Abstract
This chapter presents the board game Let’s Come Out and explores its effectiveness in dealing with the issues of gender and sexual orientation stereotypes. Conceived in the Italian context, where the idea of male and female as “the only family” is still deeply rooted in common sense and same-sex civil unions were only recently legalised, Let’s Come Out faces a particularly critical and problematic topic. Tackling the issues of gender and sexual orientation stereotypes, it creatively distrusts the norm of binarity and heteronormativity, inspiring players to reflect on labels and prejudice biases. With the support of an empirical, multidisciplinary investigation, the authors explore whether and how players were able to take advantage of the spaces of openness that Let’s Come Out encourages.
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Bertolo, M., Mariani, I., Gargano, C. (2018). Let’s Come Out! On Gender and Sexuality, Encouraging Dialogue, and Acceptance. In: Harper, T., Adams, M., Taylor, N. (eds) Queerness in Play. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6_12
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