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Overlord
 
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| [admin hat on] This thread is touching the border of acceptable discussion on the forum. I don't really want to move it to Mugger's because it has a wider appeal and is obviously the source of a vibrant discussion, but keep it civil please and refrain from the personal, implied or otherwise. [admin hat off] Take a breath before posting - this isn't a competition, no-one wins.
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Knight
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Bacon (6/25/2008)
Not long after shaking the 'healer girlfriend' label, I was called a 'ballgowner', a different dismissive sexist term (and before you claim it's not sexist, I want to see a picture of a man larping in a ballgown please  ). I've been caled a ballgowner .. It was a derogatory term and refered to p player more inolved in the socail/political aspects of the game rather than combat (which was true) As to Photographic evidence of me in a ballgown.. Im hoping that it never sees the light of day.. but It was my best disguise ever. Healer girlfriend is a derogatory term and its a negative steriotype. I have known one particularly proactive female LRP'er to acttivley recruit healer boyfriends. So the question is.. Would I attend a game as a healing type if I was going out with somone who asked me to do that? the answer is tht I probably would but would be truly crap at it since I would probably be too busy tyring to heal the arm of a dead goblin onto sir lancelot to be there in moments of crisis. I guess my point is that in an ideal world ther would be no healer girlfriends .. There would be peple who came to events as such but got so swept up in the action of the event that they were indistinguishable from other players. As an event organiser I find its really difficult to engage players who have picked deliberatley low priofile characters.. but not impossible. And if you manage it they turn into regualr players (Actually in my experience they have been universally better than thier other hlaves.. Im guessing this is just an effect of those I was able to engage in the first place, coupled with the fact that somoone who recruits a healer girlfriend tends not to be top of the larp tree in the first place.. not rally sure) I supose this warrants testing, But I dont have a girlfrend and am not currently playing in any system. (and wont do if those ballgown photos ever get out)
PD: Head of economics
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Champion
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I would like to say a few words for the poor old healers out there as well. Amongst my hard rocking buddies we have had the occasional joke as to whose turn it is to be the healer. That is whu I like the CP system. Healers are not JUST healers, they can do other stuff as well.
Matt
If I wanted to listen to an arsehole, I'd fart!
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Wag
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Lavlin (6/25/2008)
Er... Earth calling Matt Pennington! Could you get back into orbit, please?Probably not, I'm pretty confident that you and I ain't never going to be occupants of the same planet!
As long as there are women who do make an effort (and an impression) I really can`t see that happening.
I've never found the presence of reality to provide any kind of resistance to the creation of ignorance or the development of prejudice.
If no women ever fulfilled the stereotype of the healer girlfriend, the idea might die, but until that unlikely day I suspect it will get used fairly often to dismiss women's contributions in LRP.
I really think you`re reading way to much in it. We're clearly reading different things into it, that much we can agree on.
It must be so nice for you to belong to a majority. I'm rich, white, middle-classed, well-educated male and living in one of the richest counties in human history. I have the world's largest silver spoon and yes it's lovely thank you. Occasionally I let black women from council estates borrow it to stir their tea, so long as they don't look like the sort of people who might steal it. I hate them nigger muggers.
So let me get this straight: Men who go to events to get pissed when they might be roleplaying get dismissed because they get pissed when they might be roleplaying but not because they`re men, and women who go to events to cling to the boyfriend when they might be roleplaying are dismissed because they`re women and not because they cling to the boyfriend when they might be roleplaying? That`s a bit biased, isn`t it? In fact, I`d say it`s a totally screwed perspective.
If that was my perspective I'd agree with you. But that wasn't it. My point was that the women who go to events who don't cling to their boyfriend get dismissed just because there are some women who do. Just like the fact that I used to roleplay in a group of pissed-up idiots so everyone who found out what group I was from assumed I was a pissed-up idiot. Of course I don't drink, but facts are thin tissue paper in the face of prejudice.
The point is that if you link the behaviour to the gender then that creates a tendency to link the behaviour to the gender. That is what human beings, in my experience do. Obviously you don't believe sexism exists any more but the experiences of other people are very different. My experience and that of other women posting on this thread is that sexism remains a factor in society to a varied extent, including in LRP.
Girlfriend and boyfriend are freely exchangeable, it`s not pinned down to one sex.
If people talked about healer boyfriends this would be true. But they don't - they talk about healer girlfriends. And girlfriend is a gender specific word, I've never heard it used to mean a bloke, not ever.
Oh heck, it`s your language! Educate me. Er ok - girlfriend. Meaning female friend, but with the implication of a non-platonic relationship. The word pretty specifically describes a woman.
Do people at your events go about purposefully referring to their chosen mates as 'better half' or 'significant other' or other gender neutral terms out of fear of offending people by the implication of being more attracted to one sex-gender combination than to others, or even offending their chosen partner?
I've heard all phrases used. Personally I call my non-healing girlfriend my partner, but purely because the word girlfriend seems a bit inane to describe a relationship of 15+ years. I occasionally refer to her as my better half, but that's mostly because she really is my better half, as anyone who has ever met her will readily attest. Obviously we have some political correctness to the idea that referring to your partner as your girlfriend is "demeaning" but I don't think I've ever met anyone who really pays it any attention. But I don't think that has any bearing at all on the phrase "healer girlfriend" a healer girlfriend (as a phrase) means a helluva lot more than a girlfriend of someone who is playing a healer character.
I suppose at your end of the stratosphere 'boyfriend' is both sexist and racist?
Er no. Why would it be? However it definitely does imply a male individual. It can't really be used to describe women.
Matt Pennington (6/25/2008)
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.
Could you please try not to put words in my mouth? I was talking about most of the men posting here, not just yourself. But since you'd prefer your own words, here they are:
Here's your quote saying that you've never heard it and containing the strong implication that therefore it isn't a problem
Lavlin
I don`t recall ever having heard someone being called a healer girlfriend to her face
This follows a number of women posting comments about having their contribution to LRP dismissed, with the phrase "healer girlfriend". So to me that looks like you, dismissing women's claims of having their experiences of LRP dismissed right there and then. I probably shouldn't have found it ironically funny but I did.
It`s bad enough you keep twisting the ones I did utter. If I have your opinion wrong then I do apologise. I really don't mean to twist your words but as far as I can tell you seem to genuinely believe that the existence of the phrase healer girlfriend is of no consequence and it's widespread use to describe women who don't fit the criteria identified by Ian either isn't an issue or simply doesn't happen. A position I find ridiculous and repellent in equal measures when posted on a thread that includes posts by women clearly stating experiences where this has happened to them.
I didn`t find The Producers particularly funny, certainly not the goose stepping musical nazis. Fair enough. It is considered a comic classic. I laughed my tits off to "Springtime for Hitler and Germany!".
If you ever find a phrase that I can use to dismiss women`s contribution to LRP, let me know. Ok sure. How about... Healer girlfriend. That does seem to be the phrase that we are discussing that achieves this effect. As noted by some women on the thread it has been used to their faces in ways that they felt dismissed their contributions in LRP. Posts which as far as I can tell you seem to be dismissing...
In the meantime, we`re discussing a word that refers to the non-contribution, in fact, the very noninvolvement of significant others - usually girlfriends, but potentially boyfriends - who tag along to a LRP because they couldn`t let their better halves alone in a field full of scantily clad barbarians and/or frocked up lounge lizards, or any such reasons as they might have.
Healer girlfriends doesn't refer to blokes, it refers pretty specifically to healer *girlfriends*. It's quite possible that it is also used more generally to refer to men also, you've mentioned it being used once to describe a bloke you know, but that is, as far as I can tell, the only post on here stating it's use for men. I've heard the word many times, I've never heard it used to describe men, ever. Of course the usage of the word can be widened in that way, that's entirely possible, but I haven't seen that happening and nor I'm willing to bet, have that many others. Rather the experience of a few women posters is that the word is commonly used to describe non-active female participants LRP and occasionally applied to women in LRP in general.
If we get lots of posts saying how the phrase "healer girlfriend" is often used to describe men and means men in the same sort of way that "mankind" means men and women then I'll freely accept I'm wrong and that there is no gender implication in the phrase. I have heard someone called a "healer boyfriend" once, but it was meant in an ironic way and clearly built off the subtext that healer girlfriends are normally supposed to be women. The context and usage of the phrase overwhelmingly applies to women in my experience.
I can see how this could easily happen. You create a sexist word and people`d have no choice but to follow up on it, like the brainless automatons that they are. Of course, we`re not talking about us, we`re two most excellent roleplayers, we`re talking about the other people...you know, the bad ones...
You may not have been talking about yourself, I was talking about me. Language is a powerful tool and it influences the way we think and the way we act, as does the culture we're steeped in. Can I say I've never dismissed any woman's contribution to LRP as being that of a "healer girlfriend". I don't recall doing it, but I suspect I've used the phrase. I'm not beating myself up about it, but having had Helen and others point out that it is offensive and why it's offensive it's something I'll think a lot more carefully about in the future.
Just to be clear on this, I've no problem with judging people as individuals. I don't mind Ed's "accidental LRPer", I don't mind "rubbish LRPer" for that matter. Judging people is rarely beneficial, but equally I've no truck with pretending everyone is equal and that we shouldn't try to measure people's contributions. Some people LRP their socks off at events and some people stand in the bar and get pissed and some people follow one person round all weekend and wait to use their healing cards. What I have a problem with is creating a term that clearly identifies the problem as being gender based because doing that tends to lead to discrimination in the long run.
Instead of identifying the problem as being "people who attend LRP but don't participate" the phrase Healer girlfriend specifically and explicitly (through the etymology of the constituent words) identifies the problem as "women who attend LRP but don't participate". In fact their gender is completely irrelevant to the problem, but it's still clearly identified in the phrase itself. That's a problem in itself because the word then comes to imply that the problem is a gender based problem, it goes from being an issue about people who do this, to being an issue about women who do this. And from there it becomes a fairly offensive term to women in general.
To give another example, it's common in British cities for a statistically significant amount of street crime to be committed by young black males. We could create a word or phrase to describe young black male criminals (a word like yardie), how about "Nigger Mugger", but it would be wise to be enormously careful in the usage of that word. Because before long the phrase stops being about criminals who are black and risks becoming a phrase meaning black people are criminals. In the same way "healer girlfriend" stops being a phrase about women who aren't involving themselves in the game and becomes a phrase about women in LRP.
I`m a bit of a language purist so if you come across any inappropriate use of the word, feel free to scold the perpetrators on my behalf.
Ok, there was a post earlier by a guy saying that the phrase healer girlfriend also applies to blokes. If you could have a word with him that would be great.
I do often get the feeling that people go around looking for stuff to take offense at. Older feminists droning on and on about issues that have been addressed decades ago are annoying enough. Younger women seem to be totally frustrated by the fact that there are no dragons left to kill and so they have to make up new ones to get that heroic feeling. It`s nice to have rolemodels, but it would be nicer if they weren`t outdated.
Unfortunately I simply cannot relate your experiences to my own, or to those of any women I've ever spoken to. I've met a fair few men who had this opinion that sexism stopped being an issue ages ago and doesn't happen any more, but I still meet women who suffered some pretty appalling examples of sexist discrimination and prejudice.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Prodigal
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| It depends what you mean by 'ballgowner'. If you use it to mean 'prefers politicking to combat' its absolutely fine as audience segmentation.* However, I have heard it used in a derogatory sense to apply to people who dont like combat. Admittedlty, not in the last 5-6 years, as fashions in LRP have moved towards more political events anyway, more and more people become 'ballgowners'. So maybe its a term thats been reclaimed?  As for the use of 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' to describe long term adult partners, its still very common usage, and personally, I dont have a problem with it. These days I'm a 'wife' not a 'girlfriend', but the way I prefer Balor to refer to me is 'Sarah'. *I've said it before, I'll undoubtedly say it again, but fighter is not the opposite of politician. I might invent a term for players who like to play politically inclined combat wombats.
_____________________________________________________ It is not a competition. It is a web forum.
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Prodigal
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I recall a brief thread about this on the old Gamer:the podcasting forum. The americans had their own term of this - 'backpack,' meaning someone who has being carried along on the larp by their partner.
------<insert really amusing sig here>
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Knight
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Bacon (6/25/2008)
Not long after shaking the 'healer girlfriend' label, I was called a 'ballgowner', a different dismissive sexist term (and before you claim it's not sexist, I want to see a picture of a man larping in a ballgown please ).
Here you go:
http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l204/Shwooo/Coronation/?action=view¤t=EttiquetteXochiyotl.jpg
Not going to argue with the sexist bit though...
PD: Ex-wasp
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