Diversity Representation in MU*ing

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I do think that there are a surprising amount of minorities in this hobby, but I think they tend to congregate around certain places, or stay under the radar. Like, Mega Man MUSH and String Theory (even though ST is invite only now) both have more minorities than the average MUSH. The concentration of trans people on Mega Man MUSH is higher than I've seen anywhere else, which is a part of the reason I've been trying to talk non-MUSHer trans friends into giving it a try.

I was just thinking something like this and looking for a way to articulate it. While I don't think MUSHing is some kind of amazing melting pot of diversity, I think there's an assumption that everyone is white that's not always or even generally true. People don't tend to mention their race unless it comes up in a really specific context, or you know them on a more than surface level.

[bored]

@HelloProject I don't know, to me, sexuality actually feels like an area where there's been huge improvements in the hobby. As in... holy shit it is waaaay more queer than it was when I started. You're not as massively an ancient a player as some of us so maybe it's less apparent. But I can't think of any game I've played on recently that didn't have a variety of non-straight couples, individuals, etc, enough for them to not seem special or unusual. Which I would think is the goal? I know this isn't a call-out thread, but I'm curious where these egregious examples are. Maybe I don't see them because I'm straight? IDK. 'All the lesbians are guys' seems a whole lot like 'there are no girls on the internet,' which is itself a really pervasive sexist attitude.

My reaction to 'these lesbians are all trope-laden sexpests' is mostly that we're all playing trope-laden sexpests, all the time, 24/7. Behavior that we consider normal for ye olde straights is being treated as suspect, which seems kind of the opposite of what you'd want, right? Also, it feels like it's a wholly different thing than talking about ethnic minority inclusion because sexuality is something where people actually explore and evolve. There are people on this board who have come out and/or transitioned during their tenure in the hobby. Surely 'just stick to RPing what you are' isn't something you'd have wanted to have told them, right?

[Prototart]

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

'All the lesbians are guys' seems a whole lot like 'there are no girls on the internet,' which is itself a really pervasive sexist attitude.

not all but a whole bunch of the lesbians are in fact guys and it is, like - there are times when it’s just so insanely easy to spot them, honestly there are times where like half of what @GreenFlashlight & I talk about is just, eye-rolling/loling at them

[bored]

@Prototart I'm willing to bet that some of the time you're wrong, and that some of the bad lesbians are the lesbian equivalent of the guys who play 7 foot tall sex-vikings. IE, lesbians can be crap RPers too.

E Q U A L I T Y.

[ZombieGenesis]

My wife tried creating a character on a game, her first game that wasn't private/run by me. She made a lesbian and was chased off the first night by people eye-rolling and mocking her OOCly as "clearly another man creating a lesbian sex beast". It was truly repulsive to watch and pushed her away from playing on any other public games. 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.

[Auspice]

Personally, I have more issues these days with straight women wanting me to teach them how to roleplay lesbian sex than I do the men playing lesbian horn-bots.

But the latter seem to stay in their lane most of the time these days. They gravitate to each other and I like to imagine two dudes playing their buxom giggly redheads and jerking off to it and I smile.

So, most of my characters remain bi and I just gravitate to whoever's RP I like best and if I get a 'hey I dunno how to RP this lol can you teach me' I just tell them to google it and peace out.

[insomniac7809]

@Prototart said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Except this is optional.

technically, so is life

@ZombieGenesis said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I think most people in this hobby are happier just to sit back, mock, and feel generally superior to those around them.

It does seem popular. We should have some sort of form for that.

[saosmash]

@Auspice i... the entire internet is full of porn, what??

[reversed]

@Auspice said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

So, most of my characters remain bi and I just gravitate to whoever's RP I like best

You can just say "@reversed" you know

[Auspice]

@saosmash said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Auspice i... the entire internet is full of porn, what??

I know.
I know.

This is why it drives me up the fucking wall.

[SparklesTheClown]

I know plenty of actual lesbians in MUSHes who play lesbian characters, and people who are men playing lesbian characters.

Like, the difference is kind of staggeringly obvious.

For one, usually dudes playing lesbians can barely play women to begin with, let alone lesbian women.

Plenty of lesbians I know play sexy characters who are seductive and all of that. It's 100% different than when men are doing this, as men tend to universally play the same lesbian personality and character, while women play their characters as actual people with a personality.

[insomniac7809]

Also, in a feeble and ill-considered defense of my gender, it's not just dudes who MU* a gay member of the opposite sex as a fetishy stereotype.

[Auspice]

@insomniac7809 said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Also, in a feeble and ill-considered defense of my gender, it's not just dudes who MU* a gay member of the opposite sex as a fetishy stereotype.

I was about to post this.

I have known men who can play lesbians well. I have known women who can play gay men well.

I have also encountered just as many, if not more horrifyingly tropey, fetishized gay men in the past 15 years than I have the tropey, fetishized lesbians (but I also haven't played WoD as long as some which seems to draw the men-playing-lesbians more).

[bored]

I am sure all of this is true.

Personally, I'm as worried about the fetish gays and lesbians as I am about the giant sex-vikings and 4'9" waifus: its all garbage tier, hyper sexual RP from horny people, but unless its disruptive, I really don't care if they enjoy it. If it's disruptive, I'd prefer they kindly moved to Shang.

But worrying about this stuff does not actually seem to be supportive of the community it's purporting to be supportive of, since you're basically promoting policing gay portrayals and witch hunting for impostors. Surely there's better things to be doing than worrying about two clearly very straight dudes RPing as big-titted schoolgirl besties?

[SparklesTheClown]

I certainly know men who can play lesbians well, but if I play Devil's Advocate against my own argument for a moment.

I would say that if anything it probably is an ironically poor assumption on my part to say that a woman can't just be bad at RPing in general and thus come off like a guy playing a horny Shang lesbian.

So I do apologize, since gendered assumptions even in a "I'm assuming women can't fuck up in this way" way are still gendered assumptions one way or the other.

[Auspice]

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

unless its disruptive, I really don't care if they enjoy it. If it's disruptive, I'd prefer they kindly moved to Shang.

to those of us who are LGBT?
It's upsetting. And I 100% wish they'd move to Shang. I wish EVERYONE whose singular goal was just to TS would go to Shang. I got nothing against TS, but when it's your only reason to RP? Just go to Shang.

It's upsetting to see ourselves portrayed as a trope. For example, as someone bi, I hate when a bi character -- my own or another -- is assumed to be a slut, a whore, or 'always into threesomes.' I hate the portrayal (as a chick into chicks) of lesbians just being oversexed bimbos.

I was driven off a game as a 'homophobe' once because I was playing a straight dude and a handful of the tropey over-the-top gay characters came up to me demanding I 'make' my character gay and when I said no, he's straight- they sent out @mails to everyone in my RP circle saying that because I wasn't interested in gay sex, I was homophobic. I can't speak for the gay men around here, but I'm pretty sure they'd be opposed (just from the POV as someone in the LGBT umbrella) to the idea of 'gay as a choice.'

[insomniac7809]

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

But worrying about this stuff does not actually seem to be supportive of the community it's purporting to be supportive of, since you're basically promoting policing gay portrayals and witch hunting for impostors. Surely there's better things to be doing than worrying about two clearly very straight dudes RPing as big-titted schoolgirl besties?

I mean, there's better things to do than play sexy pretend elfgames, probably.

More seriously, yeah, there's a line to walk here. Scrutinizing a person's portrayal of their own demographic can be discouraging. So can seeing someone running around as a caricatured spank/schlickbait of themselves.

[bored]

@Auspice I'm not unaware of this, but I think the other option is worse, because it means you're literally applying a higher standard to people of the minority sexuality. There's no scenario I can imagine where that works out better. In fact, it's the status quo we used to have back in the old days, when people were pretty aggressive about 'catching' people and policing this stuff (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!')

Not everything has a perfect solution, and a lot of things in MUing, despite us trying to massage complex solutions, boil down to 'bad players can ruin anything.'

[SparklesTheClown]

I do think that beyond "let's burn this all down", there's at least some discussion to be had on the topic in general. Hell I never would have even questioned my basic assumption up there if we weren't talking about this. I think things like this need to be discussed, and discussion isn't necessarily the same as a witch hunt.

In Discord we were discussing "problematic" representation by a person in the minority doing the representing. Like, how with trans stuff for example, there's kind of this policing of how other trans people can write about themselves in fiction and such. I personally think that you should be able to write about your own understanding of your experience however you want, but I think that there are enough bad actors as far as just dudes who are doing fetishy lesbian stuff that there are people who will side-eye if they don't know you.

Like, I think that's just a natural reaction. If I see someone playing an over the top black thug character, tossing around the N word and binging buckets of KFC and being the biggest caricature, I'm gonna very deeply question if this is even remotely an actual black person, and I think there are people who will be uncomfortable with it.

So yeah, it's a fine and complex line. What if this person is an actual black person, what then?

I don't have a clear cut answer for you (beyond not throwing around the N word, which I said pages ago), but I believe that it's important to realize that these discussions are nuanced and it's important to accept and embrace the concept of nuance. Some discussions are just that, a discussion. They don't always have an easy solution or answer, and discussing them is how you get a better understanding of how to navigate these difficult situations.

[ZombieGenesis]

I think, often, it's not bad players that ruin things it's bad people. Over the last year and a half or so I've been RPing almost exclusively with people who are new to the hobby. Their RP was, by any standard on this board I'm sure, bad. That doesn't mean the experience was bad and, over time, they got better. Too many times I've seen new players on games chased off because they were "bad RPers".

I find most new players are very open to constructive criticism. That is generally not what they encounter. They get ostracized, mocked, and ridiculed right off of games. This can be particularly true of someone trying to stretch their RP wings by trying to play something against what they are in real life.

Maybe that dude playing a gay man is a bit over the top. Sure. Maybe it's because he's playing the character as he's seen it portrayed on various TV shows or movies. Or maybe he's just inexperienced. Maybe he's just an asshole trying to portray a caricature. I think the real problem is most people on MUs jump right to the last option and lash out at the player.

So when we ask "why don't we see more diversity on games?" or "why don't we see more new people entering the hobby" I think it boils down to this right here. There are people who will come to this hobby to explore RP. I've seen it. I've seen people new to RPGs in general excited to be able to RP online. I've seen people come from MMO RP servers excited to be able to stretch their wings textually in ways they can't in the MMO. I've also seen these players chased right off of games because they did something that set off someone's "radar" and made them suspect that the new player was "this" or "that" or "whatever the hell else".

TL;DR Version: Fewer new people try new things because they get burned for it by jaded RPers who assume the worst from every experience they have.