[CAR-PGa] Re: Two more women-in-gaming stories

I would read comments such as "We're uninhibited 'cause it's just our close girlfriends" and "We know we can trust each other and that it's a safe environment to be ridiculous and no one's going to judge you" as supporting that thesis. More generally, we're still having trouble with women feeling unsafe and harassed in gaming spaces (see: half of what I've posted in the past year), and women-only "safe spaces" are a traditional feminist solution to that problem in any environment. That these women are, as professional actresses, comfortable broadcasting edited versions of their sessions after the fact is irrelevant to their immediate experience of their gaming environment.

That being said, the author clearly has their biases, and I don't mean to endorse any of the rest of it.

—Alan

On Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 2:06:02 PM UTC-6, Mike "Talien" Tresca wrote:
I had a startlingly discussion on a forum for supposedly professional gamers in which I pointed out that calling an actress who plays D&D a "DMILF" was not professional or welcoming to women.

The response I got back was that I had taken some sort of political position and the moderator had to step in to indicate that while he didn't mean for the post to be offensive, he was welcome to all political points of view and was "not taking a side." The fact that politeness and common courtesy (e.g., not making a joke at the expense of another group's appearance) are now reframed as taking a political side is a sign of the times. 

All that said, this "safe space" language in the article seems to be a projection.  For one, these women are actresses operating in costume on the Internet, the least safest space of all; for another, none of them use the word "safe space" as a response to any political motivation.

Or to put it another way, the author of the article seems to be projecting some liberal biases onto her subjects. 

Mike

On Thursday, March 9, 2017 at 2:24:03 AM UTC-5, M. Alan Thomas II wrote:
An informal survey was taken on Twitter regarding the degree to which male players let female players fully participate. The results are better than my abyssmal expectations, but that's a low bar to clear. https://twitter.com/doctaCynthia/status/836333171612520448

A group of actresses run an all-women D&D group that they broadcast on YouTube. Also, we're still at the point of running all-women groups as safe spaces because the general gaming community is still insufficiently safe for women. (I've heard of the same thing being done in schools.) http://www.laweekly.com/arts/all-female-dandd-campaign-girls-guts-glory-creates-a-safe-space-for-gamer-girls-7828242

—Alan

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