Men Explain Poker to Women
As you can imagine, it was a trending thread.
The first response was responded to more than the original tweet. The first response was from a gentleman who tweeted that he had been playing for twenty years and he had never seen one incident of sexual harrassment. He noted that all he had seen was men drunk who got "friendly."
That response essentially speaks for itself. A woman trying to raise what she feels is a legitimate discussion point and wanting to provoke an honest discussion and a mansplaining telling her that her feelings and her experience is wrong. What did this man expect? That she would say, "oh, thank you for telling me this." Thank you for telling me how to feel, thank you for telling me that my experiences are invalid.
Not to mention that getting drunk and getting "friendly" is probably the definition of sexual harrassment.
A few men tweeted that if sexual harrassment did occur at a poker table, the police would be called and charges would be laid, and it would never happen again.
Yeah, that is how that works.
Several years ago, I was playing in a casino in British Columbia. My first and last time playing in this particular casino. I happened to be sitting next to a regular, a man who told me he played in this room atleast six days out of seven. He was consuming alcohol. He said something like, "I would like to see you in a wet tshirt contest" and then dumped his full drink over my chest area. I realize sexual harrassment is sometimes hard to recognize, but this was clear cut and it was an assault.
Were the police called and were charges laid? Actually, the rest of the table laughed at this funny prank. The dealer did nothing. The reality is that this man was a regular and a was a one off player. I ended up calling the inspector over and telling him what happened. The inspector offered to get me a towel.
It isn't incidents like these that keep women out of poker. It is frankly the response to incidents like this. Or should I say the lack of response. Is there ever any consequence for this behaviour? Sometimes, but rarely. I know of two incidents were there were consequences to the harrasser. Both incidents were rather serious and both incidents involved female staff members. If I was cynical, I could surmise action was taken because if it was not, the staff member could initiate a union grievance and also motivated by following "respectful workplace" legislation. The cyncial me suggests that women players harrassment is viewed as one of the risks that a woman experiences as part of her "voluntary" decision to play poker.
Regardless of the validity of sexual harrassment in the poker room, I think as a general idea that men should stay in their lane and chose to sit this issue out.
However, this tweet thread did not catch my attention because of the original content. I don't need Twitter to tell me that sexual harrassment in the poker room occurs. I already know this.
The initial response also was not the reason the thread caught my attention. I am very used to this denial and to mansplaining a women's experience to her.
What caught my attention was the majority of responses from men to this intial male responder.
The majority of responders supported the woman and agreed that this happens. They validated the woman's experience. They said that this guy's mansplaining is why "broculture" exists and needs to stop. Most men wanted to know more about this man. They wanted to know where he played because if he had been playing for 20 years and never seen this, they wanted to play with him because he obviously not read a "tell". Many of the responses were hilarious and creative yet respectful.
That was the vast majority of responses. Validating a woman's experience and making suggestions on how this can be improved.
A twitter thread that I thought would be infuriating ended up being hopeful. Poker. The last bastion of mysogny. There is hope that this will no longer be the case.
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