James Desborough, Gamers, and Rape

[roseembolism]

Warning: this post contains a lot of triggering concepts, such as rape.

RPG writer James Desborough has caused a controversy that brings up issues of sexism, gaming culture, and censorship. Desborough, author of works such as The Slayers Guide to Female Gamers (review here), Nymphology (review here), and The-Quintessential-Temptress, posted a blog

Comments

[heron61]

More importantly both Desborough's work and the ongoing rape threats against Malyn Cooper points out that the problem with sexism in rpgs is even worse than it commonly is thought to be.

At least in terms of the threats, from what I've seen with the sort of treatment women in forums ranging from various spects of geek culture to politics face when they make remotely controversial public on-line posts, it sadly and horrifyingly looks like the rpg community is no better and no worse than most of the rest of the internet.

What I don't understand is who the hell all these pathetic nutcases that write rape threats and similar nonses are. I read comments of the "make me a sandwich" variety and assume they must have been born before the 1960s and learned very little since then, and anonymous rape threats baffle as well as sicken me. Stats on whether or not these people are mostly or exclusively the 4-7% of men who commit most rapes would be interesting.

As a side note, although there's no evidence that Desborough wrote any of the rape threats, Ethan Skemp (one of the nicest and most creative people I've ever worked for) posted on one of the RPG.net threads exerpts of public discussions between him and Desborough, where Desborough responded to Ethan's disagreement with his ideas by pretty much directly saying that Ethan was a self-emasculated traitor to his gender. Definitely a deeply messed up and creepy individual.

In any case, I'm hoping that this proves to a a turning point like racefail was in SF fandom, where a moderate number of people eventually get a clue. I'm also impressed at how well the RPG.net mods are dealing with this mess.

[roseembolism]

I'm amazed that the rpg.net mods didn't close the whole thread down. On the other hand, there's people making "Banned from rpg.net t-shirts.

I do like to hope some progress has been made when all is said and done, that more creators will actually think about what they're doing. But this, and from recent threads on depictions of women in rpgs, there's a large contingent of hard-core sexists who will violently resist any suggestion of change.

[heron61]

But this, and from recent threads on depictions of women in rpgs, there's a large contingent of hard-core sexists who will violently resist any suggestion of change.

Very true, but I think it's well worth keeping in mind that this isn't restricted to gamers or even geeks, it's our whole damn culture (at least in the US, I haven't lived long enough outside of it to say anything useful about the rest of the planet).