| > They didn't do a good job of it; They didn't do a good job of representing women, at all; they did (for something coming out of the 1970s wargaming community) a phenomenal, awesome, unmatched, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams (especially anyone at TSR) job of marketing to women, and that’s even before (and largely why) they actually started to try. > modern feminism has a lot to say about the misogyny of the entire franchise. Sure, though I am not sure how that’s at all germane to the discussion. > I'm assuming you're defensive as a fan of the genre You are, of course, free to make any assumptions you’d like. > You don't have to dig very far in any online enticement/runaway case before you discover something like: > Both the teen and the Hunter Fox account made frequent references to the online furry community — a group of people who roleplay as anthropomorphized animal characters. If you “something like” extremely broadly, so it encompasses all kinds of exclusionary subcultures, including fundamentalist religious groups, then true. If you mean it a narrow enough sense that the word “roleplaying” is at all germane, then, you aren’t paying enough attention or are doing it through media that is painting you a highly-selectively filtered picture. > "Role playing" is a common denominator in these cases so frequently it's on most lists of grooming red flags published by every credible international child safety organization, and for good reason This is true only in the same sense that “conversation" or ”joking” or “accident” is on those lists for good reason. That is, in the portion of the list of warning signs that describes the sexualization of the relationship, common examples of how the groomer will do this include things like “sexual jokes”, “sexual conversation/roleplay”, “accidentally exposing the child to sexual/pornographic images”, etc. Neither “conversation, “roleplaying", or “accidents” (either as concepts or words that might be used by a child) are the problem. > I like RPGs myself, so I'm not panning them or trying to imply all role-players are pedophiles or trying to instigate the next Satanic Panic, And yet you are taking these exactly as out of context as would be consistent with that. |