Top Trumps

The next people  to face the Dragon’s Breath are a young man from Swindon [pause for sneer], called Bobbie and a young woman from Middlesbrough called Al – he’s the one with the spiky red hair and the nose-ring and she’s the one with the forked beard and the wooden leg, just in case…. Together they run a start-up called ‘Unicorns’ and they are here today to present their idea and, hopefully, get some of the dragon’s gold if they can survive the fire.

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Right, tell us what you’ve got

OK, we’ve developed a new game called “Intersectionality”

Stop right there. You’re never going to sell a game with a name of – how many syllables?

Ah think itsa seexa

Nay, it’s siven

Anyway, a name that no one can pronounce and no one understands. I’m out

Well, ye’d better tell us what it’s aboot

Right. It’s a card game in which each card in the deck is identified with a victim of capitalist, imperialist and western oppression

Victims of people like us you mean

Ha ha. In fact, people like you feature in the game – white, male, heterosexual, obscenely rich – as the lowest denomination cards

I admire your cheek. Reminds me a bit o’ maself when I was your age. Carry on

Each person is dealt a hand of three cards. Each card will have a different victim status with a different oppression value in the victim hierarchy – such as Black, Asian, Muslim, immigrant, woman, gay, trans, lesbian, disabled, etc. The idea is to get the hand with the highest victim status. You can discard low value cards – such as white, male, cis-gender – and pick up extra cards.

I ‘ave a question. ‘Ow is-a thees different to cards?

Ah think he means, canna ye just play wi’ regular cards and imagine it?

No, that would be to buy into the imperialist values and system of ordering and categorising, championed by the white male patriarchy

Huh. I have a practical question; if you are not giving the cards a number value, how do you decide who has the biggest victim status?

The status is decided by whoever is considered the most oppressed at any time

And who decides that?

The players do

I mean, how do you decide if a black lesbian is higher in victim status than a disabled trans woman?

You don’t. Trans trumps everything

There’s no game in that lassie. If all you need to do is find out who has the winning card, you don’t need any rules

That’s right. Rules are part of the oppressive moralistic tropes of the Western capitalist society.

Aye, well it’s the money o’ this capitalist ye’re after, so I’m oot.

This is a stupida game. Noboddy’s a-gonna play this game. I’m outta

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Well, Intersectionality is clearly not going to catch on. Next up, Dylan from Swansea [pause for sneer] has a game called “Equity” in which all properties [squints] “As part of the spoils of private ownership expropriated by the masses” have the same price and everybody ends up with the same money at the end of the game….

By Don Trubshaw

Don Trubshaw is a co-founder of the website Societal Values. He has a PhD in the philosophy and sociology of education and teaches in Higher Education.

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