Last week my friend Tom and I decided to exchange nerdy hobbies. I would take him to a Live Action Roleplay Game (more on that in another post) and he would take me to an airsoft game.

For those who haven’t indulged, Airsoft is a bit like paintball, except instead of getting splattered with paint you get hit with little plastic pellets (pictured) that are fired really quite fast (I spent the next week or so covered in little red welts and looked like I had lazy measles). The aim is for “realism”, so the guns used are of a similar weight and style to actual military weapons. Finally, if this were not enough excitement for one evening, you can use flares that you throw onto the ground near your opponent. These explode with bright light and a loud bang.

Obviously this is very cool, and equally obviously, it’s a rather boy-heavy activity. Looking for pictures for this post, I put “airsoft” into Google images and the only pictures of women I found were of a pretty blonde lady (titled “booth babe” sadly) at an airsoft gun show. When we arrived at the abandoned shopping centre (I told you it was cool) there were only two women – myself and my friend Kate.

The “safe room” in which we got ready started to fill up with men, most of whom seemed to know each other and started the kind of cameradarie rituals that made me start to reconsider whether this was really a good idea. I have an abiding memory from my childhood of trying to play street football or cricket with the boys who lived on my road and having balls deliberately thrown at my face until I went home, red-faced and in frustrated tears, to parachute My Little Ponies from my bedroom window, imagining my former teammates as the target of my plastic equine revenge. Thus, my brain started to fill with concerns about deliberate assault aimed at exclusion.

Once we’d got our kit and got briefed, we went into the combat area. The group was split into two teams and we spent the evening playing a series of “wargames” like Capture the Flag and similar scenarios with breaks for energy drinks, chocolate bars and hot dogs.

Over the course of the night I started to get a feel for the space and for how the games were played – there are a series of rules on safety and on recognising fellow teammates (a challenge when it’s dark and you’re wearing black). I needn’t have worried about the gender-exclusion problem. Once in the field, with facemask, guns and black camo gear on, the fact that I was a girl stopped being important – or even especially noticeable. Instead the fact that I was a “fae ninja” (not my words, but they kept me grinning for days) who could run really fast and sneak with the best of them meant that I was as challenging an opponent as the next really fast, really sneaky person.

I had an amazing time.

Heart racing, running through darkened corridors, finding cover, rolling out of the way of explosives and even taking command a couple of times.

A memorable moment was drawing out and picking off a few of the opposing team in a corridor, then hiding in a pitch black room, back pressed against the wall as their torchbeams sliced just past me.  Slowly, dreadfully slowly, they hesitantly pushed the door open and entered the space where they believed many shooters lay in wait. And I opened fire. It was a battle that I eventually lost, being horribly outnumbered – but that resulted in a handshake from the other side for giving good game.

Much credit goes to the people running First and Only Airsoft, who made absolutely no concession or acknowledgment of our gender. I felt welcomed and looked after, was given a good briefing on the kit, and felt sure and safe in using the guns. At no point was I talked down to, or treated as in any way different from anyone else who was there to have fun.

Which we did. Bucketloads.