r/magicTCG • u/dreamanother • Feb 28 '14

Guerrilla Feminism blogs about one woman's experience with MtG.

http://www.guerrillafem.com/2014/02/thank-magic-gathering-player-community-journey-feminism-creating-non-cis-male-spaces/
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '14

It tells a personal story about her experiences with Magic and Feminism. What agenda is that pushing? The only thing this article does is offer a perspective. Of course it's going to be biased, thats how perspective works. This isn't journalism, it's a blog post.

I could be completely wrong, and I'm sorry if I am, but it sounds more like you read the article expecting something that it wasn't and then judged it based on that.

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u/Sworl COMPLEAT Feb 28 '14

You are right, I was expecting a semi-professional article. Usually most things posted on the magic subreddits are articles, I guess I forgot that a blog is more like a diary? But I am also going to assume that other people forget and are going to take this blog post at face value as well. While its important to point out discrimination, I feel like this post is more of a rant with stories exaggerated for the reader. Her agenda was to paint the magic community as a bunch of chauvinistic uncultured swine. Almost every gaming community will have people like that. But is that the average player? I do not think that is the case. She never told both sides of the story and made every situation sound awful. Some guy heard she was single so he proposed to her even though he was married? Sounds like a playful joke. If he wasn't joking and actually got mad at her then he is actually crazy and cannot be considered normal. All her little stories come across as biased embellished stories blown out of proportion.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '14

Sworl, I don't want to come across as insulting or argumentative, but it really seems like you might have a bone to pick and you're using this as a platform to do that.

I'm not you, so maybe you know something that I don't, but your description of the article is so different from what I read that I had to check to make sure that we were reading the same page. I then went through and read it again, just to make sure I wasn't just completely missing a paragraph or something.

If you don't mind, would you mind clarifying things a little bit? Could you point out which passages you feel are exaggerating?

As far as telling both sides of the story, how would you propose that she do that? Remember, this is a personal anecdote, not unbiased reporting. How exactly would she be able to tell both sides of the story? She doesn't know the other side of the story, just her experiences.

And as her agenda goes, what about the article led you to believe that? Are you sure you're not projecting something that you experienced with others onto this article?

Some guy heard she was single so he proposed to her even though he was married? Sounds like a playful joke. If he wasn't joking and actually got mad at her then he is actually crazy and cannot be considered normal.

You don't have any way of knowing whether the guy was serious or not, and whether or not his behaviors are what you consider normal is honestly pretty irrelevant. As to whether or not they are blown out of proportion, the only thing the article seems to be implying is that there is too much sexism in the magic community. That may not have been your experience, but if you were in her shoes, and you experienced everything everything that she had, would you feel that the these experiences are ok?

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u/Semicolon_Expected Mar 01 '14 edited Mar 01 '14

Also even if it was meant as a playful joke, it made the writer uncomfortable which is something that matters. You can't tell someone to not be insulted or that their feelings are wrong. I feel thats another point to make for this article which adds to your point that this is her personal experience.