Oh we talked about the race thing a few pages back too. Funny, almost sounds like a white-male republican only club in here. hmm. 1970s hollywood, gee i wonder.

Sorry, I have poor memory. What do you mean white male republican club? You have no idea what race or gender most of these posters are, I know I sure don't. And my political leanings are definitely not republican.

That's cool though, I appreciate when the conversation dissolves into mindless stereotyping.

Most importantly people have the right to choose not to play.

It is like saying why don't more guys read romance novels.

I never got invited to go crafting by sorority girls back in college, even though I can craft stuff better than any of them ever could. Stop gender stereotyping.

Only if you quit Strawmanning.

Tournament Organizers (T.O.s) actually have a large role to play here. If T.O.s make it a priority to monitor conduct at their events and maintain a positive and welcoming environment, players of all genders should feel welcome, as well as families. As Kyla mentioned in her post, if you want women gamers to feel comfortable, first ask yourself if the venue and event are family friendly.

Being a T.O. is much more than knowing the current F.A.Q., Tournament Rules, and being able to schedule and run an event. You need to be able to handle conflict resolution with your players and guide the tone of the group, not simply be the "rules guy". For example, WOTC has done an amazing job overall by providing their sanctioned judges with support, materials, and training to help ensure quality, not just of rules decisions, but in handling situations with players as well. As FFG continues to increase and improve OP, I believe that they may also tap into the talented T.O.s in this community in a more formal way and provide them with information and guidance to create positive, inclusive, and high caliber events and tournaments. Beyond policing our own behavior (which should go without saying) if we support T.O.s in their endeavors to create inclusive event atmospheres we will naturally grow this community. So we can encourage FFG to expand their support for OP and T.O. materials while simultaneously supporting those goals in our own playgroups. In my opinion, those are concrete steps we can take as a community (though admittedly I am putting pressure on my fellow T.O.s).

I think this is going nowhere. The only girl that I saw posting in here is Kyla and she says there isn't a problem. I don't think there is a problem. A feminist is someone who believes in gender equality. A true feminist doesn't feel the need to overbalance one way to compensate for a lack of women playing the game. I treat women as another person. They either want to play or they don't. If someone isn't being friendly to females to get them to play, it's probably someone with a personal problem that also would be rude to almost anyone who came up to play. So, once again, being female doesn't matter.

I'm done. Have a nice thread.

the competitive aspect put on xwing by players and by ffg is, around my corner, the reason why some people -mostly women- doesn't want to join in.

My 2 cents to get those players and a bit of me more enjoying xwing :

-more fluff scenarios to replay starwars scenes.

wotc made 3 books with fluffy scenarios and offered free ones on their website beside tour agents and competition back to the starwars miniatures' time. Ffg absolutely doesn't. Too bad.

- ffg should propose more and more articles with premade 100pts games for casual players.

They even could propose 6 balanced short 70pts teams to organize friendly casual home tournament for beginners on an afternoon to introduce a bit of competition.

- we also would enjoy some tag team scenarios to be allowed to share stress with a partner and focus on a common objective.

This thread is a good example of whats wrong with over analyzing.

Good laugh though.

If you got the cash and the interest anyone who WANTS to play can play. Beyond that, holy moly society, ....just enjoy the game for what it is.

False. Ffg clearly states in the opening post that discussion not relating to their specific products will be deleted or locked. Every post after the first one - in a thread specifically about how to encourage gender inclusivity -is in reference to this fact.

If your position is simply "gender stereotypes should be diminished" then i fail to understand what this thread even exists for.

...

Okay, well if you think it's pointless, then I shan't insist on wasting your time anymore. See you in the other threads. Let's talk about Fat Han sometime.

But a ton of the nay-sayer argument here has been against the premise that more inclusion of women is desirable.

Quotes please. Pretty sure the argument hasn't been "against it".

I think there is a misunderstanding of terms going on here....I might be wrong, but I believe the OP is defining "inclusion of women" as an action; actively trying to recruit and bring women into the X-Wing community.

It is not simply the "presence" of women. Mikael is not saying everyone is arguing against the presence of women in the game, but arguing against actively recruiting women.

OP: Not to put words in your mouth, but this is my understanding of it. Am I on base?

Yes, you've got it. Inclusion as a verb.

I understand that Cody, but that means we don't actively try to recruit (in general, not only women or men), which is something most people i know who play the game do. Only last month i taught the game 2 guys and 2 girls. One of the guys sticked up for the league we were going to start, and one of the girls already ordered a few cores.

My problem is the premise that we are not being inclusive because there are more men than women playing a miniature game. It is an obvious flawed argument from the beginning, things don't change one day to another, even if we try to. 15 years ago you wouldn't see a women even come remotely close to a LGS, now i see and play with them regularly, even if it is not miniature games (even tho there are a few who plays infinity). Step by step.

So i am completely baffled when i read something as "since there are more men than women it must be we are not being inclusive".

Hey - awesome on your recruitment.

You, like so many people here on this thread, seem to be very active in wanting to feel insulted. When I wrote the original question: " How can we be more gender inclusive in X-Wing? " it asks how we can make ourselves more inclusive than we are? I also went I'm not calling you a sexist, or anything of that nature. I'm just asking how we might have more women sooner rather than waiting for history to do its own thing.

Here, check out this from my original posting:

"I do think that our game has a more-than-token presence of female pilots and crew, and I think that's a great sign. Also, I'm confident that FFG and most of the participants on this forum have a genuine interest in inclusivity. "

Now, since I've been rather bowled over by the reactionary responses that I've been getting in here, I am not quite as confident as I was at the beginning of the thread.

To go back a few pages:

"Why women ?" you ask? Because they're the missing demographic. For my sake, yes, social justice is my motivation for this thread. However, as seen in other spheres of life, there are economic rationales for wanting the inclusion of women. I don't see why that rationale should not apply here.

Are they the missing demographic, or a missing demographic? I see just as few African Americans playing X-Wing as I do females. I could enumerate the various other races/ethnicities that are ostensibly missing from our community, but I don't suppose I need to get hyperbolic here to reinforce my point.* Suffice it to say, any attempts at being more inclusive are disingenuous at best if you're just going to cherry-pick (doesn't that seem to be a hot phrase today?) your preferred minority group. I say leave justice to the professionals.

*Sorry, but I have to indulge myself after all. Where's the How can we be more Jewish inclusive in X-Wing? thread?

In my community, I see other ethnicities more or less proportionally represented. However, if you have observations that are different, I'm open to hearing about them.

I dunno, be friendly to everyone and not a creep?

Some people aren't interested in this stuff. I won't be bothering to strong arm people into not playing if that's what people want.

Or are people suggesting "ladies' night" and girls get into tournaments free?

I think the issue I have with this thread is that I can't really be more inclusive. Where I play there are few opportunities to recruit anyone (we play in the back of the store, the only company is from other people that are playing their own games). I'm generally pretty friendly when meeting new people, and if anything I'm more polite to girls, since my abrasive sense of humour doesn't seem to go over as well with them as it does with the guys. Since I'm treating the few people I do encounter while playing X-Wing more or less the same, asking me (me, specifically) to be more inclusive is effectively asking me to positively discriminate in favour of women. I won't, because I find that both unfair and patronising. I realize that this isn't really what you meant when you started the topic but after some introspection I think this is why I've been against it. Beyond my general opinion that maybe this is just more of a guy thing, anyway.

It's possible that others agree, since I've seen a lot of "I'm as nice to the girls as I am to the guys" remarks, so maybe this is why a lot of people do seem to feel like you're calling them sexist. I also disagree with the basic concept that a lack of female players is, in and of itself, a problem to be solved. If there was an interest that was being suppressed somehow (such as a sexist player harassing any girls that tried to play) then yes, we have a problem and if I'm in a position to deal with it I will. But if the cause is just a lack of interest in trying then I don't see that we need to go and try to cultivate an interest from girls specifically. If recruiting more X-Wing players is a goal we intend to pursue then specifically targeting women seems kind of stupid, for two reasons.

The first is that it seems kind of creepy. Most likely, any effort to recruit women--women specifically--would be done in a place with a lot more girls present. Wide nets, right? But where do we take these recruiting efforts? Any place I can think of where the guys would be allowed is generally pretty evenly-balanced, as far as gender goes. I assume most recruiting efforts would consist of playing the game in public places other than our LGS and answering questions, since going around asking random people if they've played it would be weird and really reinforce that stereotype about nerd social skills. But if we do take these efforts into areas where it's pretty much all girls, that's probably going to look like we're just creeping on them. I feel like the "recruit women specifically " idea is doomed to fail because to get our gender ratio closer to even would require us to go where we aren't necessarily welcome in the hopes that we don't come across as weird and creepy in a mission to single out girls (for reasons you consider positive, yes, but as I said before I feel like it's almost patronizing).

The second reason is that it seems likely that any large scale recruitment effort will bring in a lot more guys than girls anyway. That's actually fine in my opinion, but since you're goal seems to at least make a point of increasing the percentage of X-Wing players that are girls that does technically count as a failure.

On top of that, I don't see why it matters so much. Given how many people have agreed without hesitation that sexism should not be tolerated, I think it's clear that the issue isn't the players keeping girls away with their hostile attitudes. Getting more girls to play a stereotypical guys game isn't really much of a victory for egalitarianism when there are so many more serious issues facing women. And adding more women to our community has very few (if any) benefits that just adding more players of any gender wouldn't also have.

Q: Why talk about gender inclusiveness in X-Wing?

A: Because a more diverse group brings in new ways of thinking, new ideas and keeps a hobby dynamic. Because it means more people playing, keeping the hobby financially viable and seeing it supported by it's creators for longer while increasing the opportunities to play. Because if there's anything that possible might be driving away one group, it's likely driving away other's with similar opinions and sensibilities.

That does kind of come back to the question earlier of why we aren't also talking about recruiting more non-white people, since a few people mentioned a significant white majority in their playgroups (my group is four white guys, for example). Some of that can be justified by the fact that North America has a considerable white majority overall, but if your reason for supporting this idea is to diversify than ethnic minorities are basically your main goal.

I assume that the best way to get more women into any hobby is to have women presenting DEMOs of the game etc.

The same goes for any demographics group (e.g. age)

If I see "people like me" with the game I will consider it as an option.

I think the issue I have with this thread is that I can't really be more inclusive. Where I play there are few opportunities to recruit anyone (we play in the back of the store, the only company is from other people that are playing their own games). I'm generally pretty friendly when meeting new people, and if anything I'm more polite to girls, since my abrasive sense of humour doesn't seem to go over as well with them as it does with the guys. Since I'm treating the few people I do encounter while playing X-Wing more or less the same, asking me (me, specifically) to be more inclusive is effectively asking me to positively discriminate in favour of women. I won't, because I find that both unfair and patronising. I realize that this isn't really what you meant when you started the topic but after some introspection I think this is why I've been against it. Beyond my general opinion that maybe this is just more of a guy thing, anyway.

It's possible that others agree, since I've seen a lot of "I'm as nice to the girls as I am to the guys" remarks, so maybe this is why a lot of people do seem to feel like you're calling them sexist. I also disagree with the basic concept that a lack of female players is, in and of itself, a problem to be solved. If there was an interest that was being suppressed somehow (such as a sexist player harassing any girls that tried to play) then yes, we have a problem and if I'm in a position to deal with it I will. But if the cause is just a lack of interest in trying then I don't see that we need to go and try to cultivate an interest from girls specifically. If recruiting more X-Wing players is a goal we intend to pursue then specifically targeting women seems kind of stupid, for two reasons.

The first is that it seems kind of creepy. Most likely, any effort to recruit women--women specifically--would be done in a place with a lot more girls present. Wide nets, right? But where do we take these recruiting efforts? Any place I can think of where the guys would be allowed is generally pretty evenly-balanced, as far as gender goes. I assume most recruiting efforts would consist of playing the game in public places other than our LGS and answering questions, since going around asking random people if they've played it would be weird and really reinforce that stereotype about nerd social skills. But if we do take these efforts into areas where it's pretty much all girls, that's probably going to look like we're just creeping on them. I feel like the "recruit women specifically " idea is doomed to fail because to get our gender ratio closer to even would require us to go where we aren't necessarily welcome in the hopes that we don't come across as weird and creepy in a mission to single out girls (for reasons you consider positive, yes, but as I said before I feel like it's almost patronizing).

The second reason is that it seems likely that any large scale recruitment effort will bring in a lot more guys than girls anyway. That's actually fine in my opinion, but since you're goal seems to at least make a point of increasing the percentage of X-Wing players that are girls that does technically count as a failure.

On top of that, I don't see why it matters so much. Given how many people have agreed without hesitation that sexism should not be tolerated, I think it's clear that the issue isn't the players keeping girls away with their hostile attitudes. Getting more girls to play a stereotypical guys game isn't really much of a victory for egalitarianism when there are so many more serious issues facing women. And adding more women to our community has very few (if any) benefits that just adding more players of any gender wouldn't also have.

I think the real question then is: Are we as a gaming community or is FFG with X-Wing doing anything to drive away female players?

And really that's only a question that can be answered by women. There have been some answers here and there but I think some of them have gotten lost in all of these threads.

Maybe it's a good sign that we keep bringing this up then. While every community has it's jerks, as a whole we want to know how we can be more inclusive, more accepting of others so we can invite them to join us.

Oh we talked about the race thing a few pages back too. Funny, almost sounds like a white-male republican only club in here. hmm. 1970s hollywood, gee i wonder.

Love how people claiming they are all about diversity are amongst the most biased and prone to stereotype the ones they hate.

Wait wait wait Mikael Hasselstein has a degree in Sociology. Why are we even having this discussion, I thought it was common knowledge that the best reaction to people with those "degrees" is a hearty laugh and walking away to be a more productive member of society

No that's philosophy. Sociology is essentially the psychology of large groups of people. They either become depressed professors, or they enter politics and advise the poli-sci majors.

I have a cousin with a PHD in Medieval history.

She's in sales now....

Oh we talked about the race thing a few pages back too. Funny, almost sounds like a white-male republican only club in here. hmm. 1970s hollywood, gee i wonder.

Love how people claiming they are all about diversity are amongst the most biased and prone to stereotype the ones they hate.

Yep. Disagree with someone and you are automatically a racist or sexist.

I have a cousin with a PHD in Medieval history.

She's in sales now....

Yeah, I learned in college that 80% of people don't get a job in anything they majored in. So, instead of taking a bunch of boring classes, I got a BFA in Painting and a BA in History. I work in computers and do very well for myself.

in academia, especially for the PhDs, life is all about "Publish or Perish." We have 14 pages now of people largely saying, the issue the OP are on isn't really the issue at hand." He accuses us, without ever posting a quote, of WANTING to exclude women. If we don't agree with his conclusions, which he seems to have made before starting the thread, then we are obviously opposed to women in this hobby. Is he deliberately insulting anyone with the gall to disagree with him? Or is he baiting the community, striving to create argument and conflict, while he takes notes for his latest paper? Are we, in fact, the subjects of some future obscure academic treatise on "The Sociological Implications of Gender Exclusion in Male Dominated Subcultures?" (Or whatever title he's working on).

Remember, this is a continuation of a trolling thread. I submit, gentlemen (and the ladies reading this as well) we have been played. We are the lab rats for a sociologist writing up yet another paper decrying his pet social injustice.

My face when ~30 pages of this in total

in academia, especially for the PhDs, life is all about "Publish or Perish." We have 14 pages now of people largely saying, the issue the OP are on isn't really the issue at hand." He accuses us, without ever posting a quote, of WANTING to exclude women. If we don't agree with his conclusions, which he seems to have made before starting the thread, then we are obviously opposed to women in this hobby. Is he deliberately insulting anyone with the gall to disagree with him? Or is he baiting the community, striving to create argument and conflict, while he takes notes for his latest paper? Are we, in fact, the subjects of some future obscure academic treatise on "The Sociological Implications of Gender Exclusion in Male Dominated Subcultures?" (Or whatever title he's working on).

Remember, this is a continuation of a trolling thread. I submit, gentlemen (and the ladies reading this as well) we have been played. We are the lab rats for a sociologist writing up yet another paper decrying his pet social injustice.

Historically, this has been the issue in gaming though. So it's not too big a jump to make the assumption that either the x-wing community or wargamming in general has supported behaviors or mindsets that pushed away female gamers of all ages. You first need to notice that men out number women, then you ask "what's up with that", and finally you try to figure out why it's happening.

The problem is that there are a lot of guys throwing around theories and those are possibly based on biased logic.

So the only place that we can accept legitimate complaints from would be from female gamers. Only they can tell us either way if there is some factor that has made x-wing or wargamming difficult for them to get into.

I have't had the opportunity to read through all of the posts on this thread, and we have at least 2 prior threads that were shut down by moderators for getting off topic. Have we had any female gamers posting their thoughts on this yet? And if so what did they say?

in academia, especially for the PhDs, life is all about "Publish or Perish." We have 14 pages now of people largely saying, the issue the OP are on isn't really the issue at hand." He accuses us, without ever posting a quote, of WANTING to exclude women. If we don't agree with his conclusions, which he seems to have made before starting the thread, then we are obviously opposed to women in this hobby. Is he deliberately insulting anyone with the gall to disagree with him? Or is he baiting the community, striving to create argument and conflict, while he takes notes for his latest paper? Are we, in fact, the subjects of some future obscure academic treatise on "The Sociological Implications of Gender Exclusion in Male Dominated Subcultures?" (Or whatever title he's working on).

Remember, this is a continuation of a trolling thread. I submit, gentlemen (and the ladies reading this as well) we have been played. We are the lab rats for a sociologist writing up yet another paper decrying his pet social injustice.

Historically, this has been the issue in gaming though. So it's not too big a jump to make the assumption that either the x-wing community or wargamming in general has supported behaviors or mindsets that pushed away female gamers of all ages. You first need to notice that men out number women, then you ask "what's up with that", and finally you try to figure out why it's happening.

The problem is that there are a lot of guys throwing around theories and those are possibly based on biased logic.

So the only place that we can accept legitimate complaints from would be from female gamers. Only they can tell us either way if there is some factor that has made x-wing or wargamming difficult for them to get into.

I have't had the opportunity to read through all of the posts on this thread, and we have at least 2 prior threads that were shut down by moderators for getting off topic. Have we had any female gamers posting their thoughts on this yet? And if so what did they say?

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/125981-how-can-we-be-more-gender-inclusive-in-x-wing/?p=1316915

Emphasis on the last paragraph:

"That said, to answer the question of how to address the imbalance of gender due to it not reflecting our social times - I would say that it is an attempt to fix something not necessarily broken. If you feel your local circle isn't represented by women well, I would say change the argument to say that it isn't represented by families well. Engage the parents (both mothers and fathers) to play with their children - make it a bonding experience by putting the mini's in their hands through "family game nights" and other events. Once the visibility increases, you find a greater social experience happening - and that is what is interesting to many like me."

I think the OP's point isn't 'Make more named pilots women' or whatever, but more along the lines of 'maybe just be more considerate of the women who do show up at tourneys, and don't treat them like children/strange mythical animals'.

Cause though most people probably don't, or at least don't *think* they do, it probably does happen, let's be honest.

in academia, especially for the PhDs, life is all about "Publish or Perish." We have 14 pages now of people largely saying, the issue the OP are on isn't really the issue at hand." He accuses us, without ever posting a quote, of WANTING to exclude women. If we don't agree with his conclusions, which he seems to have made before starting the thread, then we are obviously opposed to women in this hobby. Is he deliberately insulting anyone with the gall to disagree with him? Or is he baiting the community, striving to create argument and conflict, while he takes notes for his latest paper? Are we, in fact, the subjects of some future obscure academic treatise on "The Sociological Implications of Gender Exclusion in Male Dominated Subcultures?" (Or whatever title he's working on).

Remember, this is a continuation of a trolling thread. I submit, gentlemen (and the ladies reading this as well) we have been played. We are the lab rats for a sociologist writing up yet another paper decrying his pet social injustice.

Wow.

in academia, especially for the PhDs, life is all about "Publish or Perish." We have 14 pages now of people largely saying, the issue the OP are on isn't really the issue at hand." He accuses us, without ever posting a quote, of WANTING to exclude women. If we don't agree with his conclusions, which he seems to have made before starting the thread, then we are obviously opposed to women in this hobby. Is he deliberately insulting anyone with the gall to disagree with him? Or is he baiting the community, striving to create argument and conflict, while he takes notes for his latest paper? Are we, in fact, the subjects of some future obscure academic treatise on "The Sociological Implications of Gender Exclusion in Male Dominated Subcultures?" (Or whatever title he's working on).

Remember, this is a continuation of a trolling thread. I submit, gentlemen (and the ladies reading this as well) we have been played. We are the lab rats for a sociologist writing up yet another paper decrying his pet social injustice.

Historically, this has been the issue in gaming though. So it's not too big a jump to make the assumption that either the x-wing community or wargamming in general has supported behaviors or mindsets that pushed away female gamers of all ages. You first need to notice that men out number women, then you ask "what's up with that", and finally you try to figure out why it's happening.

The problem is that there are a lot of guys throwing around theories and those are possibly based on biased logic.

So the only place that we can accept legitimate complaints from would be from female gamers. Only they can tell us either way if there is some factor that has made x-wing or wargamming difficult for them to get into.

I have't had the opportunity to read through all of the posts on this thread, and we have at least 2 prior threads that were shut down by moderators for getting off topic. Have we had any female gamers posting their thoughts on this yet? And if so what did they say?

What if the issue though, isn't with the gaming community, but negative stereotypes of gamers that apply to a pretty small portion of our population?

If I play a game against a woman, I won't stare at her boobs all game while talking to her like she is 5 years old. But this seems to be the baseline assumption about how I would act.

This is my alternative hypothesis as to why there aren't more women in x-wing.

Actually, are there any good stereotypes of gamers?