I'm going to preface this with saying that I work with kids, and magic: the gathering is HUGE this summer. Fucking titanic in the kids lives.
While I was playing a boy at work today, there was a girl who was sitting right next to me who was drawing a picture. A boy (who rarely comes) asked her "Hey, how come your friends play magic?"
First of all, the 'friends' he was talking about were a few other girls. Over the summer, quite a few girls have come up to me asking if I will teach them how to play magic (which I enthusiastically reply "Of course!"). The girl he was speaking to doesn't really hang out with the other girls, so he just assumed because she was a girl that she was friends with him.
I immediately hopped on the case, of course.
I turned to him and asked him what he meant by that. He immediately started to backtrack. I said "Why should it matter if somebody is a girl or not if they are playing magic? Things aren't gendered, I don't like that mindset."
Earlier in the summer I explained to the main group of people who play magic and D&D (Yes, there are a TON of nerds-in-training that I'm working with this summer and it rules) that I absolutely will not tolerate any sort of gendered insults, saying that was their one warning and I will drop the hammer of god upon them if I hear anything again because it is absolutely not ok in any circumstances ever. (One boy had said something he thought was innocent, but it was actually quite trans/homophobic).
Anyways that happened today and for some reason I thought I would write about it. We also took two trips to a local game shop, and trip #2 was 90% girls. Makes me happy that I am able to help make sure they enter the wonderful world of nerddom in a positive fashion, and can help cut some sexism off at the bud.
