You know that picture of Benedict Cumberbatch going around?

Yeah, that’s the one.

I really like this picture. Too often, feminism is viewed as a dirty word with tons of baggage, but it’s really a very simple viewpoint: women should be given the same opportunities as men in the social, political, educational, and employment spheres.

I’m a straight, white male. It’s hard to write about a topic like this, because even though I unequivocally consider myself a feminist, I have very little if any first-hand experience with discrimination. The absolute last thing I want is to be disingenuous about such an important and sensitive topic, so I usually just keep these viewpoints to myself.

Still, a couple weeks ago, I had the (unhappy) occasion to link a 30-year-old man (?) to Patrick Chapin’s excellent article “Words Mean Things” in response to him trying to use the asinine argument, “They’re just words,” when attempting to justify using “gay” as a pejorative. Can we just be clear here? Discrimination and hateful speech of any type is not cool, and unless your social circle is a hive of scum and villainy, most people will not like you if you talk like a child. And if you speak that way, childish is the best that can be said about you.

I spoke up in this instance, and though I don’t speak up 100 percent of the time, I’ve been making an active effort to try to speak up more.

To that end, in last week’s episode of Limited Resources, Luis Scott-Vargas tackled this very issue. An LR listener recently ran a poll that showed a result of only three percent of LR listeners being women. This is obviously concerning to Marshall and LSV both, but in discussing the issue, Marshall made a comment basically saying that people can say whatever they want with their friends, but everyone should be cool at their LGS regardless. LSV had some great things to say in response to this. Rather than paraphrase, here’s a transcript of the highlights:

When you say people should be how they want with their friends, I actually don’t fully agree with that. I think you have—and this goes for me too, completely—we are voices in this community and I think we do have a responsibility that if we observe behavior that is unwelcoming or something you’d consider—regardless of who you’re discriminating against or regardless of what you’re doing that makes other people uncomfortable, I think you should say something. Like, if you’re at a local game store and someone makes a racist joke or a sexist joke, or whatever, I do think that you have some responsibility to say something. … The people who have good intentions but don’t speak up really are part of the problem, as well. If someone’s doing something that makes other people there uncomfortable (you know, within social norms…)… The people who are impacted by situations like this often don’t feel that they have the power or voice to speak out, and you and I are people who do have that. And a lot of our listeners do, too, especially if you’re, well, you know, a white man, you have a lot more ability to say these things. More the man part especially in Magic. And I think you should say something. I think by sitting and not saying something, you’re kind of enabling it. And that leads toward the kind of destructive environment that is in my assumption what drives women out. Again, I can’t speak fully to this, because as someone who hasn’t faced really any kind of discrimination in Magic, or really outside of Magic, it’s not my place to say what exactly is happening that’s causing this, but there is this imbalance. It’s not for no reason, right? It’s not just random that there’s 94 percent men listening to this podcast.

I cannot endorse this viewpoint more highly. Don’t just accept someone’s using hateful language. Say something.

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Danny Brown Danny is a Cube enthusiast and the Director of Content for Quiet Speculation. More Posts Follow Me:



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