No I think the words are a large part of the problem.
Omg girls, playing GAMES?
WAIT A MINUTE WHAT
Creepy 'OP' checking back in - my point was this, it was refreshing to see Women (and Men) just playing games and having fun - without the stigma of 'boy games' vs 'girl games'.
That stigma hasn't existed for a bit now, nobody worth their time tries to distinguish "girl gamers" from "gamers" anymore
edit: which is not to say it doesn't happen, but that it's voiced by vocal outliers
I've only been playing tabletop since 2010 and since then it's been rare not to have female representation at the table. All the spaces I've been to have been co-ed here in the not-exactly-super-progressive Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. I'm pretty sure the game group I have been a part of for awhile has somewhere above a 65/35% split of men to women.
However, I do still hear from my ladynerd friends about them having to deal with some shit in nerd spaces that they shouldn't have to deal with.
On a side note: Did you know The Vapors' Turning Japanese is a mildly racist song about a dude jackin' it to a woman's photo! I mean, that is creepy, right? I don't want to know what those British men get up to. They are weird.
The creators of the song have denied such claims and have stated its a love song about someone losing their girlfriend and slowly going crazy and turning into something they never expected to be.
Up to you if you believe them or not though.
+2
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
On a side note: Did you know The Vapors' Turning Japanese is a mildly racist song about a dude jackin' it to a woman's photo! I mean, that is creepy, right?
No I think the words are a large part of the problem.
Omg girls, playing GAMES?
WAIT A MINUTE WHAT
Creepy 'OP' checking back in - my point was this, it was refreshing to see Women (and Men) just playing games and having fun - without the stigma of 'boy games' vs 'girl games'.
My wife and I have friends that will play games at our house, but will not play games out in public at a game store or what have you
not because of nerdy stigma, but because they're sick and fucking tired of being treated like a sideshow exhibit or a theme park or a novelty.
'OH WOW YOU'RE GIRLS WHO PLAY WARHAMMER THATS SO COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, I'M JUST GOING TO HOVER HERE AND TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH GIRLS YOU ARE AND HOW COOL IT IS THAT YOU PLAY WARHAMMER COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, I AM VERY MODERN AND PROGRESIVE, AND THINK IT'S WONDERFUL THAT YOU FEMALE GIRLS CAN PLAY WARHAMMER AND NO ONE SITS AND BOTHERS YOU ABOUT BEING GIRLS AND PLAYING WARHAMMER'
the irony would be funny if it didn't make me so fucking mad.
+21
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
My boardgame group in Japan was all women other than myself, my boardgame group tends to be a 75/25 split of men to women, while the pen and paper stuff I run tends to be a more 50/50 split.
The boardgaming convention I frequent has a split that is heavily influenced by what room you are in. The wargame room is usually 100% men, and usually I'm the only person in that room that is like, sub 40 years old. The general gaming area I'd say falls closer to 60/40 men to women, RPG and more social games like werewolf tend to be an even split. Also the younger the audience is for a game, the closer the split comes towards 50/50 in my experience, and the older the closer it gets to 100/0.
So hopefully with effort and time these issues will become lessened.
I think it's a relatively new thing. Certainly when I was still in college 10 years ago there was a stigma against gamers in general and it was very rare to find a lady interested in playing tabletop RPGs. Certainly now things are in the process of changing; my little sister and cousins have tons of female friends who play D&D with them, but they still refer to themselves as "girl gamers."
I don't really live anywhere crappy. I'm US Military and move every 2-3 years, and I've played tabletop games in Orange County CA, Lower Alabama, San Antonio TX, Raleigh NC, Las Vegas NV, and East Anglia UK. I think I've got a very broad experience for someone who's 33, and I agree with Inquisitor's post in that general gaming scene is still mostly men but that it's a lot more acceptable for the younger crowd and a larger portion of that crowd is female. I'm actually really jealous of my little brother and sister and their social circles and I think it has everything to do with the progressiveness of this younger generation.
I read an article a few years back that tried to hypothesize why you just didn't see women in the traditional hobby stores and cited everything from the way the flagship products were advertised to issues with male gaze and even the general musty smell a lot of those places have. There are a few replies above that read 'there are less women than men where I play in public' or 'my tabletop group has women in it and they're not comfortable playing in public.' That seems to support the OP's narrative of 'I was surprised to see a 100% female tabletop gaming group in public.'
I'm not making a judgment here. I support people playing games regardless of sex. I just think it's disingenuous to point out the OP's singular observation of a what is an uncommon event as creepy. I mean if you took issue with how the post gives off an impression of 'Japanese women = awesome, Japanese men = WTF' or want to talk about ethnocentric views or whatever I'm all for that. I agree with Wearingglasses above too: this forum is super progressive, which is why I spend a lot of time on it. But it also seems to have a habit of ganging up on anyone who has a different impression of the world. Finally to tie this all back around to Japan, I think the OP observed something that I've also observed about the Japanese culture; they seem to be very tolerant about how one decides to pursue their free time. One can be very passionate and serious about a variety of hobbies in Japan and people are very accepting of that. Though there is still a stigma of the full-time gamer being a social shut in.
You don't see a difference between thinking an all female CoC playgroup is neat, and staring at them long enough to note habits and judge seriousness, then reporting back to The Men on The Internet about your findings?
I saw a woman drive a car all by herself today, she parked it without crashing, then went inside to her very own job! I hung around to make sure she'd gone to the right place then checked with her boss to make sure she was doing a good job and to tell him how cool we both are for supporting women.
+22
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
If I could kiss for like, 2 hours a day, that'd be primo.
That is 14 hours of kissing in a week
That is in the ballpark of three literal marathons of kissing, per week
I would have to very respectfully say "no thank you" to that much smooching
It doesn't have to be all at once. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there. It adds up quick. Kissing during a commercial break? That's four minutes! Doing that for an entire hour long show? That's over a quarter of an hour!
Of course, it's more difficult during the work week, but it's manageable.
Just a lot of smoochin'.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
+1
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The GeekOh-Two Crew, OmeganautRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I don't really live anywhere crappy. I'm US Military and move every 2-3 years, and I've played tabletop games in Orange County CA, Lower Alabama, San Antonio TX, Raleigh NC, Las Vegas NV, and East Anglia UK. I think I've got a very broad experience for someone who's 33, and I agree with Inquisitor's post in that general gaming scene is still mostly men but that it's a lot more acceptable for the younger crowd and a larger portion of that crowd is female. I'm actually really jealous of my little brother and sister and their social circles and I think it has everything to do with the progressiveness of this younger generation.
I read an article a few years back that tried to hypothesize why you just didn't see women in the traditional hobby stores and cited everything from the way the flagship products were advertised to issues with male gaze and even the general musty smell a lot of those places have. There are a few replies above that read 'there are less women than men where I play in public' or 'my tabletop group has women in it and they're not comfortable playing in public.' That seems to support the OP's narrative of 'I was surprised to see a 100% female tabletop gaming group in public.'
I'm not making a judgment here. I support people playing games regardless of sex. I just think it's disingenuous to point out the OP's singular observation of a what is an uncommon event as creepy. I mean if you took issue with how the post gives off an impression of 'Japanese women = awesome, Japanese men = WTF' or want to talk about ethnocentric views or whatever I'm all for that. I agree with Wearingglasses above too: this forum is super progressive, which is why I spend a lot of time on it. But it also seems to have a habit of ganging up on anyone who has a different impression of the world. Finally to tie this all back around to Japan, I think the OP observed something that I've also observed about the Japanese culture; they seem to be very tolerant about how one decides to pursue their free time. One can be very passionate and serious about a variety of hobbies in Japan and people are very accepting of that. Though there is still a stigma of the full-time gamer being a social shut in.
Having been in the US military I think I spotted the problem. Military bases and the areas around bases (because the areas around bases tend to be overwhelmingly active, inactive, children of, or ex-military) tend to emit the kind of toxic masculinity that many people don't want to associate with, and certainly don't want to be around when they don't have to.
At one base of 13,000+ people, in my shop of 80 there were three big (10+ people) gaming groups alone but if you looked at any of the local gaming stores you'd think that there was only one group in the entire area, specifically the all male one. That was because the other groups would all wait around to make sure you weren't a complete arse before inviting you and played at people's homes. They didn't bother going to the game stores because the game stores were full of people who would oggle anything female that walked in.
As for the last part, it's an issue of pedestals. It's one thing to be supportive of women playing games, but treating them like an oddity or pointing it out is fairly discouraging. "Hey women in gaming, awesome that they're so progressive" is also silently telling those women "Hey you're in a space where you don't have to think about all the geese out there who point you out as an oddity among the crowd! Good Job! High Five!". It makes people self-conscious in a creepy way, and it's also kind of explicitly calling them out as an oddity. It's best to treat people in a way that doesn't make them seem weird or unusual, or in a way that implies it.
Everything being said about women in gaming is covered a lot by many people in the Magic community. I'm not sure if Magic is better or worse than, say, Pathfinder or War Machine or whatever, but the shit they have to endure is bananas. It blows my mind people think it's okay to be overtly shitty towards other people, especially for showing any interest in similar hobbies.
+1
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TrippyJingMoses supposes his toeses are roses.But Moses supposes erroneously.Registered Userregular
I played a ton of Avalon in Japan. Trying to convince people not to trust the traitor knights without letting on that you're Merlin in only shitty Japanese is exhausting as hell. The one girl in our group was somehow always the traitor. I started calling her Spy-chan and she would get mad. Good times.
The GeekOh-Two Crew, OmeganautRegistered User, ClubPAregular
We finally had a decent-seeming gamer bar/restaurant near us at the south end of the Seattle area, (a second version of a place that's done well up on the north end) but apparently it had management and service issues and shut down.
You don't see a difference between thinking an all female CoC playgroup is neat, and staring at them long enough to note habits and judge seriousness, then reporting back to The Men on The Internet about your findings?
I saw a woman drive a car all by herself today, she parked it without crashing, then went inside to her very own job! I hung around to make sure she'd gone to the right place then checked with her boss to make sure she was doing a good job and to tell him how cool we both are for supporting women.
I think you're taking a lot of liberties with your assumptions about how the OP interacted there. I'd say that I've got the ability to look at a group of individuals, determine what they're doing, and note if "they're laughing and having a great time" in a matter of seconds. I don't think this is abnormal behavior either. Obviously there's a difference to that and sitting down in the corner staring and taking notes. But even still an important part of this 'conversation' is how the girls there reacted. Body language and eye contact would be enough for them to say one way or the other if they didn't want the attention, and hopefully the OP is cognizant enough to respect that. If you're of the opinion that we as people shouldn't look at other people, I'd say that you've got some serious issues with human contact. But even that would be making some serious logical leaps based on your argument. In short, we don't have enough information to know how creepy the event is, and all of our information is based off of one side. I'm being a bit pedantic here, but my basic point remains unchanged; I think it's a harsh and biased value judgment that you've put on the OP, and people here are bandwagoning on it.
As to reporting back to Men on the Internet, is talking to a bunch of random strangers about a novel experience in a foreign country so far fetched in this forum? I thought sharing novel experiences was basically what all the [chat] threads are about. If this thread isn't on par for what SE does then wouldn't it simply be better to shut it down instead of group shaming the OP? I'm not being tongue-and-cheek here, this is my first bit of posting on SE after lurking here for about a month.
Re: Dedwrekka
I totally agree about the local area around military bases, but that's not the areas of expertise that I talked about. Orange County CA, San Antonio TX, Raleigh NC, Las Vegas NV, and East Anglia UK are all pretty large varied areas, and in most cases the places I went to game were hours away from the military base. You're making some pretty big assumptions about my experiences. We all do to various extents, but you shouldn't discount my observations because of a previous bias.
I also agree with you though in that I've seen plenty of gaming places that have an environment toxic towards women. But I think that ties back into the OP's point of what he saw being a relatively uncommon occurrence, and into my observation of the Japanese culture in general being more accepting of various hobbies.
To your last point, I can see how observing that women are less common in these situations can be discouraging. To the utmost of my ability I try to treat all people fairly (as should be evidenced by how I'm defending the OP). I think it's skeevy (to quote the Sauce) when a girl speaks up in Teamchat and someone replies with "ooo, sexy voice" or really any kind of reaction that points them out for simply being female. So if the thread is trying to correct the OP's behavior or outlook, sure, I could get behind that. But that's not what I'm seeing. To me it looks like 'you're observations are wrong and outdated and that makes you creepy.'
Some good-humored abuse seemed appropriate. Some of this is feeling a little disproportionate to the statement. A lot is being extrapolated from a comment or two and some if it feels like personal projection. Just saying.
you don't need a plus sized anime girl to sell me steamed pork buns
but I mean, I'm cool with it, too. advertising is hard
To be honest, you could sell me steamed pork buns by punching me in the face. I've never had the Japanese version, but good hum bao is like, top 3 foods for me.
you don't need a plus sized anime girl to sell me steamed pork buns
but I mean, I'm cool with it, too. advertising is hard
To be honest, you could sell me steamed pork buns by punching me in the face. I've never had the Japanese version, but good hum bao is like, top 3 foods for me.
The number of 7-11 steam buns I got in Japan is embarassingly large.
But they have ones with pizza filling!
It's like a steam bun hot pocket!
+2
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
you don't need a plus sized anime girl to sell me steamed pork buns
but I mean, I'm cool with it, too. advertising is hard
To be honest, you could sell me steamed pork buns by punching me in the face. I've never had the Japanese version, but good hum bao is like, top 3 foods for me.
Gyuman are where it's at for me. Beef buns in the same style, with amazing sweet bbq style beef and onions inside. I ate so many of them in Takayama.
Well now I'm scouring the Internet to find the brand that made these actually quite good frozen hum bao I got at Costco once upon a time. If anyone wants deets I will happily give them if I uncover the mystery.
No I think the words are a large part of the problem.
Omg girls, playing GAMES?
WAIT A MINUTE WHAT
Creepy 'OP' checking back in - my point was this, it was refreshing to see Women (and Men) just playing games and having fun - without the stigma of 'boy games' vs 'girl games'.
That stigma hasn't existed for a bit now, nobody worth their time tries to distinguish "girl gamers" from "gamers" anymore
edit: which is not to say it doesn't happen, but that it's voiced by vocal outliers
I've only been playing tabletop since 2010 and since then it's been rare not to have female representation at the table. All the spaces I've been to have been co-ed here in the not-exactly-super-progressive Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. I'm pretty sure the game group I have been a part of for awhile has somewhere above a 65/35% split of men to women.
However, I do still hear from my ladynerd friends about them having to deal with some shit in nerd spaces that they shouldn't have to deal with.
On a side note: Did you know The Vapors' Turning Japanese is a mildly racist song about a dude jackin' it to a woman's photo! I mean, that is creepy, right? I don't want to know what those British men get up to. They are weird.
Wow... I go to some really shitty game stores. Nice job Atlanta!
Posts
The creators of the song have denied such claims and have stated its a love song about someone losing their girlfriend and slowly going crazy and turning into something they never expected to be.
Up to you if you believe them or not though.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
My wife and I have friends that will play games at our house, but will not play games out in public at a game store or what have you
not because of nerdy stigma, but because they're sick and fucking tired of being treated like a sideshow exhibit or a theme park or a novelty.
'OH WOW YOU'RE GIRLS WHO PLAY WARHAMMER THATS SO COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, I'M JUST GOING TO HOVER HERE AND TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH GIRLS YOU ARE AND HOW COOL IT IS THAT YOU PLAY WARHAMMER COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, I AM VERY MODERN AND PROGRESIVE, AND THINK IT'S WONDERFUL THAT YOU FEMALE GIRLS CAN PLAY WARHAMMER AND NO ONE SITS AND BOTHERS YOU ABOUT BEING GIRLS AND PLAYING WARHAMMER'
the irony would be funny if it didn't make me so fucking mad.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
The boardgaming convention I frequent has a split that is heavily influenced by what room you are in. The wargame room is usually 100% men, and usually I'm the only person in that room that is like, sub 40 years old. The general gaming area I'd say falls closer to 60/40 men to women, RPG and more social games like werewolf tend to be an even split. Also the younger the audience is for a game, the closer the split comes towards 50/50 in my experience, and the older the closer it gets to 100/0.
So hopefully with effort and time these issues will become lessened.
I'm sorry you live somewhere crappy
no thank you
*runs kill_all_nerds.exe*
Oh no
with my last breath... erase my hard drives...
I read an article a few years back that tried to hypothesize why you just didn't see women in the traditional hobby stores and cited everything from the way the flagship products were advertised to issues with male gaze and even the general musty smell a lot of those places have. There are a few replies above that read 'there are less women than men where I play in public' or 'my tabletop group has women in it and they're not comfortable playing in public.' That seems to support the OP's narrative of 'I was surprised to see a 100% female tabletop gaming group in public.'
I'm not making a judgment here. I support people playing games regardless of sex. I just think it's disingenuous to point out the OP's singular observation of a what is an uncommon event as creepy. I mean if you took issue with how the post gives off an impression of 'Japanese women = awesome, Japanese men = WTF' or want to talk about ethnocentric views or whatever I'm all for that. I agree with Wearingglasses above too: this forum is super progressive, which is why I spend a lot of time on it. But it also seems to have a habit of ganging up on anyone who has a different impression of the world. Finally to tie this all back around to Japan, I think the OP observed something that I've also observed about the Japanese culture; they seem to be very tolerant about how one decides to pursue their free time. One can be very passionate and serious about a variety of hobbies in Japan and people are very accepting of that. Though there is still a stigma of the full-time gamer being a social shut in.
I saw a woman drive a car all by herself today, she parked it without crashing, then went inside to her very own job! I hung around to make sure she'd gone to the right place then checked with her boss to make sure she was doing a good job and to tell him how cool we both are for supporting women.
It doesn't have to be all at once. Fifteen minutes here, ten minutes there. It adds up quick. Kissing during a commercial break? That's four minutes! Doing that for an entire hour long show? That's over a quarter of an hour!
Of course, it's more difficult during the work week, but it's manageable.
Just a lot of smoochin'.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Having been in the US military I think I spotted the problem. Military bases and the areas around bases (because the areas around bases tend to be overwhelmingly active, inactive, children of, or ex-military) tend to emit the kind of toxic masculinity that many people don't want to associate with, and certainly don't want to be around when they don't have to.
At one base of 13,000+ people, in my shop of 80 there were three big (10+ people) gaming groups alone but if you looked at any of the local gaming stores you'd think that there was only one group in the entire area, specifically the all male one. That was because the other groups would all wait around to make sure you weren't a complete arse before inviting you and played at people's homes. They didn't bother going to the game stores because the game stores were full of people who would oggle anything female that walked in.
As for the last part, it's an issue of pedestals. It's one thing to be supportive of women playing games, but treating them like an oddity or pointing it out is fairly discouraging. "Hey women in gaming, awesome that they're so progressive" is also silently telling those women "Hey you're in a space where you don't have to think about all the geese out there who point you out as an oddity among the crowd! Good Job! High Five!". It makes people self-conscious in a creepy way, and it's also kind of explicitly calling them out as an oddity. It's best to treat people in a way that doesn't make them seem weird or unusual, or in a way that implies it.
Thank god for the new revival of board games so I can pelt people like that with handfuls of meeples.
I stepped on a meeple once walking to the kitchen at night. I set that fucker on fire and rocketed the ashes into space.
1) A shyboy
2) A parent
STEAM
I like gaming cafes that serve bar food alcohol the best. :biggrin:
The place we used to play down in midtown is getting gutted and will be out of comission for like a year. :bigfrown:
I think you're taking a lot of liberties with your assumptions about how the OP interacted there. I'd say that I've got the ability to look at a group of individuals, determine what they're doing, and note if "they're laughing and having a great time" in a matter of seconds. I don't think this is abnormal behavior either. Obviously there's a difference to that and sitting down in the corner staring and taking notes. But even still an important part of this 'conversation' is how the girls there reacted. Body language and eye contact would be enough for them to say one way or the other if they didn't want the attention, and hopefully the OP is cognizant enough to respect that. If you're of the opinion that we as people shouldn't look at other people, I'd say that you've got some serious issues with human contact. But even that would be making some serious logical leaps based on your argument. In short, we don't have enough information to know how creepy the event is, and all of our information is based off of one side. I'm being a bit pedantic here, but my basic point remains unchanged; I think it's a harsh and biased value judgment that you've put on the OP, and people here are bandwagoning on it.
As to reporting back to Men on the Internet, is talking to a bunch of random strangers about a novel experience in a foreign country so far fetched in this forum? I thought sharing novel experiences was basically what all the [chat] threads are about. If this thread isn't on par for what SE does then wouldn't it simply be better to shut it down instead of group shaming the OP? I'm not being tongue-and-cheek here, this is my first bit of posting on SE after lurking here for about a month.
Re: Dedwrekka
I totally agree about the local area around military bases, but that's not the areas of expertise that I talked about. Orange County CA, San Antonio TX, Raleigh NC, Las Vegas NV, and East Anglia UK are all pretty large varied areas, and in most cases the places I went to game were hours away from the military base. You're making some pretty big assumptions about my experiences. We all do to various extents, but you shouldn't discount my observations because of a previous bias.
I also agree with you though in that I've seen plenty of gaming places that have an environment toxic towards women. But I think that ties back into the OP's point of what he saw being a relatively uncommon occurrence, and into my observation of the Japanese culture in general being more accepting of various hobbies.
To your last point, I can see how observing that women are less common in these situations can be discouraging. To the utmost of my ability I try to treat all people fairly (as should be evidenced by how I'm defending the OP). I think it's skeevy (to quote the Sauce) when a girl speaks up in Teamchat and someone replies with "ooo, sexy voice" or really any kind of reaction that points them out for simply being female. So if the thread is trying to correct the OP's behavior or outlook, sure, I could get behind that. But that's not what I'm seeing. To me it looks like 'you're observations are wrong and outdated and that makes you creepy.'
And treating them as such is extremely fucking patronizing, as per my example of getting all excited about the car driving woman.
but I mean, I'm cool with it, too. advertising is hard
To be honest, you could sell me steamed pork buns by punching me in the face. I've never had the Japanese version, but good hum bao is like, top 3 foods for me.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
The number of 7-11 steam buns I got in Japan is embarassingly large.
But they have ones with pizza filling!
It's like a steam bun hot pocket!
Gyuman are where it's at for me. Beef buns in the same style, with amazing sweet bbq style beef and onions inside. I ate so many of them in Takayama.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Does it chafe
Wow... I go to some really shitty game stores. Nice job Atlanta!