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The issues of representation in the LGBTQ+ wargaming community have been stirring for years, but recent events, especially including a certain paragraph in Games Workshop’s Horus Heresy book, have brought them to a head.
We wanted to take a deep dive into LGBTQ+ wargaming issues, so this week I’m interviewing several members of that community.
We’ll start today with someone who goes by the handle of Commissar Draeci, and who recently made waves for writing an open letter to Games Workshop regarding gender, sex, and identity.
Content Warning: Physical harassment and abuse
Commissar Draeci describes themselves this way:
I’m known as “Commissar Draeci” or “Buttery Commissar”, but my human name is Benny. A they/them, I was raised female, medically transitioned to male in my late twenties, but after some self-reflection felt I identify best with Agender (which is under the umbrella of non-binary). So on the street I look male but inside, I’m a caterpillar goop of experiences. My orientation is “too tired to deal with people”, and I’m a white European.
How Did You Get Into the Wargaming Hobby?
Commissar Draeci: I’ve always been a physical media artist, so it was more a case of starting to introduce miniatures into my own art, rather than starting to paint miniatures. I would find ways to include them in projects and sneak them into college work, alongside scale basing materials.
My first introduction to tabletop was painful. I became involved in a tabletop company, and traveled to work for them at various UK conventions. Eighteen years ago, there were no steps in place at a corporate level to protect a sixteen year old girl from what happened to me at the time. There wasn’t such an open discussion around the culture as we have now, and there were no places I would have known to look for support.
The mildest incident I can reference as an example:
At an after-party, a customer decided to physically pick me up from behind and drag me out of my seat across the room. Thankfully, a staff member who had kids of his own reacted quickly. But back then, I neither had the language nor the understanding.
I was upset and scared, but the tabletop company did nothing, and the customer was allowed to return the next day. That is to say, the company asked a confused teenager to take responsibility for allowing a grown man to return to an event with his friends or not.
Things only got worse from there. By eighteen, I dropped out for my own safety, but it was already too late.
It was a few years before I felt safe enough to venture back into wargaming, when still presenting as female, and it was still a real slog to be taken seriously back then.
I would find men would forcefully tell me what I’d enjoy, often step across in front of me at events, assuming I was only there because someone dragged me in – up until a few years ago, many historical and traditional UK wargaming events would give free or discounted entry to women, on the assumption they weren’t actually wargamers, and counted as concessions. Which on the surface is a nice discount, but a real indication of quite how men saw “their” hobby.
During games at Warhammer World, men of all ages would ask my opponents about the models I’d painted, and when told they belonged to me, simply leave or completely blank me. I was usually assumed to be “the girlfriend” of whoever I was with at the time.
But then I discovered online forums, where nobody knows you’re a stack of genders in a trench coat, and I was finally able to talk to people – of all places on Dakka Dakka – I could talk about painting! I could talk about models and lore! And people would not condescend to my little avatar of a guy. Suddenly a whole community just opened up to me – as long as I didn’t ever say I was female, or later, transgender.
The Horus Heresy Statement
The Wargame Explorer: I want to talk about the recent Horus Heresy statement that Space Marines need “The hormonal and biological make-up of the human male”. What message do you think this sends to the community? How did you feel when you read it?
Commissar Draeci: Well, I wrote an open letter to GW about this, though that was spent largely speaking from a community point of view about the unfortunate phrasing used.
If I talk about my personal view, I believe that while its inclusion was without any malicious purpose, it has caused a lot of indirect harm.
Truth be told, I don’t actually care which sex “has” to be used to create marines. As an artist I can respect that an author shouldn’t be bidden to public demand, and people may well have ideas in sci fi that make very little sense in real life.
However this isn’t just about lore, it’s about inclusivity, and by using such an inflexible phrasing in 2022, this author has handed a weapon to those who spend their time chasing anything that threatens their world view out of the hobby.
Anyone complaining about it from a phrasing perspective was treated horrifically, and anyone disappointed from a lore perspective was dismissed out of hand, if not equally abused.
For simply asking GW to consider hiring sensitivity readers (not change the lore, not redact the book), I received literally hundreds of abusive messages through the website. Death threats and sexual abuse threats via email, Twitter and the page. The sole tweet I made about the letter has over a hundred and thirty quote retweets, and the vast majority are abusive, viewing people like me as a presence to remove from “their” hobby.
Responsibility lies with those hurling abuse, but after thirty years, I cannot believe that nobody at GW would think this could happen – I believe they didn’t think about it at all.
And that’s what it tells us; We are out of touch with the fans beyond the bubble of this company.
Female Space Marines
The Wargame Explorer: We have long heard talk about better representation within the Space Marines. Why do you think we see female Stormcast Eternals and female Imperial Guard and female Leagues of Votann, but no female Space Marines?
Commissar Draeci: The short of it is, I plain don’t know why we don’t have gender diversity in Astartes. I could guess until my head hurts, but given that Games Workshop is a collection of clusters, all the way up and down, I couldn’t begin to assume why this is the case.
I don’t know if it’s blocked by some kind of lore-bible, guidelines higher up, or just everyone from the neck down assumes they can’t do it.
No idea.
Though I’m not really sure we can call half a dozen heads added to a decades old Cadian kit, “having” a diverse Imperial Guard, either.
Last month, GW retired the sole named female commissar, Sevarina Raine, after only three years on the shelves. Her male predecessor in that Black Library series of models (Eisenhorn) was not retired.
While we have them in books, the tabletop presence of gender diverse Guard is distinctly muted.
I believe we have gender diversity in Stormcast models because they’re newer, and on the whole Age of Sigmar fans are venturing into this comparatively new universe with a real hunger for lore and stories that allows them to welcome these concepts.
Warhammer Is For Everyone
The Wargame Explorer: Games Workshop has famously said “Warhammer is for everyone”. Do you think that Games Workshop is being sincere, or is it a marketing message?
Both.
There are are many many sincerely progressive people working for Games Workshop. There are trans people, non binary people, allies and families.
I believe whoever wrote that statement and whoever put it out meant it.
But I also suspect that they were only given permission to do so because higher corporate finally realised the image that surrounds their fanbase and felt their arm twisted by the silence.
If we remember the first statement that came out in 2020, amidst the surge of BLM protests, it was a significantly tamer statement than the recent ones targeting fascism, and didn’t reference any minorities directly.
At the time, it was the strongest expression that had ever come out of Games Workshop, but compared to other companies directly naming black lives and trans lives, it was muzzled.
What Makes You Pessimistic About the Wargaming Hobby?
I’m not pessimistic generally, I think now that this wagon is rolling, even if it occasionally gets stuck, it can only go forwards.
If something grinds with me it’s that there’s a generalised complacency around the lack of change;
“Oh it’s been like that since the 80s, what do you expect?” isn’t an answer as to why your paintline in 2022 is using mud, monsters or leather to describe dark skin tones (especially when you have just launched said paint range – looking at you Mr Rhodes).
Likewise, “Oh he’s just like that online, he’s nice really!” doesn’t excuse your friend being a bellend to minorities.
The biggest threat to progress has never been the people screaming against it, it is the comfort of those who don’t feel the need for it.
What Makes You Optimistic About the Wargaming Hobby?
The extraordinary becoming the ordinary. That some day we won’t need these conversations, and we won’t point out individual instances of inclusion. It will just be background to the experience.
Perhaps one day we will look at a Celebratory Black Library Authors Poster and it won’t just be the same six middle aged white men with glasses, wearing black. Maybe there will be faces like ours looking back from amongst them.
In the meantime, maybe one of them will discover some colours, or wear a hat?
Maybe.
Linear time means that eventually, the folks holding the reins have to retire, and allow new people to take over. That will always cause change, in one direction or another, and watching it will be truly fascinating.
What Message Would You Send to Games Workshop?
I wouldn’t be here without your IP, in a great many senses. Which is why it still comes from a place of love when I say:
You wrote statements that directly shook the cage of the demographic that you wish weren’t part of your fandom.
And then you have said nothing since, and left us as minorities to deal with the backlash you created.
We thrive in peer-led communities but still must watch what we say and share publicly, because we know there’s nobody else looking out for us.
There’s not yet blood on your hands, but there could be some day; if bigots in your fandom continue to truly believe that this is a space they are able to contest and fight for.
There’s time to turn things around. But don’t continue to let good people be the casualties of your silence.