More and more aspects of nerd culture have become awash in an ugly and nauseating gender debate, turning once harmless hobbies into political battlegrounds. It was inevitable that there would be some friction when traditionally males spaces became popular with women, but who could have expected the headache-inducing onslaught of trivial political drama.
New trenches are being dug in the Magic the Gathering (MtG) community, the hugely popular trading card game owned by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast (WotC). Little incidents of gender conflict have been popping up over the last few years, turning certain segments of the community against one another.
The latest installment in this saga came when WotC decided to stop giving preview cards to a popular MtG YouTuber after a bunch of keyboard warriors on Reddit complained about him. A WotC PR person came to the Reddit thread to assure people that it was a mistake to associate with the YouTuber and essentially said his fans “aren’t part of our core audience.”
The YouTube channel, MTGHeadquarters, owned by Jeremy Hambly is the second largest non-corporate MtG channel, with more than 100,000 subscribers. Hambly received a bad reputation from a vocal minority of lefty MtG fans for his right-wing politics and abrasive behavior on social media. Hambly only receives preview cards once or twice a year and has no official relationship with WotC.
“Wizards only chooses to promote those who agree (at least) publicly with the narrative that is only important to a few gatekeepers at the company,” Hambly said. “They push stuff like ‘women don’t play magic because all men are disgusting cavemen.'”
The evidence provided by Hambly’s detractors as to why WotC shouldn’t associate with him seems pretty thin and mostly political.
A few months ago he made a joke they perceived as “transphobic.” All he said was that “planeswalkers should use their own bathrooms.” A pretty harmless play on the North Carolina bathroom controversy mixed with a Magic reference.
He also got in a Twitter slapfight with an important member of the MtG community, leading him to make statements like that female YouTubers should get thicker skins about YouTube comments and having a penis doesn’t make your opinion less valid. Oh yeah, and he called someone a “cuck” once. None of these are particularly controversial talking points, as they regularly arise in online confrontations between liberals and conservatives.
But this event in a vacuum is not a real sign of a paradigm shift inside MtG. WotC is a private company and is well within their rights to not associate with a controversial figure — although it is troubling that Hambly’s conservative politics may have been part of the reason. Wizards of the Coast did not return a request for comment to clear this matter up.
What is apparent is that the Hambly incident is just one in a long line of dramas over political correctness in the community.
In 2012 a “playmat” was banned from a tournament for being too sexual and objectifying women, following complaints.
This year WotC issued a lengthy apology after featuring a deck named “Bugs and Thugs.” Some MtG fans were outraged over the association between thugs and black men.
And last year, a pro Magic player, Jim Davis, had his article taken down from Star City Games and replaced with an apology following backlash. So what did he say that was so controversial? “Women should be treated equally to men.”
Davis believed that MtG should be a meritocracy and women should be given the respect to be held on an equal footing. This sentiment enraged a certain corner of the community who believes the fandom’s fragile women need to be protected. Davis, whose girlfriend is a skilled MtG player, heartily disagreed.
And those are far from the only controversies to have plagued the game.
This kind of trend is unfortunate in such an old and rapidly growing community. Magic fans grew up getting castigated as nerds over their hobby. Now that geek culture is hip and Magic lacks its former stigma, those same fans are getting new derogatory labels.
MtG is a harmless game, able to be enjoyed competitively by all genders. It’s a damn shame it has to be mired down in such an exhausting political correctness debate that is taking over all facets of geek culture.