elfyourmother:

parisianqueen:

So last night, myself and another girl were asked to leave a D&D game, before it even started, because the DM (another woman) didn’t like how we looked. Both of us were made up, hair done, cute outfits, with a lot of pink D&D accessories. She assumed we were very “feminine” so that we could flirt with all the guy players, and try to get advantages, or distract them. We were told we had to change into “normal” clothes (t-shirts or sweatshirts), and “uncake our faces”. We both left but became really good friends really quickly afterward.

I talked about this in a few select social media places after it happened, and something unexpected started when I woke up this morning. A lot of women had contacted me with stories of similar things, from both male and female DMs. It’s now 1:30PM here, and I’ve talked to 29 women, all with their own experiences that all fell under this particular umbrella.

Their experiences included:

– Being talked to like they’re a bimbo by everyone at the table.
– Having one or more guys at a table want to “help them” play, despite having even more game experience than they did.
– Being blatantly ignored by other female players.
– Having their character hit on endlessly by most of a table.
– Being hit on themselves, despite saying “no thank you” or showing obvious disinterest.
– Being touched a lot, either on the arm, shoulder, back, or in more inappropriate places by male gamers.
– Being told they’re “trying too hard to be a woman”, included trans women being told this by other women.
– Having the DM solely target their character in battles and with traps, after turning the DM down for a date or affection, and not stopping until the character is dead.
– Having it insisted upon them that they have to change their “girly” dice, bags, binders, clothing, etc to “fit in”.
– Being told they aren’t a “real nerd”, “real gamer”, “real geek”, “real fan” because they don’t fit the “look” — this is the most common one I heard.
– Being told by a table full of guys that their below-10 roll was in fact “rolling like a girl”.
– And of course, the “gold digger” argument. That a woman who glams herself up before a game is clearly only hunting for the nerdy guy who also makes a lot of money, and who is pretending to like these things to get at his bank account. 12 separate women told me this one, each of them were kicked out of their games with this being the explanation. None of them dated or flirted with anyone at the table at any point.

The common theme here was that all of these were public play games, either at gaming stores, or at conventions. You have to sit at a table with people you don’t know, and one would expect at least common human decency here, but instead this sort of thing happens. It’s not okay for people to be treated this way by anyone, for any reason, and I was mortified by the sheer amount of women coming forward to share in such a short period of time.

So I worked away at this picture, as I express myself in really dumb fashion sketches. 

It’s the club jacket for our Glam Girl Gamer Gang. 

Girls of all types, from all backgrounds, all sizes, all places in life deserve to be respected as a fellow player. THIS INCLUDES ALL GIRLS WHO LIKE “STEREOTYPICALLY FEMININE” THINGS.

IT IS FUCKING 2017 WHY IS THIS STILL AN ISSUE YOU DINGBATS

unfortunately there is a very deep strain of “not like the other girls”-ism that runs wide in tabletop gaming circles, even more so than in comics and video games. 

and on one hand, i try to be understanding about it, because it’s very rare being a nerdgirl who *didn’t* internalize this or go through a similar stage in life, especially those of us who grew up in the 70s-90s, before D&D and similarly geeky hobbies became mainstream and were normalized to the point that many more people started getting involved. it was hard enough to find groups to game with as it was, even in the big city like mine, and it was always very clear that the price of admission was playing by white boy rules. i learned very quickly that no one would take me seriously as a DM if they saw that copy of YM/Seventeen/Sassy behind the Dungeon Master’s Guide in my backpack, or if I put anything on my face besides Lip Smackers. so many teen girls w stereotypical teen girl interests/presentation were essentially asked to leave anything that marked us as feminine away from the table and the hobby shop. and we did it because we were desperate to connect w other nerds who shared the same interest, when few others did. and we internalized this shame and perpetuated it, like the woman at OP’s table. i understand all too well where her mentality came from. it took me years to unpack it and recover from that kind of internalized misogyny.

but otoh, it’s fucked up!!! it makes me angry af that this is still going on, in 2017, when we’re undergoing something of a D&D renaissance. it makes me angry to think there are young girls and women having to go through the same garbage I did as a kid. it makes me angry af that I can STILL notice a marked difference in how I am treated in gaming spaces based on how i’m presenting, that if I’m too overtly feminine, i’m treated as less than. that people still think “femmes” and “nerds” are mutually exclusive terms. i hate that misogynistic gatekeeping is still a fucking thing.