By all intents and purposes, I am a gamer, but I hate what that label means and infers, nowadays. Allow me to explain.

I was born in the 70s into a family family that was being guided (and willingly following) into a culty version of Evangelical Fundamentalism.
I was hyper-sensitive and had difficulty parsing social cues, which made public school difficult, and I was placed into a culty farmhouse school for the majority of my growing up. For years, I was the only child in my grade, my homework was copying and reciting biblical verses, and my textbooks were from those weird Jesuscamp kinds of suppliers. My outside media exposure was highly censored and monitored, and almost everything I found an interest in had to be verified, analyzed, and monitored in how much content I was allowed to ingest.

I went through the 80s with mostly a peripheral knowledge of the cultural impact... likely why I don't have the Baby-Boomer mindset, despite being very much in that age bracket.

Being in that school, and living in that church (not literally, but I was there a LOT), and having the majority of my childhood under padlock was not at all good for my ability to handle reality once I grew up enough to make my own decisions (which was far later than it ought to have been) and severely hobbled my ability to ever be normal when it comes to being social.

The happiest memories I have, though, were at the arcade. Every week on Saturday, Dad would take me to the arcade, and for one hour a week, I'd be a perfectly normal kid dropping a coin into the slot and fully embracing the fantasy of getting as many points as possible in the given three lives. These electronic worlds were my fantasies and escapes. I wouldn't call them my safespaces because the RL bullies were in the arcades back then, as well... but the home versions that I was allowed to have definitely did become my safe space, as did the mental real estate that those game worlds held in my head and dreams.

My folks did have issues with the degree of time I'd put into those games and not into the bible, of course... I remember a lot of terribly brainwashing self-help books of why videogames can be evil and why D&D was devil worship and junk like that... but my love for all things game-related had already become a deep part of my self-identity.

All my life, games have been a fixations, my vices of choice, my comfort zones, my addictions, my obsessions, and more than occasionally my perversions. They still are. That's not likely ever going to change.

The difference, though, is that it angers and destroys me a little inside every single time I read about, converse with, or encounter someone that takes the moniker of "gamer" and uses it to try and deny or gate the notion that other folks are not allowed to enter that area that was once my oasis.

Anyone should be able to grab a controller, roll some dice, draw a card, look at their INV, or press a start button if they want to try it out, and there shouldn't be any reqvired meta-knowledge or pedigree involved in picking a game up. There shouldn't be any racial, gender, lingual, or classist qvalifiers. Skill in any game is not TheWizard-level inate for anyone, nor will some folks ever achieve it, nor should anyone ever need to if it isn't what they want to pursue. There is nothing wrong with a casual game of solitare on your phone. There is nothing wrong with min-maxing your Warcraft character's damage per second if that's your happy.

There is everything wrong with bashing someone because they do not game at your level. There is everything wrong with griefing, doxxing, swatting and spiritually destroying someone else because they are a random name that got in your way.

This was my safe space, and it was where I kept my sanity in the daily brainwashing that still affects my everyday.

It infuriates me when access to that space is denied, gated, or too harrasment-filled.

I am a gamer. I am a gamer that will happily suggest a couple of games to a soccer mom trying to pick out something for their 8yr old that they want them to enjoy, but not have sexualized or violent content. I am a gamer that will donate parts of their collection to their friend's, their friend's kids, or as gifts. I am a gamer that will ramble on for an hour or two about game mechanics, game series, jump scares, or pixelated graphics.

Gaming is still a huge passion of mine; always will be.

I just try to be a very inclusive one.