Sexism in Wargaming.

I was going to start this blog with the intent to write battle reports and show photos of my miniatures.  I'm not the best gamer or painter out there but I have loads fun and I thought my friends might be interested.

Instead I'm going to start with something a bit more nasty and serious - the issue of sexism in wargaming.  Names have not been changed to protect the identities of the people involved because I believe if you say shit like this you get to wear it.  I was reading the Infinity Australia facebook page when I saw the following picture:

This guy's name is Tim Johnson.  I don't know Tim or the woman in this photo.  Apparently her name is Tabitha and Tim just met her, and took this photo, I'm assuming because she's wearing a really awesome Neoterran Bolt costume to the convention.  That's really awesome.  They both look like they're having a great day.

Immediately Colin Clarke made a joke about Tim hiding something behind his bag.  Things were getting a bit suggestive so I asked them to stop - you shouldn't make comments about that kind of thing, Tabitha is a human being who put a lot of skill and effort into making her amazing costume and deserves a bit of respect.  And straight away it turns to shit.

 

  

At this point all the above comments were deleted from the conversation.

 

 

After this the comments mostly became about the costume and how awesome it is.  Tabitha, if you're reading this I'm very sorry,  it's not my intent to humiliate you with this post (your costume was amazing) but I don't want to stay silent on this kind of thing.  My girlfriend won't go into my local gaming club because of talk like this, and that's not OK.

Not all people that play wargames are like this, lots of them are really nice people, but as long as people like Colin Clarke think that they can harass people and get away with it, or people like Wes Graham think cosplayers want to be objectified, or people like Sheriff LoBoe think harassment is funny, or people like Gavin Bateman put down people that stand up for human rights and decency, then we're going to see this same thing over and over again.

Edit:  The saga continues!  After a few hours the conversation picked up again...

The cut-off comment by Lone Pathfinder says: Steven,I applaud your stance. But I know Colin and a lot of others here and none of them are in any way sexist. Not in a malicious sense and not even in a subconscious sense. So no one disagrees with your preaching. You now need to find another audience to preach to, further comments here from you are superfluous and wasted.

We're not in a perfect world and the slight innuendoes have been deleted and apologies have been made. Everyone has suffered bad experiences and we don't wish them on others, so you can leave it behind you know with the knowledge that you and your partner are not alone with your experiences.