Pronoun policing in hobby groups

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

I'm in a Facebook group for embroiderers. I don't do much myself (turns out it's harder than it looks!) but I like seeing other people's creations.

Anyway, the gender wars are raging.

Every so often someone posts a political pattern they've stitched, usually something to do with trans rights, and the comments are an even split between allies cheering them on and other people asking to keep the discussion related to embroidery and away from politics.

This morning someone posted a general message, not related to an embroidery they had done, calling others out for starting posts with, "Hey ladies!" or similar, saying that not everyone in the group is a woman, and signing off "from this enby".

The comments were the usual shit show that I have come to expect, with half the commenters saying, "stop ramming your special identity down our throats, we don't care" and the other half bemoaning the transphobia in the group.

But what I noticed was that several people posted to thank the person who had posted the comment and saying that they were also not women, and every single one of them was either a female person who identified as non binary, or a trans man. I did not spot one single natal male in the group.

It struck me as odd to pipe up and say, "Hey, thank you, there are men in this group too!" if the only men in the group are female.

I want to say that embroidery clearly is a very gendered activity, but weirdly it looks like more of a sexed activity, if the only people doing it are female, but identify as a range of different genders.

Anyway, that's my random thought for the day.

Yes, there has to be a happy medium between the days when RPG was viewed as an exclusively male hobby, of which males were very protective and excluding of women (and could be very sexist), and the new hyper-neurotic overcorrection that takes so long in rolling characters and negotiating conditions/rules/topics of play (and includes virtue/politics signalling) that sometimes not a lot gets done in terms of having escapist fun. If I wanted to do that type of boring stuff I’d join a committee not a hobby group.

In my day (back when this was all fields and dinosaurs roamed the earth) anyone who quibbled about the rules, or brought their own copy of the sourcebook, was called a ‘rules lawyer’ and it was discouraged for being impolite and undermining the GM.

I had no idea there were so many DnD players on FWR. That's great! Neither did I know about the politicisation. It's interesting to hear.

I am currently running a game that is a pretty straightforward 'beat the bad guy' . We didn't really have any drama about character creation but maybe that's because we knew each other before. So we are out there, those of us who just want to kill some orcs 😀.

Also, @UtopiaPlanitia , you might like this

The first true trekkie was Bjo Trimble, (if I have to parade my nerd credentials). You'd have thought it would be a teenage bloke - although sadly a lot of teenage blokes were probably preoccupied with the Vietnam War and staying alive.

Lots of men embroider and do cross stitch

Those social fallacies you linked feel all too familiar! Fallacies 2, and 4 were especially prevalent in my group - a friend of mine completely cut me off when I asked him not to do something that made me uncomfortable, and I remember all too well the Facebook posts saying "if you still speak to Person X then please unfriend me now". A really interesting look at geek psychology and I can definitely see how perfectly reasonable ideas about the world get taken to toxic extremes. And of course many of us geeks are ND (I'm no exception) and have our own unusual and strongly held perspectives, which then clash with each other!

On a related note, I really don't understand the stereotype that ND people all get along - sometimes our wavelengths are at polar extremes and everything we do clashes off each other.

some BNFs (Big Name Fans) in my favourite fandoms

Was the Harry Potter fandom one of them? I'm on the younger side, so I missed the days of LiveJournal and dedicated fansites for specific fandoms, but I've heard there were some pretty toxic BNFs in there, including one or two who later went on to become bestselling authors in their own right.

That’s another thing, why do so many readers not leave comments for authors nowadays? I think the kudos button on AO3 has made people lazy 🤔

I try very hard to appreciate any form of interaction, but a comment will always feel more valuable than a kudos. My top rated fanfiction has a third as many comments as kudos, which is pretty good, but I also have some pretty depressing ratios - 36 kudos to one comment on what I thought was my best fic! I do, rarely, get private messages from readers who find my social media (which has the same username as my AO3) and those mean a lot to me.

I do wonder if maybe readers are more tentative because they're more afraid of being seen as weird, looking stupid, or offending the author in some way? But kudos definitely plays a large role - it immediately tells the author "I liked this" and if you have nothing more substantial to add, you might think a comment is a bit redundant.

I think your observation about wargamers is astute, it isn’t as much about the feelings and emotions (and perhaps social aspects) with that hobby 🤔

Yes, I definitely think hobbies with an emotional or character-based hook are more susceptible, especially anything that involves storytelling. Storytelling has always been a place for themes, messages and serious emotional investment. So fandom, video games and the roleplay scene are probably the places that get the most politicised the most quickly - whether those politics are interpersonal or follow cultural zeitgeists.

Hi @Janie143 i don’t want to derail the thread but TB destroyed my mother’s family. For years I had a small table made by someone in the sanatorium that one of her brothers was in. It never met my maternal grandparents or uncles because of TB.

This is really interesting! I've definitely seen all these arise in hobby groups, sometimes actively enforced by the organisers (eg no private meet ups, everything has to be shared on the fb page - of 2000 plus people).

A lot of the "non-binary" women I know are really into the whole cottage-core aesthetic. They seem to divide between the ones who actually dress in retro women's clothing and are totally indistinguishable from women - and the ones who dress like odd nerdy men, but they are very into knitting, baking, and cats.

What I find off is so many of them seem to have what I would consider stereotypical female personalities, especially in terms of the kind of social games and hierarchies they seem to engage in when it comes to group settings.

I suspect when things like television are so international, it's impossible to stop language creep. There have been a few times I have heard very UK usages here in Canada recently, I think it's because so many people watch so much British television now.

But the lads thing is interesting, as is guys, because that is exactly the same way "men" used to be used. In the singular it was always a male, but in the plural (men or mankind)it was potentially mixed sex.

I find most young people now seem almost unaware of this, I've seen a few confused when using older texts, they assume something is meant to be exclusive and sexist, when it's actually intended to be universal.

But people do accept guy and guys in much the same way, and apparently lad, and lads.

Years ago when I was a soldier, they they changed the use of the word "men" to address groups of soldiers, because it was supposed to be sexist. They called us "troops" instead which always seemed a bit silly to me.

There is an argument (well, there is now 😀) that using "guys" to include men and women is a perfect way to disguise the inequalities between the sexes that persist into the 21st century.

"Have we sorted things out so that women have exactly the same opportunities and privileges in society and law as men ?"

"Well, we're now calling them 'guys'".

"Ah, I see. Good thinking Smithers. Carry on then."

I often use "folks" as being appropriately gender neutral.

You don't need to be much of an online gamer for men to flirt with you creepily. It happens to me playing online Scrabble, and I'm 74 with a picture that makes my age pretty obvious.

I often use "folks" as being appropriately gender neutral.

Except in the woo-woo that is gender politics, that is equivalent to eating babies and throwing the bones out of the window.

TRA type folk don't want gender neutral anything. They want their gender to be especially and specifically exalted.

Trying to include them in a gender neutral address is a hate crime.

It wasn't just any passenger who got "ladies and gentlemen" banned on the Tube, it was Aimee Challenor.

The M&S of passengers ?

Anyway aren't they "customers" now ? Passenger is so oppressive.

This painting (by Thomas William Wood) depicts Private Thomas Walker, wounded at the Battle of Inkerman in the Crimean War, sewing a military patchwork quilt from pieces of uniform.

In the 20thc, the actor Ernest Thesiger was an expert needleman who sustained wounds to his hands in WW1 and subsequently set up the Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry to allow wounded and bedridden veterans to provide an income for themselves by doing needlework. His main skill was in petit point, but he worked all sorts of embroidery and even made tiny carpets for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House.

These days there’s the charity Fine Cell Work, which supports prisoners by training them to do needlework to a high (luxury) standard, which sell for £££.

The whole purity spiral thing just drives me completely mad (and as a Ravelry member I watched it happen with disbelief). Of course men and women can do crafts but some people just have to be special 🙄

Thanks @Szygy. Since I posted I ruminated about why it has always been perfectly acceptable to be a male chef or tailor (ie a professional), but domestic sewing and cooking in certain sections of society in the 20th century were (and still are in some places) firmly women's work.

Dors anyone know of a good book on social history that explores this further as I’d be interested in knowing more.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'professional'.

Anything done at home by women is unseen, private and undervalued.

I don't know why men putting up shelves etc at home isn't viewed in the same way though. Probably because its usually men doing it.

That's only partly true. In Germany, "new Gender language" is promoted by the media and the Duden dictionary. It's not used by most of the public, outside of unis, certain political circles and now media. Clearly a prescriptive approach, trying to cloak itself as "public usage".

I work with a trans man and a transwoman. Both are really nice and never make the slightest reference to gender politics. They are just who they are. While I may not agree with the politics of the greater movement they are nice people who are just getting on with their lives in the workplace.

What toilets / changing rooms do they use?

If the transwoman uses the women's facilities, what would happen if a woman objected to that?

Do they have preferred pronouns?

Do they have demanded pronouns?

What would happen in a meeting if I referred to them by the biologically and grammatically pronouns?

This is the thing though. I knew plenty of transwomen and non-binary people (pretty much all born female) in my roleplay circles. Many of them were nice. Many of them did have interests and personalities outside of their gender identities. Many of them were quite solid people you could rely on in a pinch.

But this was, of course, conditional on playing the game, and they did assume you were comfortable with everything being a "good ally" involved (because only bigots and TERFs aren't comfortable, and obviously topofthetable is normal around me, so she's not a bigot or TERF). Whereas I was prepared to defend them from being abused on the street, but not to bodyguard them into the wrong sex bathroom.

Obviously, this is not a boundary that would have been accepted very much and would have led to wholesale ostracisation from my hobby if I'd set it.

I feel as though there's a conversation to be had about boundaries and consent in insular, mostly-closed communities like live action, but perhaps that's a slightly different topic.

Great idea for a thread. Although it would probably fit on this one, too.

Whereas I was prepared to defend them from being abused on the street, but not to bodyguard them into the wrong sex bathroom.

Me tangent: I've never understood why a useful and appropriate act of allyship from men wouldn't be to bodyguard a TW chum/colleague into the appropriate Room of Requirement as a deterrent against whatever the apprehension is. [/merail]

Obviously, this is not a boundary that would have been accepted very much and would have led to wholesale ostracisation from my hobby if I'd set it.
I feel as though there's a conversation to be had about boundaries and consent

It feels like software updates, shrinkwrap etc. - (informed and full) consent is presumed by default. There's a sense of default entitlement that is taken to preclude any consideration of consultation, information about intended actions, far less asking for actual consent.

Hmm, in that case I'll elaborate and if it warrants its own thread, I'll start one.

I do think "geeky" hobby groups can be especially rife with problems regarding consent and boundaries. The main issues are probably:

1. High numbers of neurodivergent participants who may have a different idea of what is or isn't socially acceptable. Many people in these circles, myself included, considered healthy boundary setting around sex, relationships, oversharing etc. to be arbitrary neurotypical rules that we were free to do away with within our own group.
2. As a closely related point to 1, high numbers of Q identities and again, the sense that these boundaries were oppressive and unnecessary. Given how much ND and Q overlap, I suspect there is a fairly strong element of "stick it to NT society" at play here.
3. Some hobbies are insular, closed groups of a dozen friends getting together at a weekend to participate in said hobby. This is especially true for niche hobbies like live-action, where a core group of "OGs" can persist for years or decades. The group is the only place to enjoy the niche hobby. The "OGs" are the gods of the group and essentially above reproach.
4. Old school / new school misogyny and attitudes towards women.

Let's say you got into this hobby as a young autistic woman - perhaps a student. You're newly independent and trying to navigate the challenges of adult life in a society that doesn't feel set up for you. You find this hobby. You hyperfixate. It's the most fun you've ever had and all the people are so nice to you. Many of the people in your hobby are older, late 20s or 30s or maybe even 40s. Wow! These guys are so cool. There's a man there who's about the same age as your dad and he's been roleplaying since before you were born. You get talking and a few months down the line, he offers to help you make a great costume for your character.

Your friends aren't too keen about him coming to your student flat, but it's 2025 not 1925. How can we advance as a society if we don't leave ALL forms of sexism at the door? Besides, this guy is your friend and he really wants to help you feel included. So he comes over, your friends are mad at you, and he shows you how to use the sewing machine. He really seems to understand your character. He says she's going to look great. You feel flattered. He says she's going to look hot. You brush it off as him just being excited about your character.

A few sessions later, his character makes a move on yours.

You feel uncomfortable and maybe a bit guilty for feeling that way because it's all in-character stuff isn't it? Not real life, even if the bum grope felt real. You do try to tell another friend in the group, but she doesn't want to hear it. She says he's a great person - he's a great LGBT ally and he got arrested at a Palestine rally last year. Poor guy just gets really into his roleplay, he's so passionate about it.

You think maybe you misunderstood him and feel guilty for spreading a bad reputation. You worry you might be kicked out of the group. Your identity now revolves around this hobby. You don't know what you'd do without it.

Besides, he said sorry. It won't happen again.