In-Fiction Sexual Exploitation: blarrrrgh
James_Nostack:
I guess this is a solicitation for similar AP; there's some analysis questions at the bottom. But mostly I feel like venting a little.
The other day I played Champions, and my female martial artist super hero got mind-controlled by another player (a stranger to me) into exposing herself for the amusement of a third player (also a stranger).
That was pretty fucking lame.
Here's the social situation:
* The GM is a guy I've gamed with a couple of times. He ran a Marvel Super Heroes session about six months ago.
* Two players are pretty decent gamer-friends of mine: though mainly we meet for gaming purposes, we socialize occasionally and respect each other.
* There were two players who were high school friends of the GM twenty years ago. "My crowd" had never met them before.
One of my character proposals was sort of a Black Canary/Mockingbird rip-off, and so the GM statted that out and we ran with it. One of the GM's high school buddies played a psychic whose backstory is that he was a D&D-obsessed teenage nerd who got mind-control/hallucination powers ("The Beholder"). The other high school buddy played a creepy/kooky bug-themed Iron Man guy ("The Earwig").
("The Earwig" was playing over webcam; the rest of us were all there in person.)
Over the course of the game, the Earwig kept making increasingly wack advances toward my character, presumably to be funny and awkward. They weren't especially funny and I basically ignored it. I think it was clear, even over webcam, that I wasn't thrilled at this development but maybe I didn't communicate how stupid and annoying it was (or, maybe I did, and that annoyance was his motivation to keep going with it).
So - no, my character doesn't want to date your character. No, my character doesn't appreciate your character ogling her. No, my character isn't going to let your character shrink down to Earwig-size and hide in her cleavage--though I did counter-propose that he hide inside my boot as I kicked down doors and other people.
In hindsight I should have stopped the game and said this was fucking stupid. But part of my reason to play was that I'd disrupted this GM's prior Marvel Super Heroes session (for reasons that had nothing to do with anything here) and felt a little bad about it. So I didn't want to be disruptive again unless it really became a problem. And I figured, y'know, it's juvenile but whatever: ya gotta pick your battles.
Finally at the end of the scenario, as we were fleeing the underwater base, the psychic guy was dying. The Earwig manages to barely save his life, on the condition that the psychic guy mind-controls my character into getting naked. The psychic guy is like, "Sure, okay," and I am like, "No, fuck you." I probably should have stated that this objection was OOC, but I doubt that would have mattered very much. Dice are rolled; my character takes off her costume.
It's pretty clear that me and my friends are uncomfortable with this whole thing.
Whereupon I state that my character will now kill the psychic guy, and does so ("I don't care, it was worth it"). Before I can kill the Earwig character, my friends end up engineering a TPK--which was probably the only way for everyone involved to save face.
Anyway.
So, overall a shitty and gratuitous experience. FWIW I didn't mind 85% of the session, but the other 15% devoted to sexually objectifying my character was pretty irritating. It's especially galling because I have a personal thing about sexism in super hero comics.
If I had known that the GM's friends were prone to juvenile dumb-assery, I (a) probably wouldn't have played at all, and (b) probably wouldn't have played a female character. (On the other hand, presumably the GM knows his buddies, so I'm annoyed that he handed me a character who was vulnerable in this way.)
Granted, my character wasn't raped or physically abused. I don't think the other players were trying to be especially domineering or exploitative; the attitude basically was, "Dude, ha ha, you're playing a chick!" Which, like, okay... I guess that's funny to a certain type of person...
====
Some questions:
1. This is the first time I've seen this happen in-game, in like 25 years of play. Maybe I'm unusual? How common is shit like this? Is it facilitated by people being strangers?
2. How does sex-based hijinks like this, correlate to racial or sexual orientation hijinks? I think if my character had been a gay male, I would have had similar treatment. But if my character were black, I don't think people would be putting on white hoods and burning crosses. But that's just a guess. Why's the one okay, but not the other?
3. I'm smart enough to know this is a Personal level problem and not a Fictional level problem, but I didn't address it on the Personal level because I wanted to be a good sport and it just wasn't worth the hassle for a one-shot. Is there a better way to handle this? What other reasons might induce a person to stay quiet here?
4. If you're the type of player who does stuff like this, what's the appeal of making other people unhappy over fictional tits?
CedricP:
You dint bring up the webcam in your questions. Could it have made it more easy for the player at the other end to act like this? You know, how sometime internet facilitate immature behaviors...
Noclue:
Well, on the bright side you now know not to game with this GM and his friends.
Callan S.:
Greater internet fuckwad theory?
But here's a hard question or two - is it a valid move? Was it within the zone of what you can do? Was there some notion that 'in a roleplay game you can do anything!', because this fits within the notion of 'anything' and that makes it valid gameplay.
How were you playing/what was the social contract you were aware of? Was it don't make a move if it upsets someone, or retract it if it did? Or playing like chess, where if it's a valid move but the other person doesn't like it, tough titty for them?
Also I played a female magic user in a D&D game over a decade ago and some guy, not someone I'd played with before, jumped my character, or tried to (I can't remember) and he was physically present at the table.
It's kind of funny how they are probably doing it 'because it's just a game/pretend', but do they target an NPC? No, it has to be something to do with a real life player. Ie, something non game/not pretend.
I guess my point is, I've stopped games over shit like this - but if the 'move' is within the zone of valid game moves, then it was actually me being disruptive to the game. Which I'd do again - but I'd still be being disruptive.
It's just in roleplay I've noticed stuff like this - instead of changing the valid zone of actions via rules, people tend to start thinking that stopping the game is actually a propper and good thing and the other guy was being disruptive with the move he made. When it's entirely the other way around. Your being disruptive to stop a game because someone else made an entirely valid move. Hell, I would too because they are into fucked shit(even if it's valid fucked shit by their thinking), but I'd try to only play games in future where these actions aren't valid.
It's just best to only play in games that seal the range of actions to begin with, rather than the nebulous idea that you can 'do anything!'.
Jeff B:
1. No, you're not unusual at all. But maybe you are lucky. I have a hunch this sort of thing goes on a fair amount. Various things could inspire the world's earwigs to behave that way. One of them is simply the fact that for most gamers (my opinion), roleplaying is a guys-only experience. I'm just saying statistically, most gaming groups are all-male. I think there is a perceived threat where introducing a female element into the game makes them feel that they can't "be themselves". One also speculates, of course, that Mr. Earwig has a bit of trouble interacting with women, period.
2. The racial issue would be much more explosive. It would be extremely difficult for a white player to play a black character without being perceived as stereotyping, even if he makes an extreme effort to avoid such stereotyping. His motives alone would be extremely suspect. I think race/orientation would have been just as problematic as gender. There's a great sociology tool available here, because for some reason, roleplayers immediately express hidden values and stereotypes (either in real-world terms or through their characters) when a situation like this arises. For example, you'll get showered with idiotic comments about wearing pink armor, if you played an openly gay character. I would expect so, anyway.
3. Good question, worthy of discussion. In my opinion, the GM has *some* responsibility to exert control over the social contract. They are the host of the game. But that is merely my experience and my style. By entering into the social contract, all players give up the notion of being first-among-equals: the playing field is theoretically flat and even. The only person who remotely resembles a leader or chief influence would be the GM. Along with the GM would be the person at whose house the playing is happening. As the real-world host, he has some responsibility to make the environment comfortable for all his guests. Either of these people probably should have called out the behavior, as perhaps you should have also (I understand your reservations -- you were blindsided on a "bad night", so to speak).
4. I believe there is an instant perception (in myself as well as Mr. Earwig) that a male player playing a female is trying to gain an advantage that cleverly sidesteps the 'system' rules and the restraints of the social contract. How many of us GM's have ever pulled our punches for the sake of a new, novice, female player? I would speculate anybody who has GM'd for more than a few women has done so. Is the male player therefore seeking some special protection from the GM or from the NPC's in the game? Real-world discomfort and gender issues work their way into the game. Many of my characters would behave differently toward a female player than a male, because my experience is the social differences between men and women extend straight into the fantasy game world, with no effort. It simply happens. For example, a female character played by a woman is less likely to betray, challenge, or threaten my character than another male is. I can say that very easily, because I've never had a female player turn on me in a game, whereas men do it all the time. At the same time, the women I've played with are usually less experienced and aren't looking for lots of competitiveness, and this makes trusting their characters easier. Were it not for real-world concerns about sexism, the quality of "being female" could easily be written as a disadvantage worth points in a game such as GURPS, or contrariwise as an advantage, because people are simply less likely to slash a woman in half with a scimitar than they are to slash a male. Statistically, the appearance of a prominent female NPC in an RPG will more often lead to something other than direct violence, than the appearance of a prominent male NPC will. I cannot prove that, but I believe it firmly. I think it should be evident to anybody giving it sufficient consideration.
Between Earwig's discomfort with women in the real-world and his sense that the game world is threatened by a cross-gender influence, he 'attacked' you, socially. After all, he has no grounds to say, "Oh, you can't play a female." It is his problem, but due to other constraints, he made it your problem. On the other hand, consider this as a gain: You have experienced in a socially real sense acts of bias that real-world women deal with constantly (at least, if you listen to them talk about it, they do). Perhaps there is a real-world lesson to be gained from fictional events.
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