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.
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