Did a quick thing on Twitter maybe I’ll cross post it after a shower but honestly rpg Twitter isn’t ready to hear
“The ability to say ‘yo what the FUCK, that’s not cool, knock it off’ is itself a safety tool, and one that a lot of marginalized people are prohibited from accessing, so yeah safety tools ARE important in your friendly game”
Along with some extra thoughts. The link to the original thread is here: https://twitter.com/JazzElves/status/1690848750825009152?s=20
I am reproducing the text beneath, too.
Ran across a statement to the lines of “games with friends shouldn’t need ‘safety tools’ if you do you’re playing with a psychopath and you shouldn’t do that” earlier. I’m brainfogged and Twitter search is busted so no screenshot, but some observations, a quick thread.
First, what makes someone “friends”? Is it some fungible quality that is applied along with the label, which prevents “friends” from intentionally or unintentionally fucking with each other? Is there a length of time involved? There’s a lot unexamined here!
As a healthy relationship (of any kind) deepens, yes, you need fewer direct applications of “safety tools” but not because they’re unimportant: rather, because a healthy relationship incorporates knowledge over time with consideration and awareness of the other person’s needs.
If you feel “my friend group has never needed safety tools but now everyone is telling me we’re doing it wrong, but we aren’t” from a place of confusion, rather than a place of derision, it’s likely that you actually ARE using “safety tool” practices without realizing it.
It’s also possible that your group is homogenous to the point that you don’t have a lot of interpersonal friction, or that people in your group ARE feeling uncomfortable, but not past their personal discomfort event horizon enough to speak up or punch out, for various reasons.
But taking it kindly: healthy friendships are built on the same kind of principles as “safety tools”, just less explicit. The knowledge that “oh, Bob doesn’t like the ocean” and steering clear of pirate games? That’s a safety tool. That’s also good friendship.
The thing is, friendship is not a magic wand which prevents hurt feelings, let alone something more significant. Ironically, the increased vulnerability that comes with a deeper friendship can accidentally INCREASE possible hurt: “but I thought you were my friend! How could you!”
So no, I firmly believe that safety practices are vital not just for games among friends, but for continuing, thriving, healthy relationships. I don’t believe there is a single one size fits all dogmatic checklist safety tool we should all use; often they’re informal and organic.
Having safety practices and boundaries is what has ALLOWED one of my long time groups to survive, and encouraged friendships to form, rather than the opposite. There are multiple incidents where the lack of consideration would have caused total collapse. They work.
As for the “psychopath” claim: yeah, absolutely, one shouldn’t game with abusers, missing stairs, or deliberately hurtful people, that’s common sense.
How do you know who they are though? Many of them are very good at building defense networks and sense of security.
I’m not doubting that the mythical “cat-piss chud” exists. I’ve encountered enough. I’m saying that for every cat-piss chud, there are 5 nice, welcoming, “I was just expressing my character” positivity types who are just so NICE and INCLUSIVE and PROGRESSIVE.
Abusers gonna abuse - but one way they can be detected and ejected from a group is by a baseline established use of safety practices, acknowledgement and acceptance of boundaries, and demonstration that it’s OKAY to speak up about things that cause distress.
“Don’t game with horrid people then” only works for the ones that introduce themselves by striding up and saying “hello, I am Chud Pissbaby, rancid asshole, and I am here to ruin your day”. Most horrible people don’t do that. And once they’re in, they’re often STUCK.
Safety tools, procedures and practices offer help for disentangling one of those extremely thorny situations: “help, my friend did something terrible but they’re my FRIEND, how can I abandon them, how can I kick them out of the group, they’re a fellow nerd gamer!”
I could keep going, and I already went deeper on the second point than I planned, so just gonna screech to a halt here.
Yes, you should be using safety tools. And honestly, there’s a high chance you already are, in some respect. You owe it to yourself to do more.
And there's so much more that I could say. I bit my tongue and didn't actually state that yes, I do believe that most of the people who "never have had to use safety tools among friends!" are abled, relatively well-off, collegiate-background, cisgender, straight- or culturally-acceptable-homosexual white men who mainly interact with friends through their fandoms which like, ding ding ding of COURSE you don't use safety tools, the gaming culture is designed to cushion and coddle you, to make sure you don't hurt yourself on the sharp edges that disadvantaged and marginalized people bear thousands of little cuts from daily
I could talk about how every single "yeah I didn't like it but what are you gonna do" story that does come from these folks could have benefited from safety tools
I could have talked at length, AT LENGTH, as someone who is a multiple-abuse-and-assault-survivor from Kind And Nice Gaming Folks (and this post isn't content-warned, so no, I will not be going into detail) that this whole attitude is one of the shields that abusers use, whether they're intentional abusers or oblivious ones (and oblivion is not an excuse! I am, however, acknowledging that yes, many abusers, many predators, do not act from a position of cackling, manipulative evil, just one of "but I want to do what I want, how can she disagree with me? Obviously she is the wrong one") and just
TTRPG twitter is barely ready to hear any of that, because they're so quick, SO quick to jump to "oh but you're saying that I might have done a the Bad Thing? You're calling me BAD? I am not bad!" lashing out, and I've been burned by THAT before too, and no, all of the cushioned and coddled and privileged parties are going to look at it and say "uh, you can't handle people calling you names online? ugh, fucking privileged trans jackoff" because they have never had to deal with the psychic load of being absolutely flooded by hate for the crime of having opinions while an acceptable target, and the fear that comes from the fact that some of these people, statistically, know where I live, if they are able to put my identity together (thanks, MM, RPGP and ZS, fuck you very much) and just... it's a conversation that needs to happen, because it's very much worth it, but I simply cannot take the load alone.
And no it also doesn't help that there ARE some people who preach "safety tools" poorly, some of them smug, some of them sneering, some of them holier-than-thou, some of them misleading, some of them insistent that if you're not doing it precisely their way you're doing it wrong, some of them (bless their hearts) from that position of white lad privilege mentioned above, trying to be an ally, but whiffing dreadfully because they don't actually understand
And lord forbid that I mention my positive experiences with the kink community (those kink communities I've had positive experiences with, that is, which is also not universal by a long shot and, SURPRISE SURPRISE, OFTEN SPLIT ALONG THE SAME LINES) because then you get the puritans and puriteens both on your ass and it's just
I'm so fucking tired, JFCFVOSC.
