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> If you are not between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, or if you happen to be a woman, you may not know what Dungeons & Dragons is, exactly, or why you w

> If you are not between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, or if you happen to be a woman, you may not know what Dungeons & Dragons is, exactly, or why you would want to get involved with it, even in the context of an essay in a respectable magazine such as this one. Why does it need to be mentioned that as a woman, you may not know D&D? I usually loathe the sexism debates on the Internet despite their importance (I loathe the 'how', not the 'why'). But it's gotta be called out, that's an unnecessarily degrading sentence where I lost all respect for the author in a single punch. I know it's predominately nerd/male. I don't play D&D but the only people I know who play it are one guy and two women. So that sentence really bewildered me and it shines a light on why not more women feel comfortable playing this stuff.

whiddershins 6y ago
I feel like degrading is not the right word here. I understand your point, and I think the sentence is offensive, but it’s more nuanced than you’re making it out to be. I think those kinds of sentences are just intrinsically kind of insulting. It can just as easily be taken to be insulting to D&D players as well. It just seems like a lazy method of writing and a description that contains an irrelevant kinda-maybe-true generalization.
pmachinery 6y ago
I think it's just a throwaway joke about/against D&D itself (for being (at least perceived as) predominantly male, as you said) rather than any kind of serious comment made at the expense of women.
ss2003 6y ago
Well this was written 14 years ago. The world was a bit of a different place and there were way fewer women playing DnD then.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I dunno. I wasn't part of my then-wife's gaming group in 2006, but there were more women in it than men. The best Call of Cthulhu keeper I've ever met is a woman, and she'd been running games for at least a decade by then. Dueling anecdotes, maybe, but I think if roleplaying ever was a "no girls allowed" club, that must've changed considerably earlier than the author gives it credit for. Or maybe, as with most things especially before the whole world had really melted into the Internet, there was much more local variation than the author was aware of.
brokenkebab 6y ago
Why do you see this degrading? It's a genuine question. Say, in my country probably no more then a few hundred people exist who can recognize D&D abbreviation. So one might say "If you're from X, you probably don't know what it is", and I don't see why that should offend me as an X-ian. I suppose there are substantially less female players then male players, so as a generalization the statement evaluates to 'true', and what goes next? How should one proceed to take it as an offence?
gwern 6y ago
When you're measuring female participation in the single digit percentage range ("You will not be surprised to learn that, in one 1978 survey of fantasy role-playing gamers, only 2.3 percent of respondents were female; in another, only 0.4 percent."), that's a striking observation about the participants and culture and attractions there of. But it's even more interesting when you reflect on the point OP inadvertently makes, and which I mentioned about this mostly predating the D&D renaissance: that's obviously not true now. So how has D&D culture changed?
- neuronic 6y ago
  Regarding your first point, I think it's important to understand the difference between hard numbers/stats and the human impact of writing something like that. IMO, a certain expression can be technically true and statistically justified but still socially wrong simply because you continue a culture of exclusiveness, unnecessarily reinforcing a barrier of entry (just like with women in software). But apparently this has changed in DnD nowadays so that would indeed be interesting to read.

whiddershins 6y ago

I feel like degrading is not the right word here. I understand your point, and I think the sentence is offensive, but it’s more nuanced than you’re making it out to be. I think those kinds of sentences are just intrinsically kind of insulting. It can just as easily be taken to be insulting to D&D players as well. It just seems like a lazy method of writing and a description that contains an irrelevant kinda-maybe-true generalization.

pmachinery 6y ago

I think it's just a throwaway joke about/against D&D itself (for being (at least perceived as) predominantly male, as you said) rather than any kind of serious comment made at the expense of women.

ss2003 6y ago

Well this was written 14 years ago. The world was a bit of a different place and there were way fewer women playing DnD then.

throwanem 6y ago
I dunno. I wasn't part of my then-wife's gaming group in 2006, but there were more women in it than men. The best Call of Cthulhu keeper I've ever met is a woman, and she'd been running games for at least a decade by then. Dueling anecdotes, maybe, but I think if roleplaying ever was a "no girls allowed" club, that must've changed considerably earlier than the author gives it credit for. Or maybe, as with most things especially before the whole world had really melted into the Internet, there was much more local variation than the author was aware of.

brokenkebab 6y ago

Why do you see this degrading? It's a genuine question. Say, in my country probably no more then a few hundred people exist who can recognize D&D abbreviation. So one might say "If you're from X, you probably don't know what it is", and I don't see why that should offend me as an X-ian. I suppose there are substantially less female players then male players, so as a generalization the statement evaluates to 'true', and what goes next? How should one proceed to take it as an offence?

gwern 6y ago

When you're measuring female participation in the single digit percentage range ("You will not be surprised to learn that, in one 1978 survey of fantasy role-playing gamers, only 2.3 percent of respondents were female; in another, only 0.4 percent."), that's a striking observation about the participants and culture and attractions there of. But it's even more interesting when you reflect on the point OP inadvertently makes, and which I mentioned about this mostly predating the D&D renaissance: that's obviously not true now. So how has D&D culture changed?

neuronic 6y ago
Regarding your first point, I think it's important to understand the difference between hard numbers/stats and the human impact of writing something like that. IMO, a certain expression can be technically true and statistically justified but still socially wrong simply because you continue a culture of exclusiveness, unnecessarily reinforcing a barrier of entry (just like with women in software). But apparently this has changed in DnD nowadays so that would indeed be interesting to read.