Photo is completely unrelated to the article. I just thought it’d be nice to start with something pretty.
Wargaming seems to have been the ugly duckling, in many aspects, of the various intertwined nerd hobbies.
Back in the day, nerdy hobbies were considered the pursuits almost solely of, to use a stereotype, lonely basement dwellers. Over time this has changed with many interests such as comic books, anime, board gaming, RPG’s and video gaming undergoing a cultural shift. This meant updating product lines to remove harmful stereotypes and calling out toxic behaviour when seen.
This is perhaps best seen in Wil Wheaton’s “Don’t Be a Dick” speech.
None of these changes were easy of course, nor are they complete. Video games are still rife with sexism and misogyny from the community with the #gamergate crap being a massive pushback from the old guard against a changing landscape.
Nevertheless, publishers persisted. They removed chainmail bikini’s, they created more realistic female characters. While there was some controversy over the storyline in the Tomb Raider reboot, the difference in tone and attitude towards the character of Lara Croft was like night and day. Lara wasn’t wank material designed to appeal to pre-pubescent teenagers, she was a more realistic and well rounded character.
The most obvious elephant in the room that we all know I’m talking about – for starters, her tits were a more realistic size.
This all seems to have taken place over the last 10-15 years. Not entirely there, not by a long shot, but there have been massive strides aiming at inclusivity.
Except for wargaming.
The Stubborn Nerd Hobby
Wargaming, until the past couple of years seemed to be stubbornly stuck in its ways.
I will say straight up that I don’t think wargaming will ever reach perfect 50/50 parity between men and women playing. Society plays a massive role in how our personalities develop and society overwhelmingly dictates that girls like pretty pink dolls and boys like macho army men. Boys are taught not to cry and suppress their emotions, girls are taught that they’re delicate little flowers. In the grown-up world, women are the child-carers while men are the bread earners. These toxic attitudes are rife throughout society though change and improvement is coming slowly.
However, even taking this societal pressure into account, women are massively under-represented in the wargaming hobby. I’ve only ever played three games, out of the thousands of wargames that I’ve played, against women. It’s not because the subject matter is inherently unappealing to the overwhelming majority of women – similar hobbies such as RPGs and video games have seen massive increases in their female fan base. Lord of the Rings and other fantasy novels have always seen large female fan bases.
These, very similar hobbies, have reached gender parity or at least made massive improvements, so why hasn’t wargaming?
Hostility
It’s not a pleasant word and I’m sure certain readers are frothing at the mouth already.
The wargaming hobby is often and has historically been hostile towards women. Often, it’s unintentional, sometimes it’s not.
We’ve all seen the comments on any online post where there’s a girl involved with wargaming. We’ve all been in a hobby store when a lass walks in and everyone goes silent. We’ve seen the rape jokes, we’ve seen female characters referred to as “inferior”, we’ve seen all the extreme behaviour from a subset of the community who do seem to outright hate women. I don’t think I need to pull up too many examples because we all have dozens that we can reel off.
Some of the attitude of wargaming being a man’s hobby comes from the very top. I don’t like the example of HG Well’s original wargaming book’s title because it is a product of its time, but in the recent past some industry leaders seemed to ignore and belittle women to the point that they seemed actively hostile.
As an example of how deep these attitudes can run, when helping to write Kings of War 2nd edition, I pushed hard to remove some of the inadvertent sexist elements in the game. At the lighter end of the scale, there was the constant referring to the player as “he”, and only using male names in examples. That was a quick fix. In the middle ground, there was an intended split for the Elf Mage – there would be an Elf Mage King which had all the offensive spells, while the Elf Mage Queen would get all the healing abilities. Because only boys could possibly attack the enemy and girls are only good at healing things and not fighting.
At the more extreme end of the scale, there was the option to upgrade a unit that was explicitly 100% female into the same unit but 100% male, giving them a strength and nerve bonus with no downsides. In Kings of War, there isn’t even differentiation in stats to account for extra strength between a malnourished peasant armed with a sword, and a well fed and trained knight with a sword. The knight doesn’t get any strength bonus over the peasant despite his vastly superior physique, yet apparently there’s enough of a difference between men and women to give men a strength bonus.
While I wish that the authors had been more receptive to this feedback and it was a quick “hey dude, this could be seen as sexist” “Damn, you’re right. I’ll fix it right now”, rather than the long drawn out process, I don’t think the authors were sexist themselves. These were just attitudes that they had developed over the years that they didn’t realise could be perceived negatively.
Often, it can be completely unintentional. Few people want to be sexist and off-putting. Point someone towards something they’re doing which is off-putting to women and they’ll be mortified that they made a mistake. That’s fine, it happens, we all learn and I’ve certainly learnt in the past.
Sometimes the hostility is just there, and they don’t care about it.
Intentional Hostility
Again, I don’t want to pull up too many examples because we’ve all seen it numerous times.
The post which brought me to writing this article was this post by Aushammer. A photo of 40k Cosplayers included a lass dressed as a sister of battle. Someone stuck a porn logo on it. The lass in question, very understandably, was upset by the implication and for being the butt of a joke because she committed the unforgivable crime of being a girl in a 40k community.
Aushammer rightly called out the toxic behaviour and stated that it wouldn’t be tolerated.
The toxic members of the community responded predictably. They begun downvoting Aushammer, despite probably having never listened to the podcast. They begun the comment war, posting TRIGGERED memes, “it’s free speech!!!!”, “omg political correctness gone mad” and ever more unsavoury photos and offensive comments.
A regular, well adjusted human being might have laughed at the original joke. Then they might have seen that it upset the butt of that joke. They might have seen the post by Aushammer calling it out. They would have felt bad. Maybe they might post something admitting they were in the wrong and apologise, maybe they might be too embarrassed to post something yet learn from the experience and be more mindful in future. Either response is perfectly understandable.
A considerable number of commenters on Aushammer’s post are not well adjusted human beings. If you see that something upsets someone – especially when it’s been targeted directly at them – basic human decency says that you reconsider continuing, perhaps apologise. Not double down on your behaviour.
This is far from an isolated case. Every single person reading this likely has multiple stories of outright hostility towards female wargamers.
What I find uplifting is that people are taking notice.
Change from the top
Games Workshop has transformed itself so much over the last five years. One of the major changes is its attitude towards women. It is openly addressing them and a few months back acknowledged its historical mistakes and pledged to change in response to messages from fans.
Games Workshop’s past attitudes are plain to see – female characters in their stories often (but not always before people pull out a bunch of examples) served as nothing more than a vehicle for the male characters. The most damning example of Grey Knights murdering and bathing in the blood of a bunch of Battle Sisters.
Despite the Imperial Guard being explicitly a mixed sex organisation with recruitment not giving two shits what’s between your legs, models were almost 100% male. Female models were few and far between. Where they existed, they were almost always objectified with very few wearing anything resembling practical clothing – not quite as explicit as the chainmail bikini but not much of an improvement either.
Well Games Workshop have been making an impact, understandably slow as it is.
The changes were at first quite subtle, with ex games designer James Hewitt saying a while back that one of their aims when updating the Blood Bowl rules was to remove any unintentional sexism, including removing gender specific pronouns in rules writing.
These changes have gathered pace with more and more women featuring in its rulebooks and publications (not without sexist comments from some fans, of course), and a stated desire to revisit their Battle Sisters line.
Most recently the new line of young-teen books feature female protagonists – non-white at that! Again, predictable sexist comments from certain fans, and now with added racism.
I fully expect we will soon see either a new Imperial Guard regiment sprue released with a 50/50 mix of female and male soldiers, or a new Cadian sprue of female soldiers to balance out the current male-only plastic sprue.
Revolution breeds conflict
I truly think that we’re seeing the wargaming hobby grow up and follow its fellow hobbies in cultivating a more progressive and diverse fanbase. Change truly comes from the top, though activists from the bottom can convince those at the top to change tack.
We’re seeing GW acknowledge their past mistakes and actively trying to change. They are pushing forwards and I do think with their leadership, as by far the biggest player in the wargaming industry, the rest of the wargaming hobby will follow.
This does breed contempt, of course. I’m currently writing this in Word but once published on my blog, there will be a comments section. Everyone reading this knows what the comments section will be filled with;
- SJW FEMINAZI!!!!
- Cuck
- Omg it’s PC gon mad
- Girls don’t even like wargaming
- Whiteknight
- Lol trying to get laid
- Snowflake
- Triggered
We all know these comments are going to be there. Every one of us. They will be there on every single article written about wargaming growing up and becoming more inclusive. Every time there’s a photo of a lass playing with her Ork army the comments section will be filled with disgusting comments on how she looks. At every large wargaming event where *gasp* a girl attends, she will be subjected to some form of behaviour that is unwelcoming at best.
I realise throughout all of this that I am speaking solely of the female inclusivity. It’s the most immediately obvious form of toxicity within the community, but all of my comments refer to toxic comments to the LGBT community as well.
We’re in the middle of a revolution. Stick to what is right. Call out toxic behaviour when you see it. If someone indicates to you that something you’ve done might be considered sexist or even toxic, don’t take offence. Reflect and see if they have a point and pledge to yourself to be better in future.
Wargaming was the ugly duckling of the various nerd hobbies and we have the opportunity to improve it. Let’s take it.
Nick Williams 
Well said
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Very well said, I couldn’t agree more!
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Very well said, couldn’t agree more!
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Excellent piece. I like to think that I’ve been inclusive to Female characters and players over the years, but this has made me think about it even more than I was already.Very well said.
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Very well written article.
I disagree towards the ending though. GW making an impact? Yeah, right. So, you’re telling me that
1. Mantic doing the Basileans Sisterhood (despite some quality issues)
2. Raging Heroes having two very well funded Kickstarters (again, despite quality and timeframe horrors)
3. Shieldwolf bringing it to the next level with the sensibly clothed Shieldmaidens (in plastic and now doing new plastic sets for sensibly clothed female paladins)
4. Anvil doing great on the Daughters of the Burning Rose despite the announcement we know of (“some time in 2019″… might even be December!)
had nothing to do with this? All these companies (and some I might be leaving out) where there way before GW woke up to smell the coffee. IMO these companies are what caused the revolution and not the giant in the industry.
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I would never use Raging Hardon, I mean, Heroes, as an example of pro-feminism for ANYTHING.
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Yeah, their minis are definitely cool, but they’re horribly sexist.
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There are others making headway, absolutely, and you’re right to laud the work done by smaller companies. GW is undeniably the market leader though and I feel that if they did nothing then nothing would change. There has been a massive turnaround for GW from just 2-3 years ago and as part of that their inclusivity has changed massively (and for the better).
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Thank you, this needed to be said.
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I don’t see the young adults section helping women or girls much. Not least because it just… Doesn’t fit the universe. If you take out the underpinning of hopeless slaves of all ages keeping up the humanity, and take out the rampant fanaticism, it all kind of fizzles.
I’d be thrilled to see well done, authentically outfitted female guardsmen… And honestly, I think part of why they have taken so long with plastic Sisters is getting them to be less sexist. At least, that’s my hope.
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Greathe post and touches on some fears I have.
Recently my 9 year old daughter has gotten into age of sigmar. I have been painting up my models and when I was last in my lgs she loved the nurgle army and so I have bought her a few pieces and she is planning what she wants next.
Now this may be a flash in the pan, six months of painting and playing and then forgotton. It may also be the start of a life long hobby like it has been for most of us.
I have no issues with taking her to my lgs for games and smaller tournaments. The people are known to me and will be known to her and I believe they are all good people.
But what if she, when older, wants to go to a larger tournament? What when she goes on line into hobby forums? My daughter is amazing and she knows what she likes and is strong enough to not let things bother her, I hope. But should she be put through some of the shit out there just because she is female and wants to push toy figures around a table?
Would I even let her go to a gt?
I also have a son 12 who dips into aos as well. I have no issues with him going to a gt when he is older. Why should it be different for my girl?
Luckily like you say things are changing but while the gaming companies can add female characters and remove overt sexism they can’t change the mindset of the players. That has to come for us.
If you are in a club or a lgs and you here sexism coming from anyone it has to be challenged.
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I think the different attitudes between your son and daughter are quite telling as you say. You’ve no issues with your son participating in the wider hobby but have (very valid) worries about letting your daughter do the same. If there was no issue, as many commentators in KoW Fanatics claimed, then you would not have any worry.
You’re absolutely right that change ultimately has to come from the community. The gaming giants can lay the groundwork but it is up to us all to challenge behaviour (whether it’s a quiet discussion to the side for a minor accidental comment or a direct confrontation for something unforgivable).
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As one of the world’s small minority of female wargamers, I can only applaud this article. Happily, I’ve not found much sexism in wargaming in real life and I avoid gaming forums.
I think that things are shifting, but it takes time to see a real impact. I think the most important thing is for non-sexist male gamers to do whatever they can to challenge and confront the sexists and misogynists.
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Thanks Carole. I’ve seen it first hand a few times before I truly considered myself a feminist. I didn’t speak up then and it’s a major regret for me. A while back I pledged to myself that I wouldn’t let things go unchallenged.
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Well said Nick, as one of those few (it seems) women who plays the games regardless its nice to see this changing over my 24 years of attending tourneys and gaming at my local club.
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I hope that you are right Nick
I’m on a FB group for crochety old wargamers
If I posted this there, I am afraid the reaction would be all too predictable
At the Carronade Wargames show, there were few women, and most of them seemed to be traders rather than customers or participants
Nice to see that change
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I am not so sure Colin. Look at the close group of wargamers that both you and I are associated with. I can’t think of a single one of them who would have anything but praise for this article. Now it is true we are something of a self selected group but we are certainly not all alike and not the SJW types that these sorts of postings get accused of being for.
I think all I would say is that the historical wargaming hobby is generally better at this than the fantasy tabletop stuff. This may well be circumstance. There is really not much scope for scantily clad females in most of what we do and even when they might be used they tend not to be. There are of course exceptions but I think we are generally a bit more adult and reasonable about these things than we are given credit for.
I want my kids to enjoy gaming. I want my daughter to be free from abuse and I want my son to have good role models and peers. I think that applies to a large majority of people in our hobby. It is just a case of how we deal with those who do not share our values.
Oh and Wil Wheaton is my hero.
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Girls don’t even like wargaming!
Didn’t want to ignore your predictions and I fear that it’s true in general. There are the odd exceptions of course. My favourite is an older female wargamer who did not care about any prejudice and brought her own hand-knitted scenery to a tournament. My daughter likes painting miniatures and I hope she’ll take to wargaming in a few years, but I doubt it. Wargaming is a niche hobby for men, and even more so for women. Who knows, maybe the current changes in miniatures and rules will do the trick and make the hobby more inclusive.
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Sure, I’m definitely under no impression that the hobby appeals more towards men than women, but I feel that we should still see a lot more women involved. Looking at things like the Aushammer post and my personal experiences seeing direct in-person sexism, it’s not hard to figure out that there are reasons other than it appealing more to women.
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I wrote a blog post on this sort of subject a year or two ago, and got the most comments I’ve ever had: http://wargaming4grownups.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-grown-up-subject.html
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Thanks for sharing. I remember seeing the post you’re talking about but hadn’t thought about it for a while. It’s definitely something that’s been entrenched in the hobby, which is why I’m hopeful that we are seeing a mass change in attitudes.
I’m really happy to see that the comments on your post were overwhelmingly supporting your position.
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Excellent article and I’m in complete agreement that anything that can be done to de-toxify the wargaming environment should be done. Like Richard above, I’m primarily a historical wargamer, a niche in which women are ludicrously under-represented. How we might address that is a tricky question, but one that should, nonetheless, be addressed in the same way as tackling the ‘greying ‘ of the hobby.
The problem is that there are plenty in the hobby who simply don’t care about either of these issues, and see the hobby as their ‘shed at the bottom of the garden’ escape from real-world issues like these. But I, for one, would love to see both more women and more young people involved in and embraced by the hobby – it has so much to offer.
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Absolutely, it’s a fantastic hobby whether historical, sci-fi or fantasy. It has broad appeal that just isn’t being tapped into.
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I suppose the problem is that as men anything we would probably instinctively think about to make the hobby appeal to women is going to be somewhat stereotypical and just as likely to (quite rightly) annoy them.
This is why I think Daedle is right with his basic position (if I am reading it right). It is not about how do we attract more women or ethnic minorities into the hobby, it is about how do we make sure we do not repel them. Wil Wheaton is on exactly the right track with this. Don’t spend your time thinking ‘how do we make wargaming more female friendly’. Concentrate on ‘how do we make wargaming less female repulsive’.
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Which, in my book, amounts to much the same thing.
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I suppose my fear is that wargamers will try to do things they think will make the hobby more attractive to other sections of society but at the same time will ignore the basic stuff they are doing that repels people. We have already seen this sort of argument on the Partizan FB page this evening where Laurence is commenting on how we hope Partizan is open and inviting to all and someone is asking what specific things we are doing to make this so. The only answer we can give is the one that Wil Wheaton uses. ‘Don’t be a Dick’. Until we make sure that message gets across to all those attending our show or clubs we are never going to make headway at attracting other sections of society.
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Oh, I agree wholeheartedly with that. After all, there are plenty of wargamers out there who are repulsive to me as a white, middle-aged male, let alone to any other section of the population.
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There was a section I cut from the article with a Venn diagram showing “Number of wargamers who are complete dicks” and “Number of wargamers who are sexist fucks”, with them overlapping almost 100% 😉
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I think it’s two fold. The overwhelming issue in my opinion is the hostility from a small subset of the community, backed up by a community that until recently seemed unwilling to challenge. I know I’ve stood by and said nothing in the past and it’s something I deeply regret. We look to make sure that we don’t repel as you say.
The other side is making sure that official products promote diversity. There are the extremely subtle issues which all add up, gradually one at a time, to saying “this is a man’s hobby” – little things like always referring to the player as male, always using male names in examples etc. I don’t think anyone believes that resolving these issues will fix everything. There are the larger questions too – Imperial Guard are explicitly 50/50 male and female in the fluff, yet 95%+ of the models are strictly male. There’s something very wrong there.
We shouldn’t go to the extent of condescension in order to make things more appealing, but we should make sure that official publications don’t promote the view that “this is a blokes only hobby”.
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I completely support this article and the views expressed.
I have been an historical wargamer for fifty years in the UK. I have never met a female wargamer and the only non white wargamers I have met have been US servicemen.
It is not enough to claim we are nice guys, the facts show us to be at least passively hostile in that we do not provide games and/or an environment in which over 50% of people feel comfortable. It is noticeable that the increase of ‘game in a box’ wargaming for dark ages has resulted in a few new female players in club night photos etc.
I would love before I die to attend a club which has a large female membership (and several tables playing out games from the pre colonial history of the Indian sub continent) but this will not happen unless we are able to reach out and actively say we want you to join in this hobby. It may be a measure of how far we have to go that as a white, middle class, middle aged man I can say I have often been made to feel unwelcome when attending a new club for the first time. I hope that our best defence is not just to say we hate everyone why should we make an exception for women
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Hear, hear! Well said, John.
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You’re working towards a noble goal, but I find your assumptions in the article to be off-putting.
For example: “We’ve all been in a hobby store when a lass walks in and everyone goes silent. We’ve seen the rape jokes, we’ve seen female characters referred to as “inferior”, we’ve seen all the extreme behaviour from a subset of the community who do seem to outright hate women. I don’t think I need to pull up too many examples because we all have dozens that we can reel off.”
Or, Every single person reading this likely has multiple stories of outright hostility towards female wargamers.
I don’t. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been in a Games Workshop or played at a store in years. Even when I did, I can’t think of any experiences. What I want to say is, I hope I’m not an outlier and I think that by painting the community with such a hostile tone you’re doing a disservice to its members.
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There seems to be some sort of politically correct argument that wargamers need to change in order to be more suited to women. I would argue we should stay the same. People who have an interest in something will follow it. If they don’t they will not. HISTORICAL wargames really require an interest in history and a commitment to learn about it and as we see very few women who are military historians its no wonder that the subject does not appeal to the wider female audience. Women do study history and some are fine historians and authors, just not necessarily military history.
There are more women involved in Fantasy and War-hammer type things which are games, not necessarily a war game, which in itself shows that people tend to drift toward what their personal interest is. Or, they drift toward a game where the player doesn’t have to think much, just follow a set of rules provided by a commercial organisation mostly for the purpose of selling product.
Therefore I would suggest that to change Wargaming to suit outsiders would be counter production and moving away from the core following.
This article is mostly about Warhammer, fantasy gaming, and other fictional subjects, which are games, but not historical wargaming as the hobby originally was. Therefore the subject of revolution does not particularly bother me. Next we will have someone saying wargames are not taking into account the LGBQ community….various races…etc!!! If a subject appeals, it appeals and should not be subject to modification. If they want to come, they will come. if not….they they didn’t want to come! That’s life so lets get on with what we enjoy and stop trying to make us feel guilty.
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“HISTORICAL wargames really require an interest in history and a commitment to learn about it”
Why? I’ve played historical games from all sorts of periods that I have no interest in or knowledge of.
Some wargamers are very interested in the history. Some of them aren’t. Some make up “imaginations”, where any history is entirely fictional. I’ve never seen anyone suggest they aren’t wargamers.
As far as I can see, the change being requested is that we become more welcoming and less hostile. If someone has an active interest in military history, and their first experience of wargaming is hostile, they may never return.
That happened to me with a club. I went to a new club with my brother in law. We were wargamers. We had models, figures, rules, and terrain. One person talked to us. The rest of the club ignored us. We never went back. If they’d been just a little more welcoming, we’d probably have become regular members.
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I think you have it right, Russell, and Mal has missed the point. The game bits of the hobby don’t need to change. The issue is with the attitude of some of the hobby’s adherents to people who aren’t like them.
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The problem is not (largely) with the games – the problem is the woman who loves the history, reads the rule system, starts collecting the miniatures, paints them, takes them along to a game club, is immediately told to ‘make me a sandwich’, endures without complaining various jokes about her breasts during the game, laughs along awkwardly and never comes back to that group, and never plays the game again.
The problem is nothing to do with people who aren’t interested in the game, it’s ‘people who have an interest in something’ who do not follow it because of the way they are treated by the other people in the gaming community.
Reading that back, the phrasing might suggest that the woman is the problem, but she’s not; the problem isn’t even really the small minority of guys making the jokes that make her too uncomfortable to return; the problem is the other guys there laughing along, or thinking that it’s out of order but not challenging it.
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Completely agree. I will add that I’d like to see the hobby be more generally inclusive, not just towards women. I’ve seen shitty attitudes towards gays and trans people, for instance. I’ve never seen racism, but I’ve never seen non-white wargamers, either.
All that said, if attitudes towards women wargamers change, hopefully attitudes towards others will change too.
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An interesting and thought provoking article and I think mostly spot on.
I’m not sure that I would agree that other parts of the industry are doing better. I love games but particularly analogue games rather than computer games, probably because I have spent most of my working life (which is heading into it’s last few years) designing, developing and managing online marketing systems. I play a lot of of games, board games, RPG and wargames.
Board games has recently become more gender neutral, if anything where I am it is more female oriented and I and my wife play a board game most days.
RPG has an occasional female involved.
Wargames, I go to two clubs and go to tournaments, not a female in sight.
So what is the difference?
I have noticed that many of the board games are wargames in different clothing. One of the games we play is called Small World and has a few expansions. It’s a variation of Risk I suppose but with a couple of interesting mechanics and very cartoonish and funny imagery. During the game your objective is to capture territory mostly by attacking other players with a very simple battle mechanic. This does not bother my wife nor the many women we play the game with.
On the other Memoire 44 that operates with a very similar mechanic but is tanks and soldiers and guns and all that gets zero female interest. I know cos I’ve tried it!
At the end of the day the games are all game mechanics with a representation to give a flavour for the theatre of the mind and a metaphor to aid way the game works. I suspect that the flavour is vital in this case – like eating with your eyes and I think that macho stuff doesn’t do it.
We have acquired Burrows and Badgers, the book at Salute where I went with a male friend and the starter minis packs at the Games Expo where I went with my wife. Let’s see if this has the flavour for my wife…
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When Nintendo released the Wii they made a deliberate effort to promote to EVERYONE.
Memorably, at the release show (E3?) they used ‘normal people’ (including a grandmother) as their ‘booth babes’.
Instead of playing to the existing archetype they extended their audience and were massively successful by being inclusive.
GW is 75-80% of their market. Any move by other companies should be applauded, but we need to realise that that message doesn’t travel. (GW will likely have made a course change of their own accord and not ‘reacted’ to the bit players.)
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As I’m getting back into my Blood Angels army again, I’m going to put female bare heads on some. They won’t have any sort of converted sculpted-breast armor. It looked just fine for Captain Phasma in “Star Wars.”
I’m sure some would cry, “But it’s against the cannon! Only men may be Space Marines!” Well, yes, because that was written 30+ years ago when the idea of women in real-world combat roles was not being considered, at least in the US. I’ll give GW a bit of a pass on that because of the society of the time. However, with the introduction of the new Primaris Marines, they could’ve and should’ve made female Marines a possibility in-world. If you’re messing with Marine genetics to make bigger ones to sell, you could’ve said women could now go through the process, too. It’s a missed opportunity, in my opinion.
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I agree. Primaris marines were the perfect opportunity for female space marines to be introduced without breaking existing more.
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There was a comment from someone on the Kings of War Fanatics post claiming that wargaming is dominated by white males. Of course it is. I doubt anyone would try to deny that. But what’s the solution to this perceived problem?
Daedle, I have no idea where you play or what kind of questionable folks you play with but at the club/store where I play, any acts of racism, sexism and homophobia are universally understood as unacceptable. It doesn’t even need to be said, it’s just basic decency. Any person doing so would be immediately ostracised from the group.
So what’s left to do? A recruitment drive would be outrageous an absolutely offensive. People of colour, Women, LGBT or any other group do not need to be hand held into the hobby. They can find their own way, and they would be more than welcome. It has to be natural.. and it’s already happening.
Stop with the virtue signalling. The hobby’s looking better than ever.
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I linked to a significant example of misogyny with the Aushammer post… I have seen examples of sexism in real life, some worse than others, and many women involved in the hobby have confirmed their experiences. It does happen. How rare and how severe? I guess that depends on the specific group in question but when there’s a very obvious and significant example given it seems a bit disingenuous to claim it doesn’t happen.
I didn’t say we should go on a recruitment drive. I said that are some longstanding issues with the general hobby which we should look to resolve-namely the overwhelmingly male products being made and where people show sexist behaviour, others call them out.
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I agree with you Daedle,- this was one of the issues I discussed in “A Grown Up Subject”. Just because it hasn’t been seen or doesn’t happen in your group doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and where observed such behaviour should be confronted. It isn’t about recruitment; it is about respect and decency.
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