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The World of Georic 1989-Present

Monday, January 7, 2013

Women in War, Men Being Jerks

The theme for this year's Cold Wars is Women in Warfare. It's not a primary subject for most wargamers. There's a better chance of gamer owning Amazons than WW2 Soviet female soldiers, so it's no surprise that theme games were sparse and fantasy-influenced. Some Soviet pilots, Queen Elizabeth vs the Spanish Armada, and I think one lowly Joan of Arc game rounded out the credible entries into the category.


It's surprising to find the vitriol online of male wargamers lambasting the choice of theme. Most fell into one of two categories. One avoided the logical portion of the argument that women in warfare had a narrow range of events and figures to do it justice and just lamented the fact that most women were victims of war through the destruction of men. The Second simply scorned the idea of women fighting, with all the time it was necessary to bake pie in the kitchen and all.

The overall opinions presented were truly sad. I'm not one to throw the word misogynist around, but in a hobby where most women are playing non-historical, With these attitudes pervading the historical tables, it's little wonder most women in the hobby are found around the pulp, weird sci-fi, and fantasy related games.

While I'm not a huge supporter of the theme, I was anticipating some more imaginative games than the ones submitted. One GM on TMP even admitted openly that's his Vietnam-era game was a theme game because one of the VC figures was female. Really?

The funny thing is, with the popularity of 28mm skirmish games, no one decided to cover the whole Private Jessica Lynch story from the Iraq War.

Ah, maybe it's just me. Or maybe the Grognards are just getting more annoying in my old age.

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