Guys, there is a big misunderstanding here. Sir Tainly, Moridin, keep in mind that your experiences may not been shared by everyone. Here we are all feeling that we are among close friends, and it is easy to forget that there are real differences between us in age, culture and general life experience. I feel like I understand both sides of the topic, and that makes me unwillingly in the middle of it all. OK, so let's go. I myself DIDN'T feel offended by the incriminated posts. Because they were written by people I esteem, and I never thought one second that they should be taken at face value. BUT, based on my own experience, and on a lot of books I have read talking about other women's experiences, I can totally inderstand why LadyRae got mad. I tried to share that understanding, obviously I failed. Try again, Moiraine (sigh). She got hurt because these jokes went on top of a heap of little frustrating sexist things that she experiences every day of her life. She got hurt because she was believing that there was ONE place where she wouldn't hear that kind of jokes, even 'for fun', and that place would be here. She got the feeling to be stabbed in the back by people she thought were her friends. She was telling you that in RL you wouldn't make jokes about fat men around a fat friend, or about black men around a black friend, even sarcastically, unless they had started first to make fun of themselves, telling by it that they were OK with it. You assumed that she was OK with it, that we were all OK with it, and you inadvertently put salt on an open wound. It is not a matter of 'growing up and getting stronger'. Different people with different natures and different life experiences have different sensitivities to a same matter.
Now, what would you do in RL if one of your good friends felt hurt by something you did ? Staying on your position that you had done nothing wrong, or say you are sorry ? I am not talking about judging if you have or haven't said something wrong, I am talking about not losing a friend to misunderstanding and hurt. So put your righteous anger at being put in the same bag as all manhood in your pocket, and try to get her back. Have you never been angry, dammit ? Do you want to lose a friend because you think you are so right ?
I am not talking about you here, Donut - you DID tell her you were sorry.
I think that, being all human and so widely different besides our common RPG interests, we are all of us bound to sometimes hurt somebody's feelings, try as we might not to. The Ladies Guild was intended to make us women feel as a group for once - playing RPGs, we feel alone everywhere else than here. It was not meant as a division - when Melusine talks Dutch with Rikard, do you feel it as a division ? My point is, hurt feelings WILL happen, and then the only attitude we have to have is to say how sorry we are, and explain why it happened - as Donut did.
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The world is my oyster !
[This message has been edited by Moiraine (edited 05-01-2001).]