Diversity Representation in MU*ing

[Ganymede]

@ZombieGenesis said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

People cry about being inclusive but, in the end, I think most people in this hobby are happier just to sit back, mock, and feel generally superior to those around them.

This is how I feel every time I hear someone say that "the vast majority of lesbian PCs are being played by male sexpests." If people want to judge me, fine, but the fact that I enjoy playing female, not-heterosexual PCs is no one's business but my own.

If I am playing a caricature, call me out, but do not presume to tell me what my motivations are.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

This whole thing confuses the hell out of me. Not the 'it's frustrating to see my gender and orientation being used as fetish fodder' -- I definitely get that. What I don't get is how many people play their sexual whatever first and their character second. Don't want to be perceived as a porn trope? Don't make sexuality the only thing your character advertises in order to invite others to interact with the character.

[Ganymede]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Don't make sexuality the only thing your character advertises in order to invite others to interact with the character.

Well, exactly.

Maybe this is why I don't think anyone's ever complained about my PCs' sexuality.

[mietze]

I think people need to be careful about what they assume another player's attraction RL is,tbh. Especially now.

I am bi, though I've been married to a man for many years. But I often find that I have dated and been in more relationships with women than the person who is most vocal about policing how I played a character of mine that was pretty much only interested in women. Which is fine? Nobody needs to have experience to identify who you're attracted to. But you cannot also exclude other people and their experience just because it is not as pure or different than yours.

I hate to break it to people but the LGBTQ community and how/if they date and live their lives are not a monolith, just like the straight community. I really with we could do away with the purity tests. I do think it is human nature for people to be extremely vicious with their own community, especially online, and I think unfortunately mushing triggers a lot more online type of behaviors in that regard than not.

[reversed]

@Ganymede said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Don't make sexuality the only thing your character advertises in order to invite others to interact with the character.

Well, exactly.

Maybe this is why I don't think anyone's ever complained about my PCs' sexuality.

I've definitely heard complaints about how my bisexual character was clearly only around to do lesbian TS stuff because I wasn't receptive to the advances of a male player I had no interest in pursuing anything with.

Of course, I heard about these complaints second hand, because they weren't said to my face. Of course.

[SparklesTheClown]

Definitely 100% I think it's good not to assume what people are. I guess I just felt like "well of course this person is (x) if they're playing like this". But I guess I just never really challenged that assumption with any alternatives.

For virtually my entire internet existence, if I don't say anything to the contrary, people will 100% assume and I and everyone else on the internet is white. It's a part of what explicitly keeps me from trying to explore certain things as a black character that ironically white people might find problematic if they don't contextually understand what I'm trying to do.

Something like this might be like the movie Attack the Block, where John Boyega and his friends are delinquents from the projects starting trouble and such. But the point of the movie is to subvert that they're ultimately kids who are the product of their environment, and when presented with the opportunity to do good and be more than that, they will.

Obviously it might be a simplistic interpretation on my part, but I think a narrative like that is hard to do in a MUSH in the sense that it requires you to dive somewhat into problematic trope in order to build to the positive aspect, and OOCly it just feels like there's always that hump of, like, this is a white environment where I have to be very careful about going too deep lore black or they'll think I'm being problematic, am secretly a white person, or any other number of things that keep me from fully expressing myself.

Of course it could all be all in my head, but people definitely 100% assume that everyone else is white usually. So these just feel like things I have to take into consideration. And I can't always depend on the idea that people will understand or even believe my intent, which I think is something that every MUSHer has experience with.

[Ganymede]

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Of course it could all be all in my head ...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes.

There's two reasons. First, I believe that games seem a lot more inclusive and understanding than even ten years ago. I think that the hobby is mostly populated by marginalized players who at least try to sympathize with marginalized characters. Even the population of this forum seems to have swung away from the machismo of shitposting in recent years, whether by design or not.

Second, even if otherwise, fuck what other people think. You are black, and this is who you are, so you go ahead and you portray what you believe a black character ought to be like. You probably know better than non-black players what this means, even if it might seem to them to be an offensive trope. You have every right to be irritated when you see the same simultaneously. There's nothing wrong with this.

Please don't let the narrow-mindedness of others affect you.

[Prototart]

My apologies. #NotAllFakeLesbians

[saosmash]

Yeah uh I've definitely heard assertions that I am playing some kind of gay fetish character and I found them pretty depressing considering I haven't even had any sex on the character in yeeaaars.

It definitely happens that players do this and that there are many awful fetish caricatures out there -- but it also happens that it is weaponized as a critique, particularly against players who aren't doing what you want, I guess.

[mietze]

It does not matter if you RP something you've actually lived, there is almost always going to be someone happy to lecture you about how unrealistic it is. Sometimes its because their own experience is different, sometimes they just feel extremely empowered by their PhD in Wikipedia.

I am trying to think of a single type of play where this hasn't happened, and I cant really name one, since people will argue to death over differently interpreted minutiae in pure fantasy worlds, or need to tie it into the same RL histories.

I think if someone's RP is just terrible, it's more likely people will just avoid them. If someone takes it upon themselves to go all out lecture/"I shall educate you how to RP this right" mode without even asking questions or finding out more (and especially if they seek to do it publicly first) tbh most of the time at least they're full of shit. I can think of a few exceptions but they're very rare in what I have seen.

[surreality]

@mietze said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

If someone takes it upon themselves to go all out lecture/"I shall educate you how to RP this right" mode without even asking questions or finding out more (and especially if they seek to do it publicly first) tbh most of the time at least they're full of shit.

Some of these folks may know the subject, but that's independent of this behavior. This behavior -- as described, the 'I'm going to complain about this other person's RPing their character 'wrong' loudly in front of the other players' bit -- is not about whether they're doing it right or wrong. It's about elevating themselves and putting the other person down.

[SparklesTheClown]

@Ganymede You're right, really. I don't know why I've always had trouble getting beyond this and doing what I want.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@reversed said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I've definitely heard complaints about how my bisexual character was clearly only around to do lesbian TS stuff because I wasn't receptive to the advances of a male player I had no interest in pursuing anything with.

Of course, I heard about these complaints second hand, because they weren't said to my face. Of course.

Think we've all run into toxic people like that. And if it's not their sexuality it's their character faction, the colour of the shoes, or something else. Some people will find an excuse to be a dick no matter what.

Have had same experience a couple of times, playing a straight white male and getting accused only being after teh gayz because saying no to some female. Toxic people will toxic.

[mietze]

I can think of many examples right now of admittedly white players policing how black and brown PCs were being RPed as well as their back stories, while not realizing that the players of those characters were brown or black. This is why I think people should be careful about assumptions, because even do-gooder "ally" people can slip into the very old cultural habit about stepping in to "correct" other people without bothering to learn more about that person, and thet tend to assume the unseen person is also white. And then also sadly mostly digging in their heels when they in turn are called out on that.

[surreality]

@mietze I knew someone on Shang who was Not A White Dude, but would play characters a lot of us would probably find problematic. He used to say one of them especially was his 'activist white girl detector' because it lured in all the angry pages, and almost universally, from white females flipping out on the part of groups they were not in (but he was). It was never played, it just existed to idle, and accumulated pages (of pages).

[Jeshin]

One person cannot speak for all of their tribe.

One person not of the tribe can take offense for all of a tribe.

Hm...

[SparklesTheClown]

The worst thing I ever saw was on Shang, I think I mentioned it here before, where years ago this dude walked into the square and started speaking in the most outrageous way possible, like something you'd see out of a racist meme comic, and was dropping N bombs all around. It was absolutely wild. My brain felt as assaulted as when I attempted to watch Revenge of the Fallen.

[headery]

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

(remember when Firan had a rule against male players playing female prostitutes? that for sure wasn't out of respect for RL sex workers, it was a homophobic 'I don't want to accidentally TS a dude!')

I keep hearing the craziest shit about this place and am still surprised Every. Single. Time

[Pacha]

@headery

I have totally been accused of trying to ensnare poor innocent straight boys by my wily homosexual ways when I have played female PCs in the past. It is one of the reasons I very seldom do any more.

[mietze]

One of the things I like about MUing these days is that there seems to be a really remarkable decline in people who are super freaked out by players RPing a character not of their gender, at least since I first started. I used to see people (especially female players) tell others that they were not the same gender as their PC almost fearfully, as if they expected to lose the RP with those they'd "deceived". I haven't really had that kind of conversation in a good 10 years now, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed it's on the way out. And I've not heard anyone in many years say that they would never RP with a PC who had a player of the opposite gender, hell not even if it involved TS. I'm sure it still happens though.