexist, for the record.) But even if you can't directly fix it, you can let women talk about those experiences, and let other people listen.
I am going to contact the board and make it clear that this is totally unacceptable behaviour. If the thread had been full of people calling each other assholes or otherwise making personal attacks, shutting it down would have been a reasonable course of action. It wasn't, at all. The thing that caused the ruckus is that somebody had the temerity to suggest that there might be a problem that needs fixing.
If you go to WBC, I would ask you to join me. Writing to anyone on the board and asking for action is useful. Sharing this to your other gamer friends would also be appreciated. I am not calling for anybody's head here. I don't think that 'silence women' is actually a policy. I think this was a serious error, one that needs fixing, and I am going to ask them to do just that. I would encourage you to be specific and make it clear that talking about the challenges women face in the con should be supported by the administration.
We want our hobby to be welcoming to all. We will never accomplish this if our approach is to pretend is already is, and no work needs to be done. We have to publicly talk about the issues we have, and take steps towards change.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Better than expected
Covid 19 continues to dominate world conversation. It actually has been a major factor in why I haven't been posting over the past couple of months, largely because all of my media is saturated by it and I find I don't usually have much to add. It sucks, people are responding to it badly, life is weird now. I can say those things, and they are true, but since everybody is saying that it doesn't feel like there is much point in me spewing the same things onto my blog.
But I do have one point to make that may provide a different take on the whole affair: I am surprised at how well the world is handling the covid crisis.
Don't get me wrong - we could do much better. The response from some nations and leaders in particular has been heinously self serving and nonsensical, and average people refusing to wear masks as a political signal is also deplorable.
But we are doing a lot better than I figured we would.
At the beginning of all of this I assumed that all nations would refuse any serious measure to contain the virus in the name of economic progress. I was stunned that so many nations actually came around to policies that closed stores and halted consumption. I had thought that this simply wouldn't happen. I figured that leaders would happily sacrifice 50% of the elderly and 1% of the rest of us on the altar of profit.
My expectation, made back in February, was that by this point about 2% of the world population would be dead, and we could easily be as high as 5% by year end. I didn't expect any sort of serious attempt to stop the virus until every municipality worldwide was digging mass graves, desperately trying to find places to put all the corpses.
There was a reason I stocked up on food in those early days, and in part it was because I thought that we would have a far worse lockdown period following a monstrous dieoff due to covid. Instead most countries had a moderate lockdown much earlier than I expected and it seems like the deaths from covid will be serious, but shouldn't even come close to 1% of world population, much less 5%.
(So far about .01% of world population has died to covid, and while it is still rising, it seems like we will have a vaccine long before we threaten to have 1% of us die from this.)
We could do much better, yes. But we already did an awful lot better than I expected of us, so humanity surprised me in a positive way. I normally like to whinge about how terrible people are, but I figurd I should at least note when it goes the other way and they surprise me in a good way.
In more normal covid news, I have grown a covid beard. I already got called santa claus by a surprised family member, and nobody thinks it looks good, but this is apparently what I am doing with my time.
But I do have one point to make that may provide a different take on the whole affair: I am surprised at how well the world is handling the covid crisis.
Don't get me wrong - we could do much better. The response from some nations and leaders in particular has been heinously self serving and nonsensical, and average people refusing to wear masks as a political signal is also deplorable.
But we are doing a lot better than I figured we would.
At the beginning of all of this I assumed that all nations would refuse any serious measure to contain the virus in the name of economic progress. I was stunned that so many nations actually came around to policies that closed stores and halted consumption. I had thought that this simply wouldn't happen. I figured that leaders would happily sacrifice 50% of the elderly and 1% of the rest of us on the altar of profit.
My expectation, made back in February, was that by this point about 2% of the world population would be dead, and we could easily be as high as 5% by year end. I didn't expect any sort of serious attempt to stop the virus until every municipality worldwide was digging mass graves, desperately trying to find places to put all the corpses.
There was a reason I stocked up on food in those early days, and in part it was because I thought that we would have a far worse lockdown period following a monstrous dieoff due to covid. Instead most countries had a moderate lockdown much earlier than I expected and it seems like the deaths from covid will be serious, but shouldn't even come close to 1% of world population, much less 5%.
(So far about .01% of world population has died to covid, and while it is still rising, it seems like we will have a vaccine long before we threaten to have 1% of us die from this.)
We could do much better, yes. But we already did an awful lot better than I expected of us, so humanity surprised me in a positive way. I normally like to whinge about how terrible people are, but I figurd I should at least note when it goes the other way and they surprise me in a good way.
In more normal covid news, I have grown a covid beard. I already got called santa claus by a surprised family member, and nobody thinks it looks good, but this is apparently what I am doing with my time.
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