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All you young'uns talking about gaming in the 90s like those were Ye Olden Days making me feel so old...
Look, I see your side and @ArjinFerman's a little. I think the anti-woke types do underestimate how shitty things could be in the 80s and 90s. I remember taking a couple of female friends to a con (yes, female gamers existed back then!) and first thing we were treated to was a table of young men loudly talking about using mind control to make the princess give them all blow jobs... They thought this was hilarious. Yes, that's a real incident, not something I made up /r/thathappened-style, and I saw a lot of that sort of thing. The looks on my friends' faces were what you'd expect.
Today, if you pulled that at a con, you'd probably get kicked out, and I think that's a good thing. Keep your juvenile cringe sex fantasies out of public spaces.
That said - you are also overstating how "bad" things were "back then." Most gamers, even straight white male gamers, were liberal and/or accepting, off-color blowjob jokes notwithstanding. Things weren't "fine," maybe, but people were not actively trying to keep girls and POC out of gaming (quite the opposite!). You are also understating how bad things have become for those of us who used to be on the liberal and tolerant side since.
And this whole argument that "straight white guys can talk calmly about politics and tolerate people with different views because it doesn't actually threaten them" just infuriates me. Like yes, politics is serious. But stop catastrophizing every damn political difference as an existential threat. That's how we got to where anything less than 100% validation of trans people is "wanting a trans genocide," and people who have qualms about abortion - any qualms! - "want to take away women's bodily autonomy."
I am unironically reminded of this reddit post I just read today. (tldr a woman who's been in a "mixed political marriage" for years is now contemplating divorcing her very good husband who is a good father to their children because he will probably vote for Trump). Now even granting that the post itself is very likely made-up ragebait, it's not the first time I've seen sentiments like that, and if you read the comments, well, the vast majority are basically affirming her decision to divorce her loving husband and become a struggling single mother with a special needs child because her husband "is literally aiding fascism and doesn't consider her or her daughters human."
Ok I know I’m probably falling for bait but holy smokes that reddit post is mind-boggling.
They have two notions that cannot both be true: A) My husband is a good person, B) All Trump supporters are bad people. It just seems so backwards to conclude: Therefore my husband is a bad person. Can’t they see it would be more reasonable to break the other proposition and conclude that not all Trump supporters are bad people? They are trusting Twitter/Reddit over their own experience with the guy? Gosh I need to stop reading this stuff or I’ll go crazy
Some people are really, really deep into culture war bullshit to the extent that they would rather believe their ideology than believe "this person I know is actually ok" when confronted with the cognitive dissonance you describe. That's just the sad truth of it.
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It is probably not real, and I would strongly recommend using that thought as open and close brackets around any reaction you have to it.
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I might need to walk back the thing about gender-blindness being a good idea (as I explicitly rejected it recently), but in my defense, the idea that men and women are literally the same was the assumption of those times, and it was promoted by feminists. And in defense of these guys, under that assumption, that's a pretty tame and harmless joke.
That fact that you are also boiling my views down "everything was great back then" is even more frustrating than the fact that he was doing it.
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