Dear Prudence,
I work for an indie video game studio that makes games aimed at young adults. Our company values itself on being progressive, especially when it comes to content having to do with gender and inclusivity. I generally love my job—there’s a lot of writing involved, and everyone seems on board with the message of tolerance and empowerment that I’m trying to communicate through our stories.
But at lunch recently, my boss was telling me about his young daughter’s troubles with making friends at school. She is interested in sci-fi and video games, and she’s frustrated that the girls in her year are only interested in “girl things.” My boss didn’t follow up with “And so I reminded her that video games are ‘girl things’ too” or “Let’s try to not think of activities in terms of gender.” He sort of dropped the story there with a shrug of the shoulders. In other words, he seemed to imply that he was on the same page as his 10-year-old daughter, as if to say, “Yeah, it does suck that you like video games and girls your age are only interested in girl things!”
It’s been a couple days now, and I’m kicking myself for not gently asking him if he agreed with what she said or if he planned to talk to her about mindsets toward gendered hobbies at any point. I also know that it’s really not my place to do that! I’m an employee of his, and it would likely be crossing a line to grill him on his parenting. With that said, we’re a very small team, and we’re generally pretty friendly and casual with each other; we know quite a bit about each other’s home lives, and he’s asked some fairly personal questions of me before. Where’s the line here? I hate to think that the figure at the helm of our nice, liberal studio is harboring some crappy ideas about the very people we’re crafting stories for.