The Seven-Sided Die

Apparently the satire I wrote about the GenCon icon needs to be explained to a depressing minority of people. (Mostly men, funnily enough. [And by "funnily enough" I mean "painfully predictably", of course.])

I've been accused of being offensive and over-the-top. "Thank you," I must reply to that because that was the fucking point. The satire in this case is meant to take a belief or argument that is considered acceptable, break it down to its underlying structure, and populate that structure with equivalent items that highlight how inappropriate the original thing is. Y'know, to make the reader question calcified and antiquated assumptions.

Like this:

Here, an icon representing an insult is used to illustrate a textual expression of an inclusive intent. The combination image is flatly contradictory bullshit. (Those are technical terms.)

The point of the satirical icons was to show the reader that these things are all the same in kind (if not degree), just with different groups of people who are marginalised by modern Western culture (i.e., our culture). To accomplish this, the images slowly ramp up the degree of blatant insult encapsulated by the image until the contradictory bullshit is undeniable.

Let's start with the most blatant and work our way down:

This image is just so fucking offensive it's unbelievable that I could bring myself to create it. It's incredibly over the top. It's unbe-fucking-lievably complete bullshit, and I hope all the readers would agree. This is indefensible if GenCon did it. Which is why I created it, to get us all on the same page that some things are just wrong. I could have gone all Modest Proposal on y'all and included baby-eating and worse, but I think this image goes far enough to make sure we've established OMG fucking wrong without a doubt. Baby-eating would have just been gilding the lily.

The inclusive intent in this image is pretty awesomely good: everyone is welcome and racial issues will be sensitively addressed! That's pretty sweet! We need more of that.

Now, the icon is really, really bad. OMG so bad. Not only does it depict a blackfaced man and/or the most egregious caricature of black men in our collective memory, but it is using this image to represent all people who would care about racially-inclusive events. "Race" in our culture is almost synonymous with "black", which is a crock. White is a race[1. Actually "White" is not one homogeneous race too, yet that's for advanced students of race issues.] too, yet only things about "coloured" people are considered to have anything to do with race. Worse, this image manages to lump all "minorities" together as if they're a homogeneous group.

A fucking crock that is!

If the icon was funny to someone, would that make the image OK? NO!

If in the privacy of your own home you called your black friend a racial slur and you both thought that wasn't offensive because it was "just in jest", would that make this image OK? NO!

I hope the structure and its relationship to unacceptability is becoming clear.

So that's the most offensive and over-the-top icon explained for the humourless and empathy-impaired. Let's say that image gets 6 out of 5 WTF?!s because it is just completely unacceptable.[2. I almost wrote "beyond the pale" here, but you know what? That's an expression that literally means, "those bloody Irish savages outside the fortified walls of civilisation that we English have carved out of Ireland for our colonists." I think that's a phrase I will have to strike from my lexicon.]

Next up:

Now I think we can all agree that making GenCon accessible is a good thing. That text there in the image is pretty good as far as inclusive intent goes.

I think we can also all agree that the image is really fucking offensive. (Do I really need to explain this? Because I want to move on to the commonalities of structure. OK, moving on.)

So again, the combination of the insensitive insult as expressed by the icon with the positive inclusive intent expressed by the text results in a contradictory pile of steer manure. It makes the image as a whole offensive, and any organisation using it in naïve earnestness would be guilty of being insensitive assholes. (Also a technical term.)

If someone somewhere laughed when they saw this icon, would that make it OK for GenCon to use this image in their schedule? NO!

If you and a buddy regularly called each other "retarded cripple" as a term of endearing affection, would that make an iota of difference in the asshole-itude of GenCon organisers if they chose to use it in their schedule? (Hint: still NO. I mean, really? Do I have to spell that out?)

Let's give this image 4 out of 5 WTF?!s for the sake of argument. Clearly it's not as unbe-fucking-lievably outrageous as the blackface icon (though it's pretty ridiculously bad), and we need some room lower down on the scale for the rest of the images.

Next image:

Is accommodations for GenCon attendees larger than a #6 dress size actually a problem? I don't know, but let's assume for the sake of explaining this satire thoroughly into the ground that there are attendees of GenCon who feel marginalised due to their physical size. Given this possible state of affairs, efforts to make these people feel more welcome and accommodated would be great.

It would be especially great if accommodating such people didn't backhand them by calling them a big fucking whale. Because that's what the icon does. See that tub of lard who can't go a second without shoving something down the gullet? Man, that is a giant radius on that ellipse. Let's all point and laugh!

NO! you insensitive assholes who are actually laughing. You can laugh and point privately (asshole), but that still wouldn't make it OK for GenCon to paste this up on their website.

If you and your Widdle Shnooky-Wookums sweetheart at home are weighty people and decide to affectionately call each other "my giant tub of love-lard" and "my overflowing cup of fatty joy," that's your business. Would your private feelings that it's "just a joke" make it OK for GenCon to actually use this icon on their schedule? NO!

Have we got the pattern clear? Is there any confusion about how this satirical structure works? No?[4. Oh, you answered "Yes?" Either ask for clarification with the honest intent to be educated or fuck off.] Good.

Let's give this image 3 out of 4 WTF?!s.

Now we arrive at the image that GenCon actually used on their schedule:

Let's see what we have here. An expression of inclusive intent in the text of the image? Check.

A term that is used widely as an insult in the icon? Check.

Do I really need to step through this structurally to show why there's a problem with that combination that results in contradictory bullshit?

Sigh. Alright then: Accommodating spouses of gamers at GenCon is a great fucking idea. It sounds like the program is very successful as evidenced by the growing number of attendees signing up for SP.A. activities each GenCon since the program was started. The more people attending GenCon and enjoying their time there, the better! Yay! Cake for everyone!

It would be especially great to have such a program that didn't deliver a backhand slap to the attendees who are actively being welcomed by insulting them and their relationship to their gamer spouse. It would be even better if such a program didn't assume that women are strange, special creatures that need very specific, women-y activities for entertainment, and didn't further assume that… Oh fuck it, I need bullet points to enumerate the assumptions buried in that one single image:

• Gamer are all men
• Women aren't gamers
• Women only like crafty, dancy, stripper-pole-y activities
• There are no male spouses
• There are no gay gamers and spouses
• Non-gamers should have an activities ghetto
• Men universally consider their wives a burden
• All married couples think this joke is funny
• All women think this joke is funny
• All men think this joke is funny
• Everyone thinks this is appropriately professional and respectful
• GenCon is run by insensitive assholes more interested in their own in-jokes than in being fucking professionals in their work
• Women are fair game as the butt of a corporation-wide joke
• Women don't mind being repeatedly insulted by their con schedule so long as the insult is "minor" and some people think it's more funny than insulting (Hint: it's still insulting even if its funny quotient is greater than its insult degree.)

Now, I'd only rate this image 1 or 2 out of 5 WTF?!s, but only because making women the butt of jokes is still considered normal in our society and not very WTF-worthy to most people. Jokes about black people and the disabled were just as common not so many years ago, but we fucking know better now (and those who don't are considered disgusting and vile people).

There are still "fat" jokes everywhere, and as a culture we have a really unhealthy relationship with weight (high and low) and the issues around it. The jokes mask attempts to shame and ostracise people who don't conform to (constantly shifting) ideals of health and beauty that are mostly made up by people who don't actually know what a good ideal of health or beauty is.

We only don't know better when it comes to jokes about women because we're in a time of transition between an era where women were considered domestic labour not worthy of education or regard (or the vote, or working outside the home, or pleasure, or human rights, etcetera ad nauseum.[6. Very much nauseum to think of how poorly half our species has treated the other half for thousands of years and as recently as last century.]), and an era where women are given equal regard and rights to men.

So, y'know, catch the fuck up. If you wouldn't laugh at a black man being called a monkey by a large corporation like GenCon, then you really shouldn't laugh at a large corporation like GenCon calling you or your partner a device of shame and incarceration. (Do you think there are any black men who laugh at monkey-black-man jokes? At all? If there were, would that make it right?)

Conclusions for the short of attention-span

A lot of people consider jokes about women harmless, having been brought up in a culture where it's just normal to hear and makes jokes at the expense of women's dignity. Many women do, even, because they were brought up in that very culture that says making jokes about women is the way to show she's not "stuck up" or "full of herself" or "can't take a joke".

To illustrate that there's really no reason to condone the ball-and-chain icon except due to one's own understandable blindness to a common injustice, it is compared to a structurally identical image that is slightly more obviously inappropriate; then to one that is very obviously inappropriate; then to one that is so very inappropriate that it is undeniable and possibly shocking.

The hope is that the reader can connect the dots with a crayon.

If the reader can't, then isn't it convenient and comfortable (and dare I say, privileged) to live a life that doesn't include questioning one's assumptions such that it might lead to giving up such an immeasurably important thing as a trite and tired joke.

GenCon organisers have been making efforts to accommodate the non-gaming partners of the thousands of gamers that flock to Indianapolis every year. Critical Hits highlights GenCon organisers' efforts, bringing to our attention all the non-gamer activities on the schedule for women[1. Because "of course" women don't game and bring their non-gamer male partners, nor do gay men game and bring their non-gamer male partners, let alone transgendered couples. And yes, if you didn't catch it this article is satire.] in all their varied glory.

Activities such as dancing lessons, fitness classes, yarn and needle crafts, jewelry-making, cooking (for your gamer), the ever-empowering pole dancing lessons, scrapbooking, bellydance, and self-defense are helpfully marked for easy identification with this icon:

Ball and chain! Haha! Those super-smart geeks sure can come up with intelligent and respectful humour when poking gentle fun at the women they purport to love!

This is a great first step for GenCon to make everyone feel valued and welcomed to the convention, but I think GenCon organisers can do better. I propose that GenCon adopt the following icons for appropriate events to make sure that no-one is left out:

Don't you hate it when you get to a table and the chairs are all too small? Or worse, all the tiny chairs are overflowing with immense gobs of geekflesh streaked with Dorito dust?

With this icon the "Big and Tall" gamers would know which games had the capacity to accommodate their corpulent selves comfortably, and the skinny-jeans geeks will know which games to avoid!

This forward-thinking and progressive icon would help the physically and mentally disabled (because that's all one homogeneous group, remember) find games and events that can accommodate their unusual and specific needs.

Normal gamers would no longer have to deal with weirdos in bulky wheelchairs breaking the suspension of disbelief in LARPs, or the awkward and resentful responses to their short series of perfectly well-meaning questions about how a disabled person became disabled.

Everyone wins!

In this post-racial world it's important to constantly highlight and emphasise how minorities are welcome everywhere normal people are. If GenCon organisers adopted this icon, minorities of all colours would be able to quickly and easily identify the games and events that are welcoming of and sensitive to their quaint subcultural customs and non-English languages.

Similarly, people who don't want to get into uncomfortable discussions of race when they're trying to enjoy their escapist fantasy of many lands full of white, muscular men and white, bustin'-out-everywhere women can rest assured that avoiding events with this icon will do the trick.

I for one hope that GenCon will consider these icon suggestions and take them as a celebration of their efforts so far, and as encouragement to further develop their sensitive and inclusive scheduling policies. I think this issue is so important that I missed my Parent and Tots knitting circle to write this article![5. Seriously, I did miss my knitting circle to write this. I must also say that the kids have been remarkably patient with my blogging.]

Last year I sent a slightly snarky email to Paizo in response to their virtual Christmas card mailing, which was a picture of the Pathfinder RPG iconic character Seoni[1. Not that I recognised her as Seoni at the time, not being familiar enough with PFRPG then. Granted, I still wouldn't know if not for that post, and I don't know any other PF iconic's name.] done up as a sexy Santa. As an afterthought I turned the email into a post because hey, why not get double duty out of that text I spent time writing?

Unsurprisingly in retrospect, but completely taking me by surprise at the time, that turned into a huge mess when the post was linked to on the Paizo forums.

I hesitated to write a follow-up post for a long time. When the next Christmas came around I considered writing something but ultimately skipped it just because it still left a foul taste just thinking about it. Even now I'm not really interested in analysing it, but a recent experience trying to explain male privilege to a friend and the resulting sensation of banging my head against a wall reminded me of that post and my undischarged duty to a commentor on it. That I've been reading the excellent Border House Blog that bankuei recently blogged about probably has a lot to do with it too.

Response

When I wrote that post, one of the first comments was from Ravyn of Exchange of Realities, asking that I post a follow-up should Paizo respond to the email. They never did so I never did, but I did (eventually, when my anger with the invaders had cooled) go and read through the entire long Paizo forum thread that discussed my post.

The male privilege and cluelessness about same was predictably rampant, but there was a surprising number of eloquent people arguing my point to the rest of the forumers,[2. roguerouge in this post and cappadocius in this post are particularly fine examples.] which was great to see. Most of them were more gentle and better-written than I was, but that sadly didn't seem to change any more minds than my angry arguing in the comments of my post did.

There were some very disappointing posts in that thread, and the most disappointing were the ones from the Paizo staff. So Ravyn, here's your answer:

LOL.

—Erik Mona, Publisher #

All I have to say since I ordered the Holiday Pin-Up Seoni is I LIKE IT and "pin-up" was in the art order description!

—Sarah Robinson, Art Director #

I don't think that Christmas Seoni is "bad" or sexist or anything of the sort. I think Paizo's done a great job at being open-minded and getting all sorts of genders, races, sexual orientations, beliefs, and all that good stuff out there in a non-discriminatory way. In other words, the only thing I discriminate against is bad writing, I guess.

—James Jacob, Pathfinder Editor-In-Chief #

The only thing to say about Erik Mona's response is that if the head publisher of a company is going to respond at all I would expect more of them. He could have said nothing at all, but he chose to respond and chose that to respond with? It seemed to be much more a response for the sake of the bulk of the forumers—"don't worry, I'm not taking this seriously either"—than for me or any of the forumers who brought up criticism of Paizo's representation of women.

The art director's answer is just tiring. That she asked for it doesn't mean it wasn't sexist. If she'd said, "I asked for a black slave naked except for Rudolph antlers and nose, with a white man's Santa-style boot on her back," that would have been plainly wrong.[4. This is not to compare sexism and racism, which are different yet related in complicated ways. It's an over-the-top example that I would hope the majority agree clearly demonstrates the irrelevance of an art director defending a piece with, "but it's what I asked for!" when the resulting art is inappropriate. Despite that intent, if using that example is offensive in a way that I—in my white privilege—have failed to see, I hope you feel welcome enough to say so and allow me to make amends.] It is the content of the art direction that matters, not whether or not it was asked for or even whether or not the art director happens to be female. Women can absorb and transmit oppressive cultural values just as easily as men can, because having the right bits in the pants doesn't provide magical brain-immunity to the culture that we're soaked in.

James Jacob's response I cared less about and I included it for the completeness of Paizo's response, paltry as it was. (Unlike the others though, he participated in the thread conversation beyond this response.) Still, it's annoyingly self-congratulatory. If the detractors are ignored and you make a point of stating your point of view over theirs, then you're selecting for self-congratulatory feedback. It's entirely possible to have done a great job on diversity and still have a lot of room to improve, and it's so much easier to overlook an area where there's a huge lack of improvement when you simply assert that there's no problem.

And of course, there were Sean K Reynold's self-serving responses in the comments of the original post, but the less said about those, the better.

So that's it.[9. Dammit. I just can't write a short post. I could have been working on my conversion of Shaintar to Burning Wheel.] The people at Paizo don't take concerns about sexism in their art seriously because they think their art is already not sexist.

Edit to add: Now that there have been a few comments in the moderation queue, I can see that this post is going to attract some of the same Champions of Men that the last did. I have only a little bit of interest in arguing with people who don't know—and more to the point, don't care—about the fundamental concepts that a conversation about inequality starts from. If your comment ladles a big helping of male-privilege condescension on top of the cluelessness I'm not going to approve it.

Yes, I'm going to police the comments.[5. Criers of "censorship!" are welcome to educate themselves about freedom of speech on their own time. The short version is: No, I don't have an obligation to give anyone a soapbox here; Yes, you are free to write in your own blog instead.] You might really want to add your opinion to the comments, but opinions saying that there's no problem are pennies a gallon and they get old fast. I'd rather keep the thread welcoming to all, no just the ones who ironically and loudly insist that there's nothing to talk about.[7. There's a quote of Lady Macbeth that applies here.] That said, you're welcome to add vitriolic comment to the original thread, where it would be in fellow company with all the other white men saying that they don't see what the problem is.

Otherwise, I'm happy to converse with people who are genuinely curious and make an effort to be respectful (not to me, but to women and PoC who are in the audience). I'm not setting the bar high—the least indication of having thought about it and being willing to keep thinking about it is all that's necessary.

Back in August of last year ravyn linked to an excellent article on women in gaming in her post about contradicting player expectations for fun and profit, inspired by her own real-world experience of being mistaken as male on the Internet. (I must admit I made the same mistake at one point. For what it's worth I think it's an Internet-culture affliction rather than one specific to RPG blogging, though.)

The article mostly covers how to include convincing female PC and NPCs and how to recruit and make women gamers welcome in a gaming group. It also—almost incidentally while accomplishing that—talks about why women gamers aren't more common and why women often give up on gaming. Unfortunately the original link is dead, but I was pleased to find a copy in the Internet Archive: Saving Throw for Half Cooties: Gaming and the Femininely Advantaged.

It's a great article because the thorny politics are almost absent, and it just focuses on good advice for anyone's game. It's far more accessible (i.e., far less inflammatory) than anything I could write on the subject.

Edit to add: Welcome, readers from the Paizo boards. Flame-free comments are welcome. Some important points to keep in mind to avoid saying clueless things: I understand that you're protective of your iconics, but they're fair game for social criticism. Please don't confuse "exploitive" with "offensive"—they're different words. Having a female friend/being a woman who doesn't see any problem doesn't necessarily mean there's no problem, just that that woman doesn't think there's one. There's a difference between criticising an example of a cultural phenomenon and "speaking for all women"—I'm doing the first, not the latter. A female CEO doesn't give a free pass on exploitation or sexism: see Jenna Jameson or Sarah Palin. For context you might want to read my first post on this blog, White privilege in fantasy fiction and gaming, and consider whether the comment you have in mind will get any traction here.

I made an account at Paizo's online store when I wanted to take a look at their Pathfinder RPG beta, so I'm on their mailing list. I got a promotional email from Paizo yesterday that I was compelled to answer.

Some of you might have gotten the email I'm talking about. It's a "Season's greetings, have a discount coupon" sort of promo email. It's one of those emails that's nearly all image. Since my mail reader doesn't load external images until I say it should (for security reasons), it initially just looked like:

Dear D7: [have a big-ass image]

Minus the editorialised replacement text, of course.

The image is of a big-breasted, skimpily-dressed, White woman fondling an enormous candy-cane with a come-hither look, sitting inside a wreath against a snowy background. (She must be cold. Or maybe she just has DR/fire.) The wreath is topped by "Season's Greetings", and the words "from your friends at Paizo" sit just beneath her coyly-crossed feet and elaborately-impractical costume. Curiously, her ears are hidden so she's of indeterminate species. Maybe they didn't want to be on the wrong side of that all-important elf fetish divide.

Yes, I'm being slightly caustic. Here's the non-caustic email I sent them in reply:

Thank you for the discount coupon and well-wishing. However, I have to take exception to the image. I imagine many of your customers appreciate being shown random cheesecake, but it's not terribly professional or respectful to your female customers. I do hope you had something less exploitive of women for your female customers. Even if so (and especially if not!) this is a good time to stop and consider how this kind of careless skin-selling from a major publisher sets back gamers' attempts to make roleplaying less of a horny-boys' club. FYI, the group I run games for is more than half women.

If none of that made any sense, you're welcome to ask what I'm on about. Part of the problem is that this kind of image is considered normal in the industry, so people don't have much of a handle on what might be problematic about it.

Sincerely, d7

I'm curious what their reply, if any, will be. Paizo is known for this kind of cheesecake and fanservice, and I can only imagine the company culture that must hold sway when that's their public face. I'm not expecting much. If only they'd realise (and care) how hostile to women gamers this kind of thing is.

Being White, I have the dubious privilege to be able to ignore race in my roleplay gaming and my fantasy fiction. It's a dubious privilege because it's one that is impossible to ever fully decline. That's not to say "poor white me boo hoo"—rather, the only moral response is to decline the privilege at every opportunity. The pervasiveness of White privilege is such that I can never catch every instance, and when I do I won't always know what I can do to reject it. The key is staying aware of the taint that filters my culture, looking for the chance to resist, and learning more about the reality that is discarded by those filters.

On that last point, some edifying links.

Pam Noles' essay "shame" is the personal story of a young girl couldn't find herself in her beloved fantasy books, her elation at discovering that Ursula K. Le Guin's character Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea is brown, and the shameful Whitewashing of the book and its racial message in the Hollywood adaptation of the book.

bankuei over at Deeper in the Game writes about the perpetuation of the white assumption in fantasy gaming by publishers and players. He particularly notes the inanity of a genre that has room for elves, wizards, half-dragon vampires, and lighting–throwing god-child alchemists who can spontaneously grow wings, but doesn't have room for any colour of human except White.

Monte Cook takes on the twin themes of race and gender in D&D art. In a genre that is all about imagining a diverse palette of possibilities, it is particularly odd that every Strapping Young Swordslinger produced by publishers is as White as bleached cotton. (And male to boot.) Monte gives the example of Regdar (an iconic character in 3rd Edition D&D): he was shoe-horned into the books at the last minute by a marketing team who assumed their target audience was male and White and who feared alienating their "core" market of male White gamers if they didn't have a dominantly-raced and -gendered character for the game's launch. Of course, that's not how it was understood at the time, but that's how racism and sexism works: "it's not biased, that's just how the world is". That attitude keeps the world seeming that way. That the design team pushed strongly for diverse art that didn't include the ever present White Male Fighter is great, despite the sabotage.

And finally, keeping this bingo card handy when engaging with race issues is probably a good way to red-flag all the ways in which we've been conditioned to perpetuate and protect White privilege. There were more than a few squares to which my reaction was to say "but that's justified!", only to realise that it was a perfect example of how otherwise good-intentioned people like me participate in the maintenance of racial imbalance.

How do I apply this to my gaming? To be honest, I don't. I'm still trying to figure out how to disrupt the White assumption in my own gaming without it being a naïve effort that ends up backfiring. I've tried playing a brown-skinned man before, but I didn't know what to do with that character detail. Playing it up would have been as bad as Hollywood's magical negro. As it was, it just sat on the character sheet and there was never a moment in the game where it entered into the narrative as a "not a big deal" detail.

As a GM I'm responsible for portraying entire cultures and worlds, and it's hard to overturn the "everyone is white" default without either being ham-fisted about it or Orientalising a culture. One way of overturning the invisibility of Whiteness (part of how it establishes itself as the default) that I've considered is just to describe the skin colour of all my characters regardless of whether they are the invisible White or a marked Other. The problem there is how to describe White characters then: do I just say White? What about actual white skin that a moon elf has? The White race isn't even homogeneous, since it's a modern construction for political and power reasons: real White skin colours range from pale pink, to tan, to olive, to yellow, and more I'm sure I'm missing.

What do you think about portrayals of race in your shared fiction?