http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?212651-Request-Gender-neutral-Rules-Please
So first off it should go without saying but there are 3 people in this thread who I think behaved in a matter acceptable for human beings; the OP, Stepfan and PPS_Simon.
I really wanted to give Nick from the Texas Renegades (the only name I recognised on the thread) a pass but he's the first person to claim that the OP is accusing PP of sexism and misogyny. That's not OK.
This is quite possibly the best request type post that I have ever seen on the forums and the responses among the worst. I have seen a thread that was nothing but the original poster complaining about how OP Venethrax was and demanding PP nerf him immediately or he would leave the hobby and the responses to that thread were mostly advice on how to win that match up. No one belittling the OP despite the fact that he was clearly an idiot.
So this is happening all over the place, women are trying to exist without harassment and dismissal. That's not what this thread started as but the thread shows what is happening to women on the internet and if I'm honest offline too.
The question is how is this going to affect PP, can we get rid of the dickheads or will PP become infested with them? I think sadly that as things stand it might be the second one. It seems to me that the signals PP is sending out are less that this is a safe space for women and more that this is a safe space for misogynist arseholes.
I think the biggest thing is sexualised female models. In particular it's the convention exclusive sculpts. The Bombshell Bombardier, the blighted bather, the druid gone wilder, the steelsoul keg protector. Every single convention exclusive is female and sexualised. Even the friggin robot. It sends a message about who the game is for and about who the game isn't for.
The PP range also has a very large amount of sexualised female sculpts. There is a lot of female clevage on display, there is a lot of boob plate, there are a lot of female sculpts with high heels for some reason.
her heels give additional traction on the ice
Fluff wise there were a lot of sexist tropes in the early story line of the game but PP has gotten better at that (at least with what I have noticed).
I think the telling thing will be the community. There are some loud feminist voices in the community, Simon at PP is one and I applaud him for it. There is also Chad at muse on minis and the Irish Warmachine guys in particular Anto and Stu. However there are still a lot of misogynistic slurs that are used in the community as names for models and which are bandied around pretty freely. I already called out one guy on a podcast lets go all in, the Chain Attack guys use a lot of unacceptable gendered language, and Emmanuel Class from RFP thought that this was an acceptable way to advertise shirts for the WTC fun raiser.
These things are not OK, these things are fomenting the boys club, anti women attitude in the community. At the moment I feel like the hate directed at women in the community is overpowering the good things.
I hope that the community is less shithead than I think it is, I hope that we get past this and the warmachine community becomes a safe space for women.
Sorry I'm so down at the moment but this is really depressing to me. I don't want to leave warmachine but I don't want to stay in a community filled with this kind of stuff.
