if you're an MRA, don't play magic

Magic players pride themselves on being an opening, welcoming community. Anyone can enter a Magic tournament at a store they’ve never been to and make a dozen new friends. This is good, until the people the community is being opening and welcoming toward are awful. Then, because Magic players are so nice and kind, they’re unwilling to ever tell people to get out.

A rare exception happened this week. Alex Hinkley wrote a review of a Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion for StarCityGames. Some people, notably Erin Campbell, found out that he happened to be a horrible misogynist who would rant at feminists on twitter and loosely use words like “faggot” in his tweets. I found her research and crossposted it as an article comment to Hinkley’s review. Half an hour later, he’d been fired from SCG.

He’d like to think that the only reason he got fired is that he called one of his friends a faggot. I hope this isn’t the only reason this happened. Personally, I’m happy he’s gone because Men’s Rights Advocates like him are horrible, hateful people that have no place in the Magic community.

There have been some thoughtful long-form pieces about this awful group of likeminded dudes. This is not one of them.

I have no interest in starting a dialogue with MRAs, debating them, or comparing our ideologies in rational discourse. I want them to get out of my community.

If you identify as a Men’s Rights Advocate, don’t play Magic.

If you support the #gamergate “movement,” don’t play Magic.

If you harass feminists over their ideologies, don’t play Magic.

If you search for MRA-related terms and try to argue with women, don’t play Magic.

If you try to argue with anti-racist minority activists about who the real racists are, don’t play Magic.

If you unironically tell people to take the “red pill” when it comes to gender issues, don’t play Magic.

If you defend your right as a straight person to call people a faggot, don’t play Magic.

If you defend your right as a white person to call someone a nigger, don’t play Magic.

If you complain on a regular basis about “Social Justice Warriors,” don’t play Magic.

If you write screeds about how “cultural Marxism” is doing whatever, don’t play Magic.

If you identify as a “pickup artist,” don’t play Magic.

If you are in any way bigoted against minorities, women, trans people, whoever, don’t play Magic.

If your response to the above is that maybe these people agitating about feminism and minority rights are the real bigots, don’t play Magic.

This is not the opening salvo in a long campaign. This is not intended to change the minds of these awful people. This is setting the boundaries of who I want in my game store, in my cube drafts, in my Twitter feed, in my group of friends who play Magic.

It is our duty, as longtime Magic players, to throw out people who don’t belong. If I go to a PTQ and my first round opponent is a known hateful piece of shit, I don’t have to grace them with my presence and treat them like a human being playing a game. I’m standing up and walking out, because they have no business playing a game with me.

There is plenty of room for political diversity in Magic. There are conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, whatever. That’s fine. But MRAs are bigots, and bigotry has no place near a game I play.

Men’s Rights Advocates, upon reading this, might take it not as a call to leave, but as an enormous “fuck you.”

Good. MRAs: fuck you. I might catch more flies with honey, but I’m not trying to catch them. I’m trying to force them out.

Questions, comments, and concerns should be directed to @KillGoldfish