Gamers™ when marginalized communities make their own gaming spaces
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Gamers™ when marginalized communities make their own gaming spaces
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The finale:
https://preview.redd.it/qb8qjywbl3sc1.png?width=447&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=538f22fef2f5dd11284326fc0d30642877a97e44
The drama happening with Black Girl Gamers right now is so funny. “What if we had an all white and male space?” You have multiple! It’s the same with men who come to this subreddit and get offended when they’re not coddled.
Always the victims. I say this all the time that men try to shut women down by claiming they are playing victim when men are some of the biggest babies when they aren’t included and take everything as a personal attack.
you are right and they refuse to accept that they’re the reason places like r/GirlGamers and poc places need to exist.
Here’s the thing that cracks me up… it’s not just communities. For a lot of the late 2000s and early 2010s, the response from gamergaters and their ilk, when people would call for more diversity in gaming was:
> If you don’t like it, make your own games
And now, when progressive people are in positions to make games with diverse characters, these same people lose their minds and rant endlessly about [“FUCKING PRONOUNS”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ9_VDbj-o4) (loud).
Because it turns out it was never about “make it yourself”, it was about the universe catering exclusively to them. They got used to always being the focus of media. So fairness for us, feels like a downgrade to them.
—
And it’s the same with them complaining about being “excluded” from certain gaming spaces. For years, they were the majority voice, they were the gatekeepers deciding who could or couldn’t play with them.
And they’ve built this narrative in their heads that women were never actually interested in those topics, and that you were destined to be single and virginal if you dared admit you had nerdy hobbies. But that’s not true. The reality is that a lot of nerds were socially awkward and often misogynistic, and so women were disinterested in them for other reasons.
The proof in the pudding is how many nerdy couples there are from those days. Those women didn’t spring up out of the snow in the 2000s. They just went for the guys who didn’t gatekeep and patronise them, and make them feel unwelcome.
A little while ago, women gamers who were upset about the cut female protagonist route in the Persona 3 remake found a safe platform to vent those frustrations and find genuine solidarity in one another in rChruchofFeMC.
A slightly littler while ago, male gamers from rPersona, rOkayBuddyPersona, and whatever other *”main”* persona subs were a constant presence in ChruchofFeMC, harassing anyone who dared to so much as hope that a gaming company would ever spend a dime catering to anyone other than teenage boys and manchildren.
I think this is a suitable example of the meme.
While I do love interacting with all gender and race communities. When I am at the subreddit like
/gaming all I see are people posting how Stellar Blade is the perfect game and how gaming nowadays is woke because girls have realistic proportions. All they do is post thirsty posts and starts problems about current drama. Over here I like because it’s softer and nicer. I made a post how in love I am with my pawn here and all of you agreed over it and shared your stories. If I were to do that there I would made fun of and people would tell me I’m gross for that because pawns are basically slaves or some bs. Also they post the same posts every damn week. I like spaces where I know the comments are from girls
*Majority groups
Not just gamers trust me. It happens with men and women’s subreddits. It happens with white people and subreddits for black people. It happens every time a minority group makes a space just for them because they were pushed out of the spaces with majority groups that dominate the conversation.
Cishet white dudes *can’t stand* not being the center of every story or the “default” character lmao
So relatable. Had others tell me before that “you don’t need this space for your group” as they dislike being excluded after excluding us.
I remember when Classic WoW was mere weeks from launching, a person made a post on a WoW Classic facebook community about how they would be making an inclusive, lgbtq+ friendly, guild. The comment section was so distressing. This guy was blindsided with people who were pissed for being “excluded” when he specifically said it was inclusive and anyone can join and that they would be lgbtq+ friendly, which in WoW is a very common tag to add to guild recruitment.
These people took it so personally that he would add that tag and that there was no need to say “lbtq+” because “eVeRyOnE iS eQuAl” all while the comment section proved exactly why he wanted to provide a safe and welcoming space for his community.
You see it every time there’s a tournament specifically for women or marginalized peoples and it pisses me off. They tell women to “get gud,” won’t draft women, and then cry crocodile tears as soon as the info goes out.
Ugh, it’s so annoying. A while back, I was a part of a D&D discord group that was for women with ADHD. It was like one day after it was created before we got our first guy join and complain that guys weren’t allowed.
As an aside Alex Norris (the cartoonist) is being sued for ownership of his art. He has a go fund me for support so if you could find some spare cash (and god knows that is hard enough at the moment) I am sure they would appreciate it.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/alexnorrislegalfund
> I am Alex Norris, creator of the webcomic Webcomic Name. I am here to ask for help fighting a legal case to protect my ownership of Webcomic Name, so that I can continue to make my comics for my audience around the world.
>
> I have been fighting this case since 2019. It arose out of an agreement to make a boardgame based on my webcomic in 2017 but the publishing company has used this as an opportunity to take all of my intellectual property, and has even claimed ownership of Webcomic Name as a whole. I can’t go into more detail here, but the details of the case are publicly available to read online.
>
> I created Webcomic Name in 2016, originally as a parody of relatable webcomics. For the past 6 years, the format has been the same: three panels long, featuring a silly pink blob, and ending every time with the punchline “oh no”. Over time, it has increasingly become a commentary on issues close to my heart: social justice, gender and sexuality, internet culture, and what it means to be an artist on the internet.
OH MY FUCKING GOD, I just made a LFG comment on r/Helldivers that I’m only looking for other women to game and it has been removed for “trolling and hate speech” 😂😂😂 I’m not fucking kidding LMAO
Reminds me of the endless discourse there used to be in horror spaces about how minorities need to make their own movies instead of complaining about lack of diversity. Queue the first trailer for Get Out and those same people absolutely losing their fucking minds. It was so fun to watch, even if it was totally predictable.
Or the opposite where they come in and take over. Then say you do not fit into the own space you created :/
YEP. Not gaming, but I’m in the leadership of a queer and trans employee group at my work, and we have some folks in leadership worrying that if we don’t include cishet people we’re being exclusionary.
WHAT DO WE EXIST FOR THEN????
i actively avoid any gaming spaces that arent specific to women or queer people. i’m just sick to death of temper tantrums being thrown over characters not being sexy enough. as well as the rampant bigotry.
Yep pretty much, not just externally but also internally sadly.
https://preview.redd.it/itwkge4t65sc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=be4c4fd8ab0d2bf6845204ec5a30ebf4979f5122
I fucking hate entitlement, more so in privileged people.
One time I legit saw a man compare a fun Discord server for girl gamers to segregation..
I’ve seriously seen this one used in a way worthy of r/persecutionfetish, too. Some years back: the “Keep Gaming Fantasy” crowd over at Xitter were spamming a variant of that, with the intent of suggesting that the pink group/yellow square represented True Gamers™ and the gray crowd represented critics (who were framed as by definition *not* gamers).
I pointed out that it made more sense if the gray crowd stood for gamers as a whole, and the pink group/yellow square stood for female gamers, QUILTBAG+ gamers, gamers of color, and so on. I mean: by all means put another layer on it where gamers as a whole are stigmatized, turn around and sideline marginalized gamers, and whine about it when we make our own space. That would be fair and accurate enough; my parents—despite being atheists and/or agnostics—adopted the Satanic Panic mindset towards gaming back in the day and haven’t budged from it; *that* still stings. It remains that the “Keep Gaming Fantasy” crowd *were* attacking marginalized gamers; and they *were* then turning around and wounded-gazelleing about how it was *they* who were under attack from Satanic Panic 2.0 or some other bad-faith outside element.
at this point im scared to be in any gaming space, I met so many transphobic people in games / gaming communities…apparently here its okay to be around as a trans woman, but I am still afraid to actually talk to people on the discord
then there’s the submarginalization of trans women from places that are not explicitly trans friendly. I swear the amount of times I have been excluded from spaces purely because I was trans is disheartening to say the least. What’s worse is that people will defend it by saying “well a lot of women have negative experiences from assigned male at birth people so it’s okay that you are excised from communities.”
Real
My favs games of all time are male protagonists but I think it would be cool if girls were more present. Only that bothers me nowadays that when women are present in games their chest size is only ever A or B and I know that shouldn’t matter but why is it always like that ? They can have a big chest and still have their gear on. Then the only big chested characters are women that clearly have men as their target audience. I can’t win
Middle aged male here. I don’t like to comment here, because I know I’m intruding and I’m only really subscribed to listen and be aware of the horrible things that can and will happen to my daughter growing up playing video games online. I am so glad this community exists for you (and her eventually) and that those other communities exist for other marginalized groups.
That being said, I still can’t avoid feeling jealous. I know being a cis het male means I have tons of advantages and don’t have to deal with targeted toxicity and microaggressions and everything else the women here and the folks in those other groups deal with. Yet I also yearn for a place where I can talk about Forbidden West without it boiling down to Aloy’s appearance or where discussions of Episode 8 revolve around its actual merits as a film and not Rose’s attractiveness.
At the end of the day, I’m commenting here to let you all know that some of us on the other side (maybe, hopefully most of us) are also super glad you have your own spaces to avoid the rest of us. Maybe if we were as vocal as them, we could be making those other spaces less toxic and more inclusive of you, but being shit on by that crowd really isn’t any more pleasant for us.
I guess with privilege comes responsibility though, so maybe I’ll try it anyway, at least for my daughter. I hope the communities you all have built are still as helpful and insightful when she needs them, though I do hope they are less necessary as well.
Ain’t that the truest little comic.
I just observe, not getting involved
Okay no more talking
There’s a third group though. People who did accept anyone but get excluded based on a arbitrary grouping. I personally don’t care about groups. I just don’t think creating walls is the best solution but maybe I’m just too optimistic about people being reasonable. I’m just a guy that likes to shoot some scavs and become the IMF in CIV.