I’d say about 90% of the time, me being a perceived woman in the D&D and mini painting spaces doesn’t matter. Most dudes are GENUINELY just excited that someone else likes their hobbies and don’t care that they think I’m a girl, truly, most dudes are nice and fun and great to talk to.
But every now and then. I’ll get a dude that. Is not. And hilariously, the two most recent examples were both game store employees
I was shopping with some of my friends this weekend and the mall had a game store. We went inside and there’s a mini painting section, and I make a B-Line for it while my friends go and look at D&D books. They have a good mini painting section, brushes, primers, and my favorite brand of paint! Next to the paints, they have boxes of Warhammer models. Now, I don’t play Warhammer, but they have some REALLY cool models and I do like to paint them. So I browse
While I’m browsing an employee walks up to me and says, for the first time I have ever personally gotten this question, “Are you shopping for a gift for someone?” and when I look over to him he adds “Or for... yourself?”
I say, “Myself :)” and he says
“Okay, do you know what these are?”
“Yes, well aware.”
“Okay let me know if you need anything.”
He walks off, I stay put, but he keeps just drifting by and asking me questions. Some innocuous, some. Less so. Eventually, my friends find me, and as they’re coming up behind me he says “If you want a mini painting tip, you should try colored primer.”
My friends, who KNOW how into D&D and mini painting I am, actually giggle, and the guy now looks scared. Finally, I say “Yeah, I’ve used colored primer. I prefer black primer though, it gets into the recesses and I’ll leave it exposed so it creates natural shadows. If they’re too dark I’ll use a glaze over the whole model and blend them all together.”
Finally the dude looks surprised, and leaves. My friends laugh HARDER this time and I say “It is my dream to have a dude try and mansplain mini painting to me,” and my friend says, “That guy was getting close!”
But with that one, it’s admittedly hard to tell if he was being deliberately patronizing, or was just awkward. He did NOT have a patronizing tone exactly, but was absolutely assuming I didn’t know as much as him. But I have had encounters where it was VERY obvious the dude was being patronizing
I was at my regular game store trying to buy a special kind of tape. It’s tape for airbrushing models, you put it over areas you’ve already painted so that when you use your airbrush on the still unpainted areas, you won’t ruin them. However, I was REALLY paranoid that the tape would rip off the paint when I took it off. I spend hours and hours on my models and that would be DEVESTATING. So at the store I found the tape, took it and a bottle of the paint brand I most often use, and found an employee. He was an older man, maybe in his fifties, and I asked him:
“Hey! If I use this tape with this kind of paint on a model, will the tape rip the paint off?”
And he just kind of stared at me blankly before saying “That tape is FOR models.”
And I said, “Yeah, I know! I’m just worried if I use the tape over this paint it might damage it. Will that happen?”
The dude, straight up, rolled his eyes, and said in a firm voice, “No. I’ve NEVER had that happen.” and walked away
I was FLOORED because, like usual, most of my interactions with the (as far as I can tell all male) employees at this store were LOVELY. But this dude, who I had seen THAT DAY excitedly talking about hobby stuff with a male customer, just IMMEDIATELY brushed me off and I still have not encountered anything like it
Idk man. It’s just so jarring to have the vast majority of my encounters with these people be positive, and then SUDDENLY be reminded that I am not seen as equal to all of them and never will be
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I made a friggin table. This was a genuinely painful experience and I plan to put table runners and a feast on it later, then put a crap load of supports on it AND THEN test print it.... Then store away the file so I can build up an inventory of tiny printable furniture to decorate a hypothetical tiny room for a tiny scene in a ttrpg I won't be participating in because I hope to sell the STL. files on etsy for others to print for themselves........ I guess that's my big first step into owning a business.
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