Pub Games and Women - Jem’s Perspective

My parents took me to quite a few pubs when I was younger, but I don't remember playing any games in them because we were too busy eating crisps. I think probably my earliest memories are playing pool in pubs when I was a teenager and just hanging out. 

But when it’s winner stays on and the anxieties around that, if you’re a casual player, the idea of doing the winner stays on thing was horrible, because we didn't want to have to play with some strange old guy who lived there.

I did like pool, but it's a game that a lot of women don't play, although in my social group quite a few others did. I was thinking about it from a physicality perspective, there's some issues with people. Because they tend to find a sort of tight place where they can fit it. There's always this thing about people walking past in the tight space and when you're leaning over the table.

And there's a whole thing about as a woman, if you're wearing a low cut top or not even that low cut and you're leaning over, if there's somebody sitting at sort of chest height, you just feel a bit exposed. 

I mean, yes you've got a great big stick in your hand, but other than that there was something about the physicality of pool tables that I think were not conducive to two young women playing.

If you lean over the pool table, somebody's looking down your top. And if you're having to take quite a long shot, leaning quite far over, your arse is sticking and you're thinking who's going to walk past and grab or slap your arse?

There’s a pub, we used to call it the Swedish, it's really near the Swedish embassy in London. It’s a really nice pub and it's the Swedish pub because it's mostly populated by Swedish people. On the quiz machine there, my brother and I had a really good run on it. We were having the best run and I think we'd basically won about £7 and it crashed, it just crashed and we said give us our money and they were like, no can't help it, we don’t operate the machine. 

I think generally they are very toxic and uncomfortable environments and they are not designed for women or children. But I've been in lots of pubs and have had lots of fun in pubs. I've been there with groups of friends and I've been there where we rented the backroom of a pub and they were awesome. 

The gothy pubs or the metal pubs tend to be the best and tend to have the nicest atmospheres and the least gross people. But I've been in pubs where you couldn’t go to the toilet without having your arse grabbed. It was horrendous and you think of standing up for yourself, but you feel like you can't. You can't say I'm uncomfortable, this is uncomfortable, this is making me feel awkward. Because then you are showing fear and we all know that when you're in a predatory scenario, you do not show fear, so you have to kind of laugh it off.

I definitely was not the kind of person to turn around and slap anyone who touched me. I just did not have the confidence to do that and I wish I had. I used to stick close with my friends, that's why the girls all go to the toilet together. It's not because we want to gossip, it's because it's safety in numbers. 

When I was 18, I worked in a pub and it didn't last very long. It was just a local country pub but we had some really busy weekends when there were big shows on locally, so it was manic and I quite enjoyed that. 

It doesn't matter which pub you go to, wherever it is there is always at least one or two old geezer's who just sit there the whole evening and get drunk and think that your job is to entertain them and to cheer them up.

This pub was no different. It had a few people who didn't do anything, but just intimidated me and then I'd only been there a few weeks. I was literally just 18 and the guy that was the bar manager said he was going home. He said me to lock up and I said no I can't. I just couldn't do it and I had what I now recognise to be an anxiety attack, but back then I didn't realise it. I said I can't do it, I'm not doing it and I refused and they sacked me and that was completely unreasonable of them to do.

He was going to leave me, an 18 year old girl, who's been working in the pub that a few weeks, to kick out the last drunks and to lock the doors and all of that and then walk back to my car and go home at 11:30 at night. Horrifying to think about it.

Gaming the System is a feminist gaming podcast where 4 intersectional feminists examine gaming through a feminist lens. This article is a abridgement of Alex's perspective from our episode on Arcade and Pub Games. If you want to hear more, you can check out the full episode on the links below. Welcome to Gaming the System!

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