Karona
April 17, 2018, 1:11pm
21
aaronius:
The text in question was not written by Adam Cadre; it was written by me, I believe added two years ago.
To the best of my knowledge, each of these terms is the preferred one of members of that group. I am reasonably well versed in issues of representation in gaming (I’ve attended and even spoken at conferences about this, for example). I am very open to suggestions about different language from a member of one of these communities; I’m less interested in speculation from those who are not.
The reason for mentioning specific groups rather than a blanket “all are welcome” statement is that members of these groups have been frequently publicly and privately attacked over the past few years for making and talking about games. In addition, research has shown that people from historically marginalized groups feel more welcomed if you specifically invite them into a space. (Again, as a queer person myself I can speak from some experience on this: My brain still looks for a phrase like “sexual orientation” whenever I see a list of welcome or protected people, and get vaguely worried if I don’t see it… “oh, they probably don’t mean me, then.”)
Anecdotally, I feel I’ve seen submissions from a broader range of people since I added that bit of text, so it feels to me as if it’s serving its purpose.
Finally, I would love to plug the Spring Thing 2018 – general discussion topic here, which hasn’t seen a lot of traffic, if you have the spare time and bandwidth to think about Spring Thing!
Thanks,
–Aaron
Speaking as a disabled, queer, woman in the US, I am not offended by the terms “disabled” or “queer”. On the contrary, I feel included by them, and I would have felt so eager to submit my work, had I not seen them.
Thank you, Aaron, for all the hard work you have put into running an inclusive IF competition.
Karona
Adam_S
April 18, 2018, 12:16pm
22
Karona:
aaronius:
The text in question was not written by Adam Cadre; it was written by me, I believe added two years ago.
To the best of my knowledge, each of these terms is the preferred one of members of that group. I am reasonably well versed in issues of representation in gaming (I’ve attended and even spoken at conferences about this, for example). I am very open to suggestions about different language from a member of one of these communities; I’m less interested in speculation from those who are not.
The reason for mentioning specific groups rather than a blanket “all are welcome” statement is that members of these groups have been frequently publicly and privately attacked over the past few years for making and talking about games. In addition, research has shown that people from historically marginalized groups feel more welcomed if you specifically invite them into a space. (Again, as a queer person myself I can speak from some experience on this: My brain still looks for a phrase like “sexual orientation” whenever I see a list of welcome or protected people, and get vaguely worried if I don’t see it… “oh, they probably don’t mean me, then.”)
Anecdotally, I feel I’ve seen submissions from a broader range of people since I added that bit of text, so it feels to me as if it’s serving its purpose.
Finally, I would love to plug the Spring Thing 2018 – general discussion topic here, which hasn’t seen a lot of traffic, if you have the spare time and bandwidth to think about Spring Thing!
Thanks,
–Aaron
Speaking as a disabled, queer, woman in the US, I am not offended by the terms “disabled” or “queer”. On the contrary, I feel included by them, and I would have felt so eager to submit my work, had I not seen them.
Thank you, Aaron, for all the hard work you have put into running an inclusive IF competition.
Karona
That’s good. I’ve long since conceded my original view on this, there clearly is no problem at all apart from my original perspective on it. Happy to concede and be proved wrong, since this means no one was/is offended by the way it was written.
Adam
I just read through the author guidelines and found this spelling error: