Tekkaman-James: Of all the times I went to a comic book store or a D&D meet-up, I never saw any girls there. Yet, now, in our much more progressive times, I always hear stories about girls who have been into comics and gaming and such their whole life. So, with all that said, I pose this question to the women here:
Where were you back then? Were you forced into even stricter silence due to the unfair stereotypes of the day? Or did our proverbial paths just never cross until now?
Since I'm young (23), for me "back then" is 2000~2005 :D I can't really comment on "those days".
Nowdays I'm frequent in an RPG / fantasy bookstore, and most employees there are women. When I looked at the pictures of Hungarian RPG meetings I saw lots of women, many of them being the meeting organizers themselves.
I was the biggest PC gamer in my class in high school, everybody acknowledged this, and nobody compalined because I was a girl.
On the other hand, my male classmates often played a Hungarian pen and paper RPG in breaks berween lessons, and during 1 week long class trips, and they NEVER allowed me to join, because I was a girl.
But they borrowed the rulebooks from ME..... No comment.
Ok, to be fair: At first, the Adventure Master had no problems with me playing with them, but another guy complained, because I've never played before, and I was a girl. He wanted to play a serious hardcore game, instead of babysitting a beginner girl. They had an arguement, and in the end they shooed me away, saying "RPGs are not for girls".
Fun fact: about 10 years ago I checked the webpage of a Hungarian RPG site. It had a list about "Signs that you're a serious RPG addict." One of these signs was: "You kow a girl who plays RPGs".
Almost every comment under that list called the site creators sexist, and stated that they know at least ten girls who play RPGs.