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I do talk a good fight
 
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It depends on context:
If the "healer girlfriend" isn't particularly enthusiastic about LRP, but has been persuaded to come along, or has decided to come along, & then been shoe-horned into the role of healer because "we need one / no-one else wants to play the Cleric / it'll be easier for you / you won't get hit", then I think the term is accurate -- and, frankly, the slightly dismissive tone it's used in is probably not entirely inaccurate. I don't really mind if people come along to LRP events without entirely wanting to, & without really engaging with the other players and/or plot; but they don't really enhance my game, either, so I don't feel that bothered about being a bit dismissive of them. That's not to say I'll dismiss them SOLELY because they happen to be someone's girlfriend & happen to be playing a healer; just if they're clearly not engaging with the game (and possibly worse, disengaging their partner from the game, either actively, or just by their presence), not actually roleplaying, and probably, if anything, making mine & others' games worse... I will dismiss them. I may even shun them, or scorn them, depending on mood.
OTOH, I don't think it's appropriate to use it to dismiss everyone who happens to be (a) female and (b) playing a surgical/healing type role.
As long as they're playing a role, I really don't mind what that role is. What I object to is the presence of someone who is there solely to
(a) Provide 6 heals to their boyfriend
(b) Get pissed and then grumpy
(c) Talk OOC incessantly
(d) Get their boyfriend (and/or anyone else who'll listen) also talking OOC incessantly (and I'll object to those people constantly being OOC too... but I will find different insults to use than "healer girlfriend").
(e) Constantly complain about being too cold
(f) Insist that boyfriend / lift / whole group / whoever all leave the event early because it's too cold / it looks like there's a storm coming / I'm bored / I hate your hobby / I hate your friends
Etc.
So, er, yeah, it probably is an offensive term. I shall strive to use it solely to cause offence. I shall probably not use it on any actual "healer girlfriends" (i.e. crap & unenthusiastic non-LRPers dragged along to LRP events) because they wouldn't understand how offensive it is, so its value would be wasted. But I'll happily use it as a short-hand to describe the kind of phenomenon I'm referring to in this post.
To those of you who'd never heard it before -- excellent! Long may you continue to go to games where all the players (male and female) are there because they're enjoying themselves, or think they might enjoy themselves, rather than on sufferance.
To those of you who find it offensive -- Jerry Sadowitz referred to the Comedy Tax. This is the price you pay for laughing at jokes that offend other people -- sometimes jokes offend you, too. No subject is not fit for humour.
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Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
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Wag
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People _take_ offence - it doesn't naturally inhere in patterns of sound. Whether anyone will take offence in any situation does depend on the context - partly the context in which you appear to be making a statement, but mostly the context of who's listening and whether or not they view Taking Offence as Morally Righteous. There's nothing you can say that I can't take offence to if I so choose.
Marios
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Knight
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More often than not it is used in a derogatory manner, i certainly havent heard it used as a compliment! And its not offense directed at healers its directed at the unfortunate girlfriends, so clearly it is offensive. I agree with Oxfordgirl completely.
But i also agree that really those men who drag girls along to be their personal mobile healing potion would take offence - or at least feel a bit of shame that they manage to be so crap to their girlfriends.
Fortunately most women who are brought along for that role often swiftly relise they can have much more fun doing something else or really get into it off their own backs.
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Champion
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| I`m with Ian on this, in that I`ve heard it used, but since I only associate with decent, reasonable and level headed people, I`ve only heard it used when they were themselves offended by the IC/OC disinterest of said persevant partner. I don`t recall ever having heard someone being called a healer girlfriend to her face, although I seem to recall someone being called a healer girlfriend to _his_ face. Neither do I think the term is sexist. In fact, I`ll regard claims that it is as being sexist themselves. But that is wholly based on my personal experiences with the word and like expressions. The fact that it is more often heard than fighter boyfriend or some such, says more about actual occurrences than it does about attitude towards women. To be honest, I`ve brought a girlfriend to an event who wasn`t really interested in the game, being that I already booked for the event when she decided to spend the summer with me, and I didn`t want to leave her alone for four days. (I`m kind of set in my ways.) I went through the rules with her and helped her make up a character with low level evil cleric spells and poison use, but she ended up spending most of the weekend picking forest blueberries which grew in abundance on that particular site (the kind that stain your fingers black, i.e. the expensive kind when you want to buy them) and since this is exactly the way people in her country like to spend their holidays (yes, I`m generalizing) she had a good time nonetheless. She did distract me from the heavy politicking my character should`ve engaged in at that moment in time, which I explained IC as my character, being a high level cleric, having to work in the new member of the church staff. My first characters in both local systems (weekend and fest) were healers, although the first had a habit of 'preserving rare creatures in order to study them in the wild' - something the other players weren`t too happy with, but then, he was the most heavily armoured character in the system with the longest polearm and could equally afford to put monsters back on their feet and to risk the ire of others, especially since his partymembers were all evil bastards who considered it a good laugh. The other one was at a summer event where I was certainly not going to wear heavy armour and since I had just lost my sword and couldn`t be bothered to build a new one on the spot, I decided to play something non-combative, so I ended up with a traveling quack who became second of his faction and founding member of the healers` guild. So no, I wouldn`t think playing a healer as a first character was a sign of incompetence.
________________________________________________________ - IRL: Edwin Hofstra
- - mostly crewing at the moment
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Wag
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maslow (6/24/2008)
Generally, ive found PD to be a great system full of supportive and non judgemental players 
At least until you got on the forum to discuss it.... 
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Lavlin (6/25/2008)
I`m with Ian on this, in that I`ve heard it used, but since I only associate with decent, reasonable and level headed people, I`ve only heard it used when they were themselves offended by the IC/OC disinterest of said persevant partner. I don`t recall ever having heard someone being called a healer girlfriend to her face, although I seem to recall someone being called a healer girlfriend to _his_ face.
I think the language helps to create the prejudice. You identify a set of non-optimal behaviour (Ian's post is an excellent list) and we classify this as "healer girlfriend" syndrome because statistically there is a perceived overlap between the people with the unpleasant behaviour and healing and being another player's girlfriend. Once you have the label however the prejudice spreads it's nasty wings and takes flight and suddenly women everywhere find themselves being dismissed as healer girlfriends despite the fact that they have no overlap with the category at all.
I suspect that what Helen and other women object to is their experience of being dismissed in this way or of seeing other women dismissed in this way. The site of a lot of men dismissing women saying "this pisses me off" by saying "women don't get dismissed in LRP" appeals in the same sort of comic way that the goose stepping musical nazis in The Producers are funny. Having a phrase that you can use to dismiss women's contribution to LRP seems like a good way to offend to me.
Years ago I used to play a Bear in the LT system. After a while I noticed that everyone assumed I must be a crap roleplayer because I was in the Bear's faction. Some even said lovely things to me like "I assumed you must be a crap roleplayer because you're in the Bears but now I've realised you can roleplay." which naturally makes you feel so much better.
Then I began to notice that there were some really extremely poor roleplayers (by my definition of poor) and the majority of them seemed to be in the Bears faction... Finally I noticed that you could tell the poor roleplayers who were in the Bears faction because they wore kilts (because they were playing Celts (except for the ones who were playing a council road-maintenance crew who had fallen through a hole in space)), whereas poor roleplayers who were in other factions were indistinguishable from each other. I'll never know (nor will anyone else) if there were more or less crap roleplayers in the Bears faction than any other, but it was the ability to identify a set of sub-optimal behaviours and associate it with another visible characteristic that allowed people to attach a convenient label to the whole thing. And it was that, that allowed me and others to be pre-judged and discriminated against.
The prejudice annoyed me, quite a lot. Not quite as much as the presence of really awful roleplayers in my faction annoyed me, but it annoyed me. And that was a made up label that had nothing to do with the real "me" at all. I suspect if I'd felt anything remotely similar by dint of my race or gender which is not remotely made up and which chimes with a long history of such prejudice in the real world then I'd have felt a lot more offended by it.
Neither do I think the term is sexist. Ok. To me this is a bit like saying "Nigger" isn't a racist term.
In fact, I`ll regard claims that it is as being sexist themselves. But that is wholly based on my personal experiences with the word and like expressions. The fact that it is more often heard than fighter boyfriend or some such, says more about actual occurrences than it does about attitude towards women.
Does it? How does it say that? I think if women find their involvement and contribution in LRP being dismissed and the phrase "healer girlfriend" being bandied around then they seem to have a solid case of misogynism in action to me. As Helen pointed out, it's not the word itself, it's the usage, the social context, the assumptions and the prejudice that all comes neatly wrapped up with the word. Men and women occasionally get their contributions dismissed or ignored in LRP, but I feel confident stating that most people's experience is that gender is sometimes the basis for dismissal with women but not with men.
The phrase becomes an image/meaning, that becomes a stereotype and eventually a prejudice - a pre-judgement, in which women's contribution is seen through the lens of the assumption that they act like Ian's list or are likely to act that way.
And of course we didn't mean you Helen! You're an excellent roleplayer, it's those other women we're dismissing... You know, the bad ones... Some of my best friends are women...
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Champion
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Matt Pennington (6/25/2008)
[quote]And of course we didn't mean you Helen! You're an excellent roleplayer, it's those other women we're dismissing... You know, the bad ones... Some of my best friends are women...
I don't have anything against women - I'm not anti-woman - I really don't mind if they go around being female in the privacy of their own home, that's completely their choice. I just wish they wouldn't... you know... bring it out on the street, shove it in your face like they do. I mean, have you seen the clothes some of them wear? And you do really have to wonder about the long-term health of a child raised by women - is that any way to grow up? I mean, you can't exactly call it a family environment, can you - what sort of effect is that going to have on a developing mind? Don't get me wrong - there are some excellent women out there - I just wish they'd stick to more... you know... traditional pursuits. I'm not a sexist! Some of my best friends are women! I mean, I don't think they should be allowed, you know, in the classroom, certainly not in a teaching or authority position.... and I wouldn't exactly want one to marry my daughter!... but many of them are perfectly good people in their own way...
Uh, sorry. Sidetracked. Matt is quite right. It's absolutely hilarious to see a thread full of men dismissing these concerns about women being dismissed because of their gender in LARP.
Ian, I appreciate your usage of the term to identify a type of LARPer that pisses you off and ruins your game (and would probably annoy me if I'd ever run into it). However, I worry that the leakage from people who use it to dismiss a much wider cohort of the female LARPers available means that the term's become pejorative in and of itself. I know that I would be inclined make a snap judgement about someone who used the phrase pretty much regardless of direction, in much the same way I'd be inclined to make a similar snap judgement about someone who used the word "faggot" or "nigger", even if it was directed at someone I didn't know. "Oh, no, but it's OK, he's gay and a complete arsehole, so I can use that term, it's not homophobic..."
Lavlin (6/25/2008)
Neither do I think the term is sexist. In fact, I`ll regard claims that it is as being sexist themselves. But that is wholly based on my personal experiences with the word and like expressions. The fact that it is more often heard than fighter boyfriend or some such, says more about actual occurrences than it does about attitude towards women.
I disagree; I think it says a lot more about variant attitudes to gender in LARP. You don't get people talking about "thug boyfriends", not because you don't get "thug boyfriends" - they're all over the place, certainly in my (totally anecdotal and not-to-be-used-for-statistics) experience - but because most of the people who use the term "healer girlfriend" tend to automatically (and probably subconsciously) assume that a male partner of an experienced LARPer is there to enjoy the LARP, get involved and become part of the game, whereas a female partner of an experienced LARPer is there to pour healing spells down their partner's tank and hide at the back wondering who all these nasty men with swords are and what they're doing.
(Nice save, by the way, Lavlin - accusing the offended parties of the type of discrimination they're offended by - always goes down a hoot.)
Marios (6/25/2008)
People _take_ offence - it doesn't naturally inhere in patterns of sound. Whether anyone will take offence in any situation does depend on the context - partly the context in which you appear to be making a statement, but mostly the context of who's listening and whether or not they view Taking Offence as Morally Righteous.
Marios is partly right. I could get equally offended by terms like "weasel" or "FOIP" or "your mum". There's no inherent semantic quality in "healer girlfriend" that makes it a "bad phrase"; but it's not just about immediate context either, it's about the word's overall contextual loading and history. My uncle Barry can be as polite, friendly and non-confrontational as he likes - and often is - when talking about how the "nigger Jew queers" are taking over the White House(1); that doesn't make his statement any less likely to cause offense in people like me.
Equally, for me at least, it's not about moral rectitude; it's about personal threat levels. Overt demonstrations of sexism are immediately threatening to me; they imply attitude-complexes which will, when applied in a broader spectrum, see me marginalised, discriminated against and my personal ability to act as an equal human being reduced. They also imply attitude-complexes that often go hand-in-hand with an immediate reduction in my personal safety when in the company of the sexist in question. Moral rectitude is indeed very tasty, but a basic level of confidence that you're not going to be prejudged and dismissed on the basis of your front bumps is even nommier.
Is it fair to assume that everyone using the term "healer girlfriend" really is a misogynist arsehole? No. That's rather the point I'm trying to make. It's not fair - it's no more fair than assuming that every girlfriend who happens to be a healer is a "healer girlfriend".
However, I don't currently have a feasible alternative.
(1) - I wish to God I was using this as a comedy speculative example, I really do.
--
PD: Then: Some dead Wemic, some dead Puritan, Peggy Novak. Now: Samael den Shemhazai of the Sephirot.
White City: Then: Cpt. Ambriel Chermes, Broken Guard. Now: Sir Cordelia of the Shining Order.
RL: Helen W, RPGSoc.
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