No tópico sobre a mudança de política relativamente aos meetups, o ricmadeira escreveu o seguinte:[quote=ricmadeira]havia entre nós 3 lindas meninas, o que é uma proporção altamente respeitável para o hobby mas que ainda assim devia ser bem maior.[/quote]
Quase como se a Força guiasse as minhas acções, descobri este artigo no agregador de notícias, que acho poder trazer uma discussão interessante... ou talvez não.
I’d consider the indie gaming community, and most certainly the people I’ve met and whom I call my friends, to be a well-meaning, fairly liberal bunch. And I mean liberal in the sense of ‘open to progress,’ not just in the political sense. Even within the indie niche of an already small hobby, we can look around and say, yeah, we’re mostly dudes, and most of us are prepared to say that’s not a good thing. I think we’re all likely to be unhappy with any evidence that suggests that we’re a male majority because there are at least some women who feel unwelcome in the gaming community. I personally don’t want my hobby to exclude anyone, and I would hope that you’d agree.
So what’s a bunch of well-meaning guys to do about it? Why is the problem perpetuated? This is my take on what the problem is and what I plan on doing to rectify that problem. As a part of the group, I consider it my responsibility to try and effect a change.
Part 1: So what’s the problem?
I was considering using big fat scary words like oppression, but I decided against it. Let’s get to the point: the numbers ought to speak for themselves. If they don’t, take the cases of the very few women who speak out about feeling uncomfortable or literally unwelcome as the tip of an otherwise silent iceberg. Anyone who’s been involved with any kind of marketing or survey knows what it means when one person speaks up: there’s 10 more who didn’t.
This is, as we’re all aware, a predominantly male hobby. If you were at Forge Midwest, you know that there were maybe six or seven women there out of about 50. That’s what? A six-to-one ratio? So the game groups are predominantly male, the writers of the games are predominantly male, and the various communities, online or otherwise, are predominantly male. And when you’ve already got cultural baggage, you inevitably run into some assumptions. In general terms, the biggest assumption that happens, even if it’s an unconscious one, is that the predominant group is the norm, the default.
The result of that assumption is a set of behaviors that exclude everyone who isn’t considered part of that norm. In the case of gaming, it’s a predominantly white male group, so you end up with the assumption that the ‘normal’ gamer is also male. If that assumption manifests in game texts, rules and communities, then they can all make women feel unwelcome, even though gaming might be an activity they’d really like to participate in. It could be artwork, language in the game texts, the focus of discussions online, specific game rules, verbalized assumptions, even choice of words. Most often the things that provoke those feelings weren’t even intended. Nobody wakes up and says, “today, I’m going to oppress some women.” But when there are unquestioned assumptions at the level of the group as a whole, the results are inevitable. If you just don’t know what does and doesn’t exclude, you can’t easily avoid doing it.
Now, ideally, what ought to happen is for women to be able to say, “hey, that makes me feel unwelcome,” and get a response that boils down to, “oh, sorry, we’ll stop that, because we want you to feel welcome.” It really ought to be that simple. Except it hardly ever happens. Instead, what happens is stuff like this:
- Denial and Minimalizing. Men will respond with comments like, “oh, come on, it’s not unwelcoming, you’re wrong,” or “is it really that bad? I don’t think so.” See, as the predominant group, men get to assume the right to interpret the experience of women and deny the validity of what they say. Then they get to impose their own views upon them, like “really, my game text that you think makes you feel uncomfortable is about this other thing.” If you can deny the problem, then you don’t have to take any responsibility.
- Blame the Victim. When women speak up about something in various forums, men will say something like, “I think you’re just not looking at it the right way.” It’s essentially “your problem, not mine” with a polite veneer, focusing attention on the perceived limitations of women. Men are the norm, right? Everything was fine until the women complained. Any problem, then, must be from outside.
- Call it something else. Sometimes when a person in a minority position speaks up, someone will respond with a variation of, “that’s just another example of how women don’t understand men.” It’s a red herring that effectively dismisses the more important issue of men having the control over the community in the first place. It’s also easily shifted over to denial or blaming the victim.
- “It’s just how things are.” This argument naturalizes any exclusionary behavior. “It’s my hormones that make me want objectified women in my artwork. I can’t be held responsible for that.”
- “But I didn’t mean it.” This response just confuses a person’s intentions with the consequences. It’s the consequences that matter. Even if you don’t mean it, you can still do harm. You can’t use, “I didn’t know murder was wrong” in a court of law. It’s a disturbing sense of unacknowledged entitlement that makes anyone think that way
- "I’m one of the good ones." This focuses a problem on an individual rather than the system itself. Like, “oh, yeah, your problem is just with Dude. He’s an asshole, but no, I’m not like that.” Except everyone is part of the community, and if there’s a problem with the community, you can either fight or acquiesce. It’s everyone’s problem.
- Sick and Tired. This person claims to hear about it “all the time,” when in fact there’s hardly any discussion at all, largely because of what happens in 1-6. It makes men really uncomfortable, so it only takes a little bit to make them shut down and claim victim status, or to start labeling people who speak out as ‘whining’ or ‘ranting,’ whereas women have to deal with it every single day. Women are probably sick and tired, too, but they can’t get away from it.
The real irony of all this stuff above is that it’s hard work. You’re constantly resisting and denying, and you end up distancing yourself from people who challenge the status quo. All you have to do is say, hey, “I hear what you’re saying, and I’m sorry I made you feel excluded, and I will try not to do it again.”
So wait, you’re wondering, maybe, why don’t these crazy men-folk just do that? I think the answer is actually pretty straightforward. People who themselves feel marginalized can’t bear the thought that they could be in a position of power wherein they could hurt someone in the same way that they feel hurt. Who out there hasn’t felt terribly marginalized? What happens, then, is there’s this conflation of “you’re doing something that makes me feel excluded or hurt” with “you’re a bad, bad man like those people with the bitch shirts.” You can’t handle that thought, so you try desperately to prove that it’s not the case. Guilt, or fear that you might be guilty, never did anybody any good."
Fonte: https://rpgtalk.net/msw/weblog/148.html
Numa nota mais pessoal, por acaso foram poucos os grupos de RP que joguei que não tinham uma rapariga, normalmente era a namorada do GM, a minha ou de outro jogador qualquer.