Sick of ‘sexist’ playing cards, woman creates genderless pack
Source :-Newzee
Indy Mellink, a Dutch card fan, was explaining a game to her cousins last summer when she asked herself: why should a king be worth more than a queen?
The 23-year-old psychology student, encouraged by her father, decided it was time to break with the centuries-old tradition of sexual inequality in playing card decks that rank men above women.
"I was going through the explanation of the card game I just thought of and I was saying 'ok, yeah, standard role: king above queen above jack', you know, and suddenly when I said that sentence I was like, wait, what am I actually saying? I am just saying that the king is worth more than the queen and the queen is worth more than the jack," she said in an interview.
After a lot of trial and error, she designed a genderless deck in which the images of a king, queen and jack were replaced with gold, silver and bronze.
Friends and family snapped up the first 50 decks of "GSB" cards, which have images of gold bars, silver coins and a bronze shields. Mellink ordered more and began selling them online.
Within a few months, Mellink said she mailed off around 1,500 packs, including orders from Belgium, Germany, France and the United States.
Some 70 kilometres away from there, members of the Dutch Bridge Association were split about Mellink's creations.
"It is good that we reflect on gender neutrality, but I wonder how many people, while they are playing cards, have thought about the fact that the king is worth more than the queen," said Berit van Dobbenburgh, head of the Dutch Bridge Association, while playing a hand with the new cards.
"I have been playing bridge for 36 years now and I never heard that somebody, a woman or a jack would feel undervalued," said Hans Kelder, the association's technical director.