What you've described I consider normal - and like dealing with root cause analysis, you're right. Acknowledging the needs of the company and adjusting the approach to encourage the behavior you want, is a fine way to go about it. That principle applies in many fields, if you can answer a need in a person or a group it becomes much easier to get them to help. The predatory I'm talking about borders more on the illegal. Not upholding paid for contracts because they know you can't afford a lawyer or because they're betting you'll be dead so it won't matter if they delay approving treatment. I'm gonna hold my tongue on that, but suffice to say, me and the insurance industry don't get along on principle. Any industry responsible for both paying their debts, and determining if they are liable for those debts, screams 'conflict of interest' in my head.

Just to clarify-I am not against women studying science, astronomy, transhumanism or playing role playing games. There are women astronomers and scientists that I greatly admire and respect. What I am against are ideological attempts to change these topics and their content in order to include larger amount of women.

sysop wrote:

The predatory I'm talking about borders more on the illegal. Not upholding paid for contracts because they know you can't afford a lawyer or because they're betting you'll be dead so it won't matter if they delay approving treatment. I'm gonna hold my tongue on that, but suffice to say, me and the insurance industry don't get along on principle. Any industry responsible for both paying their debts, and determining if they are liable for those debts, screams 'conflict of interest' in my head.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. You can't blame them for doing something illegal (well you can but it won't solve the problem of conflicts arising). Legality and contracts only provide a cost structure for breaking laws and clauses. Just like people don't worry about speeding, pirating songs, smoking marihuana or dodging taxes the inherent legality isn't really an issue. Furthermore, getting an image as an easy litigation target can be very costly. While I think maternity leave could be handled without conflict, insurance is just a conflict area by definition. In a country like the US where the corporate lobby has more or less taken over the political process it is just so much worse. Ah, imagine an anarcho-capitalist society where consumer rights were subject to market forces. Where we weren't forced to follow the regulations decided by corrupt politicians but could pick for ourselves among consumer rights codes competing for customers. Where private courts who were slow and costly went out of business.

nizkateth wrote:

Where those who have huge excesses of money would be in a position to directly influence the success of said privately owned consumer rights packages and courts? Putting out of business any court of bill of rights that favors normal people and pumping huge amounts of money into the ones that support their interests?

How could they? At present I don't have any choice but to abide by laws chosen by very few people. Those people can be bought or at least influenced. If instead I was free to choose, they'd have to buy me. Or they could buy every single legislation provider, including future startups. Look at all the amazing, reasonably priced products we have. Look at how many gigantic corporations that fell because they failed to provide what customers wanted. When it is left to consumer choice, it doesn't matter how powerful they are, they have to provide.

Tangents like this are why I love you guys. :)

How frequently have people here personally felt or witnessed pressure against their participating in transhuman games or activities on the basis of their gender?

nizkateth wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

When it is left to consumer choice, it doesn't matter how powerful they are, they have to provide.

Maybe things are different in other parts of the world, but here in the US we don't so much have great choices of who to buy from. Many are too poor to travel far enough to find a good company. Wal-Mart, for example, is everywhere and provides crappy goods for crappy prices and treats their employees crappily. I'd go to Cost-Co, as I hear they are much better to their employees and provide better goods, but the nearest one is about 3 hours away from where I live and I can't afford that kind of gas on a regular basis.

I have no idea where you live that your second option is 3 hours away, but that can't be representative for many people. And if Wal-Mart really was providing such uncompetitive products that setting up a competing shop was easy, and you'd either make a lot of profit or Wal-Mart would buy you out, everyone would be doing that. It's just not a sustainable business model to not be competitive. Time and again corporations that have tried that have failed. And I just looked it up and Wal-Mart's net profit margins has been stable at 3-4% the last 5 years. That is certainly not monopoly-level profit margins. Either they're selling goods at competitive prices or they have unreasonably high costs.

Quote:

It's a very common business model around here: buy out or drive out competitors so you are as close to a monopoly as can be legally squeaked by the system. Or just pay off those with power to let you do whatever you like. So, if courts and rights boards can be open to market forces, all the mega-companies would have to do is buy out all the ones that matter and then use their titanic monetary leverage to muscle out competitors. It's basically exactly the same as the corrupt-government model, but without the hassle of having to pay off politicians.

The idea that a corporation has more money than all of its customers is frankly silly. Heck, quite often they can't even match their employees. Labor unions have often shown how weak corporations really are. Of course, the government protects the corporations a lot with various legislation and its monopoly on violence. It is ironic that it is probably because of anti-labor union legislation that the working conditions at Wal-Mart are so poor, and yet you use those working conditions as an argument for preserving a system that allows corporations to get such laws passed.

Quote:

Choice isn't the only force that works on a market, desperation and necessity are quite a bit stronger. Yeah... free-market law would be a nightmare scenario...

I don't know what you mean. Desperation and necessity doesn't make choice impossible. Companies can compete at providing services to the desperate as much as they can to anyone else.

Sorry in advance for putting my toe in this -- I try to only comment when I have a question to be answered or something that I think is interesting to say. I'm not sure how that policy is about to play out here, so if some part of my comments give offense, ignore me and I'll go away. I saw a few things in this thread that were interesting to me, and it reminded me about a conversation I was having with my wife about sports. This might be a bit wide ranging and rambling like some sort of Kaczynski manifesto, but bear with me if you will.

Smokeskin wrote:

Ah, imagine an anarcho-capitalist society where consumer rights were subject to market forces. Where we weren't forced to follow the regulations decided by corrupt politicians but could pick for ourselves among consumer rights codes competing for customers. Where private courts who were slow and costly went out of business.

As a piece of starting ground, I think there are some fundamentally flawed assumptions on all sides of economic issues of our time (and the ones in EP that are based heavily on them). A free market is not something to aspire towards -- it's a tool for modeling what we HAVE. On a micro scale, individuals act in accordance with their own personal motivations and value systems. You can model this with Game Theory, depending on how well you've analyzed the individual motivations in play. The common libertarian / conservative / anarcho-capitalist line is to take off the yoke of government interference and let the actors act. But what are those individual actors going to do in their own self interests? They're going to form groups of shared interests, thats what. Some of those groups are called Corporations. Others are called Unions, depending on what the shared interests are. The larger sized groups are industry coalitions and Oligopolies. Pan out a bit larger, a group of people decide that there are some behaviors they want to encourage, that the community would be better off if some of the groups operating within it were held to some specific standards. They agree to behave that way, and to enforce that behavior on anybody who wants to do business with them in their marketplace. That's called a Government, and it just came about through unrestricted free-market action. Now, forgive me for being a little bit "John Lennon" here, but I too dream of a post governmental society. But what I think it is important to acknowledge, is that societies organize themselves and voluntarily impose rules on themselves. sometimes those societies are subcultures of roleplayers or transhumanists. sometimes the subdivisions are based on gender. and sometimes the rules are whatever behavior you witness at your own table or read about on the internets.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

Meh, I am glad it is sausagefest. I saw video and role playing games ruined by inclusion of women and catering to their needs. Wouldn't want this to happen here.

nizkateth wrote:

I don't see any need to change those topics to include more women. All we really need is for women to not be resisted or excluded. Remove social pressures and cultural restrictions that keep women out. After all, I find all those subjects interesting... as they are. No change needed.

So, I think we all understand that populations are growing, interests are becoming more diverse, there are incidents of minorities of all sorts infiltrating traditionally majority dominated fields of all sorts. Not really an interesting discussion, I think everyone can acknowledge that it is happening -- at least in first world regions there are all sorts of barriers slowly coming down. Jack's original question was something like "what can we do to promote this integration" or at least "stop discouraging integration" or whatever. I dont plan on touching on that, because I don't have anything even vaguely resembling insight into that. But what is really interesting to me, is "what will happen on its own -- due to free market forces -- when Extrasolar Angel's fears come true?" And here is what I see, as a gamer and an engineer, when "teh womens" begin participating in traditionally male dominated fields. First, you have a rare and anomalous type of woman who is wired just like the typical man, or molded by societal pressures to act like one. No real value-add there, but people still get angsty and weird about it. If you're doing the same engineering or powergaming the same Fighter/Cleric, does it mater what your gender is? Probably not. I dont mean to say that you're boring, nizkateth. But if your above assertion is absolutely literal and you don't want to create any sort of waves in the activities that you choose to participate in... I guess I did mean to say that was boring, but that's probably not what you meant to say. Second, and more interestingly, you have women who will bring their own views to the table and introduce diversity to the environment. Or you have Russians, or Hindus, or homosexuals. You might have different views being introduced to the community that are based on differences in neurochemistry or glands or just plain cultural experience. This increases diversity, makes the ecosystem healthier, etc., etc. And as a result of the increased diversity, the system adapts on its own. What does this have to do with my wife and sports? This was the gist of our conversation: Girls may be interested in baseball but, excepting edge cases, they dont obsess over numbers and minutia. Boys trade baseball cards and memorize statistics and batting averages and consecutive strikeouts of every player since the beginning of the league -- same for other sports or classic car engines, or firearms trivia. Women might enjoy all those things and be enthusiastic racing fans or soccer players or marksmen, but they tend not to give too much of a fuck about excruciating details and minute trivia. I dont know if that is good or bad, or if that means they have (on average) a qualitative instead of quantitative approach -- I really dont know. But it does mean that their (typical) approach is different. And therefore, that typical approach is valuable BECAUSE it is different. And what is emerging over the last decade or so within the RPG community? less structured "story" games or "indy" games. Games like FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, Fiasco, Apocalypse World, and One Roll Engine. Is it because of women or because the game industry is just becoming more robust, mature and diverse as it ages? I think all those games are written by men, so are they being influenced by outside factors or are they trying to accommodate women, or just moving away from crunchy statistical minutia on their own initiative? Again, I dont have the answer and neither would I know where to begin to look for it. But I'm glad that we have the diversity and I think some of the new ideas in gaming that the fast-playing rules-lite narrative-driven systems are bringing are fresh fun and tasty.

OneTrikPony wrote:

The transhumanist sausage fest is a worse problem than too many dicks on the dance floor. The fact is that sooner or later we will all *be* transhuman. We can't afford to marginalize, ignore, or fail to invite the female perspective into the discussion before it happens. Purely patriarchal visions of the future are a big part of what fucked up the last century so bad. The post singularity future needs a woman's touch.

Well shit, I guess the TL;DR of all this was that I didn't have anything meaningful to add that OTP didnt cover more concisely already.

See? mind-boggling and alien, right there. I think the take away is that, if you remove barriers to entry, the system will change on its own accord. Given that diverse perspectives are valuable, how are they encouraged? Or, how are those barriers to entry reduced? Wait! That was Jack Graham's original question! Everyone else already had this discussion! Thanks for helping me work through my reading-comprehension deficiencies.

I just cannot escape the problem that capitalism without regulations is what we had here for quite some time. And it was terrible. Monopolies didn't come about because of government backing, they came about because of no intervention. Sure, now that there are laws to restrict things, they then turn to just buying off politicians. But (to use fantasy terms) if you have a demon, trapped in a binding circle, and its presence starts corrupting the surrounding lands... the solution is not to let the demon out. The solution is to get rid of the demon.

Smokeskin wrote:

Without money, no one cares about regular people, and without a market to help them receive the pay that their work is really worth, they just get exploited. Creativity and initiative is thwarted, new ideas can't get a foothold, and improvements to the human condition happens at snail's pace, at best.

If you actually think the only reason people do anything is to be paid, then I feel very sad for you.

I will agree with you on patents and copyrights, I think those should be eliminated entirely as well. But money, as it is, strikes me as inevitably a tool of inequality and oppression. If we want to truly advance, to break well beyond what we currently have, we need to move past such things. More equitable allocation of vital resources for instance. It is inexcusable that we live on a planet that could support 10-12 billion of us, and yet with only 7 billion people go hungry. And yes, I know, governments get in the way of that. I am not arguing that we shouldn't change governmental systems in addition to eliminating traditional market-based economics. Even in wealthy countries people go hungry. I find the very term "cost of living" to be abhorrent. If life is supposed to be a right, but it has an inherent monetary cost to maintain... that isn't a right, it's a privilege. We pay for the privilege to continue going on living. And yes, I know, it is technically possible to go "off the grid" and live outside currency exchange off the land... for some. Most don't have the skill, tenacity, knowledge, and sheer strength needed to do so. And frankly that would require a step back for civilization if everyone were to do such. What I'd propose is just eliminating "the grid" so to speak, keep the social advancement while getting rid of the cost by accepting that we have the resources already and simply using them collectively to make the lives of everyone better. It's still self-interest, in that if the world is overall a better place, and you live in the world, then you now live in a better place. And I am with you with science being a great force for making things better. ^_^ I'd like to see more focus on that force than on what is essentially distilled greed. *edit* And, when I really think about it, the whole notion of market forces knowing best strikes me as a form of argumentum ad populum... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

What nezumi said ^_^ ... except: I don't think eliminating patents would eliminate invention and discovery. That's still based on the idea that people will only do something for profit. Psychologists are finding we have all manner of reasons for doing what we do, from simple desire for creativity and sharing, to altruism, to pure self-interest. Plenty of scientists continue to do research even though they have difficulty getting funding. I somehow doubt that Einstein only discovered Relativity because he was being paid to do so. Why might someone seek a cure for cancer outside the profit motive, even knowing that others will use their no-patent research? Maybe they have a love of biology and come across the information as part of other research. Maybe it's a personal quest after losing a loved one to cancer (the reason I always attribute to people becoming proctologists). Or maybe they are just forward thinking enough to consider "hey, one day I might have cancer... so if I find the cure, I'll save myself by proxy!"

Personally, I'd rather be in a system that focuses on collaboration toward the greater good than competition. Even at its purest, I worry about non-competitive individuals in a capitalistic system. I also have concerns that only what appears profitable would be pursued, as opposed to research and creativity and curiosity for their own sake.

Ranxerox wrote:

Maybe in the post-scarcity future we won't need such things. Until then it is the thoughts of future riches that pays for the expenses of research even when the researcher themselves might view it as a labor of love.

That future needs to get here quicker then. I'm sick of money and everything to do with it. ^_^ And I wasn't denying that they need money to cure cancer, I was stating that the goal needn't be one of profit. One can work within a system without sharing the underlying goals. Non-profit still uses money, even if that is unfortunate that they have to.

Well, I oppose religion too. And sure, money could be anything. All money is fiat-based. Gold only has 'value' because we say it does, so a gold standard is no more 'real' currency than paper money or credit. The key, I suppose, would be getting people to finally realize this on a wide scale... to accept that any concept of money is equally arbitrary and to thus stop valuing it. Push for post-scarcity thinking. Even if we don't yet have it, I don't want to end up in a viable post-scarcity time and still have old greed-based thinking dominant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

Complete aside, from Jack's signature... I love the space whales! ^_^

nizkateth wrote:

Ranxerox wrote:

Maybe in the post-scarcity future we won't need such things. Until then it is the thoughts of future riches that pays for the expenses of research even when the researcher themselves might view it as a labor of love.

That future needs to get here quicker then. I'm sick of money and everything to do with it. ^_^ And I wasn't denying that they need money to cure cancer, I was stating that the goal needn't be one of profit. One can work within a system without sharing the underlying goals. Non-profit still uses money, even if that is unfortunate that they have to.

Well, maybe the future will get here quicker. In many ways we already live in a post-scarcity age and in some ways that the problem. We live in a time where more than enough food is produced to feed everyone on the planet despite the fact fewer and fewer people devote their lives to agriculture. We have the capability to end hunger and I think most of us have the desire. So at this point starvation is an artificial state maintained by the existing system of distribution and is not the product of actual scarcity of food. Absence of adequate shelter and clean drinking water exist for the same artificial reason. Unfortunately, while the developed nations of the world could feed all the people of the world and not be bankrupted in the process, it would win us no friends. The developing world would hate us and call us wicked for undermining indigenous agriculture ... and they would have genuine point. We could implement policies of buying local first before importing food and this would maintain local agriculture in a fashion. However this large influx of foreign capital through a narrow channel would invite and encourage corruption, and creating a single buyer for agricultural products would tend to encourage a matching consolidation of agricultural producer. A break down in existing markets and other law of unintended consequences sorts of events would also be almost certain. The bigger problem with pursuing post scarcity is what would all the people who are use to spending the bulk of their waking days securing the necessity of existence would now need to find something else to do with their time. This may seem like a blessing, but not so much in practice. We live in a time where due to advances in technology a fraction of the population is capable of providing all the essential physical needs of whole. In theory, work could be voluntary and in all likelihood enough would volunteer to provide for the (physical) needs of the masses. One of the non-physical needs of the masses, however, is a life with a sense of meaning and purpose. I really like and admire the Eclipse Phase setting so please people don't get defensive, but it "cheated" by getting rid of the teaming billions and bringing the population closer in line with what is needed to maintain system. It skipped out on the question of what to do with 7 billion plus people of whom 80 to 90 percent are economically superfluous. As we deal with our own post-scarcity future/present we have to address issue of meaning once basic survival is a given and no longer something that one has to strive to maintain. At this point post-scarcity requires no new technological revolution. Cornucopia machines aren't needed. What is needed is a social/philosophical revolution to answer the questions we will be left with time to contemplate once so much time is not spent chasing after scarce things.

jackgraham wrote:

Fun fact: About 1/3 of the people credited as playtesters on EP Core are women (some of them a bit gender queer; but then, so are some of the boys -- leaving that aside for now, though...). And if you come by our booth at Gen Con, you'll see a roughly 50/50 gender mix over the course of the weekend -- all of whom are people who play & are familiar with the game. The same was true of our old Shadowrun group (and of the Wizkids booth) back when Rob was line dev for that game. This is notable in part because SR is every bit as techie and numbers-crunchy as EP -- maybe more so, given the added complexities of the Magic and Rigging subsystems.

I assume you also don't believe these frequencies carry over to the general transhumanist/EP player etc.? Why do you think you see the increased frequencies at cons and as playtesters? A larger interest in the social aspects? Better communication skills? More likely to get invited because people seek an equal gender mix or simply prefer girls (I saw a study on WoW raiding that girls and even female avatars were more likely to get a spot). Or is EP and SR more appealing to women so a large proportion of the RPG interested ones seek there? Is it 50/50 at your booth and 1:20 at AD&D? Are fantasy settings less interesting so they seek to the scifi RPGs that deal with more contemporary issues? Do they prefer a gender neutral future over a medieval setting which historically was oppressive to women? Are they unable to relate to melee weapons which only men can wield effectively while firearms are every bit as deadly in the hands of a woman?

nizkateth wrote:

Complete aside, from Jack's signature... I love the space whales! ^_^

To be fair, those who don't like the space whales don't dislike the concept as such, they just dislike the implementation because the physics are impossible.

many extropians are female artists, but.. men seem to be more drawn to the competitive aspects of the sciences in general. I cant get it quite into the right words.. but women seem to do more feeling while men seem to do more answering if that makes sense. also the first premise transhumanism is that bodies are interchangable, I dont think women like that idea on general principal, probably due to bio imperitives... women keep families together, men are more likely to leave offspring, how much worse would it be for the average mom if dad could slip on a new skin and go robo-whoring across the universe whenever he wanted? yeah this is sorta sexist but it kinda fits I think...

nizkateth wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

Are fantasy settings less interesting so they seek to the scifi RPGs that deal with more contemporary issues? Do they prefer a gender neutral future over a medieval setting which historically was oppressive to women? Are they unable to relate to melee weapons which only men can wield effectively while firearms are every bit as deadly in the hands of a woman?

In my experience, it still comes down to societal inclusiveness. D&D and other fantasy games have such a reputation as 'a guy thing' (of one sort or another) that many women who might be interested simply don't even look. But then there are groups out there that are all women and love D&D. Or people like me, who was DM for a group of 4 guys all through high school. But overall it's generally just not seen as something 'women should do' so societal pressure just passively keeps us out.

But say you are into the RPG world probably startong out with fantasy. And the you come across Shadowrun or EP. Do you think those settings are more appealing to many women?

Quote:

A fantasy setting needn't be as gender-biased as human history. In fact, the official D&D settings are generally (and deliberately) made gender-inclusive and often have plenty of women in positions of power and in positions like military officers and soldiers (even if they never have actual matriarchal societies outside of evil species like Drow, which is unfortunate).

I know, but the medieval image still sticks in many people's mind I think.

Quote:

The difference in physical strength between men and women is mainly cultural as well, women just aren't encouraged to build their strength. As a cracked article (I know, I know) put it: "So should time travel ever become a thing, never tell a medieval peasant woman to go make her husband a sandwich, because she'll probably cackle her plague-breath all up in your face before snapping you in half like a twig." (http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-age...)

Plain false. Men are signicantly stronger and faster than women. I train MMA and there are some women there and it isn't even close. Women lack the size, body composition, muscle fibers and testosteron to compete where strength and explosive speed is needed.

nizkateth wrote:

[ So I guess the point to take away from this is: "women" are no more a unified preference group than "men".

Men are a unified preference group. Of course there are outliers, but if someone asked me "do you think many men would find The Bridges over Madison County more interesting if it had action and beautiful women?" I would say absolutely.

nizkateth wrote:

I am likely a tremendous idealist. There, I said it... got that out of the way. ^_^ Now, I'd think that the answer to what people do when they don't need to bend their waking hours to labor just to get by is: whatever they want to do. I know of plenty of people who like to work with their hands and get satisfaction from physical work. So they could volunteer to do some labor that we haven't yet made machines to do... or extra work beyond what the machines do to make things even better. Creatively minded people would bend their time toward creative efforts instead. Design-minded folk might spend time coming up with new and great architectural designs or interior-design models. Like playing Sims, only for real. Artists would likely continue to... art. Performers could spend more time honing and displaying their talents. Et cetera. Curiosity-driven and intellectual folk would, given access to free research equipment and resources, continue to research and develop. If just to be the one to make the next big discovery (Rep anyone?) or to find something they are essentially questing for (cure for that thing what killed dad). I've known several science-minded people as well, especially back in college (love science, even though I was a Business major with minors in English and Philosophy), to know there are at least some who do science out of love for it. People could spend more time and effort raising the next generation, since they wouldn't be forced to waste so much time on money-seeking. This would, I should hope, lead to better educated and prepared new generations who can help speed up the process of advancement and innovation even more. Or at least kids wouldn't need to be so readily relegated to day-care or plopped in front of the TV all the time. ...I'm going somewhere with this, I think. Or I already made my point. I don't know, it's late.

I'm an idealist too, but perhaps a less optimistic one. I believe that yes, plenty of people would go right on living productive or at least interesting lives even if work was not required of them ... but I don't see the bulk of humanity as being that self-actualized. I think that the bulk of us freed from the need to work would drink, sleep around, squabble, fight, embrace destructive ideologies, find excuses to go to war, and generally muck a good thing up. Honest work provides direction and purpose to a life. Idle hands are the devils playground. Yada yada yada. However, I am not so pessimistic that I think that this is inevitable. I just think that as we make the transition to post scarcity (which as I stated we could start today) we need to be mindful that people need stuff to do. If we have no clear suggestion to the masses about how to find purpose in their lives after the constant motivation of survival goes away, other people will fill the void of purpose and will harness masses for their own aggrandizement. Don't expect to just find their way into the future. Leave them a trail of breadcrumbs and expect quite a few of them to get lost anyway. So be prepared to find the lost and bring them home. Hmmm, Eclipse Phase: Shepherds. How does that sound as a campaign?

Consumer Protection laws, ala 'Smokeskin': Very interesting concept: a company, similar to one of those firms that used to issue insurance on stuff for a couple extra bucks ala Radio Shack (ever insure your brand-new phones? A specific company partners with Radio Shack to do that), issues a certain rules paradigm for a consumer protection scheme. People sign on with whichever one tastes best to them, thereby creating a specific community of consumers who agree on that paradigm. Their completely voluntary adherence (perhaps also involving a fee, paid either by the producer or the consumer or both) creates the success of that particular paradigm in consumer protection. Also similar to an arbitration company, I must suppose. Sausagefest/Sexism: The one guy who first replied on this count was an ignoramus. Don't like gaming with women? Please go away. I'm always disappointed when there are no women at the table. Fortunately my wife is a gamer, so it's generally not a problem. I would have to agree with the folks insisting that the best way to deal with it is to nix the elements that turn women off or chase them away, to make sure they find it all interesting and comfortable. Rather than try to make the material inclusive, just chop out elements of the presentation or attendant culture that push women out. Women in gaming generally don't need to be catered that much; they just don't like ignoramuses. Don't be an ass and the scene will eventually attract women who find the concepts interesting. I would like to point out an Icelandic movie about roleplaying games that in many ways addresses this topic: 'Astropia' (also presented as 'Dorks & Damsels'). Ragnhildur Steinunn Jónsdóttir plays a woman who comes into the gaming scene from a whole other world and becomes a mainstay in her gaming circle. It's a personal classic of mine.