On Being a Girl...and a Gamer. (part two)
DISCLAIMER: (while some examples come from real life, none of them are intended to suggest people are 'doin' it wrong.' They are purely my observations and tinted by my perceptions and all of that. PS: If these things are bothering you in your group? Speak up. Most folk are reasonable.)
Here's one that bugs me (and again, my experience, and certainly there is only a small percentage of the men in my gaming life that do it) but why is it that women aren't expected to know how the game works? As if they didn't buy games and learn the rules?
I'm not talking about guys accepting the guy's knowledge ("Spades are high!") over the woman protesting ("Um, PTA... hearts anyone?") because that's against the spirit of this commentary. But...
If you want a good example of mansplainin', it's in RPGs. You know, I actually design my own. Like everyone (male OR female), there may be things I don't "get" intuitively - there's little to no standardization of language - heck, some games require you to know a lot about gaming before you even pick them up...which is all well and good! And when it comes to the "storygaming" and the idea of having to make my own narration, I'm still a little slow... but that doesn't mean I can't decipher, say, THAC0.
(My worst "slow" habit I think is that I want the approval of the GM before I go anywhere "weird." This means sometimes I don't pick up the reins because I'm not sure how to stop once you get me galloping...)
This is actually a place I feel sorry for guys, because, you know, as a woman, I can ask for directions. [snort, rolls eyes] And I will - asking for assistance is not the same thing as needing to be told how to play. It may just be a matter of sorting out the boundaries.
Boundaries, of course, being a feminine conceit. [snort] [tease]
Another funny gender disparity I've found is the, "Tell me about your character," trope. See, when I get enthused when I've found another gamer, in my experience 100% of the time the guy will start telling me about his character. The woman will tell me about the game, and only when I express specific interest do I get to hear all about who she's playing. That 100% is not a typo or a generalization, by the way: that's a, "Every Time Up To Current," kind of ratio.
The other side of this is that men are more likely to tell women about their characters like she cares. (Lucky for you, I do, but that's because I'm weird, not because of the boobies.)
So, that's four things off the top of my head that I don't see highlighted enough in the discussions. I don't want anyone thinking I don't take seriously the dangerous and dysfunction that happens with other social expectations and details when men and women get together in the potentially intimate atmosphere of gaming, just that I did have the realization that outside all the oogly stuff, I guess it DOES make a difference.