Unconscious Bias or Why I Write

Discussing bias in terms of gaming is often a difficult task because it's often, but not always, the result of unconscious bias, not active discrimination. Because unconscious bias is the result of societal attitudes and practices, it is both much harder to see and often results in a greater level of defensiveness when people find out that they, too, are contributing to larger social patterns that they might otherwise decry and work against.

I understand this defensiveness because I've lived it. I've always been interested in civil rights issues, especially issues of race. But, like many people out there, I often assumed a rather equal playing field when I approached questions. For instance, when I got a job as an undergraduate advisor (my school's version of residential advisors, fellow students who provided mentorship, especially to first year students), I often worried about what "being fair" would look like on a diverse floor. Would it really be fair to ask someone from the south to take down a Confederate flag they hung in their room? It didn't help that I had grown up relatively poor and much of my extended family lived in poverty, so many of the experiences people of color shared were much like my own and seemed normal.

Eventually I came to see what I couldn't see before. Climbing the class ladder helped a bit. Now when I walk into stores, the clerks want to help me and no longer follow me around, mainly because I buy jeans that cost 3x or more what I did when I was in high school. I probably also walk differently and do other unconscious displays of social status.

I say all that to explain how I got to where I am today and why discussing things like how banshees are portrayed in some book about some elf game matters to me. While I'm forever wary of confirmation bias, my research and my life experiences lead me to a place where I find concepts like privilege, unconscious bias, implicit association, and the like are true. I think we do notice patterns in our lives and the art and media we experience, whether it's fiction or not, and internalize them in ways that we might not like if it's made explicit. And I do agree with research that suggests that the way to counter these biases isn't through censorship but through discussion and that it's through lack of discussion that these things continue. Also, it's not just the dominant group who often has these biases, for instance a research into the hiring of recent science grads showed that women were discriminated by men and women (I believe the research worked within the gender binary).

Now that I've been a bit more explicit about my own approach and biases, I'd like to talk about the Monster Manual a bit more. There is a lot I love about the book. I love that there is a richer history here, things like how hatred simmers below the surface between the azers and the efreeti. I rather enjoy the concept of lair actions and environmental effects, maybe because they remind me of the catastrophic dragons from 4e or my own monster from Lost City. (Aside, I loved Lyndsay's article about how to use these as part of world building.) Likewise, there is a lot of implied world history in the book, as Rob Donoghue points out. I've already used it to help someone knew to the game understand what the monsters we were describing in a discussion look like. Overall, the Monster Manual can be indispensable for a dungeon master as they prepare for their game or campaign and I highly recommend it.

However, that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with all the things it says about the world that we're supposed to play in. One of the goals of this edition of D&D, especially with the way organized play is set up, is that they want us to have a shared experience. I know many of you have had awesome conversations with each other about the older modules. "Man, that Acererak is a real asshole. Why the hell would he ever set up [redacted] in room [redacted]?" "Do you remember when that chick turned out to be a vampire and almost killed our entire party?" These sorts of shared stories help us bond and become our secret handshake of sorts.

Now imagine of that secret handshake left you feeling not only uncomfortable but like your basic humanity was being ignored. When a game starts making one gender the other, makes that gender a symbol for only certain things, that's what happens to many (but not all) members of that gender. Yes, it's true, there are a lot of "strong men" in D&D. But there are also physically weak male wizards who get by on their brains instead of their brawn. There are pudgy men, wise men, evil men, good men, men who lead armies, men who hide in a tower and read books all day, etc. However, women are too often limited to their looks and/or their covetousness of beautiful things. That's why the banshee, in that context, made me take notice. Mythological banshees are none of those things.

It's easy to argue for the existence of any one example or against the inclusion of one example in the pattern. If the banshee were the only example, sure, we need variety. If we had lots of other monsters that were portrayed as explicitly having female members with agency, sure, the fact that the medusa can also be male would be important to note. But those things, in our product today, aren't true. Sometimes, we are missing the forest for the trees.

When you aren't part of the core audience that the book due to explicit and/or implicit bias, which would include people of all genders who like and are well served by current societal attitudes towards gender, it's often easier to see that forest, to see that general pattern that even if it doesn't say stay away, says that you're not exactly welcome either. And that is why I write these things. Not because I hate games or because I want to tell other people that they are bad, but because if I stay quiet, if I don't mention these things, no one will ever know. People will still ask the questions, "Why is it so hard to get this person I care about to play? Are women really just not interested in this?" and no understanding will come of it because the real reasons are never allowed to be spoken, the sentiments censored.

Now, I'm not asking for total agreement. Plenty of people disagree with me on some things much of the time. Disagreement is not only good, it's going to be a fact of life. Humans are incredibly diverse in their tastes and their opinions. Just look at the full spectrum of kinks! But if you want to discuss gender essentialism or how applying the stereotype or the average to the individual is actually a good thing, well, you won't find purchase for your arguments here. That's not censorship, I just hear those opinions way too often as it is.

For those who have supported me through the years, many hearty thanks.

Art: "Scroll Raider" © 2013 Kaitlynn Peavler and Cheeky Mountain Parrot Games, created for Conquering Corsairs, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/