Resolution Time.

When I first started playing Magic, I had one rule: I will only ever date one member of the Magic community. Even if the relationship fails, I will only date one, so I better make it count. I did not make it count, and almost four years later, here I am breaking my own rule (YOU HAD ONE JOB). Why would I even make such a ridiculous and hard to follow rule in the first place? Easy.

For as large as the community is in size, it acts like a small town. Everybody talks, everybody speculates, and most of all, everybody gossips. People will assume if you hang out or talk to someone enough, it means you have slept together. At the very least, you are going to sleep together soon. The number of people I've heard I've slept with from second-hand accounts is insane. But here we are.

I remember back at those first few tournaments when I very first heard rumors of who was sleeping with whom. I sat with an open ear anxious to hear about these "misbehaving sluts" and the tales of how easy they were. Four years later, that's me. I'm the "misbehaving slut." I'm the one who people are gossiping about.

It makes me feel bad I ever listened to the stories, bad I ever passed along what was said, and bad I ever said such terrible things about those women. Before I go any further, I'd like to apologize to all the women...and men I've wronged.

This community has a funny way of turning its woman against each other. There aren't that many of us! Instead of calling each other sluts and allowing the men to do the same, we should stand up for each other. How can we expect men to stop saying such things when we women stand by and let it happen, or even worse, provoke it. I know I've been a party to this in the past, but it's a new year. Let's do this!

Being a woman in a space dominated by men is hard enough. I shouldn't make the experience harder, especially for new women playing the game. I should be there as someone who has done this before. Someone who can help them handle the crowd. Not the most terrifying person in the room (let's face it, mean girls are the worst, and I'm totally a plastic). Every GP I go to this year, I will try not to be catty (even if I feel I have been wronged), I will try to not judge people based on what they wear or how they look, and lastly I will try not to judge people for who they chose to love, date, or most importantly fuck. I think I just wrote this down so you can all hold me accountable for it. This year I'm going to try to be a better member of the Magic/woman Magic Community.
This isn't what I was going to write, but it is how it came out. Happy New Year everyone

@MTG_Mary

Preface

This morning I woke up to an article about females in the Magic community, but before I get into my reaction I would like to make a few things clear. Even though I started out writing a blog about Tinder, much of it has morphed into my experiences at Magic tournaments which I breifly described here. The fun in my blog posts and the negative reactions all stem from the Magic community. Now that the connection has been readily pointed out, let's begin.

Re: Visibility

I've locked myself into brutal honesty for this article. When you're brutally honest, some things come off as cocky. It is not my purpose to brag. It is my purpose to tell the truth. The people I hang out with when I go to Magic tournaments are different than the majority of players. In fact while in Charlotte, it was pointed out to me that my weekend was spent, by in large, with two out of the three largest brands in Magic.

Nowadays when I walk into a Grand Prix I feel unshakable. I know by round three when my friends (who all have byes and who have all played a lot more than I have) show up I will be surrounded by people whom many people in the room wish to be surrounded by. Nothing to fear.

The article however talks about the difficulties of a female when they first enter the Magic community. Who I am now, and who I was then are not the same. After playing Magic at a local shop for sometime I decided to travel to my first Grand Prix with some other local players. Granted, I went to college in Montana, so it was practically the only Grand Prix within driving distance since I started playing Magic. Whether I would have attended one sooner is unclear. I remember not really knowing the people in my car very well, and distinctly thinking one of them hated me, but I was determined to take this once a year chance to play some competitive Magic. I walked into the event hall and was intimidated. I don't know why other female Magic players are intimidated to start playing in larger tournaments, but it wasn't the disproportionate amount of men to women that intimidated me. Grand Prix SLC was the largest of it's time. Being surrounded by so many people, many of which I didn't know, all of which I didn't know well was petrifying. The judge made an announcement during the player's meeting that this was the largest female turn out (by percentage) to a tournament yet. I believe it was 13%. In that moment, I remember being proud. Proud to be a small part of the growing community and proud to be representing female players. I gained a little confidence. I remember buying a blank playmat for my boyfriend who could not attend, and running off to have it signed by all the pros for him.

I distinctly remember shaking in my boot (literal boots) when I asked Brain Kibler if he would sign my playmat, but scariest of all was talking to Conley Woods . He was our favorite author and I wanted to see what he thought of our home brewed deck. After having a near panic attack I sheepishly walked over to the last table in the room to compose myself. It wasn't long before three people I had never seen asked me if I wanted to be the fourth in their two headed giant battle. I said I would, but I didn't know what many of the cards did. They didn't care and took their seats. I didn't know any of these people, but they took me in. Later I learned I had been playing with Paul Rietzl and Matt Sperling.

Years later the people I was intimidated by have become friends of mine. I lived with Conley for a time, and grabbed dinner with Kibler and company in Charlotte. Where I am now makes it hard to remember that at a point in time I felt all these feelings new players feel. After writing I feel happy and nostalgic. The reason why I started writing was completely lost on me. I guess my point is being intimidated is natural, but as I have come to learn there is nothing to be intimidated by. People are just people, and there will be a Sperling/Rietzl to make you feel at home. At the end of the day the majority of the Magic community is friendly and inviting, and the people who aren't... well they aren't worth our time.

I'm Not WOTC, but If I Did It....

This morning I woke up to the same shocking news as many of my friends; Zach Jesse received a 35 year ban from the DCI. If you're reading this I assume you know what the DCI is, but if not, the DCI is the official sanctioning body for competitive play in Magic: The Gathering and various other games produced by Wizards of the Coast (WOTC). The news widely shocked the community. See, Jesse recently put up some solid finishes at Grand Prix, and while they say there is no such thing as bad publicity, maybe there is when you have skeletons in your closet.

I had first met Zach Jesse back in March when we both attended the SCG Invitational in his hometown of Richmond. Our mutual friend grabbed us to be his partners in a team draft. I'd never met Jesse or heard anything about him, and he was nice and courteous to me for the entire time we played. We also won the draft, so I had an overall positive impression of him moving forward. I saw him again in May at Grand Prix Atlantic City, where he happened to make top 8. When I saw him most recently at GP Charlotte, I knew something was amiss. Jesse had a winning record in the tournament and he was playing against a well-known opponent, but he did not receive a feature match. I was hanging out with our mutual friend who was disheartened by the news. From what I remember his quote was "This is bullshit". I had no idea what he was talking about so I dug for more information. I didn't get a complete answer, but he told me that something had happened in Jesse's past and Wizards did not want him on camera. I assumed it was an instance of cheating, and thought nothing more of it.

This morning when I found out the DCI had banned Jesse for something non Magic related I was outraged. Jesse wrote an explanation of his past behavior on Reddit, but for those of you too lazy to click the link here's the short version as I understand it. In 2003 (yes, 12 years ago) two college freshmen (18 years old) made a poor choice: they drank so much neither one had a clear recollection of the night. Unfortunately, the night didn't end there. Later that night, while the female was sick in her own bathroom, she was raped by Jesse. When the case went to court, Jesse took a plea offer for the lesser charge of aggravated sexual battery. He received an 8 year sentence, 3 months of which was to be spent in prison, with 10 years of supervised release to follow.

While I find Jesse's actions that night disgusting, my initial reaction was I didn't think it was fair for the DCI to ban a player for a non Magic related occurrence. If Zach has always displayed sportsman-like conduct in the game, never cheated, and holds a good rapport at his local shop, what could be the harm in allowing him to play? It instantly made me worried for anything that might be hiding in my past. After the initial shock passed, I tried to rationalize what the DCI did. This is what I came up with....

Sports leagues ban players all the time for things that occur in their personal lives. Most notably, the NFL suspends (or bans) players for a certain amount of time depending on... well, for seemingly random times based on whatever the commissioner sees fit. I found this graph that denotes crimes vs games suspended.

The "sexual assault" you see on the graph belongs to none others than Ben Roethlisberger, who raped a college age girl back in April of 2010. He was 28, she was 20. While we can see Ben's crime to be a bit more severe, the punishment is way more lax. Roethlisberger was originally suspended for 6 games, but upon the charges being dropped, his suspension was reduced. In fact, the WOTC explanation for the ban seem to mimic Goodell's reasoning for leaving some kind of suspension in tact

"The Personal Conduct Policy makes clear that I may impose discipline "even where the conduct does not result in conviction of a crime' as, for example, where the conduct 'imposes inherent danger to the safety and well being of another person.""

And while I enjoy watching sports, I had no idea the NFL had such a thing as a Personal Conduct Policy. In 2007, the same year the indefinite suspension was brought down on Micheal Vick, a new conduct policy was introduced to punish players for personal behavior. All of my information on the NFL, including the graph, can be found here (it's a pretty short and sweet article).

Just reading those statements, it sounds like the NFL one up-ed WOTC by putting a code of conduct in place before suspending players. Which brings us to the point - if WOTC is going to ban people for their personal lives, they need to establish the rules/bylaws to say so prior to the banning. We keep seeing WOTC amend their rules after something happens that they think shouldn't be allowed - for example, the mistreatment of women in the Magic community. What if they decided to stop being reactive and start being proactive? If WOTC wants to ban people based on personal behavior then they should take a page from the NFL's book and write the rules on personal conduct. At least that way, if someone gets banned they can see it coming. People would know what behaviors were acceptable and which ones weren't, and the people being banned would not be so blindsided. But if WOTC wants to do that they have to be more timely about it....

No matter how we each feel about Zach Jesse and his ban, I don't think anyone thinks rape is okay or a crime that should be taken lightly. The real shocker is how delayed the ban was. Hell, if Jesse had recently been convicted of rape I don't think anyone would have batted an eye at his ban. No, the real problem lies in the fact WOTC let him get invested in the game after his first Grand Prix top 8, build a brand, and spend time and money to play all without even whispers of a ban. Once he was starting to feel good and comfortable everything he had worked for, it was pulled out from underneath him.

Sure, advocates of WOTC may say that they had no idea of Jesse's past until the facts were brought to their attention, and they acted as soon as possible. Again, if that were true AND he was convicted of rape say 2 years ago a multi-year banning for the sake of the community seems reasonable. Neither of those things are true in this case.

13 years ago Jesse made a mistake that both he and his victim have to live with everyday. In all of this DCI/WOTC/Drew Levin blame, no one has addressed the victim. I don't claim to know her or what she wants, but from her interview in the local paper it did not sound like she wanted Jesse to still be haunted by a teenage mistake over a decade later.

"Zug says the victim wasn't concerned with a lengthy sentence. She didn't want to see him buried under the jail," says Zug. She just wanted to see him held accountable."

The victim seems to be a compassionate person who tries to see the good in people. After spending 3 months in jail and 10 years under supervision, I think he has been held accountable. If you don't want Jesse to be the next face of Magic: The Gathering that's fine, but putting (essentially) a lifetime ban on a reformed and upstanding member of the Magic community is unprecedented and without any established policy to back their actions.

That's how I would have done it.