Welcoming to some

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.