How should IC discrimination be handled?

[surreality]

@rebekahse said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Games set in crappy/oppressive worlds have flourished before, but it seems like there was some seismic shift over the last few years where everyone got worried they'd be labeled some sort of '-ist' and now everything's sanitized and pretty boring. People don't seem to leap to OOC accusations of the player behind a character being a murderer when that character kills a bunch of people, and I'm confused why we seem to have decided that's self-evident but a character being a sexist or a racist is legitimate cause for OOC concern.

I think this is well put.

The unfortunate thing is, it isn't a completely unreasonable fear -- or, rather, it doesn't seem to be an unreasonable fear at all any more.

There's more than a few instances around the board in recent months in which it's been said outright that anyone wanting to play in a setting like this, or play a character with any of these traits, is somehow celebrating these traits, getting off on them, or that it's a reflection their real world views in some fashion.

I never actually thought I'd see that happen, but it seems to be surprisingly widespread. Sometimes these views are expressed very vocally and aggressively, which may make them seem more common than they actually are -- the loudest voices in the room principle at work, more or less -- but it appears to be a prevailing view.

Normally, I'm pretty 'live and let live' about these things. Games can allow this, disallow this, or strike some balance in between, and so far as I'm concerned, that's all well and good; people will naturally migrate to the games and settings that support their preferred play style and comfort zone, and everybody's happy. To me, that's just common sense, live and let live, etc. and it should be the end of it.

It's hard for that to be the end of it, though, when there are endless discussions about whether something is acceptable subject matter period, anywhere, ever, for any reason, even among players interested in exploring those themes peaceably and consentually amongst themselves in a way that's very vocally damning of the actual players/people behind the screen as being necessarily horribly flawed people for considering these themes, settings, or character concepts.

ETA: It comes back to the fundamental assumption that all games should cater to all players, essentially. They shouldn't, in my view. Players should seek out the games that support the fun they want to have, whatever form that fun takes.

[Collective]

@sunny Yep. Like I called it earlier, it's a 'fun tax'.

If two people want to play vampires or space elves or something, one of them has to put up with real world prejudices because, well, in a world with supernatural horrors, multiple sentient species and other fantasy/SF weirdness it just breaks immersion to believe that people might not be harassed or hated because they aren't straight white dudes.

Because, um, reasons.

[rebekahse]

@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

ETA: Like, why does my PC have to suffer the same crap I do IRL for somebody else to be having fun?

Verisimilitude?

I dunno. I'm subject to sexism IRL, and it doesn't bother me when it makes an appearance in pretendy funtimes. Its absence were it would be realistic to have it strikes me as false, if anything.

[Thenomain]

@rebekahse

As a dreaded Cis White Male, I think I’m seeing people start to find a balanced medium between changes we must make in society (and are), and our ability to accept that not everyone’s is going to have the same reaction to it. You wouldn’t be the first woman (or person of color? person who has to fight micro aggressions) I’ve heard this week who’s said that they can handle it on their own terms, and gaming is mostly our own terms.

That’s not really why I’m posting, but it’s tied into it.

One of the things I love about Victorianna, the RPG, is that the introduction has a hilited sidebar that says, paraphrased, the following:

Your players are going to bring in modern social sensibilities. Let them. The characters will be outcasts to society in many aspects, and that is one of the challenges of all adventurers of this era.

They baked it into the game and theme. It helps that the world is only similar to our Earth.

But being not even as accurate as a Netflix costume drama is why I always look at any period game with suspicion.

[faraday]

@thenomain said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

But being not even as accurate as a Netflix costume drama is why I always look at any period game with suspicion.

I think that touches on an interesting point though.

Very few would bat an eye at a Netflix period drama where <insert historically mistreated group here> was mistreated. But a lot would bat an eye at one where the protagonist was going around mistreating people, or spent the entire show being mistreated.

We generally want to see our protagonist battling evil, or overcoming their obstacles to succeed against the odds. That works just dandy in books, movies and TV shows.

The problem on a MUSH, IMHO, isn't the departure from historical norms in and of itself, it's the scale on which it's done. Instead of one protagonist being "the special one", you've now got a whole town full of them.

[Sunny]

@rebekahse I'm glad it doesn't bother you. It does bother other people. There are still games in which people choose to include -isms, so why are games that have actively been designed to not have them a problem?

[surreality]

I don't think there's a problem with games that choose to exclude them.

I don't think there's a problem with games that choose to include them.

I think there is a problem when members of the community insist that all games must be one of these things or the other, and the other alternative is unacceptable.

I think there is a problem when members of the community insist that players engaging in themes without these elements are 'thin-skinned fantasists' or 'whiny children who want to live in bubble-wrap world'.

I think there is a problem when members of the community insist that players engaging in themes with these elements are 'glorifying bigotry' or 'must be into that RL, too'.

This is because both of the above attitudes are complete and utter nonsense, and we should all be smarter and more mature than (either of the) that(s).

@faraday I don't tend to see a character on a MUX as a protagonist or antagonist, but instead as parts of an ensemble cast -- as in, not one with stars and supporting roles, but one in which everyone is part of a whole, with the same (OOC) default importance to the story. How much they end up in the spotlight tends to be a factor of how much initiative they take to end up there. (This doesn't mean there's nothing special about them any more, it's that it's a group of special individuals each special in their own unique way.)

I try to steer clear of the hero|villain/protagonist|antagonist dichotomy in general, since the hero to one is the villain to the next, and so on, and not only in the sense of the villain who doesn't realize his plan to better mankind is monstrous or the reluctant anti-hero sort of way. More in that most characters, like most people, tend to be most interesting when they have strengths and flaws of ideals, personality, identity, morality, etc.

In a sense, I don't see allowing these types as a form of 'allowing antagonist PCs' -- I don't think that's what you're suggesting, either, really -- but as 'everybody on grid's got a grey soul, and some are brighter or darker a grey than others at different times and in different circumstances'.

[Ganymede]

@surreality

You may dodge the dichotomy, but that doesn't mean that others do.

I find the entire "-ism" thing to be trite. It isn't novel; it isn't edgy; it isn't interesting. If someone picks "racist" just to have an antagonistic side to them, that's like a girlfriend-in-the-fridge protagonist motivation to me. It's been done, and, frankly, it's kind of boring.

If someone's character is racist or sexist as a side-note or a background bit, then there's no reason why it can't be overlooked or ignored, or made to be just as aspect, not a center-piece. And if a character aspect is not a center-piece, then it can be ignored in interpretation.

Still, people fall back on time-enduring tropes because there's a reason they survive: they are simple, over-valued, and as American as apple pie.

[insomniac7809]

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@rebekahse said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I'm confused why we seem to have decided that's self-evident but a character being a sexist or a racist is legitimate cause for OOC concern.
It's way easier to be triggered by something that has actually happened to you or someone you know. But how does that relate to gaming when that's just an IC point of view not shared by players? Well, that's what this thread is about.

Well, ideally it's an IC view not shared by players. But we've all seen people who play creepers, who use the IC screen to try to legitimize creeping on women across the screen. Right?

There are some people who don't want to see hateful, hurtful, ugly words targeting people like them used during their pretendy funtimes. There are some people who want to use those words and use the character as a shield. There are some people who just think the barrier for proving they aren't in the second group needs to be higher than logging in from the other side of the planet and apping a character.

I do see a pretty big gap between hating shav'arvani or the goddamn metahumans vs. insisting that using the n-word as a comma is just historically accurate, guys.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

The problem on a MUSH, IMHO, isn't the departure from historical norms in and of itself, it's the scale on which it's done. Instead of one protagonist being "the special one", you've now got a whole town full of them.

This is why I wanted to hilite Victorianna. It has come up with an excuse to allow the players to be Special Snowflakes in a world that does not well appreciate them, yet needs them.

And this is, to me, the perfect D&D-based world. Adventurers are reviled as being lower-class, as being basically serial killers and thieves with just enough conscience to be let into the outskirts of town because they're necessary, they're needed, like mercenaries and libertines but not quite as stable nor as organized.

Rat Queens is a comic that speaks to my D&D heart.

[Arkandel]

I don't want to necessarily argue this applies to us, but here's a passage from Fahrenheit 451 I came across on a book subreddit.

"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals.""

What do you think?

[Collective]

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

What do you think?

I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm tired of shutting up and taking it while straight people, no matter how revered or well-meaning, find reasons why it's cool to call me a fag.

And yes, I know my characters are not me. But I also don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask why the 'right' to be vile and hurtful to other people is so much more important than anyone else feeling welcome in a given environment. Because those words hit the players with the same force they hit the characters sometimes.

And yes, some queer person will be along in a minute to tell you it's okay. They don't mind. Good for them. I do. And despite what people want to say, that's not actually unreasonable.

I mean, I get it, free speech uber alles and all that. But while I'm sure people will jump in to tell me they are the ones who are the exception to the rule, I've never seen an Internet free speech warrior out protesting 'Free Speech Zones' or actual government censorship or anything like that.

They all want to fight for that simple right to call me a fag online, though.

I'm not ascribing any attitudes or attributes to them in real life. I don't know them. But I do know I wonder why this particular fight is so important and so enduring and why it needs to always be fought at somebody else's expense.

[surreality]

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

You may dodge the dichotomy, but that doesn't mean that others do.

I don't dodge it. It's not 'this is an inconvenient thing I'm going to ignore because it doesn't suit my paradigm'. I think it's absurd in its entirety, so I reject it in full.

...just like I'd reject a character that was so two-dimensional that an -ism (or collection of -isms) was their sole defining trait without hesitation. I'd do the same with 'is a marine' or 'is an artist' or 'wants to avenge their spouse's murder' or any number of other things that lacked any depth or nuance beyond that one trait or motivation -- and app staff should really not hesitate to do this.

Essentially, I don't think this is some unique issue that requires that dichotomy to exist, I think this is the same 'two-dimensional/one trick pony problem' we are all well familiar with manifesting in the form of a 'trick' that has the potential to be substantially more problematic and upsetting than some of the other tricks that make the rounds.

I don't believe in protagonists or antagonists as viable concepts on a MU*, period, regardless of any -ism either may or may not possess. They don't work outside of short-term NPCs, because a game is necessarily an ensemble cast.

A game isn't 'Iron Man 2', it's 'The Avengers'.
It isn't 'Misery', it's 'American Horror Story'.

It may contain any number of subplots in which individuals take on a protagonist or antagonist role, the protagonist in one may be the antagonist in the next, or each character in that subplot may consider themselves the protagonist, even if they are acting in direct opposition to one another. This third scenario is the most common on a game.

If someone's character is racist or sexist as a side-note or a background bit, then there's no reason why it can't be overlooked or ignored, or made to be just as aspect, not a center-piece. And if a character aspect is not a center-piece, then it can be ignored in interpretation.

(What you're describing relates directly to my preferred approach to this subject, but considering how many people screamed about that to high heaven the last time I brought it up like it was the actual end of the world, I'm not about to do it again.)

And this is the predominant fashion in which it exists: as an aspect or flaw, not centerpiece. Even if you are looking at most actual antagonist characters that have an -ism as a primary motivation for the character, it isn't the -ism that's the overtly antagonistic behavior, it's what that -ism motivates the character to do.

Still, people fall back on time-enduring tropes because there's a reason they survive: they are simple, over-valued, and as American as apple pie.

None of these things are remotely something that is a uniquely or originally American phenomena, c'mon now, that's more than a little ridiculous to even suggest. They're world-wide human bullshit that did not suddenly emerge out of nowhere when the Declaration of Independence was signed. They existed long before it and they exist all over the world throughout all of human history. Does that make them cool or OK? Obviously not, but come on. If it was that simple, people could just set a game in Victorian London or Ancient Rome and voila, utopia at last!

@insomniac7809 said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Well, ideally it's an IC view not shared by players. But we've all seen people who play creepers, who use the IC screen to try to legitimize creeping on women across the screen. Right?

Rarely do these players play something 'creepy'. They play something they think is going to appeal to their target audience, and then they start working the creepy bullshit in, like turning up the heat on a frog in a pot until it's boiling.

The ones who actually go there -- the Rex/Ashur/Sovereigns -- are pretty much universally unwelcome in the community on games run by anyone with even half a lick of sense. Similarly, anyone espousing hateful or predatory views OOC tends to get bounced these days with impressive speed.

This is the first answer to resolution on this issue, no matter what 'allow', 'disallow', 'allow with consent amongst consenting players', 'some other option' approach any game environment takes on the IC content on the game: these things must have no place whatsoever in the OOC environment of the game, and that line must be held consistently, firmly, promptly, and without wishy washy hesitation about not wanting to deal with conflict by the game's administration.

There are some people who don't want to see hateful, hurtful, ugly words targeting people like them used during their pretendy funtimes.

Which is reasonable.

The only thing I'd say here is that it's somewhat reductive to suggest that the only manifestation this is likely to have would be the use of slurs being slung around. There's a lot more that can happen that's pretty horrible, too, obviously. Mostly, this is a case of 'limiting language is not going to solve the issue' and it's not going to stop people from encountering issues.

You can also run into a completely non-sexist character that spouts off, "Son of a bitch!" or "Motherfucker!" when they hit their thumb with a hammer who'd get slapped by a policy with this kind of focus -- I'm a woman RL and I absolutely do this RL (my poor thumbs, metalwork is seriously not for me, y'all) -- while the sexist character that tells their female employee, "I don't think a woman is suitable for that promotion. Too emotional. Sorry, dear. Could you make sure to get me a fresh coffee on your way out?" would slide by. Not ideal.

There are some people who want to use those words and use the character as a shield.

Which is true, but should not be assumed as the default. Really. This is actually inappropriate. This is fundamentally no different than assuming any other trait or action a character demonstrates is indicative of the player identity, motivation, and integrity.

This same logic has been applied in the past to claim absurdities, 'They were playing a woman, they're not a woman, they are therefore a deceptive monster trying to make me be homosexual RL!'

Sounds opposite or different? It isn't. It's just a different permutation of the problem of making assumptions about a player based on the character, and one way it can go profoundly wrong in hurtful ways, when no one is actually doing anything remotely wrong or improper at all. The 'character gender' attitude described above exists in tiny pockets today, but it was the norm not so long ago. We have grown as a community enough to recognize that it was foolish and damaging.

There are some people who just think the barrier for proving they aren't in the second group needs to be higher than logging in from the other side of the planet and apping a character.

I have never seen a reasonable 'purity test' proposed. (I am literally cringing typing 'purity test' because I find this premise so awful, but there's no question this is what this amounts to.)

I have seen consistent insistences that the only actual 'purity test' possible that is valid is: don't play anything like this in the first place. And that's bullshit.

The reasonable purity test is that the player adheres to the letter and spirit of the 'law'/policy on the game in regard to bigoted behavior, whatever that may be. (Again, IMO, the only reasonable policy is: no, bigotry is not OK OOC on any level, period, the end.)

I do see a pretty big gap between hating shav'arvani or the goddamn metahumans vs. insisting that using the n-word as a comma is just historically accurate, guys.

And here's the problem again: those are not the only possibilities. The longer we keep characterizing people with a different perspective as one of these extremes, actual solutions are not possible because understanding and even comprehension of another's view is impossible. Reductionist thinking like this ultimately only serves to reduce the chances of any positive or productive outcome, because most of the people in the community exist within that very gap which has effectively been rendered null.

[Kanye Qwest]

@collective As I tell people, these games are ALL fantasy, and there's no reason in a fantasy that you have to have anything. Use your creative brain, and it's easy to come up with societies and chains of events that lead to situations other than the 'real' historical and modern ones from our world.

[surreality]

@kanye-qwest This is why, no matter how much you and I may not get along personally, I am 100% behind and in support of, and respect the work you have put into, the game world you created. It is absolutely and completely the kind of setting a lot of people clearly very much want, and appreciate for being the way it is. Personal bullshit aside, that is an objectively good thing.

I just don't think it's the only kind of game or setting that should be allowed to exist, or that people creating worlds, or characters, that are not constructed that way should by default be shamed, insulted, or assumed to be horrible people, because that is an objectively bad thing.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I don't dodge it.

Succinctly, I know. I think you misread my comment. It was calculated to concur with you, on almost all accounts.

You clearly recognize that, between two ends of a binary construct, there's a whole swath of space to exist in. What I'm saying is that others may not agree or recognize this, so they fall onto the tropes we're lamenting. And some people who do* recognize the other ground still enjoy playing concepts that hang off of the ends.

[surreality]

@ganymede Gotcha -- I definitely misread then. Sorry about that! (Show prep = brain scramble, and I try to shut up then normally, but... FAIL!)

I don't actually know how to deal with the 'argue the extremes alone' problem at this juncture, since it is essentially a duel between strawmen that insults the majority of sensible, respectful individuals by its very existence (sometimes, in both directions at once). This isn't the only subject it arises in, but ugh, does it get ugly in this one.

I mean, we already have answers for the actual extremes:

• The people who can simply not accept these things existing in any form in a setting can play on a place that doesn't allow them, or allows only fantastical forms of these issues (fantasy, space aliens, etc.) if they're only comfortable with non-real-world forms.

• The people who are genuinely bad actors (and are never so subtle or hard to spot as they assume they are; I've never seen one of these players not out their bigotry on channels, OOC rooms, or in conversations that get reported to staff) who want to indulge in actual OOC bigotry behind a character-shaped mask of plausible deniability should be shown the door promptly.

It's the rest of us that need answers, and they're hard to come to if 'if you accept this at all, you just want to demean women RL and call people offensive slurs right and left' or 'you just want the world rewritten to bubble wrap your personal sensibilities and everyone is sensitive to something' are the only positions people recognize as participants in the discussion.

[faraday]

@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I don't believe in protagonists or antagonists as viable concepts on a MU*, period, regardless of any -ism either may or may not possess. They don't work outside of short-term NPCs, because a game is necessarily an ensemble cast.
A game isn't 'Iron Man 2', it's 'The Avengers'.

I think we're just using different terms for the same thing. Yes, a MU is an ensemble cast with many protagonists, plural. By this I'm using the definition "main character" - in contrast to "supporting character". Most MUSHers want to be one of the heroes, not one of the extras.

My point was that in mainstream fiction/TV/movies/etc. the "main characters" aren't usually the ones spouting racial slurs, unless they're the bad guy or in the midst of a rehabilitation arc. They're also not the ones locked into oppression, unless they're in the middle of a 'bust free from the oppression' arc.

Given that as the cultural norm, it surprises me that people expect MU characters to really be any different. There are just more of them in any particular story than even in the biggest ensemble cast.

[Arkandel]

@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

It's the rest of us that need answers, and they're hard to come to if 'if you accept this at all, you just want to demean women RL and call people offensive slurs right and left' or 'you just want the world rewritten to bubble wrap your personal sensibilities and everyone is sensitive to something' are the only positions people recognize as participants in the discussion.

If this thread has a point at all it is to at least allow the conversation to be had, and see what - if any - restraints are sufficient to both allow for some interesting depictions of real world issues while not making the same setting essentially unplayable for those who have faced a form of discrimination in their own real lives.

I am not even sure if it's fair to call for understanding from both 'sides' of this (to the extent there are sides). Some of us simply happen to be on the more privileged side of the social fence, and that's a difficult signal to override.

[surreality]

@faraday I think, realistically speaking, the storylines you're describing are the most likely by far, and anything else would be an outlier at best.

You do end up with a lot of exceptions, though, that are interesting characters in their own right. The Walking Dead has a lot of examples of these, and many of them flip back and forth along the protagonist/antagonist divide depending on the circumstances and experiences the character has. Black Sails is another example.

The freeform nature of a M* lends itself a lot to the above, too.

I embrace the 'ensemble cast' notion a lot in part because I believe it's an important ideal to reinforce -- that it's a group, we're supposed to be cooperating and playing off each other, collaborating with each other, etc. (The Avengers example is a great one of an ensemble cast in which everyone involved is a hero in their own right.) I tend to shy away from 'protagonist' or 'hero' terms as they tend to imply increased importance being placed on one head, which cannot be the case on a M* in the way it could be in a movie or otherwise standalone story.