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Do you mean that dealing with potential objections in a persuasive article is an underhanded rhetorical tactic? Because that sounds to me like a basic principle of good writing, which means that you would be advancing the "cheating by using words" argument.
Not at all. But dealing with, as he appears to, all potential male objectors by saying "you are male (ha!), therefore you are in receipt of X,Y and Z class privileges, therefore you are automatically barred from arguing against my points because you are inherently prejudiced" seems to be to me, well, a bit strong. Painting with a brush so broad as to make the picture meaningless, so to speak.
I would say not that he is defensive, but that those who defend the gaming industry against fair criticisms of male bias using the defensive tactics he lists are defensive. Which includes both the comment by "Ben" and your post, in my opinion.
Good heavens, I wasn't defending the gaming industry. I described myself accurately as mostly disinterested; TTRPGs hold little appeal for me. I have very little agenda on the subject, and I don't question that there is bias in the gaming industry, of course there will be a thousand biases and prejudices; roleplaying is probably one of the most complicated human activities, after all, and there is full scope for every -ism in the book.
What irks me, I suppose, is that he is saying "all roleplay is male-biased, and if you disagree you are in denial" when the majority of tabletop roleplay groups I know appear to exhibit no such bias. I've seen all male groups, too; but it doesn't seem right to me that he should lump all groups together - even those which, if they are influenced by prejudices, are invisibly influenced, that is, there is no discernable effect - and say "you're all part of the problem! - even you, you people who aren't doing anything wrong, well, you are really!"
I have been a member of many fairly balanced male/female gaming groups, and I observe that in these cases, the social groups were composed of a fairly balanced ratio of female and male friends. But the correlation does not imply causation— couldn't it be that guys who are sensitive to gendered power dynamics are more likely to be friends with women with whom to game?
It's possible, I agree. Although I'd suggest that a group of people to whom gender is truly not an issue would be at more of an advantage than those conversant in gendered power dynamics...
And with a predominance of white people in the group, there's going to be a lot of white privilege being displayed and taken for granted, which will likely make him even more uncomfortable, especially if when he tries to challenge assumptions of privilege he's called "over defensive" and such, and before long he's not coming to your parties.
At the risk of derailing the topic, I'm curious as to how that white privilege - or indeed male privilege -.would be expected to manifest during a tabletop roleplay session. Although to refer back to the original article, maybe it would go something like this:
GM (anglo-saxon male): "Ok, so you're all standing by the statue in Lincoln Square*."
Objector: "Arg! Lincoln is both white and male! Your game includes references to a history which is dominated by white male figures! Your game is biased! I'm out of here!"
Seriously, he's claiming a lot of things are inherently sexist, but which are not necessarily so. For instance, a list of American Presidents is not sexist or racist in itself, even though it is composed entirely of white males. The list is neutral; it is an observation, a window, nothing more. An observer might conclude that the social factors which have led to the events recorded in the list are racist and sexist, but would be wrong to consider the list itself at fault.
I don't dispute that a roleplaying game could be more than just a neutral window on the world - it could contain elements of -ism by design, it could be a tinted window - but that is not necessarily the case.
*Manchester, of course. |
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