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Good to see the "help a fellow hobbyist" thread turned into "women don't even like warhammer anyway". Good work guys, you're really helping to subdue the notion that there's not a gatekeeping problem in this hobby.

 Gert wrote:
Good to see the "help a fellow hobbyist" thread turned into "women don't even like warhammer anyway". Good work guys, you're really helping to subdue the notion that there's not a gatekeeping problem in this hobby.

This is the exact reason I didn't want to reply in this thread. Exalted.

Yep. It takes a generation or two of women enduring the awkwardness and other uncomfortable feelings so that women in this hobby become normalized and don’t have to endure the same thing. That’s the lovely process of enculturation. One generation of wargamers seeing women in the hobby regularly should be sufficient to wipe the pseudoscience of “women don’t like warhammer because biology” out of the mainstream discussion.

Make friends that also play, the end.

 the_scotsman wrote:
...It's a bold claim that someone's interest in playing games with and painting small miniature models is...not driven by biology?

The claim that biology has no impact whatsoever on hobbies/interests, and that it's all socialization, is contradicted by well-accepted research. There's overwhelming evidence for sex-based toy preferences in childhood, with children as young as nine months old showing markedly different preferences in toys long before they're socialized towards gender-aligned toys. Rhesus monkeys show the same trends. Women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition which produces more masculine hormonal balance early in development, demonstrate hobby and career preferences more similar to men. A preponderance of evidence suggests that biology and socialization are both components, not just one or the other.

So if anyone's declaring conclusively that either 'women are hardwired to not like wargaming' or 'biology has nothing to do with hobbies', those are purely ideological positions that don't fit the science.

The real questions should be:

1. Can biology alone account for the lack of female representation in this hobby? We can already answer this one: absolutely not. Even if there is a biological basis for men preferring wargaming- which is suspect- it couldn't account for the completely lopsided gender balance we currently observe. Statistical trends between the sexes aren't that one-sided.

2. How much of that lack of representation is on account of community gatekeeping, and how much is due to factors beyond the direct ability of hobbyists to directly influence? Because we can (and should) make for a better and more welcoming community, but that won't guarantee gender parity in societies where military-themed toys and games are socialized as explicitly masculine from a young age. I don't think wargamers have the social power to directly redefine these cultural perceptions.

Ballet and knitting aren't predominantly female spaces because of gatekeeping. If members of either interest think they can, on their own, achieve equal male/female representation by making their community more welcoming, they're setting themselves up for failure. Whether the reason for lack of male representation is the result of biology, socialization, or a combination of the two, it's not something the ballet or knitting communities can fix on their own.

What we can do for wargaming is ensure we provide a welcoming environment, and that means better policing our own. I've seen a lot of shops turn a blind eye to exclusionary behaviors- harassment and leering in particular- and correcting behaviors that alienate prospective players is a bare minimum for improving representation in this hobby. The stereotype (socialization) that wargaming is for men can't be challenged, and socialized perceptions revised, until women are free to participate without being actively driven out. Videogaming is currently going through this process, and if that hobby can do it, so can wargaming.

 catbarf wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
...It's a bold claim that someone's interest in playing games with and painting small miniature models is...not driven by biology?

The claim that biology has no impact whatsoever on hobbies/interests, and that it's all socialization, is contradicted by well-accepted research. There's overwhelming evidence for sex-based toy preferences in childhood, with children as young as nine months old showing markedly different preferences in toys long before they're socialized towards gender-aligned toys. Rhesus monkeys show the same trends. Women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition which produces more masculine hormonal balance early in development, demonstrate hobby and career preferences more similar to men. A preponderance of evidence suggests that biology and socialization are both components, not just one or the other.

So if anyone's declaring conclusively that either 'women are hardwired to not like wargaming' or 'biology has nothing to do with hobbies', those are purely ideological positions that don't fit the science.

The science is total bs that has accomplished nothing but taking an obvious, immutable truth that even the cavemen understood and introduced nothing but chaos and confusion, resulting in the horror show we're living in. You don't need research to prove that men and women are different, it has manifested itself in all societies across the earth since the dawn of mankind. And these source slinging arguments never accomplish anything or change anyone's mind, just cherry picked counter studies and quibbling about whether the source is credible in an endless loop.

Men and women are different because of social constructs. The same needs across all different cultures arose. We could argue that women with hormone balances that are considered more masculine for example may be more likely to place themselves in a more masculine gender schema. The science is not BS because it does a better job of explaining more phenomena than the explanations we had before. Just because you choose not to understand the science does not mean it doesn’t make sense or is objectively flawed.

The wargaming hobby is a rather big one with many different elements. Just because you have a lot of women crafting stuff doesn't mean that they would like wargaming. I haven't seen anyone claim women wouldn't like the crafting or story telling parts of the hobby which are the 2 parts I have seen women like the most of the wargaming aspect. But if they like those things wargaming probably isn't the best avenue for that, especially not games like 40k or the fantasy equivalent that requires a lot of models. RPGs or boardgames or just doing the crafting part of the wargaming hobby is often more suitable for them if that is what they are after. I have seen many beautiful armies and models painted by women but very few larger collections of a single army/force. The average model I have seen painted by a woman(who didn't just paint 1 time to try it with their bf) is of a much higher quality than the average model painted by a man. Quite clearly the creative aspect of the hobby is a larger draw for women than for men. On the other hand I know a lot of guys who really enjoy the playing aspect of the game and doesn't care at all about the building and painting parts and wish the models came prepainted. There should of course be women like that as well in the hobby but since there are so relatively few of them I haven't met anyone like that yet.

Nothing wrong with having a gender imbalance in a hobby as long as it is a "natural" one and not purely gatekeeping etc. People like different things and you shouldn't try to cater to everyone. Everyone should of course be welcome but there are different parts of each hobby/interest that just isn't as appealing to everyone. Painting a few cool models when you feel like it is entirely different from painting dozens if not hundreds of models of the same unit type for mass battles. Being part of a narrative story is quite different from the average wargame you will play at a store, club or tournament. The closer you get to roleplaying I would think you would have more women and the closer you get to large scale war simulation the more men you will have even if you removed all the other socialized behaviors that might prevent women from joining the hobby,

macluvin wrote:
The science is not BS because it does a better job of explaining more phenomena than the explanations we had before. Just because you choose not to understand the science does not mean it doesn’t make sense or is objectively flawed.

I don’t think the laws of nature care if you understand, and you are choosing to ignore thousands of years of Tradition because somebody wrote a paper claiming girls can be boys.

We're living in a "horror show" because of academic debate about gender roles?

News to me. Things are bad for a lot of reasons, I wasn't aware that was the main one.

What an interesting perspective.

 Irkjoe wrote:

macluvin wrote:
The science is not BS because it does a better job of explaining more phenomena than the explanations we had before. Just because you choose not to understand the science does not mean it doesn’t make sense or is objectively flawed.

I don’t think the laws of nature care if you understand, and you are choosing to ignore thousands of years of Tradition because somebody wrote a paper claiming girls can be boys.

Laws of nature or laws of society? Slavery was legal for thousand of years and a consequence of "law of the strongest" which is a law of nature, somewhere it's still legal or tolerated, and yet how many in the civilized world could refer to thousand of years of tradition to make the point that slavery is right as a law of nature?

"Girls can be boys" meaning there are activities/interests/hobbies/etc that are gender locked is complete nonsense in 2021, almost 2022.

Ok. First, this is an entertainment for me, not some Great Crusade. Second, I was agreeing with the previous post, to some extent, that ‘umans do not conform to expectations. Third, words like ‘apparently’ and ‘seems’ do not raise the Standard of Truth for all to behold and cower before. They show the following is not presented as Validated, but as something you might find of interest.

That being said, and I am not savvy enough to post links from the pad here, a Google on ‘Scandinavian occupations by sex’ gives over seven million results, the first of which is a university article on gender segregation in the Nordic labour market. And a second search on ‘Scandinavian gender neutral gives slightly fewer results, the first of which is a NYT article on Swedish gender neutralising attempts. Happy to help

 Gert wrote:
Good to see the "help a fellow hobbyist" thread turned into "women don't even like warhammer anyway". Good work guys, you're really helping to subdue the notion that there's not a gatekeeping problem in this hobby.

People were helping by explaining that the behaviours OP considered gate keeping were the norm or just an individual's problem. It wasn't until others started flinging accusations of sexism where there is none that people started talking about gender roles. Thinking that any slight against a woman MUST be sexism is dumb because if you view the world through that lens then everyone must be sexist. Women aren't infallible and can misinterpret signals and intentions as easily as anyone else. If a man had started this thread there wouldn't even be a discussion. He'd be told that the norm is to treat newbies with kid gloves, the guy was a bad loser and to just avoid the other guy and the thread would have died at page 2 because no one had anything else to add.


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 Blackie wrote:

 Irkjoe wrote:

macluvin wrote:
The science is not BS because it does a better job of explaining more phenomena than the explanations we had before. Just because you choose not to understand the science does not mean it doesn’t make sense or is objectively flawed.

I don’t think the laws of nature care if you understand, and you are choosing to ignore thousands of years of Tradition because somebody wrote a paper claiming girls can be boys.

Slavery was legal for thousand of years and a consequence of "law of the strongest" which is a law of nature, somewhere it's still legal or tolerated, and yet how many in the civilized world could refer to thousand of years of tradition to make the point that slavery is right as a law of nature?

Thats a false equivalence. Slavery isn't a biological urge.

 Sim-Life wrote:


Thats a false equivalence. Slavery isn't a biological urge.

Neither is a hobby, or a job. My point is that something isn't right/wrong just because it was how things were done for thousands of years. Those "thousands of years of tradition" may be the consequence of cultures that aren't based on gender equality, which is a pillar of modern democratic societies instead. It should be at least.

We're humans, not animals. We are beyond the "laws of nature". In the civilized world at least.


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 Sim-Life wrote:


People were helping by explaining that the behaviours OP considered gate keeping were the norm or just an individual's problem. It wasn't until others started flinging accusations of sexism where there is none that people started talking about gender roles. Thinking that any slight against a woman MUST be sexism is dumb because if you view the world through that lens then everyone must be sexist. Women aren't infallible and can misinterpret signals and intentions as easily as anyone else. If a man had started this thread there wouldn't even be a discussion. He'd be told that the norm is to treat newbies with kid gloves, the guy was a bad loser and to just avoid the other guy and the thread would have died at page 2 because no one had anything else to add.

Again, without knowing the specific case you can't know if that was sexism or not. Of course the use of MUST without knowing the facts is wrong as well, but the use of CAN isn't in this matter.

OP should just be glad that the group she found was one of the ones full of sexists, and not one full of Nazis...

 Blackie wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:


Thats a false equivalence. Slavery isn't a biological urge.

Neither is a hobby, or a job. My point is that something isn't right/wrong just because it was how things were done for thousands of years. Those "thousands of years of tradition" may be the consequence of cultures that aren't based on gender equality, which is a pillar of modern democratic societies instead. It should be at least.

We're humans, not animals. We are beyond the "laws of nature". In the civilized world at least.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:


People were helping by explaining that the behaviours OP considered gate keeping were the norm or just an individual's problem. It wasn't until others started flinging accusations of sexism where there is none that people started talking about gender roles. Thinking that any slight against a woman MUST be sexism is dumb because if you view the world through that lens then everyone must be sexist. Women aren't infallible and can misinterpret signals and intentions as easily as anyone else. If a man had started this thread there wouldn't even be a discussion. He'd be told that the norm is to treat newbies with kid gloves, the guy was a bad loser and to just avoid the other guy and the thread would have died at page 2 because no one had anything else to add.

Again, without knowing the specific case you can't know if that was sexism or not. Of course the use of MUST without knowing the facts is wrong as well, but the use of CAN isn't in this matter.

There's a difference between tradition and biology. When my dog has puppies she doesn't try to make a nest in a secluded spot or go into labour somewhere she feels safe because it's traditional. She doesn't develop a bond with the puppies because society told her to. Likewise the rest of the pack don't check over the puppies when they're young because of peer pressure, its all an instinctual need that is part of their biology. Animals (which includes humans) follow behaviours dictated by MILLIONS of years of evolution in order to propagate the species. It is genuinely amazing to me every time one of our girls has her first litter of puppies how they just KNOW how to take care of them. No one ever showed them how, they never read a book about it, no one is there to offer advice. Their biology just tells them what to do. Comparative to how long society has actually existed it's not been around anywhere near enough time to overwrite evolutionary behaviours.

Hobbies and (to a lesser extent I would argue) jobs are an outlet for natural evolutionary instincts. Attempting to deny that is just trying to deny those millions of years of evolution. Its more likely that masculine behaviour in women is the societal influence than the other way round.

 Gert wrote:
Good to see the "help a fellow hobbyist" thread turned into "women don't even like warhammer anyway". Good work guys, you're really helping to subdue the notion that there's not a gatekeeping problem in this hobby.

It's fine, I suspect the OP left a few pages back...

 Sim-Life wrote:


There's a difference between tradition and biology. When my dog has puppies she doesn't try to make a nest in a secluded spot or go into labour somewhere she feels safe because it's traditional. She doesn't develop a bond with the puppies because society told her to. Likewise the rest of the pack don't check over the puppies when they're young because of peer pressure, its all an instinctual need that is part of their biology. Animals (which includes humans) follow behaviours dictated by MILLIONS of years of evolution in order to propagate the species. It is genuinely amazing to me every time one of our girls has her first litter of puppies how they just KNOW how to take care of them. No one ever showed them how, they never read a book about it, no one is there to offer advice. Their biology just tells them what to do. Comparative to how long society has actually existed it's not been around anywhere near enough time to overwrite evolutionary behaviours.

Hobbies and (to a lesser extent I would argue) jobs are an outlet for natural evolutionary instincts. Attempting to deny that is just trying to deny those millions of years of evolution. Its more likely that masculine behaviour in women is the societal influence than the other way round.

And I know lots of cases in which women were horrible to their puppies and had no maternal instincts at all, while some men were amazing in that role. My mum is some sort of activist in the field of pets adoptions.

Women aren't better than men in raising puppies or children, just stereotypes from decades of patriarchal society may let someone believe that. It's like claiming that black people should be relegated to hard work because it's the role they had for thousands of years and evolution made them stronger and more resilient, since it's a fact that on average black people are more fit than whites or people from other ethnic groups.

There is no such thing as natural evolutionary instincts based on genders. "Masculine" behaviour in women always existed, simply in most of the cases it had to be kept hidden or repressed to avoid repercussions. You refer to evolution, but one the last steps in the field of evolution is the actual disband of the gender discrimination as a concept. Not accepting it is denying evolution.

We are not (anymore) animals that simply follow some instincts, we have laws and morals that have nothing to do with the "law of nature". And it doesn't matter for how long some behaviours have been considered normal or even good, we live in 2021, almost 2022 now. Societies are a consequence of evolution, gender equality is evolution. Would you justify slavery just because it was a natural part of the majority of societies in human history barring the last century or so, and law of the strongest always applies in nature?

Thankfully we don't live in The Handmaid's Tale's society.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
OP should just be glad that the group she found was one of the ones full of sexists, and not one full of Nazis...

Hey! Don’t forget the ones full of sexist Nazi’s!

Any thread here about women participating the hobby or female representation abundantly clearly demonstrates why women might not feel welcome to the hobby.

Paige, in case you still might be reading this, I hope you will find decent sort of people to game with.

There is a difference between different genders/races or whatever to have inclinations towards things and forcing people to do certain things due to those inclinations. Black people might be more fit and is the reason why they are performing so well in sports. We aren't forcing them to do that though. We give people the opportunities and then they can seek them out. We shouldn't change stuff so more whites or asians can play elite sports instead of black people. If among the top 0,1% of athletes blacks are slightly over represented it isn't a problem.

Slavery is forcing people to do things. Not trying to bend backwards to make everything equally represented is the opposite of that. If more women want to knit and more men want to weld we shouldn't force some welders to knit and vice versa.

When people don't have much choice to get a good life then they will turn to the opportunities that exist no matter what race, sex or background they have. Gender norms(be they based on biology or socety) be damned. Which is why in scandinavian countries, where the difference in career doesnt matter much. we have certain occupations and other metrics that are more skewed than in countries that are less wealthy and less equal. Apparently men and women choose different things if they have abundant of options.

So saying men and women as groups have different preferences or inclinations isn't wrong. The thing is on an individual level most of these differences are irrelevant. An individual should be treated as an individual and not the group they come from and we can't know where on the curve/line a certain individual lies anyway before we know them. So on individual behavior we shouldn't put too much weight on their actions or interests. But it does help in trying to understand why we might have less women in wargaming than roleplaying or boardgaming even though it doesn't explain why each individual woman have chosen one over the other.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

I have hears of this. I think the female experience of war and what it involves is often far darker than that of the men. Frankly I'm not surprised that its 'popularity' as a pursuit fell away once the mangled sons and husbands came home or stories from other women left in the wake of rampaging victorious armies came to light.

Its easy to 'glory up' and put some snazz on the fighting and shooting and winning, not so much the other stuff. Boys fight, girls live with the consequences of what happens and have to pick up the pieces.

No, I'm pretty sure watching your friends explode or having your legs blown off is worse than being told stories about it.

Actually I think bringing up a typically large family without a male breadwinner in the interwar period before the advent of welfare states was arguably worse, compounded by dealing with the grief. Certainly the incidence of female suicide was shockingly high during this time and one of the the drivers for many of the anti suicide measures that are part of our every day lives now (mostly based around the idea of making suicide take longer as people are more likely to have second thoughts).

Klickor wrote:

So saying men and women as groups have different preferences or inclinations isn't wrong.

No, it isn't.

But do you think as a thought experiment, you might be able to infer a secondary meaning when someone makes a post "Community Gate Keeping For Women" and every response is

"men and women as groups have different preferences"?

Because, to me, what's interesting about that response is that it's not really an answer to the original question, but it implies an answer - "there is not community gatekeeping against women in the wargaming hobby".

 Irkjoe wrote:

The science is total bs that has accomplished nothing but taking an obvious, immutable truth that even the cavemen understood and introduced nothing but chaos and confusion, resulting in the horror show we're living in.

I dunno, I think men like to dominate farming these days, the idea of only letting women do it whilst men are relegated to only hunting won't be popular... People have very blinkered views on traditional roles, traditional views and apparently innate behaviours. What people have done and why has been driven by multiple stimuli, power relationships, threat levels, societal practices and so on. It is remarkably complex with counter examples from human societies through history for nearly every gendered role or practice you could mention. Hell even colours with pink for boys and blue for girls switching over in the 20th century, with non gendered use before then.


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Catulle wrote:

 kurhanik wrote:
Where is all this talk of women not liking things for biological reasons even coming from?

By and large? It comes from dudes.

(Who will of course be *shocked* that there is gatekeeping in the establishment)

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/navy-considers-crotch-level-rank

Again, what the actual feth does this have anything to do with the initial query of the thread? This entire circle of bs is likely to, if it hasn't already, drive the OP away.

Seriously, she asks a simple question, gave a few examples, and for the first page or so the responses were reasonable - explaining likely reasons for the issues and ways to solve some of them.

Now this thread has devolved into people claiming that women biologically do not like warhammer etc.

That is not the point here. The point is making someone feel welcome in the community, and frankly, we are doing a gak job of it here.

To OP, if you are still here, I'd say look to some of the possible solutions earlier in the thread - talk it out with the group if possible. Some of their antics are likely just trying to be overly nice to the newbie since Warhammer is a complex yet simultaneously shallow game, with way too many rules, special rules, strategems, etc to remember. For the issues that cannot be explained by that - the ignoring you and grunting leering guy, the best solution is to either talk it out or to avoid them. In any group you'll get the kind of person who just are tiring to be around unfortunately, but it is possible to avoid them. You can try bringing a friend into the game if you know anybody interested so you have someone immediately to socialize/play with even when with the full group. If all else fails, you may have to find, or build a new group from the ground up - not ideal, but if the people you are playing with now don't respond well to talking it out it could be better than putting up with a bad group.

Honestly, at this point I'd say look to earlier in the thread where some ideas and pointers were given, maybe find a poster or two with the best advice and send them a pm. They might be willing to give some more insights or ideas.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Klickor wrote:

So saying men and women as groups have different preferences or inclinations isn't wrong.

No, it isn't.

But do you think as a thought experiment, you might be able to infer a secondary meaning when someone makes a post "Community Gate Keeping For Women" and every response is

"men and women as groups have different preferences"?

Because, to me, what's interesting about that response is that it's not really an answer to the original question, but it implies an answer - "there is not community gatekeeping against women in the wargaming hobby".

The topic of gatekeeping women must involve some discussion about whether or not women actually want play the game though, you can't just assume that the lack of women in the hobby is because of some nebulous accusation of general sexism

 Sim-Life wrote:
The topic of gatekeeping women must involve some discussion about whether or not women actually want play the game though, you can't just assume that the lack of women in the hobby is because of some nebulous accusation of general sexism

No, it doesn't, not when the person who started the thread is a woman feeling like she is being treated differently because she is a woman. She's in the hobby so obviously, she wants to do it. Any discussion relating to "women don't even like Warhammer" is wholly irrelevant to the topic and every single one of you who's been making "but wiminz" posts should be ashamed of yourselves.

 Gert wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
The topic of gatekeeping women must involve some discussion about whether or not women actually want play the game though, you can't just assume that the lack of women in the hobby is because of some nebulous accusation of general sexism

No, it doesn't, not when the person who started the thread is a woman feeling like she is being treated differently because she is a woman. She's in the hobby so obviously, she wants to do it. Any discussion relating to "women don't even like Warhammer" is wholly irrelevant to the topic and every single one of you who's been making "but wiminz" posts should be ashamed of yourselves.

Indeed, in my short time on this forum this thread has been the most disappointing thing I have read.
Worse than the nerf threads

 Gert wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
The topic of gatekeeping women must involve some discussion about whether or not women actually want play the game though, you can't just assume that the lack of women in the hobby is because of some nebulous accusation of general sexism

No, it doesn't, not when the person who started the thread is a woman feeling like she is being treated differently because she is a woman.

And people told her that her experiences weren't unique to her being a woman. At which point people insisted that no, actually it was sexism. Guess all the men who also experienced it were also victims of sexism?

I don't really want to dig deeper into all this "biology vs sociology" discussion, but one parameter that is severely overlooked when discussing wargaming is undisputable gender difference in incidence of autism spectrum disorder. There is about 2.5% prevalence of ASD in population, between 3:1 to 4:1 ratio of males vs females on the spectrum, and males with ASD score significantly higher on excessive interest trait than females with ASD (as well as few other parameters that amount to "social awkwardness"). Observable overrepresentation of ASD people in this hobby as compared to other social activities, paired with acknowledging that ASD is, well, a spectrum and there are sub-diagnosis people who will show similar but less severe traits, illustrates quite well that there are in fact significant biological factors involved in social activity choices and biology based gender differences. It is indeed 2021, nearly 2022 and people could actually reach for current neuroscientific knowledge when discussing such topics instead of relying on left vs right ideological quarrels.