I’m going to talk to you about some­thing not very inter­na­tion­al. Which is sur­pris­ing because this is not just Nordic larp talk, this is inter­na­tion­al larp talk. I’m going to talk to you about a Danish ini­tia­tive that, a fem­i­nist ini­tia­tive, called the Girls In Armor move­ment, wich start­ed as a reg­i­ment of all women made for a Danish larp called Warlarp, which went [on] to be an offi­cial orga­ni­za­tion with mem­bers of both sex­es, and is now some sort of loose net­work that sup­ports this sys­tem for peo­ple who are inter­est­ed in fem­i­nism and wom­en’s rights. 

What’s up with the name, Girls in Armor? It’s a real­ly stu­pid name. We know. It start­ed up as a joke or a pun about an old Danish movie about women and enrolling them­selves in the army. It was from the 70s. We bit­ter­ly regret­ted giv­ing the group the name then, but it sort of stuck and now it has nos­tal­gic value.

This is me. And I’m going to say that I’m real­ly ter­ri­ble at mak­ing this sort of pre­sen­ta­tion. Not giv­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion but actu­al­ly mak­ing what’s on the screen. So now I just have pic­tures of us run­ning around in larp gear.

Warlarp is a series of Danish larps which focus­es on bat­tles, epic­ness, sol­dier lives, and badass cos­tumes. It’s not very com­pli­cat­ed. It has about five hun­dred par­tic­i­pants every time. It runs once a year with a dif­fer­ent orga­niz­ing group, and it’s about three days. 

In 2009, when we began this ini­tia­tive, there weren’t real­ly that many women around to play these games. They were usu­al­ly, ​“I’m the musi­cian. I’m the one who car­ries the stan­dard. I’m at home mak­ing food.” If there were women par­tic­i­pat­ing in reg­i­ments, there was usu­al­ly just one per reg­i­ment, and the reg­i­ment is like ten to thir­ty, maybe forty peo­ple for the largest of them. So, not many women were around to play these games.

So, one night we sat down a bunch of women. We had smoked a lot of cig­a­rettes and we had drunk a lot of red wine, and some­one said, ​“We’ll do a group of only women.” And every­body said, ​“Yeah!” and the game was on. So now we’d said it and we had to do it. 

So, the whole project sort of start­ed for our own sake. Usually when you make this kind of fem­i­nist ini­tia­tive, it starts with peo­ple read­ing a bunch of fem­i­nist the­o­ry. I know, because I read a bunch of fem­i­nist the­o­ry all the time. But none of us real­ly knew any­thing about fem­i­nist the­o­ry and how to be a prop­er fem­i­nist activist group. We did this for our own sake. We did it because we thought, ​“Warlarp. That sounds like fun.” Some had been, some had not. So we were kind of like, ​“We’re going the whole way.”

With Warlarp, we kind of want­ed to chal­lenge how women were por­trayed in these kinds of larps, when you use super reg­u­lar stereo­types with women like, ​“You go and cook. And I go and fight.” We want­ed to chal­lenge that.

We also want­ed to make it seem where no one felt like the weak link. If you’re one woman in a group of ten men and you have to be very phys­i­cal— Aand you have to be when you play Warlarp. There’s a lot of run­ning around and fight­ing and get­ting hit in the head with swords and axes. And you kind of tend to feel like the weak link. And hav­ing a group of women—all women—doing this, then nobody felt like the weak link, so it was kind of like an act of empowerment.

And we want­ed to show our male friends. They were laugh­ing a lit­tle bit at us, and we want­ed to prove that we could do this. We could all orga­nize this whole she­bang, and so we did.

And most impor­tant­ly, we want­ed to show that we could func­tion as a reg­i­ment as well as any­body. So, we found about sev­en­teen women who want­ed to par­tic­i­pate with us. We fundraised €4,000 to make cos­tumes that fit wom­en’s bod­ies. And we made a ton of cos­tumes. At one point, I actu­al­ly had a dream of being a sewing machine.

We had char­ac­ter work­shops and train­ing days. And at the game, we were awe­some. We won bat­tles. Not all but a prop­er amount. And we got praise from all the oth­er Warlarp par­tic­i­pants and orga­nizes. So, when we came home, we had suc­cess and felt pride. So, what was wrong?

Well, we dis­cov­ered some­thing, that we went from being just a bunch of women run­ning around and play­ing Warlarp, to being an actu­al fem­i­nist group. And that was that in the dura­tion of the larp, we were treat­ed so much more dif­fer­ent­ly because we were women. And in Warlarp, gen­der does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. It’s a game about being in the Warhammer fic­tion. And then you fight the oth­er army. And then you go back and then you say, ​“Yay, we lost!” or, ​“Yay, we won!” And then you go out and fight some more.

It’s not a deep game. It’s not a deep emo­tion­al game. And gen­der is not an issue. So, why was it that we had ran­dom sol­diers com­ing up to us and ask­ing, ​“Hey, I have a son at home. Could could you maybe mar­ry him?” And peo­ple were ask­ing, ​“Oh, but why are you in this war?” And I would look at him and say, ​“But why are you in this war? Maybe because we both signed up for the same larp.” And at some point anoth­er reg­i­ment made us a home­made wood­en dil­do because ​“that’s prob­a­bly the sort of thing you miss.” Yeah, great. So, hav­ing your gen­der be an issue or being some­thing that the oth­er play­ers respond­ed to con­stant­ly and all the time was kind of real­ly fuck­ing annoy­ing when you’re play­ing a game where gen­der does­n’t real­ly matter.

So we came home with a dream. We want­ed to make the Warlarp more acces­si­ble to women. We want­ed to talk and debate wom­en’s role in these kinds of larps. And we want­ed to ask sim­ple ques­tions like, when you have a fan­ta­sy fic­tion, when does gen­der mat­ter? When it it impor­tant and when is it not?

So the ini­tia­tive evolved quite a lot from there. We became an offi­cial orga­ni­za­tion with mem­bers, and we had a spot on the [?] board and stuff like that. We wrote a bunch of arti­cles. We debat­ed a lot. We made a ton of debate on Facebook and social media. We also did a lot of shit­storms, which I’m not real­ly proud of, but yeah. I’ll tell you about all the mis­takes we made lat­er. This is not the time.

We went to some more Warlarps and looked epic. And most impor­tant­ly, we talked. We talked to a lot of peo­ple and not on the web site. Having your like plat­form with this kind of larp for five hun­dred peo­ple, most­ly men, it gives you a lot of peo­ple to talk to, and a lot of them don’t agree with you. But we made an issue out of it to try to be polite. These peo­ple, they were not evil, they were not vicious. They just did­n’t under­stand what it’s like to have your gen­der used against you in a larp where gen­der is clear­ly not the point. And we tried to give cred­it and sup­port to oth­er women, women which we did not know. Because we felt that that was impor­tant and that was kind of the whole empow­er­ment thing. 

So appar­ent­ly some­thing worked. We got a bunch of more allies. People step­ping for­ward and say­ing, ​“Hey, I agree with you, and I will take this fight.” Which was great, because we would nev­er be able to do this if we did­n’t have a bunch of allies, both men and women. And we could see that slow­ly, peo­ple were begin­ning to talk a lot more about gen­der in Warlarp, but also in oth­er kinds of larp. We had orga­niz­ers call us or write us ask­ing, ​“Hey, how do I make this game more acces­si­ble to women?” And we got in touch with a bunch of badass women who have had the same strug­gle, and we bond­ed with them, and we learned from them.

So, then it got wider than just Warlarp and fan­ta­sy games. Many of us became real fem­i­nists, not just larp fem­i­nists. I know there’s no such thing. But for me per­son­al­ly, it became a way of look­ing at soci­ety and how it’s struc­tured and how it functions. 

We also began to reflect a lot about what are wom­en’s roles off-game. As orga­niz­ers, as play­mak­ers, a sce­nario writ­ers. All that stuff. And obvi­ous­ly there were a lot of women before us who made all these things, and were all these things. But they were scat­tered, and I thought that they were hard to reach. So, we can­not begin to reflect, how can I be in that posi­tion? How can I be a larp orga­niz­er or a sce­nario writer, or all this stuff?

And we began to push each oth­er, and to encour­age each oth­er to stand up and to claim that fame, and to do that project. And we slow­ly closed down the ​“offi­cial” part of the orga­ni­za­tion and became more like a net­work which sup­port­ed each oth­er, and— ​“I’m not sure whether I should do this thing.” Yeah, you go and do that thing, and we sup­port you, and we believe in you. And that is prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant things to come out of this initiative.

So today it’s been six years since we made the first Girls In Armor project. And today we have been main orga­niz­ers at the Danish con­ven­tion Fastaval forum, and main orga­niz­ers at Knudepunkt. People have been mak­ing tons of larps. People have been sce­nario writ­ers at [?], Fastaval, and Grenselandet. People have been sit­ting on boards in var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tion. And I’m talk­ing about all the women who have some­how been a part of or affil­i­at­ed with the Girls In Armor move­ment. So, we real­ly real­ly evolved our­selves in this process, and hope­ful­ly we pulled a lot of oth­er women up with us because we’re going onwards and forwards. 

Network is the thing I want to— If I had to sum up the Girls In Armor move­ment with one word, it would be ​“net­work.” It’s that sup­port sys­tem. It is that under­stand­ing of the oth­er per­son­’s strug­gle. Being sort of mar­gin­al­ized as a woman in Danish larp because there aren’t so many, I can see that it’s chang­ing now. There are so many more vis­i­ble women doing so much more awe­some stuff. I’m not say­ing that we did it. But I’m say­ing that we maybe did some of it. Maybe we encour­aged some­one. I hope so. But we def­i­nite­ly made an effort to change how women are per­ceived, and how women are involved in Danish larp. Thank you.