Y’all were so good at helping us win the RPGGeek best RPG ladder, we figured you’d ALSO be shit-hot at working together towards an even better goal than that.
Donate today. Get the very first post-Kickstarter class designed by me and Sage LaTorra.
Originally shared by Dungeon World
It’s roll+give 2014! Donate to the Code Liberation Foundation and get our brand new playbook, the Immolator, over a month before anyone else.
Why not support a charity that helps all kids rather than exclude half the people because of something they have no control over? Would you support a charity that said “boys only” or “whites only” or any other “no X group allowed”? That doesn’t sound like a very inclusive and accepting charity to me.
Because trying to counteract the historical exclusion of certain people for something they have no control over demands focused attention and effort.
Jason Lutes There are drastic shortages of male teachers, especially in primary school. Many schools have no male teachers at all. You don’t see men-and-boys-only charity efforts to get them into teaching.
Tom Miskey men and boys have the advantage of an entire social structure designed to advantage them. This is the charity we chose because they have a message we believe in. You’re welcome to disagree, please continue to do so respectfully if you choose to express that disagreement.
Adam Koebel I am always respectful, but I do disagree with the choice and the idea that the social structure is designed to advantage men. In fact, men are considered disposable by society. You can see it in everything from Selective Service requirements for men but not women to the the disparities in funding between diseases that mostly affect women vs those that affect men.
I’m not saying the charity doesn’t help some people, but in the same way that a children’s hospital that only treats white kids might be doing good things for the people it helps, it’s refusal to admit an entire group based on something they can’t control is discriminatory and something that should be addressed IMHO.
Still, looking forward to the Immolator when the rest of the public gets access to it.
I can’t really object to a charity targeting specific groups or genders as that is what charities do. Certain problems tend to be gender specific or group specific which shouldn’t deny people in need help. Of course a charity that only helps poor lesbian Albanians is somewhat obnoxious but in the real world non-profits always have agendas. No one is without sin, except the Dutch. Kill’em all I say.
Lets play some Dungeon World ! The Dude Abides…
Done. Never heard of them, but sounds like a good cause.
Tom Miskey, do you believe it would be valuable to have more women programmers in the game industry? I do. Speaking from experience, men dominate the field and women are exceedingly rare.
If you do think there should be more women game programmers, how do you suggest we get there? Say such an issue is important to me but I don’t have a lot of time to devote. Say I’d like to financially support such a cause. What do you suggest I do?
Trenton Kennedy While I’m fine with making men and women aware of their many options when it comes to careers (and I actually do that, having manned a booth at career fairs for 10+ years for an organization I believe in), in the end it’s up to the individuals as to what they want to do with their lives. I find that in many cases, men are inclined to work with things (tools, cars, computers, etc) and women are more interested in working with people. That’s a generalization, and yes there are many that don’t fit it, but it is still generally true.
I’d prefer that people do what makes them happy, and I don’t give a darn about artificial quotas. If 90% of the people that choose to become game designers are male, then fine. If 90% of the people that choose to become beauticians are female, then fine. The mere absence of balance in numbers doesn’t necessarily prove discrimination, and artificially trying to alter the number is not necessarily a good thing. Women programmers are not inherently better than male programmers, and a program to help kids get interested in coding has no justifiable reason to exclude half the human race IMO. Coding is something boys and girls can do side by side and together, it’s not like this is a football camp.
J.T. Seusoff My own FLGS, the only one in town for many decades though a few more have opened recently, was run by a woman. Also, the largest comic book shop in my town has been run by a woman since 1989.
Even if boys are already more interested in video games, and thus more likely to want to enter it as a career, how many actually have the opportunity to learn how? Would you want to have to tell your son or nephew that he can’t go to this video game creation event because he has the wrong equipment between his legs? Is that fair to him, anymore than it would be to tell a girl she can’t do something simply because she’s a girl (when she’s old enough and smart enough to know that being a girl should in no way prevent her from participating)?
I believe in treating individuals equally, allowing them equal opportunities and free choice, and then let the chips fall where they may. Discrimination isn’t solved by even more discrimination in the same way 2 wrongs don’t make a right. You teach that discrimination is wrong by ending discrimination and leading by example. To me, this charity is sending the wrong message to these students, especially since if they actually have a career in the field, they’ll need to work together with a lot of men. Shouldn’t they be prepared for that rather than sheltered from it?
“positive discrimination” is a very controversial subject in France because it’s not limited to funding charities but implementing state policies favoring minorities or gender at other’s expense.
A charity being a private initiative, that is fine with me. Everyone is free to give or not.
Christopher Grau you made my day !
Tom Miskey, women have been historically denied and actively discouraged from pursuing roles in every male-dominated field, and this charity is directly attempting to address that. You seem to be speaking from an alternate-reality utopia where the playing field is level, and favors all players equally. It’s not, and it doesn’t. This charity, and many others set up to help women and girls, is making an effort to give girls a leg up in a field in which they are often actively discouraged from participating.
And it doesn’t deny anyone’s son or nephew any opportunity — those sons and nephews already benefit from a culture that favor them over their sisters. Read up a little on women in the video game industry and you will see what they are up against.
Jason Lutes We believe in fundamentally opposite things. I believe in equal opportunity, allowing everyone an equal chance to do whatever they’d like to do and are capable of doing. Whatever past discrimination there was will then naturally disappear over time,. If the end results are not perfectly equal because of individual choices and preferences, that’s fine and not something that needs to be corrected. You don’t need to start from (or wait for) a level playing field in order to level the playing field, you just do it. A “level playing field” is about providing equal opportunity for all regardless of race or gender and it has no correlation to outcomes, which are decided individually using free will.
You seem to believe in the exact opposite (and correct me if I’m wrong here), you want purposely unequal opportunities in order to try and engineer equal outcomes. You want to give special opportunities to some and raise the bar for others based on their race and gender until you create what you believe is an equitable (though artificial) distribution of people by identity in the profession, in the belief that this is beneficial and just.
But weren’t unequal opportunities based on race and gender decried as unfair and morally wrong when it was done in the past? I contend that if judging and excluding people for race and gender was wrong before, it’s still wrong now when you do it to a new generation of people. You correct the failures of the past by changing the behaviors today, not by repeating them and hurting a different group of people this time.
Tom Miskey From reading this thread, I don’t believe that you and Jason Lutes believe in fundamentally opposite things; in fact, I’m positive that you and Jason strive to live in a world where everyone has an equal chance of doing what they love and are capable of doing.
It’s important to realize that any kind of of organization that strives to fulfill a societal need is in no way required to accomplish their goal by making sure that everything is fair and equal and inclusive. In fact, they accomplish these goals by finding the gaps and needs and addressing them specifically. By very generalized example: we all need food, money and homes to live, but local and government organizations look to provide these resources specifically to those people who don’t have food or homes or cannot provide it for themselves.
There exists a extensive gap in the computer engineering (including video game engineering) between the male and female populations (at least 17 to 1). If you want this gap to decrease to “equal” proportions, then you specifically target the female population with coding opportunities. The reality is that this organization in no way excludes men from entering the field. In fact, I implore you to show me your son or male relative who actually feels excluded from entering the programming world by this organization.
As a side note, Tom raised a good point that there are very few men serving communities as primary school teachers, which is a real issue. There ought to be an organization that let’s men know that it’s just as important for them to be caregivers at early stages at education, and just leave it to women to seek the higher paid and “respectable” teaching positions of tenure at the university level.
Donna Almendrala ” If you want this gap to decrease to “equal” proportions, then you specifically target the female population with coding opportunities.”
To me, that’s the wrong goal, it’s looking at outcomes. How many male coders vs female coders is not what’s important. What is important is whether everyone is free to pursue the career they want without discrimination either for or against anyone (because all discrimination for a group is discrimination against other groups). If free choice is allowed and still men and women gravitate toward different types of jobs of their own free will (which is proven to be the case), then there is nothing wrong with that, nothing that needs artificial correction.
Maybe it’s easiest to think of equal opportunity vs equal outcome as a 1000m race. What is the definition of a fair race? There are 2 opposing views. 1 side says it is important that everyone start at the same time and lined up shoulder to shoulder, and then the race is fair. That means some people might cross the finish line well ahead of other people, through luck, hard work, natural talent, etc., The other view of a “fair race” is to try and engineer an outcome where everyone crosses the line at the same time. So you push the faster runners back an addition 300m, and you give the slower runners a 1 minute head start. If you guess right, each runner should have a roughly similar chance of crossing the finish line at the same time, though some will need to run much farther and much faster to do so because of their starting position. As you can see, these 2 ideas are diametrically opposed, since you can’t have both an even start and an uneven start to a race. So each person must decide for themselves which version of fair and equal they believe in, equal opportunity or equal outcome?
Tom Miskey Man get that MRA crap out of here. Its thinly veiled misogyny. And dont even bring that Girl WritesWhat male disposability out.
Tom Miskey: “You seem to believe in the exact opposite (and correct me if I’m wrong here), you want purposely unequal opportunities in order to try and engineer equal outcomes.”
Okay, I’ll correct you: you’re wrong. I haven’t said anything about equal outcomes. Maybe the final ratio of men to women in the video game industry on an even playing field is 5 to 1. Maybe it’s 2 to 1. Maybe it’s 1 to 3. I don’t know. The point is to remove as many disadvantages as possible so people can find what they love to do, and succeed on the merits of their skill and passion, without stupid cultural limitations.
Your footrace metaphor is backwards. It’s not about handicapping the runners based on their ability. What we have here, in reality, is a race where half of the runners have had iron weights chained to their ankles against their will. Everyone starts on the same mark. And the guy with the starting pistol — you — says, “Okay, however you place in this race is purely a reflection of your personal ability, and nothing else.”
But I don’t expect you to see the truth in that, or for this to become an actual dialogue any time soon, and I have better things to do than get lectured to, so I’ll bow out. But first, I’ll pledge $20 to Code Liberation, because I think it’s a great idea and this exchange has only underlined its importance.
Jason Lutes Doing good work man, though I dont think hes gonna change his mind any time soon.
Cool idea, cool charity, donated.
Is the 17 in the stat blocks intentional?
I donated because I like the idea of workshops. There is a good idea in there, for sure.
That said… I don’t think this charity approaches the heart of the issue. I don’t personally believe that female interest and avenues for female learning are the answer. Rather, a cultural shift in how women are perceived would be the key. I’m not really sure how to do that aside from bombarding the public with ads and stories about acceptance (for all things) then wait for the culture to slowly change.
So yeah, I agree with Tom… everyone should be allowed to pursue the opportunities they are interested in.
Did it man!!!
Didn’t donate because of exclusivity of charity.
Shadi: How are men’s rights and issues a bad thing, when women’s rights and issues are a good thing? Also, why are people separating rights based on gender? Why are you pushing for discrimination based on gender? Do you also support discrimination based on race?
If you want equality work towards equality of opportunity. Not on boosting one group artificially until you hit a quota so you can feel better.
Jeff Wells There are many many groups that help men. Almost all of which want nothing to do with the “Mens Rights Movement” Thats what I was refering too. And for the record no I dont advocate for racial discrimination.
Oh, so this is what “No good deed goes unpunished” means…
Shadi Alhusary No Shadi, there are very few groups that help men exclusively and exclude women. Any that used to exist were sued by feminists for being sexist. There are tons and tons of groups that give financial aid or outreach only to women and minorities (just look over all the women and minority only scholarships and aid in computer field vs help that is for white men, as though being a white man means you can’t be poor or ever need help).
Good for you Jeff, I hope others stand up and speak out for what’s right too.
Tom Miskey Oooh and the feminist hate starts. That means in peacing out. Oh also where did you donate instead of this charity?
Shadi Alhusary What “feminist hate”? Are you saying feminists did NOT pressure and often sue male-only organizations to open their doors to women too? How is it hate to say something most feminists brag about?
And I donate my time and money to several groups each year, none of which exclude either men or women from participating or benefiting.
Tom Miskey Honestly do what you do. I dont give a shit. But leave other people who are doing good work out of it. Im done here.
Tom and Jeff’s comedy act is so good, they should take it on the road.
Far away from here.
“There are drastic shortages of male teachers, especially in primary school. Many schools have no male teachers at all. You don’t see men-and-boys-only charity efforts to get them into teaching.”
Yes you do…
http://www.menteach.org/join_or_donate
Robert Finamore Good find! Never heard of that group before, but looking over the site, it says that it’s a group that does “information exchange, consulting, and research” and that it consists of both men and women, not just men only (they point that out twice on the About page).I don’t really have a problem with a group of both men and women exchanging info and doing research on a topic. If they excluded women from being part of the group, or held an event that literally forbid any women from attending, then it may be a problem.
Just a question, how long after you donate before you can expect the email? My friend donated yesterday and is still waiting for the response email.
Mine came pretty much immediately after I donated. Have him check junk mail as it may have gone in there.
It turns out he did it wrong. All good now, the fault was his, and not that of our future computerized overlords.
It isn’t an idea of excluding men so women will do better. The problem is that there area already schools/programs/workshops that treat women in the game development industry with prejudice; and it is not always necessarily the organizations fault, but the people in their employ. The criticism and exclusion directed towards women in the game development industry intentionally drives down the number of women who can succeed in the industry.
Maybe an all women workshop is not the purest idea, but they are trying to create an environment where the ideas of women wont be criticized and thrown out as ‘stupid’ ideas by their peers.
Like with Hollywood, the representation of women in the industry is abysmal, and it is NOT from lack of interest in the field. Somewhere along the way, someone who has influence over the direction of your movie or video game will decide that your ideas do not fit with their own ideas of what is good for the business. While this is a problem many writers and developers have regardless of gender, more often your ideas are the ones considered ‘too different’ because it introduces ideals which are feminine and therefor alien.
The industry isn’t imbalanced for lack of trying, it is imbalanced because someone IS trying, whether they know it or not, to make it that way.
Cory Alfaro Do you have actual evidence of this bias and prejudice going on, or are you inferring it merely because there are fewer women coders so obviously prejudice MUST be the cause? Personally, I don’t believe there is some great male conspiracy to keep women out, though there may be a few jerks here and there that want that (same as there are some female jerks that don’t want men horning in on some traditionally female jobs). And even if you can find provable instances of prejudice, is purposely creating more prejudice and exclusionary programs the best way to change things, as though 2 wrongs DO make a right?
Don’t you think that having an exclusive track for women, where they don’t have to compete with or associate with men until it comes time to get a real job might cause problems and create (possibly unfair) assumptions?
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J.T. Seusoff Fair, enough just having a bit of fun pokin him ill remove it.
Yeah Tom Miskey this is pretty sexist shit here. This for instance:
“I find that in many cases, men are inclined to work with things (tools, cars, computers, etc) and women are more interested in working with people. That’s a generalization, and yes there are many that don’t fit it, but it is still generally true. “
Making broad generalizations about people based on their gender+sex is pretty much the definition of sexism.
“If free choice is allowed and still men and women gravitate toward different types of jobs of their own free will (which is proven to be the case), then there is nothing wrong with that, nothing that needs artificial correction.”
Proven to be the case? Where? By who? Sounds like bullshit to me.
The other problem is you’re taking this state of affairs at this particular point in history in your particular part of the world as somehow expressing human nature. Even if what you’re saying is true (And it isn’t) it’s just as artificial as the affirmative action you’re speaking out against! Men have been “artificially” privileged over women for centuries in your part of the world. When something’s been true for that long and people lose sight of its origins, they will tend to believe that it’s always been like that, that it’s “natural”.
You’re thinking men and women are equal right now and any privileging of men over women is simply the natural state of affairs. That’s why you see women trying to raise themselves up and you think they’re trying to dominate you when in fact they’re just trying to get even. Look at the gender pay gap – do you think men and women should be paid the same for the same work or don’t you? The gender pay gap is a bad thing, artificial or natural.
And what are you trying to say here, artificial is necessarily bad? Natural is necessarily good? Says who? The Artificial-Natural dichotomy falls apart when you look at it for more than two seconds anyway.
Burk Diggler Man hes an MRA no good can come of a reactionary movement that only exists to counter feminism.
Gone. Done. Awarded. Happy.
Man, the amount of bullshit in this comment thread was astounding. I especially liked the feminist claiming that the guy who disagreed with her had to be a woman-hating MRA. Good shit. Oh yeah, the class is good too. Worth donating for, at least.
Normal when people talk politics. No civility and it quickly becomes bumper stickers and noise even with the brightest and best people. I will say some women on the net have a legit beef: some guys need to learn a few manners.
Can we get a mod to lock the comments down on this thread? Someone got politics all over my RPG forum.
Delos Adamski I say just nuke the post and make a new one.
Agreed!
This is a little bit scary to look at now that a certain combination of a “social group” and fence decoration has festered. Don’t be hatin on the feminists yo.
Darn’it Noel Warford , you had one job. Don’t poke the SJW’s. If people want to resurrect this discussion about feminism, please take it somewhere else.
Noel, the goobers are just a louder and more obvious branch of crap that happens everywhere, and has happened for awhile. Tabletop rpgs are no exception.
It is funny how ‘social justice warrior’ is supposed to be some kind of insult. 🙂