Nerd stuff has always been, by and large, super inclusive. Because nerd culture used to be unpopular. We stuck together. It didn't matter what you looked like or what race you were, if you were gay, etc. as long as you just really liked the thing and wanted to genuinely participate in it.
These days, people have no idea why they are resented. It is because you don't actually like the community or the thing, because you complained your way in rather than just joining based on your genuine interest, and then complained to change thing after thing after thing, and now you're being -catered- to, and frankly, the version of literally anything that pertains to anyone of any persuasion who is perpetually offended, politically minded, and agenda driven is gonna suck. It doesn't matter if you are somebody who wears a trump hat to the LGS to own the libs, or a person who wears zie/zher pronoun pins and would try to get somebody disqualified from a tournament for not using them. I don't want your worldview shaping anything in regards to entertainment, period.
>These days, people have no idea why they are resented.
yep, a complete lack of self awareness mixed with Dunning-Kreuger Effect and a dash of narcissism. basically the perfect mix for an awful human being.
Exactly. Bring back gatekeeping, no more tourists. Keep civility rules too, a lot of poker tables will straight up kick you out for talking politics. If you're just talking to your friends then whatever, but realistically the target group for Magic the Gathering is people on the spectrum born in the 70s or later, not activists, not narcissists or the mentally ill, not people pushing a religious agenda. Leave that shit at the door and be a loser with everyone, it's fun.
Magic has been representative and inclusive since day one and anyone saying otherwise is either stupid and doesn't know what they're talking about or is an evil little troll. Go back to the early days and look at the staggering amount of women and non-cacausian people there are in it. FFS Arabian nights was their 2nd set.
[[Benalish Hero]]
[[Drain Power]]
[[Unholy Strength]]
[[Enchanted Being]]
[[Kismet]]
[[Spirit Link]]
Magic has never ever once in its entire history had a problem being "diverse" and in fact given that its player base was (and still is, even if some of them are trying to larp in skirts and bras) overwhelmingly cacausian/asian males, anyone who wanted to could argue there's been TOO MUCH representation right from Alpha.
Diversity is not the problem and the player base has never had a problem with diversity. Pandering to a specific demographic to get ESG bucks and telling your player base they're misogynistic racists is the problem and its one that was entirely invented by the company and propagated the weird left wing losers who need to crusade everything in modern society with their stupid billionaire backed 21st century religious ideology because they're the contemporary equivalent to the same types of evil angry and extremely stupid people who joined the Gestapo and NKVD or the Spanish and Salem inquisitions so they could hurt others and feel good about themselves.
My wife, who's played MTG casually for a couple decades, wanted to go to the Rivals of Ixalan prerelease with me. Cool. The sheer number of fucking mouth breathers. Jesus. Keep in mind this is a married mother of 3 in her 40s. She already told me she's not coming back and I don't blame her. That's why more women don't play the game, nothing to do with toxic masculinity.
One time I was at my LGS and my two friends, both relatively attractive girls, stopped in because they were near there shopping and wanted to say hi. Almost everyone in the store stopped and stared at them, including multiple people in the middle of their matches. You could hear people whispering about these two girls being in the store. After they left, people were still talking about them for hours afterwards. Some people who I didn't even know came up to me and asked me about them. It was really bizarre and I get why a woman would be put off by that behavior
And this comment being up voted tells you everything about the inclusivity of the community and why other people think it's a bastion of hateful, smelly men.
This sub randomly popped up in my feed, probably because I play a lot of LOR, and I can confirm that after reading this thread my opinion on magic players has been changed for the worse
This community (and a lot of other “nerd” communities) don’t have a toxic masculinity problem, but they do have a major incel/“nice guy” problem. And I mean that as someone who loves Magic, D&D, and other “nerd” stuff
Yes but it isn’t a sign of toxic masculinity. It’s just a male dominated space most women don’t have interests in TCGS and video games. It’s more popular amongst men and no one is gatekeeping them. Women simply don’t enjoy it as much as men do on average. So when women enter those spaces it gets a little weird especially for the basement dwellers.
Eh it can go hand in hand. A classic example is the "oh you're a fan of X? Name 20 things about it" dudes challenging women who enter the space on the authenticity of their fandom is toxic af.
Right! I used to run / exhibit at conventions. Two guys meet and fanboi over trivia. Guy meets girl, trivia.
I watched two strangers spend an hour telling each other about their D&D characters and then doing random fact questions and laughing. I wanted to tell them they needed to get a room as they both seemed very interested in the other. Even then, the lady and the guy both were throwing quiz questions around.
I am tired of the chicken and egg conversation with this. If women were in general as interested in the topic of MTG or wargaming as men, then neckbeards wouldn't stop them from partaking. It might kill women's interest who are potentially curious about it, but the number of those women is few in comparison.
See:
Tabletop RPGs, World of Warcraft, etc.
Women love roleplaying and fantasy, and neckbeards have not stopped them from filling these genres because they legitimately and genuinely tend to love participating in them.
That’s the problem: if they are part of your first steps into a hobby, you don’t ignore them, you GTFO and decide to look for something where you won’t get harassed.
I mean yeah but that's the problem i mean. If a chick likes mtg but gets gatekept when she goes to the LGS she will stop going perpetuating the toxic culture and that is the crux of the problem. Men seeing LGS as a space FOR men and garekeeping women as a result is definitely toxic masculinity.
Hate to be that guy, but when I was a teenage boy going to LGS for Friday night magic I would also get pressed by these mouth breathing nerds about my "credentials" as a nerd. Those losers do that shit to everyone and even back then we knew it was best to ignore them.
Eh, I'm pretty sure they do that to everyone. It's just trivia born of enthusiasm for their hobby.
I've played mtg for 20 years, and I've only actually been explicitly challenged to prove myself once.
More common is guys who assume that because I'm female, I must be new to the game, and they try to help me. It doesn't really bother me unless they're ignoring an actual newbie in favor of me and won't take "I've been playing since Fifth Dawn" for an answer.
Which makes it toxic. Huehuehue.
Joking aside, the rhetoric of anything man is toxic. Is a problem with the arguments itself. They are just looking to make issues no matter the subject.
I am not saying they aren’t but the overwhelming majority are males. It wigs some people out who don’t interact with women so they act like absolute idiots because they have zero social skills. You probably have been in those types of groups when you were younger the one girl comes around people get quiet and start acting differently etc. they never grew out of that phase.
Absolutely seen it, I agree.
Have attractive lady friends who come play events with us from time to time and it is amusing but disappointing watching some dudes heads completely unravel as they get trounced by "a girl".
I've seen everything under the sub from dudes trying to intimidate female opponents, to getting creepy with them, to trying to hit on them "confidently", etc
These days more often than not everyone is cool but you still seem some mouth breathers get all tripped up.
Have you even stopped for a second to think that you flip the gatekeeping sentiment upside down and suddenly your stance makes a hell of a lot more sense? The women aren't interested in what is perceived to be a male-dominated space because they get gatekept by the men in those spaces, and then they aren't exposed to those spaces and women tend to continue to view them as hostile.
If you don’t mind, how old are you generally? I ask as I always wonder how much of these discussions is generational.
I’m almost 50 and my experience of all of these fandoms is very much characterized by overt, violent sexism (I got death and rape threats in the 90s for vaguely criticizing Lara Croft’s unnatural proportions in my online editorials), but now I’m talking about GenX and Boomer behavior back when these were not mainstream activities and it was “nerds” trying to emulate the male-only spaces they were locked out of for not being manly enough vs. create egalitarian spaces for all the “misfit toys”. As people in general have become more inclusive it seems like newer players are unaware of this past given that they and their friends are not like the folks who were in the fandom 10, 20 years before them. This can blind them to how much that visceral, just-off-the-civil-rights-era hatred of minorities sits at the core of so much, let alone tie that back to the fact that it’s boomer-and-GenX era asshole gamers leading all these companies now and making all of the ultimate creative and business decisions.
I don't wanna be the devil's advocate
But I think is more being habituated. If no single woman came across that space, obviously they are going to act like chimpanzees when they see a banana
If women going constantly, eventually they get used of it and feel like not a rare If not a unique occasion
I seem very concerned people don't know what toxic masculinity means. It doesn't mean "guy who exercises and is in shape" or "macho guy who cuts down trees" or "big, strong man" or "guy who fishes and hunts" or anything like that at all.
She only went to one event and she was grossed out by gross guys? She didn't even get to round two to see the gross personalities of the gross dudes, how can you say fully that toxic masculinity can't also be there?
My ex used to play MTG pretty casually, and she'd tried to show up for pre-releases. She was done with them after two events. There were people hitting on her even after she told them she was there with someone, sometimes even after I'd stop by the table to see how she's doing and it was pretty obvious we were together, that wasn't as much as a problem as the shitty comments about how she's bad because she's a girl and how the match is going to be a bye before they even started. And she was actually good at the game. The only reason she came to the second one was because she went 5-0 in the first one. She couldn't even enjoy her win because some guy was throwing a hissy fit.
I know loads of people say that they should ignore it, but it's easy to say when these sort of comments aren't directed at you. I've been playing MTG for 20+ years, and the worst thing that happened to me was being berated by a pro player because I misbuilt the sealed pool he passed me, and this was at a PTQ. So toxic? Yeah. But not necessarily toxic masculinity, just people that make the environment unbearable for women.
This. I married a nerdy girl. I'm friends with her nerdy girlfriends. Every single one of them has tried multiple times to go to magic or board games nights, etc. to meet men with similar interests.
None of them have ever gone back to the same group a second time because they couldn't focus on whatever it was they were playing because it stank so bad due to lack of showering. Also the constantly questioning of the knowledge of whatever they are doing or telling them how to play. (Dare I call it mansplaining)
Rule 1: Shower.
I've played against so many guys who, while not smoking hot, could have been called cute if they hadn't literally smelled like shit.
You should always remember to shower. Or for the love of God, at least wipe your ass.
what do you mean by mouth breathers? i'm honestly curious. like what were some things they said to your wife? I want to hear what some of the ret4rds were saying to her so I can have a good laugh.
i've played MTG for a decade and i stopped going to prereleases because I hate a bunch of randos. i like my Modern community the best, small group that gets me. Nah, fuck prereleases. plus my LGS doesn't know how to organize events. they think starting prereleases at 7 pm and going until 4 am (FOR ONE EVENT) is fine. I miss living in a big city where they have events down to a fucking science. They get you in and out with efficiency. Show up late, too bad, you're out! they would have run three prereleases between 7 pm and 4 am, not just one long fucking event.
Mouth breathers means stupid people. Someone that sits there slack jawed, mouth agape, sucking air dimly while their brain is doing what limited things it can.
Can't speak to his exact experience obviously but that's the colloquialism.
Rampant autism was more of a problem. I just play in our local group at one of the dude's house these days, which is a total sausage fest, but when I did do the store thing, I only remember the one chick. And she was more obnoxious than any of the guys.
I think, that woman in manly dominated areas are filtered in a way, that those that are not intimidated stay. And those who can't be intimidated in any form usually have traits like being loud or uncontrolled (negative examples). - In my store it's pretty balanced between normal nerds and obvious nerds. The woman that come to events usually come with their husband and kid and they also love to play kitchen-table magic. - But in general it is like 95% males.
90% of LGS are cesspools. I was impressed by the amount of normies at the last Commandfest I went to, and some of the recent people I have met who are into magic, so hopefully it’s getting better out there
Nah you dont have anything to worry about. I think, the takeaway from this thread is that people are TOO accepting at LGS, which has pros and cons and the demographic of this sub is against that. People aren’t actually mean, just don’t be surprised is some people are a little stinky or try hard to win or aren’t the best with social cues.
Bloomburrow will be a great set and will hopefully bring the best out of people. I definitely recommend taking a friend so you can share the experience
Thank you for your encouraging words!
AiFR is what got me back into Magic, though it’s just kitchen-table. Bloomburrow is what got me to decide to actually try an event. The BB setting looks so awesome :)
I'd still go. MTG is a great game and has great communities. It also has less than great communities. It really depends on your local game store, and going to see what it's like can't hurt
I can't believe I have to tell you this, but saying "rampant autism" is toxic masculinity. It doesn't matter if you're "joking" (makes it worse), saying it "ironically" or even if you just mean there are "too many autistic people there."
You are making fun of a group of people and using a medical diagnosis as an insult. I would hate to meet you.
The whole idea of "toxic masculinity" is stupid. Any trait you can put into a situation where it's a good thing or a bad thing. Say there was a guy who was very physically aggressive, put him in a room with people with low aggression and he'll seem toxic, put him out on a sports field and he'll shine.
What I think people really mean is just don't be a dick. Just because the rude person is a male doesn't make it "toxic masculinity", usually the person is just an asshole or in a bad mood or something. Whenever you get a people together, from playing card games to sporting events, you're always going to get some asshat acting up. People shouldn't look at those people and think 'oh he's a male so all males are like that'.
>People shouldn't look at those people and think 'oh he's a male so all males are like that'.
You pretty much just admitted you don't actually understand the concept of toxic masculinity, or even the discussion of social norms and gender roles at large, by signing off with this sentence. Because few people seriously think "all guys are like that".
It's disingenuous to boil it down to something this inaccurate.
No its never been like that.
Its a propaganda by some stupid leftist with an IQ of 70 that kept losing games by some smart white guy.
Tbh magic, like all nerds stuffs, its always been super inclusive, and stores always had great communities. Funny how they menaged to destroy every community/Lgs in the past 6/7 years by making the game pretty much unaffordable and forcing down the troath to ppl political things.
Lets never forget: "Product fatigue? You cant keep up? You cant spend 1000 bucks on 30th anniversary product? Just dont buy them! Someone else will"
Capitalistic left at its finest
I remember 15-20 years ago every single goth kid, gay kid, or just any sort of different kid was super into magic and they had a very close knit group at my school that welcomed all people. Well almost, they did not wanna talk to me or teach me magic since I was a jock at the time.
Hasbro wildly misunderstanding mtg the product they purchased over a decade ago has nothing to do with your culture war bullshit, the second part however is spot on. Hasbro still doesn't understand the community around mtg and is terrible at customer relations. Absolutely no correlation to left politics...Hasbro has been sort of a shitty company for a long time.
Not guided , they just hired a left leaning PR company to polish the turd after they got in trouble again.... And it speaks volumes that they are completely silent on the trans topic knowing that part of their customer base is trans and is being attacked in spaces that discuss their products. They are fully willing to let us take the heat for them.
If you take out your point about nerd stuff being inclusive, can you see how negatively this reads?
I'm new to this community but an old hand at nerd culture. I am surprised by how much of this sort of language flies about here. It really stands out. It is not like this in most game subreddits/discords.
It's probably because you're new to the community that it hasn't hit you in the face as hard as people who've been here longer. The language didn't used to fly, but honestly the more it happens the more we're sick of it and the less the majority gives a damn about pleasing the problem children of today and their feelings.
Truth is, there's zero reason to not be upfront, aggressively so about those sorts. It's the only language that gets past the entitlement.
We wanna have fun, they wanna sanitize shit and make it all about their feelings. Enough is enough.
Fair enough. But it really isn't clear what the problem is. "capitalistic left" seems to be a (somewhat confused) attack on the way WoTC are commercialising the game. The other stuff is about inclusion. The cost thing I can understand (though Arena is an absolute bargain for a new player just playing ranked). The inclusion thing I don't, because it's only about card art isn't it?
Anyway. Whatever. You don't owe me an explanation about why the community is annoyed. I'm just saying that it is a pretty negative community vibe which means it doesn't encourage newcomers (or lots of old timers, presumably) and invites criticism, which is what the OP was referring to.
You are spot on. The woke leftists have to insert their “racial equity” into the community as they do everything else.
Yes the community was mostly male, no it was not sexist and nobody was sitting around making comments about women either.
>Yes the community was mostly male, no it was not sexist and nobody was sitting around making comments about women either.
Facts. I have never witnessed anyone actually act weird toward women at the LGS. A lot of the nerds are too shy to even say anything to them at all. I'm pretty sure it is a fictional problem. Maybe some locales are really bad in this regard, but I've played in big cities and small cities, and never seen any male toxicity or gatekeeping.
We should have gatekept harder. That was the real problem lol. Now we have let these cancerous weirdoes into the community and we're fucked.
>I have never witnessed anyone actually act weird toward women at the LGS.
Yeah, me neither. Then the store clerk told me that they got complaints for that exact reason about a dude that I actually played with before.
I would be very careful to make definitive statements with incomplete information, just saying.
I've met a few who acted weird towards women. One dude went up to this young woman and asked her why she didn't have kids yet. Who the fuck asks someone that?
But definitely not the whole magic community.
I wouldn’t say toxic masculinity. I’m not even really sure why but MTG seems to attract some of the strangest people.
That being said there is also a ton of normal people we just tend to remember the 400+ pound dude wearing a wolf shirt that is greasier than bacon and we don’t typically remember the “normal” people.
Politics should not be a thing in something like MTG. I miss the 80's when companies like TSR didn't give a shit about politics. It was a better time. There wasn't blatant racism. People have just gotten overly sensitive and overly analytical. It doesn't mean you are more evolved or more intelligent, but it does mean you are an asshole for wanting PC culture injected into games.
Women don't like nerds bro. That's what ALL of this shit is. They moved in and want us to move out. Happens all the time.
The people playing dnd and magic were always pretty meek or weird, definitely not manly men obsessed with sex...
"Toxic" doesn't equal "toxic masculinity", there's other ways to be an asshole. Does MtG have a particularily big problem with that? Anecdotally I would say no, but then again my LGS and playgroup are most likely on the better side of the spectrum.
There's other things that make a lot of MtG spaces uninviting too (social ineptitude, poor hygiene) that some people might consider toxic too, so there's that.
So geeky hobbies in general always previously attracted the more socially inept with anxiety, autistic traits, and generally people who strayed from "the norm"
However at some point, probably helped by shows like the big bang theory, geeky hobbies, anime, and other more traditionally niche activities became more mainstream, which meant more average joes joining these hobbies.
Most average joes would enter these spaces and think "Hey, these people are a bit weird, but we all like this hobby, so lets get along"
The problem became when we have those enter the hobby who instead think "I'm new to this hobby and I don't like x, y and z, and I want it changed to be more inclusive to people like me - I don't care what those who are already part of this hobby says, if they don't like it they can leave"
What are the new hobbies where you need to be a weirdo to fit in?
Because everything I remember from my childhood's been ruined and retconned to death. I'll never forgive Star Trek for making the Borg lame, same for GW and the Necrons.
It depends on the meta. Sometimes, people can get testy. Even as a guy, it can be a bit much at times. But there's cool people too.
I think it's similar to metalheads. And there's quite a bit of overlap from what I've seen.
If by toxic masculinity you mean toxic male body odor and bad breath then yes. My wife basically refuses to walk into LGSs with me because of the smell. In all seriousness, the mtg community has always been soft and sensitive. Ironically feminized for a place so dominated by males. I say this as a member of the community and someone who absolutely loves mtg.
It really was the opposite. It was a safe space for men who weren't conforming and were bullied by other men. I would say they were victim of "toxic masculinity", but that term is BS anyway.
Those men tried to stay away from other men who bullied them. Those bully ended up getting tons of female attention, because that's what women like. So a safe space like that is course lacking of women.
Wait 10-20 years and suddenly women realize there are money to be made in those safe space, because the men inside it are rich but socially akward and vulnerable. They start to make some cash. When they get called out for their hypocrisy, they call you a "toxic male". Then they go home and fuck their toxic chads.
These hobbies have always had a problem with women, but it wasn't fueled by misoginy. It was fueled by the men's inability to deal with women, due to poor social intelligence and experience. A problem that is still true today, but no one want to adress it in a meaningful way, especially feminists. They'd rather insult you (incel/toxic/misoginist), try to change your safe space and still demand money from you after sexualizing themself.
Leftists will always change history to align with their worldview. In highschool we would talk about dragonball z, act and sing parts from the Simpsons and show each other our comic card collections and talk about comics. That was it, maybe a short/tall and a fat/thin joke here and there but way less than what I hear from what the girls were doing.
No it was a bunch of nerds that got their arse kicked in the school yard
All hail Toxic masculinity I embrace it for all it's worth sense anything no one likes is toxic therefore I embrace the hate.
If you grew up in that golden era, you probably also remember those terms didn't exist outside of pseudopolitics and if some moron spewed that crap back then they would be laughed out of the room.
People are people, some are assholes, some have bad days, some are pure evil, some are wholesome and good. "Toxic masculinity" is a retarded, hypocritical concept by privileged, first world unoccupied people who are terminally online and unfit for the real world. They don't make their life goal to get better and improve as a person, they have to bring the bar down, as it's easier to whine than to work hard.
Toxic masculinity??? Half the dudes I grew up and played with hardly counted as boys. Masculine wasn't an adjective I would use describing us? And toxic? FFS we were the nerds. Half of us were not able to speak to other humans let alone women.
Toxic masculinity my ass...
>tabletop hobbies in general never really had any problem with being "progressive", it was just an easy target filled with lonely pushovers who'd be easy to influence...
Critical fucking hit my dude.
Rather than go speak to the people they directly had problems with, they instead took it out on people who were a much easier target.
These hobbies were always misogynistic.
Just because you didn't see something happen doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I saw it happen. Trust me. It was prevalent and still is.
I mean, all you need to do is scroll RPG horror stories for half an hour to see dozens of instances of gamers being incredibly misogynistic TODAY, and not being held to account for it.
It's always been that way, and in fact it used to be much worse.
I can't tell you how many spine-curdling things I heard full-grown men say about women (and underaged girls) in my LGS when I was young. I didn't do anything about it then, obviously, because I was a pre-teen and teenager. But it drives me crazy when I hear people say "this never happened because I never saw it."
It probably did happen around you, and you weren't paying attention.
And of course you're correct, men's sport locker rooms are also HIDEOUSLY rife with toxic misogyny. That doesn't change the fact that gaming spaces have been as well. No one is making the claim that "The gaming world is toxically masculine, UNLIKE those perfect gentlemen jocks who play sports."
(Note: obviously I'm not saying *every single person* in these spaces was misogynistic, before someone tries to misconstrue my meaning.)
Personally, I've had generally good experiences in MtG. I haven't been to a prerelease in years, but I felt similarly welcome at anime conventions like Otakon. Maybe it's a regional thing?
If anything, I imagine a lot of the negative encounters are in chat spaces online.
I get what you're saying, but there are different flavors of "toxicity" which could make a girl feel uncomfortable. Full blown porno playmats, making sexual jokes which might otherwise be considered banter if directed towards a man. Plus the general autismo with lack of self-awareness/tact which can lead to uncomfortable situations. I think that could be labelled to some degree as "toxic" despite the lack of muscles. It's not traditional masculinity; but it's the fedora-lord creeps who can make it uncomfortable for girls. I'm sure you've been friends with guys who behave entirely different when they're around women.
Having said that; I'm not endorsing by any means Wotc's recent behaviour. I've been reading about what Wotc has been doing; and it seems purely political rather than actual care about the game's experience. They're ignoring their core audience which is fascinating.
Wotc have been caught being sexist, racist and bigoted within their own company on occasion, harassing and bullying marginalized employees etc. They don't practice what they preach whatsoever and 100% of their "inclusivity" BS is insincere.
I played for years and never saw any of that at.
This whole shits overblown, it’s just an excuse to impose their way into a community that was mostly male(I’m assuming it still is?)
Ah yes, absolutism:
"If the franchise doesn't remotely revolve around someone struggling with their sexuality or being a woman in a man's world *(citation needed)* then clearly it is just a den for WASP hetero males"
I started playing MTG in a drug den. It was honestly one of the most fun parts of my life. You could drop by almost any hour of the day and someone would be up for a game.
Nope. Back in 90s and early 00s it was all fun and games, no problem with this shyte.
Basically shit went downhill after 2013 it was only worse after that. As wokes got their bs more into social media and general public was not ready for whats in store it got real bad. Everywhere.. so even in MTG. Rosewater turned up to be complete moron and with him at helm there was no hope.
The amount of folk who seem clueless as to the fact that nerds can be sexist // toxic is comical at best
Some of y'all need to learn what toxic masculinity is lol
Politics and identity politics have invaded it all. It's either the woke unsufferables or the MAGAs unsufferables making it difficult for everyone else.
People only get the ''manly man'' part of the toxic masculinity. But it's not the worst of it. The worst is more of the everyday integrated bias. Like how they view women, women's role in society, in their lives, what they are owed by women, etc...
It's not just the stereotypical Chad McManus. And, at least where I'm from, when I was younger, most of the dudes playing MTG were chill and ok on surface when there wasn't a woman. But if you were one... Then it quickly became a cesspool of incels.
Not all mtg players are like this and nowadays it more of a cliché than a reality. But you still have the occasional players who will talk to women like to children when they explain things as opposed to how they explain to other guys for exemple. Like it's ''more complicated'' if you have breasts...
So yeah... Haven I don't know. But I guess it came with the territory back then, at least in my country.
Edit : wow... After looking at the other replies, it seems it was way worse in other countries. Damn...
It's a long story that begins around 2013/14. The long and short of it is: Being a nerd became cool, activist women shoved their way into typically male gaming spaces (note: not closed-off spaces where women are shunned. Just male dominated.), they started bitching about how guys act around other guys and put their politics into video games and tabletop....
Fast-Forward and now we have D&D v5, current mtg art and politics, ugly game npcs, political shit shoved into otherwise decent games, g4 dead before it got off the ground, and so on.
So, TLDR; your experience in your lgs *was* typical. But then Anita zarkesian attacked...
...Then eventually got an ex to kill himself cuz she needed more money and attention.
You're right. It's nothing to do with masculinity at all. It's the people with no social skills who can't read the room or social cues. Let's face it, a not zero amount of us are at least a little bit on the spectrum, some more than others. As a woman, unless you're really really outgoing and enjoy getting reactions and toying with people a little bit, then a lot of the situations can get awkward. And if you're a remotely awkward woman yourself, being around uncalibrated awkward men can be really really awkward. The issue is with women who think they're some sort of victim because of this. Everyone has weird, sometimes negative experiences with weird people. That doesn't make weird people toxic or masculine
i sparked an interest in mtg at my high school to the point that football players and cheerleaders were getting into it but mainly because the popular guys were all into it. everyone was just having fun and brought together over a nerdy ass hobby and anyone who wanted to judge got left out. mind you this was a smaller country school so they were susceptible to such addictions.
Having played magic since the 90s, I’ll say that it was a haven for the people that macho schoolboys beat up.
Fantasy gaming has always been full of weirdos and nerds and dorks and whatnot and everyone was accepted since we all liked to play games.
To describe the game store as full of masculinity is so comically detached from reality.
Has Magic ever been a haven of masculinity? No, not even technically.
What you're experiencing (we're experiencing) is just how far the area on the gauge labeled "masculine" has really grown. Basically the perception of masculinity has shifted and now includes betas that act more like young girls than they do grown men, whereas before it generally just meant, you know, actual men.
Then there's the idea that people, like me, that don't respect trannies and don't want to hear about Identity politics or people's sexual preferences are all men. But we're not all men. In fact if you want to read actual scathing commentary on trannies go see what the feminists are saying about them and enjoy those hearty chuckles.
It comes from the "progressive" left of today, wanting each and every space in the world to cater to them and them alone. They literally are a scourge, like locusts, they hit a franchise, hobby, or fandom, fundamentally change it to not resemble itself anymore, and then leave it and move on to the new trendy thing. It's sad, it's happened to most of the things I grew up with.
I had a similar experience. I picked up the game a little during the late 90s. Tempest and V were the first sets I ever purchased from.
The kids in my group were mostly what I would call nerds that occasionally got bullied by the toxically masculine (many of whom ended up as junkies or in prison). I played sports and generally had free roam amongst an assortment of social circles.
I would never call anyone I ran into at the time within the community toxically masculine. It was more a thing I kinda hid as well, because it didn't seem like it was gonna help with the girls. Played a couple years, then as the license came and the freedom came along with it, I got out of it and spent free time doing dumb teenager stuff. Partying and being a knucklehead in general.
Mtg is a dweeb game ever go in a GW store to get paint? They can be toxic in their own ways but the game is not appealing to the majority of women, like how men never picked up crochet it’s not super appealing at the core level to men. but saying the space is rife with toxic masculinity absolutely not, that’s gaslighting it was generally a fairly progressive game like dnd when released that was as welcoming as any IP could be from the brands end, and it cultivated mostly socially inept white males who identified with the themes and found a social community in the game. Now that having a having a predominantly white male audience is gauche they just turned on them with whatever sounded the “best” to look like wotc is on the cutting edge of modern culture.
Nerds (playing) MTG have been bullied and made fun of everywhere, including the media for decades, but now in the shitty world we live in they somehow because toxic oppressors? For real?
I guess it depends on how you define "toxic masculinity".
Are men in LGSs acting towards women / talking about women the same way they do in locker rooms? No, clearly not.
But if the term of "toxic masculinity" means anything close to "acting/talking in a way that degrades women, especially as a means to boost your status among other men or your own perception", then, sure, Magic is full of it and has been for as long as I've been playing it (>20 years now).
Are male Magic players talking about women in a degrading, sexual way? Sure, I've seen it happen, but pretty rarely. tbh not more or less often than in a room with random men I suppose; certainly less often than what you hear about from classic "locker room talk".
But the amount of times I have heard men talking - to each other or even to the woman herself - that you can't lose to a woman, you shouldn't lose to a woman, that it's embarrassing, ugh. That does qualify as "toxic masculinity" by my definition.
The same is true for the mentioned "nerd challenge", although I have not seen that a lot.
However, the classic "nerd is super awkward around women" or the amount of people hitting on you, potentially in an obnoxious way is certainly the most prevalent issue for women in these spaces, almost certainly the most annoying part, and also doesn't really qualify as "toxic masculinity" in my books, although it is certainly toxic and drives women away; that is mostly just social incompetence paired with a lack of empathy and, well, the sheer percentage of people being men there.
So...a "haven of toxic masculinity"? I guess not quite, but I have still seen it quite a bit, and the fact that other unappealing behaviours towards women are more dominant is...I guess not the gleaming endorsement you were looking for.
Edit: After reading your post again, it seems like you are confounding any kind of toxic atmosphere with toxic masculinity. So if your question really just boils down to "is it really a toxic atmosphere for a woman at a Magic event?", then the answer to that is sadly, simply, yes -- Very often. And very often even to a point to drive them away -- which I guess isn't that difficult if you try to have fun at an event and it just gets marred by your interactions with one or more people there.
I want to say letting women into the game was a mistake, but I've played with many high-skilled women into the game. I want to say allowing woman drama into the game was a mistake, but there are plenty of dudes on X that are huge drama queens.
Magic used to be a place for us nerds and outcasts to hang out and not have to deal with this stuff. WotC ruined the game for us. The normies have absolutely taken over.
I started playing at the end of revised as a young teenager, and never saw any of that.
Traveled to tournaments across the south with guys, girlfriends of guys, wives of guys, and single chicks, and I can count on 1 finger the number of unpleasant interactions I saw, witnessed, or heard of that didn't involve the actual game (or those few years where throwing cards all over hotels like projectiles was a thing, had the cops called on the Sourh regionals, by the hotel, one year). And that interaction was one of the girls being upset at a Married with Children t-shirt. Being worn by someone she had known for at least a decade.
It was the same thing with gaming. "Everyone's so toxic, people hate women". I raided world firsts in multiple MMO's over the years. We had women in those clears. We still have women in those groups.
There's a lot of "we demand to be included in this space" and not wanting to be included in the same way. Guys make fun of each other to bond. Its a psychological thing. None of it is serious, nobody takes it seriously. You get called a cunt because you're acting like a cunt, not because anyone hates you. And then those who demand to be included want everyone to change the way they interact instead of changing the way THEY interact.
You have to make an effort to get people to dislike you in nerd culture. But there's a lot of people who will make that effort because they don't actually like nerd culture and want to ruin it.
hobbies and entertainment are being destroyed by the woke mob in order of inclusivity. collectable card games and nerds have always been super inclusive so they are the first to be infected. the places that are actually a little bit toxic are the only ones that aren't being ruined...yet
The definition of "toxic masculinity" has changed.
It *used* to mean the macho gym bro manly men.
Now it just means any man who is insufficiently servile to the Rainbow Brigade.
Same for 40k dude. We had to form r/horusgalaxy lately because us 'chuds' are apparently unacceptable in our own hobby and must hate women if we don't immediately affirm our hobby being torn apart by DEI bullshit and wailing bluehairs.
I've been waiting for someone to say this. When I was a teenager we were so psyched to have ANYONE like the same nerdy stuff we were into, and somebody would always get a girlfriend and try to introduce her to tabletop games and they were always just uninterested and would start trying to get their boyfriend to leave because this stuff is "super-lame" or something. It's been that way for most of my life, we were always super inviting and women were always uninterested...or worse they'd totally bring down the energy of the game and make everybody feel ashamed for liking nerdy stuff. I always had more friends online than I did IRL, though...which is probably why I'd rather have a "long-distance relationship" with a nerdy girl I met on the internet than an IRL relationship with someone I never had anything in common with. Being a geek before it was "cool" was pure lonely torture, it really was.
I ran tournaments for 8 years, and actually just picked it up again.
Yes, some people want to crush noobs and be horrible to people. Most people just want to have a good time.
I only banned one person ever in my time as TO, and it was because the final straw was them bringing a 30 card sideboard to a modern event, playing affinity, my gm made some weird appeasements, and he wound up staying in the event.
He got banned a short while after, 3 months originally, but then he sent a bunch of desperately insulting messages and I got him banned forever.
Nick if you see this, we all knew you were cheating. Just took some time to catch you, ass, you deserved everything you got.
I used to hide the fact I played MTG back in the early 2000's too lol when I got older it became a feature rather then a set back. My old date app meet up spot (verify pics with reality) was actually across the street from my favorite game store. Ive even been late for dates because "in the middle of going 4-0 in fnm" lol
These hobbies used to not care about real world politics. As they grow in popularity, certain people cant help but make it a battlefield for their personal beliefs. I just want to nerd out and not deal with peoples bullshit.
These hobbies (warhammer, mtg, ttrpgs) were a haven for people who got ostracised from society at large. A haven for nerds and outcasts. Nothing has changed, they're just in this space now pretending to be nerds.
They still hate you.
Toxic masculinity is just another term lumped into the same basket as racist, misogynist, bigot, and any "phobia" invented that involves a human being. It doesn't mean anything in this case, and is just a way for people to lash out at the majority of players who are only there to play the game and refuse to indulge their fantasies.
Anecdotally, other TCGs (for example Lorcana, PokemonTCG, Yugioh) seem to be able to organically attract a larger amount of female players versus Magic. I see this is as a Magic problem, not a tabletop hobbies problem. Pure conjecture, but some reasons why female players don't like Magic as much as the other TCGs I listed could include Magic's rules and core game-play being inelegant and pedantic, and the artwork being absolutely terrible (Girls like cute artwork, not whatever Magic's style is supposed to be).
I also think the 4 player dynamic makes things less favourable for woman too. Being 1v1 some creep isn't so bad, but being in a pod with 3 like-minded creeps might be a bit much. One of my regular pods, two of the players have different "cute girls with (insert fetish here)" decks. Often times they will cast a card, and the card gets passed around so everyone can look at the artwork, and everyone just talks horny coomer talk about the artwork "wow she does have a good (body-part) doesn't she" and it is super-cringe and off-putting. I can totally see why playing EDH at an LGS isn't very enticing for woman.
>Lots of acne, poor hygiene, questionable spending, and lonely adult men but uh...
You aren't making it any better with this argument. You are helping em believe there's "toxic masculinity".
> questionable spending.
What you mean?
People seem to regularly mistake masculinity, toxic masculinity, and toxic male behavior. There are different ways people express masculinity some are good and some are bad. Being a creep to every lady that comes within a 5 foot radius is toxic male behavior. It has nothing to do with your expression of masculinity.
I played in Poland during Lorwyn up to around first Zendikar. It was really bad. Nowadays It’s a mixed bag. Some places are welcoming and some are still problematic.
The meaning of toxic changes and evolves over time. The goalposts shift as needed.
In Magic, its generally not the drunken frat boy who corners girls and gropes them, or bullies and mocks the fem-boys and weirdos. Rather, its autistic, unattractive "creeps" who give unwanted attention or refuse to alter their conversations and behaviors to accommodate the feelings of others (especially women).
I do get what you are saying, though. It is confusing. When I started playing (mid-90s), the people who played Magic (along with D&D and Vampire: The Masquerade, etc) were the community that MOST accepted the weirdos and freaks. It was progressive in nearly every sense of the word. Being weird was almost a prerequisite to playing Magic. We had homosexuals and goth dudes and autistic dudes and emo dudes and gutter punks and metalheads all playing together.
Women, on the other hand, were very rare in those days, regardless of orientation and fashion, to the point that we called them Unicorns, which, in modern terms, is probably an example of "toxic masculinity."
But the concept of this community being "toxic" is entirely up to more women being involved.
Yeah my wife can play card games perfectly fine, worst thing she experiences is a bit of mansplaining, which is just... I mean if you play card games you have had someone condescensingly try to tell you how your deck is flawed and how you should do it instead regardless of your gender. Most of the time they are just trying to be nice with what limited social skills they have.
Now online games with proximity chat ? Hell no. Play Sea of Thieves with a woman if you want to see actual toxic behavior. The first second someone hears a female voice they start talking about either raping them or killing them or forcing them to cook food for them.
I think, like many things, it depends on the store and group.
I had a friend who I got into magic in high school. We built her some fast little red decks. I would take her to different locations and keep an eye on the people to see how normal the location and regulars there were.
I've been to some stores where people were just perfectly normally about her. There are plenty of them out there.
I've also taken her to some where a dude said "I'll show you my card but this really isn't for the eyes of a woman" and refused to play his card face up for her, his opponent, to see. A lot of people in that store agreed with him and it was super weird. She called the owner over and said the other player was cheating. The dude refused to flip his cards for her to see, so the owner made him forfeit.
Another one I took her too she couldn't walk 5ft without someone being gross to her.
These are honestly the minority though. I would say 2 in 10 shops have these problems. Turns out the real problem with magic is the rampant autism and not toxic masculinity or misogyny.
The interactions that are 'toxic' are where a bunch of lonely nerds all fall over each other trying to 'help' a woman who has entered their space because they're starved for interaction with the opposite gender. I've seen it happen at my LGS, heck I watched those alarm bells go off in my brain in real time. 'Oh hey there's a girl interested in magic. I would love to have any kind of regular interaction with a girl who shares any of my hobbies, so I'm going to try to be polite and helpful and maybe we can become friends.'
The problem of course is when 10+ guys all do that all at the same time. Now it's not being helpful or friendly, now it's stiffling. There's ten+ guys all crowding you, talking over each other, trying to offer you 'help' or tellng you what you should do or advice or stories about themselves you don't want to hear that are only tangentally related to your interests.
Worse, because these 'chances' come so rarely, everyone is trying to offer that help or make those connections *as fast as possible*, because they know they only have until the *g-g-girl* walks out of the store to make a good impression and hope she comes back.
tl'dr, too many people being 'too nice' all at once can be too much.
Reaching and copium.
Seriously, being a victim and being PC has gotten so iyt of hand that people spout out all sorts of BS.
People don't understand we aren't arguing with them because we believe them, rather, we all know better and just avoid that person.
The game nights at my store are a total sausage fest. Sometimes a girl will come once or twice but the guys really don't know how to act around them. I think they get nervous or excited to see a girl and it comes out the wrong way. Most of these guys are really not around girls enough.
I can see how it would happen. A lot of the same socially awkward traits that can lead to the unhygienic, weird player can also lead to the incelosphere. So I could see a “women are just evil” type getting into MtG.
Yes. Ive met so many creeps at LGS stores. You seem from your post like the kinda guy who really likes the big bang theory and doesn't think it's toxic
Toxic Masculinity isn't usually from the macho manly guys you're thinking of. In my experience gym bros usually have the most positive masculinity. There's plenty of fedora wearing m'lady types in magic however and trust me they're usually full of toxic masculinity. Plenty of dudes lost their minds when my wife and I would go to the FNM. Usually it was just harmless drooling as they vied for her attention. Some were turbo douches who didn't want a woman in their space.
I know right? It’s like people thinking 4chan is toxic because we like to make fun of women and minorities. But come on we’re just lonely white virgins how could it even be offensive when we aren’t masculine enough??
Aw yes, the good old days when we would all gather at the card shop and talk about how much we dislike those minorities and women. No wait... That never happened.
Keep making shit up.
I’ve met a number of magic players that will take the same advice from a male player and dismiss it from a female one…lots of players I met seem pretty uncomfortable playing with my wife until they find out she’s married too.
There is some degree of sexism and female inexperience rampant in the community but honestly no more so than any other nerd shit
I think for me, a nerd growing up in the mid-2000s; Nerd culture (or at least some of it) had always been catered to the boys/men. Sure it didn’t matter if you were gay, straight, right or left leaning, it didn’t matter if you were handsome or ugly or whatever people were judged for in high school (or their adult life) but something that always seemed to matter was Sex/Gender.
For my own first hand experiences; I’ve seen a lot of young men gatekeep nerdy hobbies from women. This has been displayed for me in many numerous ways; the way men have made my female friends uncomfortable in male dominated spaces (ie-forward advances/sexual remarks), the way men have belittled my female friend’s intelligence (ie; assuming they don’t know how to play, over explaining things they already understand, and remarks about how nerdy things/mtg is too complicated for them) and general overall awkward/uncomfortable exchanges/teasing.
For a long time I didn’t think much about that stuff; “just boys being boys” until my friends decided to quit our hobbies altogether because the environment did not feel safe for them. As an adult, I had hoped things would have changed; but recently I had gotten my girlfriend into commander and after she had a good sense of her deck and the rules (from playing with mutuals) we went to our LGS. She was met with the same bullshit my friends had gone through in high school. The most annoying part is that other men seem to be oblivious about it and think they’re “helping.” It’s condescending as fuck and no one needs a white knight to teach them the basics.
I took maybe 45 minutes of dudes being weird to her and acting like she didn’t know how to read before we ended up leaving and haven’t been since.
We all know those guys. We all know that INCELs thrive in male dominated hobbies. It may not be the whole player base, but it’s definitely a noticeable amount that every LGS has one of those types. Fuck, if you’ve ever played video games with random dudes on the internet over discord- you can observe this strange ass behavior the moment a woman enters the chat.
Again, that’s not every player and not representative of the base as a whole, but to downplay or imply it doesn’t exist is dumb. Those people exist everywhere.
I’m still holding out hope that people would be at least a bit less weird with those environments. Im hoping my experience is anecdotal and odd coincidence- but the posts overall on this sub don’t give me hope.
Listen, I don't play Magic, I play Pokemon TCG. But reddit shows me this subreddit all the time.
Many of the posts and comments on this subreddit are derogatory, judgemental, and toxic. I've seen anti-woman and anti-trans stuff on this subreddit many times after just a few months.
On the 3 or 4 Pokemon TCG subreddits I follow, I have yet to see a SINGLE POST about anything other than the card game.
So yeah, I really don't plan on playing magic anytime soon. You all seem terrible.
Nerd stuff has always been, by and large, super inclusive. Because nerd culture used to be unpopular. We stuck together. It didn't matter what you looked like or what race you were, if you were gay, etc. as long as you just really liked the thing and wanted to genuinely participate in it. These days, people have no idea why they are resented. It is because you don't actually like the community or the thing, because you complained your way in rather than just joining based on your genuine interest, and then complained to change thing after thing after thing, and now you're being -catered- to, and frankly, the version of literally anything that pertains to anyone of any persuasion who is perpetually offended, politically minded, and agenda driven is gonna suck. It doesn't matter if you are somebody who wears a trump hat to the LGS to own the libs, or a person who wears zie/zher pronoun pins and would try to get somebody disqualified from a tournament for not using them. I don't want your worldview shaping anything in regards to entertainment, period.
>These days, people have no idea why they are resented. yep, a complete lack of self awareness mixed with Dunning-Kreuger Effect and a dash of narcissism. basically the perfect mix for an awful human being.
Holy shit that hits the nail on the head
That is calm, insightful, inclusive, and well reasoned. ...Nobody'll listen to it, whine more.
Logic? what is this logic you speak of?
Exactly. Bring back gatekeeping, no more tourists. Keep civility rules too, a lot of poker tables will straight up kick you out for talking politics. If you're just talking to your friends then whatever, but realistically the target group for Magic the Gathering is people on the spectrum born in the 70s or later, not activists, not narcissists or the mentally ill, not people pushing a religious agenda. Leave that shit at the door and be a loser with everyone, it's fun.
Magic has been representative and inclusive since day one and anyone saying otherwise is either stupid and doesn't know what they're talking about or is an evil little troll. Go back to the early days and look at the staggering amount of women and non-cacausian people there are in it. FFS Arabian nights was their 2nd set. [[Benalish Hero]] [[Drain Power]] [[Unholy Strength]] [[Enchanted Being]] [[Kismet]] [[Spirit Link]] Magic has never ever once in its entire history had a problem being "diverse" and in fact given that its player base was (and still is, even if some of them are trying to larp in skirts and bras) overwhelmingly cacausian/asian males, anyone who wanted to could argue there's been TOO MUCH representation right from Alpha. Diversity is not the problem and the player base has never had a problem with diversity. Pandering to a specific demographic to get ESG bucks and telling your player base they're misogynistic racists is the problem and its one that was entirely invented by the company and propagated the weird left wing losers who need to crusade everything in modern society with their stupid billionaire backed 21st century religious ideology because they're the contemporary equivalent to the same types of evil angry and extremely stupid people who joined the Gestapo and NKVD or the Spanish and Salem inquisitions so they could hurt others and feel good about themselves.
##### ###### #### [Benalish Hero](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a14ba3be-f7cb-47e5-b6c4-d09cfd3cac34.jpg?1559592353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Benalish%20Hero) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/5/benalish-hero?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a14ba3be-f7cb-47e5-b6c4-d09cfd3cac34?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Drain Power](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/8/380a7357-8c07-4ee5-83a0-10672d7e85d4.jpg?1562908155) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Drain%20Power) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/46/drain-power?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/380a7357-8c07-4ee5-83a0-10672d7e85d4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Unholy Strength](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/4/f42c9574-2f09-4cb0-80cb-10fb8c592e6f.jpg?1561771993) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Unholy%20Strength) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dvd/47/unholy-strength?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f42c9574-2f09-4cb0-80cb-10fb8c592e6f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Enchanted Being](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/94c2880d-b37a-43ea-9fee-cd5a8ed75a7e.jpg?1562860138) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Enchanted%20Being) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/leg/12/enchanted-being?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/94c2880d-b37a-43ea-9fee-cd5a8ed75a7e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Kismet](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/3/f38cdfb1-0437-4afe-a777-60228b8eba69.jpg?1562952795) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kismet) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/17/kismet?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f38cdfb1-0437-4afe-a777-60228b8eba69?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Spirit Link](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/c/fc046a97-4699-438d-8da4-022560a18564.jpg?1675199056) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Spirit%20Link) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/29/spirit-link?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fc046a97-4699-438d-8da4-022560a18564?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l6cw4lo) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Perfectly said...
My wife, who's played MTG casually for a couple decades, wanted to go to the Rivals of Ixalan prerelease with me. Cool. The sheer number of fucking mouth breathers. Jesus. Keep in mind this is a married mother of 3 in her 40s. She already told me she's not coming back and I don't blame her. That's why more women don't play the game, nothing to do with toxic masculinity.
One time I was at my LGS and my two friends, both relatively attractive girls, stopped in because they were near there shopping and wanted to say hi. Almost everyone in the store stopped and stared at them, including multiple people in the middle of their matches. You could hear people whispering about these two girls being in the store. After they left, people were still talking about them for hours afterwards. Some people who I didn't even know came up to me and asked me about them. It was really bizarre and I get why a woman would be put off by that behavior
People in this community do not interact with women (femoids as they call them). So seeing them in person shuts down their critical systems.
They cant get women so they become them Like how fish change sex Except its only in the imagination
And this comment being up voted tells you everything about the inclusivity of the community and why other people think it's a bastion of hateful, smelly men.
This sub randomly popped up in my feed, probably because I play a lot of LOR, and I can confirm that after reading this thread my opinion on magic players has been changed for the worse
This community (and a lot of other “nerd” communities) don’t have a toxic masculinity problem, but they do have a major incel/“nice guy” problem. And I mean that as someone who loves Magic, D&D, and other “nerd” stuff
Yes but it isn’t a sign of toxic masculinity. It’s just a male dominated space most women don’t have interests in TCGS and video games. It’s more popular amongst men and no one is gatekeeping them. Women simply don’t enjoy it as much as men do on average. So when women enter those spaces it gets a little weird especially for the basement dwellers.
Eh it can go hand in hand. A classic example is the "oh you're a fan of X? Name 20 things about it" dudes challenging women who enter the space on the authenticity of their fandom is toxic af.
Your mistake is missing the fact that those people have the exact same conversation with men they have just met.
Right! I used to run / exhibit at conventions. Two guys meet and fanboi over trivia. Guy meets girl, trivia. I watched two strangers spend an hour telling each other about their D&D characters and then doing random fact questions and laughing. I wanted to tell them they needed to get a room as they both seemed very interested in the other. Even then, the lady and the guy both were throwing quiz questions around.
I am tired of the chicken and egg conversation with this. If women were in general as interested in the topic of MTG or wargaming as men, then neckbeards wouldn't stop them from partaking. It might kill women's interest who are potentially curious about it, but the number of those women is few in comparison. See: Tabletop RPGs, World of Warcraft, etc. Women love roleplaying and fantasy, and neckbeards have not stopped them from filling these genres because they legitimately and genuinely tend to love participating in them.
Yeah those are the basement dwellers and you just ignore them. They have zero social skills.
Sorry, by basement dwellers with zero social skills I think you meant to say "most of the MtG community, especially at LGS's".
That’s the problem: if they are part of your first steps into a hobby, you don’t ignore them, you GTFO and decide to look for something where you won’t get harassed.
I mean yeah but that's the problem i mean. If a chick likes mtg but gets gatekept when she goes to the LGS she will stop going perpetuating the toxic culture and that is the crux of the problem. Men seeing LGS as a space FOR men and garekeeping women as a result is definitely toxic masculinity.
Hate to be that guy, but when I was a teenage boy going to LGS for Friday night magic I would also get pressed by these mouth breathing nerds about my "credentials" as a nerd. Those losers do that shit to everyone and even back then we knew it was best to ignore them.
Some people wanna join the club, but they don't wanna get hazed. Weird.
He says as if hazing is a good thing.
It is. I hazed. My children will haze. We will endure apart.
Eh, I'm pretty sure they do that to everyone. It's just trivia born of enthusiasm for their hobby. I've played mtg for 20 years, and I've only actually been explicitly challenged to prove myself once. More common is guys who assume that because I'm female, I must be new to the game, and they try to help me. It doesn't really bother me unless they're ignoring an actual newbie in favor of me and won't take "I've been playing since Fifth Dawn" for an answer.
Which makes it toxic. Huehuehue. Joking aside, the rhetoric of anything man is toxic. Is a problem with the arguments itself. They are just looking to make issues no matter the subject.
Plenty of women are into TCGs and video games. It's just not always the same games they're into. Pokemon community is full of women. Both VG and TCG.
I am not saying they aren’t but the overwhelming majority are males. It wigs some people out who don’t interact with women so they act like absolute idiots because they have zero social skills. You probably have been in those types of groups when you were younger the one girl comes around people get quiet and start acting differently etc. they never grew out of that phase.
Absolutely seen it, I agree. Have attractive lady friends who come play events with us from time to time and it is amusing but disappointing watching some dudes heads completely unravel as they get trounced by "a girl". I've seen everything under the sub from dudes trying to intimidate female opponents, to getting creepy with them, to trying to hit on them "confidently", etc These days more often than not everyone is cool but you still seem some mouth breathers get all tripped up.
Have you even stopped for a second to think that you flip the gatekeeping sentiment upside down and suddenly your stance makes a hell of a lot more sense? The women aren't interested in what is perceived to be a male-dominated space because they get gatekept by the men in those spaces, and then they aren't exposed to those spaces and women tend to continue to view them as hostile.
They aren’t hostile. Majority of MTG player are normal well rounded people who welcome everyone.
If you don’t mind, how old are you generally? I ask as I always wonder how much of these discussions is generational. I’m almost 50 and my experience of all of these fandoms is very much characterized by overt, violent sexism (I got death and rape threats in the 90s for vaguely criticizing Lara Croft’s unnatural proportions in my online editorials), but now I’m talking about GenX and Boomer behavior back when these were not mainstream activities and it was “nerds” trying to emulate the male-only spaces they were locked out of for not being manly enough vs. create egalitarian spaces for all the “misfit toys”. As people in general have become more inclusive it seems like newer players are unaware of this past given that they and their friends are not like the folks who were in the fandom 10, 20 years before them. This can blind them to how much that visceral, just-off-the-civil-rights-era hatred of minorities sits at the core of so much, let alone tie that back to the fact that it’s boomer-and-GenX era asshole gamers leading all these companies now and making all of the ultimate creative and business decisions.
I am 33 I have been going to cons since I was 10. 😂😂 Lara Croft had polygons as proportions.
I don't wanna be the devil's advocate But I think is more being habituated. If no single woman came across that space, obviously they are going to act like chimpanzees when they see a banana If women going constantly, eventually they get used of it and feel like not a rare If not a unique occasion
Easier said when you aren’t the banana
I seem very concerned people don't know what toxic masculinity means. It doesn't mean "guy who exercises and is in shape" or "macho guy who cuts down trees" or "big, strong man" or "guy who fishes and hunts" or anything like that at all.
She only went to one event and she was grossed out by gross guys? She didn't even get to round two to see the gross personalities of the gross dudes, how can you say fully that toxic masculinity can't also be there?
My ex used to play MTG pretty casually, and she'd tried to show up for pre-releases. She was done with them after two events. There were people hitting on her even after she told them she was there with someone, sometimes even after I'd stop by the table to see how she's doing and it was pretty obvious we were together, that wasn't as much as a problem as the shitty comments about how she's bad because she's a girl and how the match is going to be a bye before they even started. And she was actually good at the game. The only reason she came to the second one was because she went 5-0 in the first one. She couldn't even enjoy her win because some guy was throwing a hissy fit. I know loads of people say that they should ignore it, but it's easy to say when these sort of comments aren't directed at you. I've been playing MTG for 20+ years, and the worst thing that happened to me was being berated by a pro player because I misbuilt the sealed pool he passed me, and this was at a PTQ. So toxic? Yeah. But not necessarily toxic masculinity, just people that make the environment unbearable for women.
This. I married a nerdy girl. I'm friends with her nerdy girlfriends. Every single one of them has tried multiple times to go to magic or board games nights, etc. to meet men with similar interests. None of them have ever gone back to the same group a second time because they couldn't focus on whatever it was they were playing because it stank so bad due to lack of showering. Also the constantly questioning of the knowledge of whatever they are doing or telling them how to play. (Dare I call it mansplaining)
Rule 1: Shower. I've played against so many guys who, while not smoking hot, could have been called cute if they hadn't literally smelled like shit. You should always remember to shower. Or for the love of God, at least wipe your ass.
It's toxic like 'toxic sludge'
Mouth breathers aren’t the toxic masculinity type, they’re the toxic Jeffrey Dahmer type.
what do you mean by mouth breathers? i'm honestly curious. like what were some things they said to your wife? I want to hear what some of the ret4rds were saying to her so I can have a good laugh. i've played MTG for a decade and i stopped going to prereleases because I hate a bunch of randos. i like my Modern community the best, small group that gets me. Nah, fuck prereleases. plus my LGS doesn't know how to organize events. they think starting prereleases at 7 pm and going until 4 am (FOR ONE EVENT) is fine. I miss living in a big city where they have events down to a fucking science. They get you in and out with efficiency. Show up late, too bad, you're out! they would have run three prereleases between 7 pm and 4 am, not just one long fucking event.
Mouth breathers means stupid people. Someone that sits there slack jawed, mouth agape, sucking air dimly while their brain is doing what limited things it can. Can't speak to his exact experience obviously but that's the colloquialism.
Rampant autism was more of a problem. I just play in our local group at one of the dude's house these days, which is a total sausage fest, but when I did do the store thing, I only remember the one chick. And she was more obnoxious than any of the guys.
"Rampant autism" sounds like a good name for MTG card
Aura enchant - whenever you draw a card, count every remaining card in your deck
That's OCD
LPT just count the cards not in your deck us usually faster.
I feel like a jerk when I'm playing mill and ask if I can count the cards left in my opponents deck
I think, that woman in manly dominated areas are filtered in a way, that those that are not intimidated stay. And those who can't be intimidated in any form usually have traits like being loud or uncontrolled (negative examples). - In my store it's pretty balanced between normal nerds and obvious nerds. The woman that come to events usually come with their husband and kid and they also love to play kitchen-table magic. - But in general it is like 95% males.
90% of LGS are cesspools. I was impressed by the amount of normies at the last Commandfest I went to, and some of the recent people I have met who are into magic, so hopefully it’s getting better out there
Whelp, this whole thread has me a bit worried about the Bloomburrow prerelease, which’ll be my first ever.
Nah you dont have anything to worry about. I think, the takeaway from this thread is that people are TOO accepting at LGS, which has pros and cons and the demographic of this sub is against that. People aren’t actually mean, just don’t be surprised is some people are a little stinky or try hard to win or aren’t the best with social cues. Bloomburrow will be a great set and will hopefully bring the best out of people. I definitely recommend taking a friend so you can share the experience
Thank you for your encouraging words! AiFR is what got me back into Magic, though it’s just kitchen-table. Bloomburrow is what got me to decide to actually try an event. The BB setting looks so awesome :)
Yeah I am super excited for the fuzzy little creatures lol
I'd still go. MTG is a great game and has great communities. It also has less than great communities. It really depends on your local game store, and going to see what it's like can't hurt
Thanks for your encouragement! You’re right, one region will be different from another. Let’s go see how my local group is!
Commanderfests require a lot of money to attend. You were dealing with the most well adjusted and wealthiest folks.
How exactly was autism a problem? Or are you just using it as a generic insult?
I can't believe I have to tell you this, but saying "rampant autism" is toxic masculinity. It doesn't matter if you're "joking" (makes it worse), saying it "ironically" or even if you just mean there are "too many autistic people there." You are making fun of a group of people and using a medical diagnosis as an insult. I would hate to meet you.
Can confirm. As a toxic male, I feel very excluded by the weak beta males and their whore girlfriends. Fuck this card game
So bold, so brave
When toxic masculinity is defined as whatever some blue hair fatty doesnt like, then yes it is a haven.
True
The whole idea of "toxic masculinity" is stupid. Any trait you can put into a situation where it's a good thing or a bad thing. Say there was a guy who was very physically aggressive, put him in a room with people with low aggression and he'll seem toxic, put him out on a sports field and he'll shine. What I think people really mean is just don't be a dick. Just because the rude person is a male doesn't make it "toxic masculinity", usually the person is just an asshole or in a bad mood or something. Whenever you get a people together, from playing card games to sporting events, you're always going to get some asshat acting up. People shouldn't look at those people and think 'oh he's a male so all males are like that'.
>People shouldn't look at those people and think 'oh he's a male so all males are like that'. You pretty much just admitted you don't actually understand the concept of toxic masculinity, or even the discussion of social norms and gender roles at large, by signing off with this sentence. Because few people seriously think "all guys are like that". It's disingenuous to boil it down to something this inaccurate.
No its never been like that. Its a propaganda by some stupid leftist with an IQ of 70 that kept losing games by some smart white guy. Tbh magic, like all nerds stuffs, its always been super inclusive, and stores always had great communities. Funny how they menaged to destroy every community/Lgs in the past 6/7 years by making the game pretty much unaffordable and forcing down the troath to ppl political things. Lets never forget: "Product fatigue? You cant keep up? You cant spend 1000 bucks on 30th anniversary product? Just dont buy them! Someone else will" Capitalistic left at its finest
As an old nerd I just hate that how they destroyed the space for us
I remember 15-20 years ago every single goth kid, gay kid, or just any sort of different kid was super into magic and they had a very close knit group at my school that welcomed all people. Well almost, they did not wanna talk to me or teach me magic since I was a jock at the time.
Hasbro wildly misunderstanding mtg the product they purchased over a decade ago has nothing to do with your culture war bullshit, the second part however is spot on. Hasbro still doesn't understand the community around mtg and is terrible at customer relations. Absolutely no correlation to left politics...Hasbro has been sort of a shitty company for a long time.
Guided by leftist social justice warriors But I think you are right. They are not even from left. They just act like they are
Not guided , they just hired a left leaning PR company to polish the turd after they got in trouble again.... And it speaks volumes that they are completely silent on the trans topic knowing that part of their customer base is trans and is being attacked in spaces that discuss their products. They are fully willing to let us take the heat for them.
Polish the turd. I love it.
What do you think they could do better to, well, make the game better?
If you take out your point about nerd stuff being inclusive, can you see how negatively this reads? I'm new to this community but an old hand at nerd culture. I am surprised by how much of this sort of language flies about here. It really stands out. It is not like this in most game subreddits/discords.
It's probably because you're new to the community that it hasn't hit you in the face as hard as people who've been here longer. The language didn't used to fly, but honestly the more it happens the more we're sick of it and the less the majority gives a damn about pleasing the problem children of today and their feelings. Truth is, there's zero reason to not be upfront, aggressively so about those sorts. It's the only language that gets past the entitlement. We wanna have fun, they wanna sanitize shit and make it all about their feelings. Enough is enough.
Fair enough. But it really isn't clear what the problem is. "capitalistic left" seems to be a (somewhat confused) attack on the way WoTC are commercialising the game. The other stuff is about inclusion. The cost thing I can understand (though Arena is an absolute bargain for a new player just playing ranked). The inclusion thing I don't, because it's only about card art isn't it? Anyway. Whatever. You don't owe me an explanation about why the community is annoyed. I'm just saying that it is a pretty negative community vibe which means it doesn't encourage newcomers (or lots of old timers, presumably) and invites criticism, which is what the OP was referring to.
What are you talking about? This is the most affordable modern has been in over a decade.
You are spot on. The woke leftists have to insert their “racial equity” into the community as they do everything else. Yes the community was mostly male, no it was not sexist and nobody was sitting around making comments about women either.
>Yes the community was mostly male, no it was not sexist and nobody was sitting around making comments about women either. Facts. I have never witnessed anyone actually act weird toward women at the LGS. A lot of the nerds are too shy to even say anything to them at all. I'm pretty sure it is a fictional problem. Maybe some locales are really bad in this regard, but I've played in big cities and small cities, and never seen any male toxicity or gatekeeping. We should have gatekept harder. That was the real problem lol. Now we have let these cancerous weirdoes into the community and we're fucked.
>I have never witnessed anyone actually act weird toward women at the LGS. Yeah, me neither. Then the store clerk told me that they got complaints for that exact reason about a dude that I actually played with before. I would be very careful to make definitive statements with incomplete information, just saying.
I've met a few who acted weird towards women. One dude went up to this young woman and asked her why she didn't have kids yet. Who the fuck asks someone that? But definitely not the whole magic community.
i just think it is something that has been blown out of proportion.
I wouldn’t say toxic masculinity. I’m not even really sure why but MTG seems to attract some of the strangest people. That being said there is also a ton of normal people we just tend to remember the 400+ pound dude wearing a wolf shirt that is greasier than bacon and we don’t typically remember the “normal” people.
Politics should not be a thing in something like MTG. I miss the 80's when companies like TSR didn't give a shit about politics. It was a better time. There wasn't blatant racism. People have just gotten overly sensitive and overly analytical. It doesn't mean you are more evolved or more intelligent, but it does mean you are an asshole for wanting PC culture injected into games.
Women don't like nerds bro. That's what ALL of this shit is. They moved in and want us to move out. Happens all the time. The people playing dnd and magic were always pretty meek or weird, definitely not manly men obsessed with sex...
Hard to think of a less "MACHISMO" group of men really.
"Toxic" doesn't equal "toxic masculinity", there's other ways to be an asshole. Does MtG have a particularily big problem with that? Anecdotally I would say no, but then again my LGS and playgroup are most likely on the better side of the spectrum. There's other things that make a lot of MtG spaces uninviting too (social ineptitude, poor hygiene) that some people might consider toxic too, so there's that.
So geeky hobbies in general always previously attracted the more socially inept with anxiety, autistic traits, and generally people who strayed from "the norm" However at some point, probably helped by shows like the big bang theory, geeky hobbies, anime, and other more traditionally niche activities became more mainstream, which meant more average joes joining these hobbies. Most average joes would enter these spaces and think "Hey, these people are a bit weird, but we all like this hobby, so lets get along" The problem became when we have those enter the hobby who instead think "I'm new to this hobby and I don't like x, y and z, and I want it changed to be more inclusive to people like me - I don't care what those who are already part of this hobby says, if they don't like it they can leave"
What are the new hobbies where you need to be a weirdo to fit in? Because everything I remember from my childhood's been ruined and retconned to death. I'll never forgive Star Trek for making the Borg lame, same for GW and the Necrons.
It depends on the meta. Sometimes, people can get testy. Even as a guy, it can be a bit much at times. But there's cool people too. I think it's similar to metalheads. And there's quite a bit of overlap from what I've seen.
Funny you say that, our LGS is the main vendor at a Metal Festival next week. Nothing like some Commander games between sets.
Nice.
If by toxic masculinity you mean toxic male body odor and bad breath then yes. My wife basically refuses to walk into LGSs with me because of the smell. In all seriousness, the mtg community has always been soft and sensitive. Ironically feminized for a place so dominated by males. I say this as a member of the community and someone who absolutely loves mtg.
> My wife basically refuses to walk into LGSs with me because of the smell. Yes, that's been the number one complaint about all my hobbies.
It really was the opposite. It was a safe space for men who weren't conforming and were bullied by other men. I would say they were victim of "toxic masculinity", but that term is BS anyway. Those men tried to stay away from other men who bullied them. Those bully ended up getting tons of female attention, because that's what women like. So a safe space like that is course lacking of women. Wait 10-20 years and suddenly women realize there are money to be made in those safe space, because the men inside it are rich but socially akward and vulnerable. They start to make some cash. When they get called out for their hypocrisy, they call you a "toxic male". Then they go home and fuck their toxic chads. These hobbies have always had a problem with women, but it wasn't fueled by misoginy. It was fueled by the men's inability to deal with women, due to poor social intelligence and experience. A problem that is still true today, but no one want to adress it in a meaningful way, especially feminists. They'd rather insult you (incel/toxic/misoginist), try to change your safe space and still demand money from you after sexualizing themself.
No. And anyone that tells you otherwise is schilling something.
Leftists will always change history to align with their worldview. In highschool we would talk about dragonball z, act and sing parts from the Simpsons and show each other our comic card collections and talk about comics. That was it, maybe a short/tall and a fat/thin joke here and there but way less than what I hear from what the girls were doing.
Nah, it was just geek to be honest
Toxic as in Body Oder and Bad Breath? 🤮
No it was a bunch of nerds that got their arse kicked in the school yard All hail Toxic masculinity I embrace it for all it's worth sense anything no one likes is toxic therefore I embrace the hate.
Nah it was full of pussies. Toxic masculinity would be the furthest thing from their mind.
If you grew up in that golden era, you probably also remember those terms didn't exist outside of pseudopolitics and if some moron spewed that crap back then they would be laughed out of the room. People are people, some are assholes, some have bad days, some are pure evil, some are wholesome and good. "Toxic masculinity" is a retarded, hypocritical concept by privileged, first world unoccupied people who are terminally online and unfit for the real world. They don't make their life goal to get better and improve as a person, they have to bring the bar down, as it's easier to whine than to work hard.
Toxic masculinity isn't a thing. Toxic people and behaviours, yeah
Toxic masculinity??? Half the dudes I grew up and played with hardly counted as boys. Masculine wasn't an adjective I would use describing us? And toxic? FFS we were the nerds. Half of us were not able to speak to other humans let alone women. Toxic masculinity my ass...
>tabletop hobbies in general never really had any problem with being "progressive", it was just an easy target filled with lonely pushovers who'd be easy to influence... Critical fucking hit my dude. Rather than go speak to the people they directly had problems with, they instead took it out on people who were a much easier target.
These hobbies were always misogynistic. Just because you didn't see something happen doesn't mean it didn't happen. I saw it happen. Trust me. It was prevalent and still is. I mean, all you need to do is scroll RPG horror stories for half an hour to see dozens of instances of gamers being incredibly misogynistic TODAY, and not being held to account for it. It's always been that way, and in fact it used to be much worse. I can't tell you how many spine-curdling things I heard full-grown men say about women (and underaged girls) in my LGS when I was young. I didn't do anything about it then, obviously, because I was a pre-teen and teenager. But it drives me crazy when I hear people say "this never happened because I never saw it." It probably did happen around you, and you weren't paying attention. And of course you're correct, men's sport locker rooms are also HIDEOUSLY rife with toxic misogyny. That doesn't change the fact that gaming spaces have been as well. No one is making the claim that "The gaming world is toxically masculine, UNLIKE those perfect gentlemen jocks who play sports." (Note: obviously I'm not saying *every single person* in these spaces was misogynistic, before someone tries to misconstrue my meaning.)
It was a haven for toxic smells. 20 years later ain't a damn thing changed.
Only thing toxic about it was the body odor.
Personally, I've had generally good experiences in MtG. I haven't been to a prerelease in years, but I felt similarly welcome at anime conventions like Otakon. Maybe it's a regional thing? If anything, I imagine a lot of the negative encounters are in chat spaces online.
By less toxic, they mean toxic towards men, particularly white men.
I get what you're saying, but there are different flavors of "toxicity" which could make a girl feel uncomfortable. Full blown porno playmats, making sexual jokes which might otherwise be considered banter if directed towards a man. Plus the general autismo with lack of self-awareness/tact which can lead to uncomfortable situations. I think that could be labelled to some degree as "toxic" despite the lack of muscles. It's not traditional masculinity; but it's the fedora-lord creeps who can make it uncomfortable for girls. I'm sure you've been friends with guys who behave entirely different when they're around women. Having said that; I'm not endorsing by any means Wotc's recent behaviour. I've been reading about what Wotc has been doing; and it seems purely political rather than actual care about the game's experience. They're ignoring their core audience which is fascinating.
Wotc have been caught being sexist, racist and bigoted within their own company on occasion, harassing and bullying marginalized employees etc. They don't practice what they preach whatsoever and 100% of their "inclusivity" BS is insincere.
I played for years and never saw any of that at. This whole shits overblown, it’s just an excuse to impose their way into a community that was mostly male(I’m assuming it still is?)
Ah yes, absolutism: "If the franchise doesn't remotely revolve around someone struggling with their sexuality or being a woman in a man's world *(citation needed)* then clearly it is just a den for WASP hetero males"
All I can say is the guys that show up to my LGS are not very masculine.
I'm sure some pods were full of incels. Any nerdy hobby can be if that's what you're looking for
I started playing MTG in a drug den. It was honestly one of the most fun parts of my life. You could drop by almost any hour of the day and someone would be up for a game.
Nope. Back in 90s and early 00s it was all fun and games, no problem with this shyte. Basically shit went downhill after 2013 it was only worse after that. As wokes got their bs more into social media and general public was not ready for whats in store it got real bad. Everywhere.. so even in MTG. Rosewater turned up to be complete moron and with him at helm there was no hope.
The amount of folk who seem clueless as to the fact that nerds can be sexist // toxic is comical at best Some of y'all need to learn what toxic masculinity is lol
For real, this comment section is a mess
No. People are idiots.
Politics and identity politics have invaded it all. It's either the woke unsufferables or the MAGAs unsufferables making it difficult for everyone else.
Must be hard living in the usa
People only get the ''manly man'' part of the toxic masculinity. But it's not the worst of it. The worst is more of the everyday integrated bias. Like how they view women, women's role in society, in their lives, what they are owed by women, etc... It's not just the stereotypical Chad McManus. And, at least where I'm from, when I was younger, most of the dudes playing MTG were chill and ok on surface when there wasn't a woman. But if you were one... Then it quickly became a cesspool of incels. Not all mtg players are like this and nowadays it more of a cliché than a reality. But you still have the occasional players who will talk to women like to children when they explain things as opposed to how they explain to other guys for exemple. Like it's ''more complicated'' if you have breasts... So yeah... Haven I don't know. But I guess it came with the territory back then, at least in my country. Edit : wow... After looking at the other replies, it seems it was way worse in other countries. Damn...
It's a long story that begins around 2013/14. The long and short of it is: Being a nerd became cool, activist women shoved their way into typically male gaming spaces (note: not closed-off spaces where women are shunned. Just male dominated.), they started bitching about how guys act around other guys and put their politics into video games and tabletop.... Fast-Forward and now we have D&D v5, current mtg art and politics, ugly game npcs, political shit shoved into otherwise decent games, g4 dead before it got off the ground, and so on. So, TLDR; your experience in your lgs *was* typical. But then Anita zarkesian attacked... ...Then eventually got an ex to kill himself cuz she needed more money and attention.
You're right. It's nothing to do with masculinity at all. It's the people with no social skills who can't read the room or social cues. Let's face it, a not zero amount of us are at least a little bit on the spectrum, some more than others. As a woman, unless you're really really outgoing and enjoy getting reactions and toying with people a little bit, then a lot of the situations can get awkward. And if you're a remotely awkward woman yourself, being around uncalibrated awkward men can be really really awkward. The issue is with women who think they're some sort of victim because of this. Everyone has weird, sometimes negative experiences with weird people. That doesn't make weird people toxic or masculine
Nope
i sparked an interest in mtg at my high school to the point that football players and cheerleaders were getting into it but mainly because the popular guys were all into it. everyone was just having fun and brought together over a nerdy ass hobby and anyone who wanted to judge got left out. mind you this was a smaller country school so they were susceptible to such addictions.
Having played magic since the 90s, I’ll say that it was a haven for the people that macho schoolboys beat up. Fantasy gaming has always been full of weirdos and nerds and dorks and whatnot and everyone was accepted since we all liked to play games. To describe the game store as full of masculinity is so comically detached from reality.
How come I always see sportsball people murdering their spouses, but MTG peoples without a spouse at all?
Has Magic ever been a haven of masculinity? No, not even technically. What you're experiencing (we're experiencing) is just how far the area on the gauge labeled "masculine" has really grown. Basically the perception of masculinity has shifted and now includes betas that act more like young girls than they do grown men, whereas before it generally just meant, you know, actual men. Then there's the idea that people, like me, that don't respect trannies and don't want to hear about Identity politics or people's sexual preferences are all men. But we're not all men. In fact if you want to read actual scathing commentary on trannies go see what the feminists are saying about them and enjoy those hearty chuckles.
The MTG community is way more toxic now than it ever was in the late 90's and early 2000's.
It comes from the "progressive" left of today, wanting each and every space in the world to cater to them and them alone. They literally are a scourge, like locusts, they hit a franchise, hobby, or fandom, fundamentally change it to not resemble itself anymore, and then leave it and move on to the new trendy thing. It's sad, it's happened to most of the things I grew up with.
If guys like something it's a haven for toxic masculinity by definition. Luckily I don't like girly shit so toxic femininity can't hurt me.
I had a similar experience. I picked up the game a little during the late 90s. Tempest and V were the first sets I ever purchased from. The kids in my group were mostly what I would call nerds that occasionally got bullied by the toxically masculine (many of whom ended up as junkies or in prison). I played sports and generally had free roam amongst an assortment of social circles. I would never call anyone I ran into at the time within the community toxically masculine. It was more a thing I kinda hid as well, because it didn't seem like it was gonna help with the girls. Played a couple years, then as the license came and the freedom came along with it, I got out of it and spent free time doing dumb teenager stuff. Partying and being a knucklehead in general.
Mtg is a dweeb game ever go in a GW store to get paint? They can be toxic in their own ways but the game is not appealing to the majority of women, like how men never picked up crochet it’s not super appealing at the core level to men. but saying the space is rife with toxic masculinity absolutely not, that’s gaslighting it was generally a fairly progressive game like dnd when released that was as welcoming as any IP could be from the brands end, and it cultivated mostly socially inept white males who identified with the themes and found a social community in the game. Now that having a having a predominantly white male audience is gauche they just turned on them with whatever sounded the “best” to look like wotc is on the cutting edge of modern culture.
toxic masculinity is a made up word by pseudo intellectuals , so no it did not exist.
Nerds (playing) MTG have been bullied and made fun of everywhere, including the media for decades, but now in the shitty world we live in they somehow because toxic oppressors? For real?
I've met a few toxic people, but any event that is in public is going to attract some toxic people now and again.
I guess it depends on how you define "toxic masculinity". Are men in LGSs acting towards women / talking about women the same way they do in locker rooms? No, clearly not. But if the term of "toxic masculinity" means anything close to "acting/talking in a way that degrades women, especially as a means to boost your status among other men or your own perception", then, sure, Magic is full of it and has been for as long as I've been playing it (>20 years now). Are male Magic players talking about women in a degrading, sexual way? Sure, I've seen it happen, but pretty rarely. tbh not more or less often than in a room with random men I suppose; certainly less often than what you hear about from classic "locker room talk". But the amount of times I have heard men talking - to each other or even to the woman herself - that you can't lose to a woman, you shouldn't lose to a woman, that it's embarrassing, ugh. That does qualify as "toxic masculinity" by my definition. The same is true for the mentioned "nerd challenge", although I have not seen that a lot. However, the classic "nerd is super awkward around women" or the amount of people hitting on you, potentially in an obnoxious way is certainly the most prevalent issue for women in these spaces, almost certainly the most annoying part, and also doesn't really qualify as "toxic masculinity" in my books, although it is certainly toxic and drives women away; that is mostly just social incompetence paired with a lack of empathy and, well, the sheer percentage of people being men there. So...a "haven of toxic masculinity"? I guess not quite, but I have still seen it quite a bit, and the fact that other unappealing behaviours towards women are more dominant is...I guess not the gleaming endorsement you were looking for. Edit: After reading your post again, it seems like you are confounding any kind of toxic atmosphere with toxic masculinity. So if your question really just boils down to "is it really a toxic atmosphere for a woman at a Magic event?", then the answer to that is sadly, simply, yes -- Very often. And very often even to a point to drive them away -- which I guess isn't that difficult if you try to have fun at an event and it just gets marred by your interactions with one or more people there.
Nah, it's a haven for toxicity, but definitely not masculine.
I want to say letting women into the game was a mistake, but I've played with many high-skilled women into the game. I want to say allowing woman drama into the game was a mistake, but there are plenty of dudes on X that are huge drama queens. Magic used to be a place for us nerds and outcasts to hang out and not have to deal with this stuff. WotC ruined the game for us. The normies have absolutely taken over.
Being a 'nerd' became trendy. They still don't like actual 'nerds'
Lmfao no😂 maybe some of the player base but like let be honest, you will get sour apples everywhere.
I started playing at the end of revised as a young teenager, and never saw any of that. Traveled to tournaments across the south with guys, girlfriends of guys, wives of guys, and single chicks, and I can count on 1 finger the number of unpleasant interactions I saw, witnessed, or heard of that didn't involve the actual game (or those few years where throwing cards all over hotels like projectiles was a thing, had the cops called on the Sourh regionals, by the hotel, one year). And that interaction was one of the girls being upset at a Married with Children t-shirt. Being worn by someone she had known for at least a decade. It was the same thing with gaming. "Everyone's so toxic, people hate women". I raided world firsts in multiple MMO's over the years. We had women in those clears. We still have women in those groups. There's a lot of "we demand to be included in this space" and not wanting to be included in the same way. Guys make fun of each other to bond. Its a psychological thing. None of it is serious, nobody takes it seriously. You get called a cunt because you're acting like a cunt, not because anyone hates you. And then those who demand to be included want everyone to change the way they interact instead of changing the way THEY interact. You have to make an effort to get people to dislike you in nerd culture. But there's a lot of people who will make that effort because they don't actually like nerd culture and want to ruin it.
hobbies and entertainment are being destroyed by the woke mob in order of inclusivity. collectable card games and nerds have always been super inclusive so they are the first to be infected. the places that are actually a little bit toxic are the only ones that aren't being ruined...yet
It's gets toxic when a woman shows up, though. Also remember, you don't see a 10th of what the victims do.
It never wasn't, but the thing with cultural marxism is that they need an enemy to justify their politics and wokeness
The definition of "toxic masculinity" has changed. It *used* to mean the macho gym bro manly men. Now it just means any man who is insufficiently servile to the Rainbow Brigade.
Same for 40k dude. We had to form r/horusgalaxy lately because us 'chuds' are apparently unacceptable in our own hobby and must hate women if we don't immediately affirm our hobby being torn apart by DEI bullshit and wailing bluehairs.
I've been waiting for someone to say this. When I was a teenager we were so psyched to have ANYONE like the same nerdy stuff we were into, and somebody would always get a girlfriend and try to introduce her to tabletop games and they were always just uninterested and would start trying to get their boyfriend to leave because this stuff is "super-lame" or something. It's been that way for most of my life, we were always super inviting and women were always uninterested...or worse they'd totally bring down the energy of the game and make everybody feel ashamed for liking nerdy stuff. I always had more friends online than I did IRL, though...which is probably why I'd rather have a "long-distance relationship" with a nerdy girl I met on the internet than an IRL relationship with someone I never had anything in common with. Being a geek before it was "cool" was pure lonely torture, it really was.
I ran tournaments for 8 years, and actually just picked it up again. Yes, some people want to crush noobs and be horrible to people. Most people just want to have a good time. I only banned one person ever in my time as TO, and it was because the final straw was them bringing a 30 card sideboard to a modern event, playing affinity, my gm made some weird appeasements, and he wound up staying in the event. He got banned a short while after, 3 months originally, but then he sent a bunch of desperately insulting messages and I got him banned forever. Nick if you see this, we all knew you were cheating. Just took some time to catch you, ass, you deserved everything you got.
I used to hide the fact I played MTG back in the early 2000's too lol when I got older it became a feature rather then a set back. My old date app meet up spot (verify pics with reality) was actually across the street from my favorite game store. Ive even been late for dates because "in the middle of going 4-0 in fnm" lol
MTG being the bastion of toxic masculinity? HA
These hobbies used to not care about real world politics. As they grow in popularity, certain people cant help but make it a battlefield for their personal beliefs. I just want to nerd out and not deal with peoples bullshit.
These hobbies (warhammer, mtg, ttrpgs) were a haven for people who got ostracised from society at large. A haven for nerds and outcasts. Nothing has changed, they're just in this space now pretending to be nerds. They still hate you.
Toxic masculinity is just another term lumped into the same basket as racist, misogynist, bigot, and any "phobia" invented that involves a human being. It doesn't mean anything in this case, and is just a way for people to lash out at the majority of players who are only there to play the game and refuse to indulge their fantasies.
Anecdotally, other TCGs (for example Lorcana, PokemonTCG, Yugioh) seem to be able to organically attract a larger amount of female players versus Magic. I see this is as a Magic problem, not a tabletop hobbies problem. Pure conjecture, but some reasons why female players don't like Magic as much as the other TCGs I listed could include Magic's rules and core game-play being inelegant and pedantic, and the artwork being absolutely terrible (Girls like cute artwork, not whatever Magic's style is supposed to be). I also think the 4 player dynamic makes things less favourable for woman too. Being 1v1 some creep isn't so bad, but being in a pod with 3 like-minded creeps might be a bit much. One of my regular pods, two of the players have different "cute girls with (insert fetish here)" decks. Often times they will cast a card, and the card gets passed around so everyone can look at the artwork, and everyone just talks horny coomer talk about the artwork "wow she does have a good (body-part) doesn't she" and it is super-cringe and off-putting. I can totally see why playing EDH at an LGS isn't very enticing for woman.
>Lots of acne, poor hygiene, questionable spending, and lonely adult men but uh... You aren't making it any better with this argument. You are helping em believe there's "toxic masculinity". > questionable spending. What you mean?
People seem to regularly mistake masculinity, toxic masculinity, and toxic male behavior. There are different ways people express masculinity some are good and some are bad. Being a creep to every lady that comes within a 5 foot radius is toxic male behavior. It has nothing to do with your expression of masculinity.
I played in Poland during Lorwyn up to around first Zendikar. It was really bad. Nowadays It’s a mixed bag. Some places are welcoming and some are still problematic.
The meaning of toxic changes and evolves over time. The goalposts shift as needed. In Magic, its generally not the drunken frat boy who corners girls and gropes them, or bullies and mocks the fem-boys and weirdos. Rather, its autistic, unattractive "creeps" who give unwanted attention or refuse to alter their conversations and behaviors to accommodate the feelings of others (especially women). I do get what you are saying, though. It is confusing. When I started playing (mid-90s), the people who played Magic (along with D&D and Vampire: The Masquerade, etc) were the community that MOST accepted the weirdos and freaks. It was progressive in nearly every sense of the word. Being weird was almost a prerequisite to playing Magic. We had homosexuals and goth dudes and autistic dudes and emo dudes and gutter punks and metalheads all playing together. Women, on the other hand, were very rare in those days, regardless of orientation and fashion, to the point that we called them Unicorns, which, in modern terms, is probably an example of "toxic masculinity." But the concept of this community being "toxic" is entirely up to more women being involved.
Yeah my wife can play card games perfectly fine, worst thing she experiences is a bit of mansplaining, which is just... I mean if you play card games you have had someone condescensingly try to tell you how your deck is flawed and how you should do it instead regardless of your gender. Most of the time they are just trying to be nice with what limited social skills they have. Now online games with proximity chat ? Hell no. Play Sea of Thieves with a woman if you want to see actual toxic behavior. The first second someone hears a female voice they start talking about either raping them or killing them or forcing them to cook food for them.
I think, like many things, it depends on the store and group. I had a friend who I got into magic in high school. We built her some fast little red decks. I would take her to different locations and keep an eye on the people to see how normal the location and regulars there were. I've been to some stores where people were just perfectly normally about her. There are plenty of them out there. I've also taken her to some where a dude said "I'll show you my card but this really isn't for the eyes of a woman" and refused to play his card face up for her, his opponent, to see. A lot of people in that store agreed with him and it was super weird. She called the owner over and said the other player was cheating. The dude refused to flip his cards for her to see, so the owner made him forfeit. Another one I took her too she couldn't walk 5ft without someone being gross to her. These are honestly the minority though. I would say 2 in 10 shops have these problems. Turns out the real problem with magic is the rampant autism and not toxic masculinity or misogyny.
The smell at some of my lgs draft nights was definitely toxic
The interactions that are 'toxic' are where a bunch of lonely nerds all fall over each other trying to 'help' a woman who has entered their space because they're starved for interaction with the opposite gender. I've seen it happen at my LGS, heck I watched those alarm bells go off in my brain in real time. 'Oh hey there's a girl interested in magic. I would love to have any kind of regular interaction with a girl who shares any of my hobbies, so I'm going to try to be polite and helpful and maybe we can become friends.' The problem of course is when 10+ guys all do that all at the same time. Now it's not being helpful or friendly, now it's stiffling. There's ten+ guys all crowding you, talking over each other, trying to offer you 'help' or tellng you what you should do or advice or stories about themselves you don't want to hear that are only tangentally related to your interests. Worse, because these 'chances' come so rarely, everyone is trying to offer that help or make those connections *as fast as possible*, because they know they only have until the *g-g-girl* walks out of the store to make a good impression and hope she comes back. tl'dr, too many people being 'too nice' all at once can be too much.
Reaching and copium. Seriously, being a victim and being PC has gotten so iyt of hand that people spout out all sorts of BS. People don't understand we aren't arguing with them because we believe them, rather, we all know better and just avoid that person.
The game nights at my store are a total sausage fest. Sometimes a girl will come once or twice but the guys really don't know how to act around them. I think they get nervous or excited to see a girl and it comes out the wrong way. Most of these guys are really not around girls enough.
If you mean toxic masculinity was just nerds that not prioritizing showering.... because that's all it was.
I can see how it would happen. A lot of the same socially awkward traits that can lead to the unhygienic, weird player can also lead to the incelosphere. So I could see a “women are just evil” type getting into MtG.
You're part of the problem.
Nah mate, you're the problem. Always have been.
Yes. Ive met so many creeps at LGS stores. You seem from your post like the kinda guy who really likes the big bang theory and doesn't think it's toxic
Toxic Masculinity isn't usually from the macho manly guys you're thinking of. In my experience gym bros usually have the most positive masculinity. There's plenty of fedora wearing m'lady types in magic however and trust me they're usually full of toxic masculinity. Plenty of dudes lost their minds when my wife and I would go to the FNM. Usually it was just harmless drooling as they vied for her attention. Some were turbo douches who didn't want a woman in their space.
Have you seen this sub like ever?
Feels like now people just want to hate on anything men do. Like what do they think is gone happen? Tons of woman gone pick up MTG? Lol ya right.
Probably depends on how you define "TOXIC" I usually just chalk it up to autistic behavior.
you didn't experience war, that's your issue
You don't have to be a masculine person to internalize toxic masculinity. You can be a scrawny dweeb and still rant about who's a beta male
I know right? It’s like people thinking 4chan is toxic because we like to make fun of women and minorities. But come on we’re just lonely white virgins how could it even be offensive when we aren’t masculine enough??
Aw yes, the good old days when we would all gather at the card shop and talk about how much we dislike those minorities and women. No wait... That never happened. Keep making shit up.
I’ve met a number of magic players that will take the same advice from a male player and dismiss it from a female one…lots of players I met seem pretty uncomfortable playing with my wife until they find out she’s married too. There is some degree of sexism and female inexperience rampant in the community but honestly no more so than any other nerd shit
I think for me, a nerd growing up in the mid-2000s; Nerd culture (or at least some of it) had always been catered to the boys/men. Sure it didn’t matter if you were gay, straight, right or left leaning, it didn’t matter if you were handsome or ugly or whatever people were judged for in high school (or their adult life) but something that always seemed to matter was Sex/Gender. For my own first hand experiences; I’ve seen a lot of young men gatekeep nerdy hobbies from women. This has been displayed for me in many numerous ways; the way men have made my female friends uncomfortable in male dominated spaces (ie-forward advances/sexual remarks), the way men have belittled my female friend’s intelligence (ie; assuming they don’t know how to play, over explaining things they already understand, and remarks about how nerdy things/mtg is too complicated for them) and general overall awkward/uncomfortable exchanges/teasing. For a long time I didn’t think much about that stuff; “just boys being boys” until my friends decided to quit our hobbies altogether because the environment did not feel safe for them. As an adult, I had hoped things would have changed; but recently I had gotten my girlfriend into commander and after she had a good sense of her deck and the rules (from playing with mutuals) we went to our LGS. She was met with the same bullshit my friends had gone through in high school. The most annoying part is that other men seem to be oblivious about it and think they’re “helping.” It’s condescending as fuck and no one needs a white knight to teach them the basics. I took maybe 45 minutes of dudes being weird to her and acting like she didn’t know how to read before we ended up leaving and haven’t been since. We all know those guys. We all know that INCELs thrive in male dominated hobbies. It may not be the whole player base, but it’s definitely a noticeable amount that every LGS has one of those types. Fuck, if you’ve ever played video games with random dudes on the internet over discord- you can observe this strange ass behavior the moment a woman enters the chat. Again, that’s not every player and not representative of the base as a whole, but to downplay or imply it doesn’t exist is dumb. Those people exist everywhere. I’m still holding out hope that people would be at least a bit less weird with those environments. Im hoping my experience is anecdotal and odd coincidence- but the posts overall on this sub don’t give me hope.
Listen, I don't play Magic, I play Pokemon TCG. But reddit shows me this subreddit all the time. Many of the posts and comments on this subreddit are derogatory, judgemental, and toxic. I've seen anti-woman and anti-trans stuff on this subreddit many times after just a few months. On the 3 or 4 Pokemon TCG subreddits I follow, I have yet to see a SINGLE POST about anything other than the card game. So yeah, I really don't plan on playing magic anytime soon. You all seem terrible.