Recently I was told by a fellow LARPer, at LARP event that [Ed- redaction due to a disagreement about tone and intent. The gist was that he wasn’t a feminist because nobody had managed to convince him to be one yet, and because I was educated in the subject he’d like me to try.]
I’m sure that the guy meant nothing of it, but I am full of regret that I didn’t make some kind of pithy comment as my reaction. Instead I stood there frozen, like a deer in the headlights, before scampering off to the portaloo (which I was on my way to anyway, just to clear up any confusion). In fairness I was more than a little tipsy at the time so I should proberbly forgive myself for not having my usual level of cutting sarcasm ready to go at the drop of a misogynistic insult.
But the incident reminds me that I have to be constantly on my guard at events. You see, I know about gender politics. As well as having a background full of my own experiences, I have a degree where I specialised in feminist and queer methodologies in my subject which I guess means that I’m more equipped than most to tell people to ‘quit it’.
I also know that most other people won’t speak up. They don’t have the confidence or the tenacity to wrestle with these individuals who bring the big, bad, outside world to LARP. And it is a big, bad outside world. Realistically there isn’t a day go by when my life isn’t made more difficult than a cis man’s life because of the gender I was born with.
No. What happens instead is that others just suffer quietly, or they simply don’t come back. We must lose so many amazing people to the insidious sexism that penetrates the hobby, and it’s impossible to count those numbers and keep track of what’s happening.
And that’s just it – the appropriate word is ‘insidious’. It’s a slow moving problem that gradually strangles the life out of peoples fun. And when people object they are told that actually they are the problem because they are the ones getting offended. The word ‘offended’ is used like some kind of insult. As if it’s a problem to resent a perceived insult.
Well I’ll level with you – you should absolutely be offended when someone slurs a whole gender, sexuality, or race. It’s not acceptable. And if you’re not offended then I question why you’re ok with that kind of behaviour.
You see, if you’re encouraging people to just try and get along and accept the status quo, then you’re doing almost as much damage as the people who actively throw out the kind of comments as the guy in the first paragraph above. By saying ‘oh, they didn’t mean it like that’ or ‘they’re a really great guy, just a little misguided’ you’re dismissing the experience of the person raising the problem. The very least you can do is try to understand why the comments were hurtful to an individual.
But sometimes the comments are not as obvious as this. Something they are as simple as gendered language in a game setting where men, women, and others are specifically considered equals. The often heard excuse is ‘sorry, I’ve always spoken that way and I don’t think I can change it after all these years.’ I have some sympathy. Ingrained behaviour is hard to change. It took me ages to change a load of bad habits I have, but I got there eventually because I wanted to make myself a better person (and I also wanted my nails to stop being bitten down to ratty stumps).
As if these comments, that make many feel unwelcome, weren’t bad enough – the worst is yet to come. The problem is that being told ‘that’s sexist, please don’t do it’ forces you to examine the fact that actually, you’ve been being sexist for years it’s just nobody has told you or you haven’t realise. So when someone kicks up a stink because they feel like their ‘right’ to use whatever language they please in a communal setting is taken away, what they’re actually fighting back against is the implicate that they’ve always been sexist. And nobody wants to hear that about themselves.
And the problem with that, as pointed out to me by a friend, is that by kicking back against some perceived ‘political correctness’ (isn’t it awful to take peoples feelings into consideration and try to make the world a better place?) they are in fact missing a valuable opportunity to examine their own behaviour and try to understand how the things that they say are hurtful. We should never stop learning as people, we should always strive to keep growing. And we should never stop finding out about ourselves.
Of course it’s human nature to be defensive when our ideologies are challenged. And those of us who routinely challenge others on their behaviour know better than to expect an instant Damascene style conversion. But we have to hope that every time somebody kicks back against a suggestion of sexism (or racism, homophobia, etc) they will, in the future, examine their behaviour and understand why people in our community hurt when they are excluded through language and actions.
14 Comments
It’s always incredibly frustrating when OOC sexism happens IC, because then what do you do? Do you break character and say ‘not ok’? Do you try and do it IC? Do you wait until after and hope that they’ll remember it and won’t think you’re being a shrill harpy?
I remember one incident, and I’ve never been able to forget it. We (the player base) were on our way to camp after a fight. I was having an IC conversation with a guy, who said “You know, you’re a bloody good warrior, for a woman.”
OOC, that sort of comment is getting more and more ridiculous. But even with the IC context, his comment made no sense. 1) My character was from a culture that didn’t distinguish between male and female warriors, if you wanted to fight, then fight. 2) His character was from a matriarchal tribe, where the women were warriors, leaders, people for the men to look up to.
So no matter which way you look at it, the comment makes no sense, but just like you, I didn’t say anything. I froze. Was lost for words. And afterwards, was too scared that I’d made this out to bigger than it was to confront him about it.
I really hope you don’t get any backlash for this article. It’s a good one. It needs to be said.
It is a statistical fact that literally just under half of women (or men for that matter) are smarter than the remaining majority. That statement is just true, not mysogynist. The person saying you are “smarter than most women” is simply acknowledging your intellectual presence in the top 49% and probably having a bit of a go at you because they know how you will take it (as they already know you are a feminist and want to bait you into a conversation about it). So chill. That was pretty funny if you think about it.
Of course you know the person saying it, they may be a legit a-hole, but that would be my take if somebody said that to me.
Saying she was smarter than most women, rather than most people, is the offensive bit. Categorising her IQ by an irrelevant grouping (gender) is daft. It would only make sense if there was a difference between those groups in the target trait.
Like saying “X is taller than most Chinese people’ or ‘shorter than most Dutch people’. Totally makes sense.
There’s something about treating people as the exception to the rule linguistically in there, which I know there’s been some great discussion of somewhere, but I have to finish a pile of data analysis before I go pick up the kids so I shall hope someone else fills in for me!
There may be a difference. I’m not up on the gender IQ statistics. I do know there are more women than men attending university now, and education is correlative to IQ. So it may have been (intentionally or not) more complimentary to limit the pool of comparison in the statement to females. But I still think he was just having a go. Trolling a bit.
Women on an average are less intelligent than men on average. There is nothing wrong in that statement. It has been well studied and well documented – most studies say that men are either more intelligent or of same intelligence as women. Talking about average of course, hope people are intelligent enough to see that.
All I see feminists complaining about is how physically weaker they are than men and hence should be affirmatively protected in man-woman physical altercation but when it comes to intelligence, since it is not visible directly, politically motivated individuals who know they will still be getting public attention after getting caught in one lie after another, get chance to muddy the water by lame excuses that will be ignored by the same intelligence radar that they are complaining about.
Though the article is anecdotal in style and personal, it is nethertheless highly political.
LARP as a target for political activism is new. I think many larpers are still struggling to come to terms with that fact. The clock however can’t be turned back, and politics in Larp is here to stay.
The question I take away from this article is- how do we as larpers learn to discuss politics with each other in a constructive way? After all, if we can’t discuss something, we won’t be able to change it. Previous attempts on forums have led to some legendary spats. I’m not surprised the author decided not to explain feminism when asked!!!
The current situation of politics in Larp is dreadful. Rather than a progressive dialogue it’s become entrenched in ‘my way or the highway’ thinking on all sides.
Consequently the ‘politics’ that informs this articles particular view of feminism, and the activists leading on the politicisation of LARP, have had the heaviest fire reined down them.
I think part of the reason is because this form of feminist politics is not universally understood or agreed on by all the people who Larp. The consequent misunderstandings and political disagreements have led to some awfully nasty arguments on forums and other OOC spaces. However, I think most larpers do, support the intent, ‘to make our society a fairer and equal place for everybody’ and feminism, just like any other ‘ism, doesn’t soley hold claim to that ground.
Many larpers are also politically educated and full of life experiences and will have their own views of what politics should or shouldn’t inform Larp.
This does not make them misoginistic or oppressive, it’s just that they see a different route to reach the same end of a fairer and equal place for all. The real misoginists are the exception to the rule.
I really hope that articles like this (whether you agree or disagree) lead to discussing politics in Larp in a more constructive way. We all need to keep the dialogue open and if any of us really do want to make the world a better place, surely we want our larper buddies with us as allies.
After all if we can stand back to back fighting evil in our games, could we not do the same in real life?
I know how exactly you settle it.
Like LARPers.
By the sword.
Personally I prefer not to deal with OC problems using IC methods.
I really enjoyed reading your post and I think that you are right on the nail with many of your points.
However I don’t see ‘asking to be treated as equals’ as ‘political activism’. I just see it as basic human decency.
It is political activism, because nearly every single person who LARPs is a decent human being that treats everyone equally… If you can’t see that, then you have problems
Basic human decency is a simple phrase, I could sum it up as ‘lets not be mean to each other’. But the article is about feminism and feminism is a lot deeper in its thinking than a simple phrase. Like all sociological theories, feminism offers an explanation of why people aren’t treated as equals and a programme on how to change that. Political activists, differ from sociologists, because they takes a set of ideas of why things are as they are in society, extrapolate from those ideas, what is wrong in society and why, and then take action to change those conditions by influencing other people.The writing and publication of this article is a form of political activism. Let me expand on that:- The article conveys feminist sociological concepts like :Micro-aggression, political correctness, offence, non-binary gender identity, language and Interactionism. These concepts are way beyond simple phrases like ‘basic human decency’.They are much deeper and form part of the bedrock of modern feminist thinking. The personal, anecdotal style of this article, demystifies these concepts, normalising them even, making the articles feminist point of view easy to understand. Which is important, because if the reader can’t tap into that ‘feminist perspective’, then they won’t see society around them (namely larp society in this case) in the same way. The article challenges the reader to see the world from a feminist perspective very explicitly, even going as far to suggest that failure to adopt that perspective is tantamount to being a willing contributor to the injustices the article describes. This ultimately is a call to action to the reader. The double bind here is that by making the political personal, the politics and the person espousing them become inseparable. This as we have seen on larp forums leads to criticism of the politics being indistinguishable from criticism of the person. However, without making the politics personal it is difficult (not impossible) for others to understand the politics themselves (unless they have had some form of political education) and if they don’t understand the politics, they are unlikely to take action to change the society in the way the politics suggest they should. It’s a tough challenge for political activists and there are lots of views on how to approach it. Perhaps as suggested above, settle it with swords 😉
And this is how you kill a hobby, by introducing shitty fucking politics and agendas into it
Actually I’d like a bit less IC feminism and modern values in (semi)historical settings.
One of the larps I play in is 13th century European setting. People of different times had different social norms, different thoughts towards religion and the unknown , different attitudes towards status and social positions, when people try to use this mindset (IC), and not let there modern values bleed in, I feel it makes the setting realistic and in my, opinion, extra fun.
For example, I see the dutch larp community as some of the most inclusive and accepting groups I have encountered, but; in game some of them play hardcore crusaders religious fanatics, sexist xenophobes and even anti-Semitic, al in the name of creating a dynamic and historically correct world and character (as long you can keep IC and OC seperated)