Do you know what's exhausting & infuriating when trying to promote safety + inclusivity in boardgaming to white cis het dudes (and their enablers)?

Always having to start on square one w/detailed explainers & receipts of the events or bad actors that are direct threats to me and my friends.

It's always 1st grade, 1st day of class. It's always Chapter 1, page one

And it's always having to re-dramatize or relive those events when walking them through it. It's revisiting actual trauma I've experienced or seen my friends experience

And it's not like there are myriad ways to tell it: a person said/did something racist, sexist, transphobic, xenophobic. Or excluded someone due to gender, race, sexuality, age, disability. Or harassed another person online or in person. Or stalked or assaulted another person.

Yet you tell it in granular detail often at their request. Because as white cis het dudes & their enablers, since they've never experienced this themselves your account sounds unreal or abstract to them to the point that they may not believe it (you)

They should believe you *first*, shouldn't they? If they are friends, or allies, or sincerely invested in making and keeping spaces safe and inclusive, they should believe you *first* and then get into details of the who and when and where

Instead they act like inconvenienced and ineffectual cops at the scene of a crime they have no interest in solving, once they roll up and see you're not "one of them." They pretend to write in their notepad and roll their eyes at each other, or they victim blame or gaslight

Even if you lay out your case with evidence and smoking guns and eyewitnesses and even confessions from the guilty parties themselves

Even if you mind your tone (don't yell, don't accuse, don't get upset) because you know if you present in a certain way there's a sliver of a chance they won't dismiss you outright

You use up a year's worth of spoons to do all that and subject yourself to further reprisals from these bad faith bad actors by stepping up and speaking out

Just to see your work and effort vaporized with another Shrug of Indifference +10 (critical hit)

To be dismissed with microaggression (because they can) while being targeted by toxic levels of aggression (because they can) is SO demoralizing and infuriating

Maybe they put you through that because they KNOW it's demoralizing to you. They hope it's so existentially hopeless that you don't do it again.

That you don't call out someone for being racist or a serial harasser – or for being *friends* w/racists & toxic people – ever again.

They don't want to think about empathy, or human rights, or equality. "I just want to play boardgames and like what I like."

But when they say that they are saying they want to retain, consolidate, and keep their power and supremacy over you – and they think that keeping these spaces 90% white and male and unsafe is the source of that power

I just suffered the "shrugging indifference of whiteness" fatality at a site I occasionally write for in light of current Board Game Twitter discourse

A writer wanted to post their "Six BG Youtubers" piece and wanted to include That 1min BG Personality

I said "oh heads up" and walked them through the perfect storm of kerfuffle as best as I could. Of JDA's origin story with Worldcon and the SFWA. A long and deliberate explainer. With links and screenshots.

With the summary "maybe being one degree separate from a monstrous vermin like JDA or MRct or The Quarter Poundering yet not blocking them, and engaging in back-and-forth with them as they use her for their own toxic promotion, maybe you should leave them off your list"

The writer immediately shut me down with "I'm aware of the situation" and "I have too much on my plate to be focused on other people's plates" yet agreeing that "we need to be careful about other content creators."

Master class in dismissal, deflection, gaslighting

After JDA escalated he said "my issue is that Ss didn't start this" in defense of the butterbeer photo, which at this point was 2 or 3 controversies ago. I'm talking about her stanning the myth of cancel culture & how JDA and bad actors used her belief in that to "ally" w/her

And since it's always two cops, another member who subscribes to the "I keep my boardgames separate from politics" canard swanned in as backup

With this: "Does she produce quality content that fits in with the criteria for your article? If so, then just stick with what you've written. You cannot be held personally responsible for the people that you once associated with."

Yeeeeeeesh

Tell me again words don't matter https://twitter.com/tiffanyleigh/status/1358067419391135744

Tell me again you just like to keep your boardgaming passion and your politics separate https://twitter.com/tiffanyleigh/status/1273960420571832320

The cherry on top was that Backup then said "I admit, I don't know what's going on and don't particularly care. I don't really follow anyone on social media or participate in social media in any meaningful way and it's precisely because of silly stuff like this."

I realized: that space isn't really including me, I'm just there. They don't actually want things to change. They don't want to be invested, they want to be divested.

"They just want to talk about games"

They think harassment and toxic populations in boardgaming is "silly" or non-existent. And the bromance of these two guys domming the conversation as soon as I started speaking out and pushing back was textbook supremacy

You think I want to always have to worry about this stuff and shout about it? I would love to just think about games and talk about games without subtext or context.

But it doesn't start with me; it starts with people not like me who inhabit 90% of the boardgaming space

And I've been fortunate that I'm not bearing the full brunt of these toxic mutant attacks. But I'm still exhausted. Imagine if you were being deplatformed, or doxxed, or receiving death threats like my colleagues are right now

And I noticed that my last hurrah in the Slack was dominated by the two bromance cops, but that about a dozen people were quiet.

Another reason to be loud and amplify is that it's likely someone is seeing and hearing and agreeing with you even if they aren't joining in

It should be said because there are likely oodles of people that agree and co-sign that don't feel like they can.

That's the definition of "representation" matters. You don't have to have boots on the ground to reach other people

What becomes an issue in situations where (white cishets) dominate a space like that with no pushback or moderation or accountability or even a code of conduct to follow, is that if they're a problem or attract problem people, the site & those people won't know how to eject him

If you believe that board games aren't political (lol), it provides plausible deniability & cover for toxic bad faith bad actors in yr space (who are 100% political btw) to act w/100% impunity

And it also allows for a slow boiling creep of microaggression & stereotyping & casual or covert racism even from good faith people/allies that may be trying harder & not realize their bias

Example of what happens when you think boardgames aren't political and that inclusion and diversity will just happen in your spaces https://twitter.com/neilvrobinson/status/1359192237490470918

If you don't proactively moderate your space, this lunkhead would have waltzed right in, started spewing trash, assumed everyone else in the room was just like him, and destroyed your space

guilty as charged https://twitter.com/femaleredhead/status/1358869961305772033