Sexism in D&D and on ENWorld (now with SOLUTIONS!)

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

I think Shilsen's call for more equal numbers of male and female NPCs and non-sexist art is quite reasonable because it would be easy to change and I doubt any male customers would be lost as a result. As an example, I'm a big fan of the Eberron setting and until Shilsen mentioned it I hadn't even noticed it had more balanced gender representation. That shows nothing is being lost, at least for me.

I talked with Shilsen a lot about that. He used BSG as an example of gender equality in media, which essentially plays a similar trick on a largely male audience: they don't really notice the balanced gender representation, and if they do, it's not a negative thing to (most) of them. As you said, I really feel like nothing is being lost.

Vampire demonstrates it's possible to have pictures of attractive, sexy women in an rpg without being sexist.

Right. Women want their fantasy characters to look cool too, and not see artwork that assumes females are for the consumption of men. When it's no longer one-sided sexual objectification, sexism is not a problem.

While I do like the bare midriff on the PHB 4 cover, mostly because it's so contemporary (like the 70s moustaches in 1e art which seem so dated now), showing cleavage, midriff and thigh is going a bit far.

The artwork for 4e isn't too bad. Bare midriffs aren't very contemporary for adult women living in 2009, though. If they were being presented in a contemporary way, they'd all be in tunics or dresses with a pair of leggings. Also, like many other proud and ardent feminists, I don't mind cool, sexy looking women - as long as it's tasteful. Cleavage, midriff, and thigh showing can be cool, but usually that stuff is drawn to titilate men instead. And this kind of goes back to what you originally said. I think guys and women want GOOD artwork, and probably wouldn't felt that they lost anything if the women were less "sexy" and more cool looking.

That said I think D&D has some intrinsic features which means even if those changes are made it will never appeal to women anything like as much as men. For the same reason action movies and shoot-em-up videogames are more popular with men while romcoms and Harlequin novels are more popular with women.

This is kinda a boys are blue, girls are pink type argument. If that was true, then the numbers of women playing videogames wouldn't be consistently rising. And while action movies are marketed towards guys, I've consistently seen lots of women in attendance (if not in equal numbers, then very close). Also, romcoms? Have you watched any Judd Apatow movies? And all the movies that have come out recently that are in the same vein? It's all about the bromance, but with male/female relationships also being an important part of the storyline. I think those movies are tripe, but I also don't like romcoms period.

Anyway, to get back on topic, what I mentioned is somewhat decent evidence (well, in my opinion - you can disagree) that "instrinsic" is a really bad word to use here. What is common for the genders is pretty fluid and heavily influenced by society.

[S'mon]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

The sexual stereotype above is inherently sexist -- albeit actually reflective of broad demographics...

Reality is sexist? I thought only people could be sexist (or racist etc), not facts. It doesn't seem like a good idea to call facts a loaded word like sexist, anyway.

[Dice4Hire]

Originally Posted by Mathew_Freeman

If you are male, then it is not possible for you to make a valid judgement on whether or not there is or is not a problem with sexism in gaming. You cannot experience the same sort of discrimination as women, as you are not one.

I appreciate that the second statement there is going to provoke some comments. I'm happy to discuss this view.

Simply put, this statement is patently false. If you extend this even to obvious levels: racist, political, religious, income level, upbringing, criminal record, etc, you are saying no one can understand anyone else.

It is not necessary to experience something to realize that it is happening, and draw deductions about how it affects people. If so, we had best stop studying history, psychology, sociology etc as we are all such unique snowflakes that no one can understand each other, in your view.

[Dice4Hire]

Originally Posted by Mathew_Freeman

If you are male, then it is not possible for you to make a valid judgement on whether or not there is or is not a problem with sexism in gaming. You cannot experience the same sort of discrimination as women, as you are not one.

I appreciate that the second statement there is going to provoke some comments. I'm happy to discuss this view.

Simply put, this statement is patently false. If you extend this even to obvious levels: racist, political, religious, income level, upbringing, criminal record, etc, you are saying no one can understand anyone else.

It is not necessary to experience something to realize that it is happening, and draw deductions about how it affects people. If the statement above were true, we had best stop studying history, psychology, sociology etc as we are all such unique snowflakes that no one can understand each other, in your view.

[Ariosto]

Originally Posted by S'mon

Reality is sexist? I thought only people could be sexist (or racist etc), not facts. It doesn't seem like a good idea to call facts a loaded word like sexist, anyway.

There is a difference between fact and inference, coincidence and causation, and other things often confused (sometimes willfully) in rhetorical representations of reality.

[S'mon]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

...I also don't like romcoms...

But you were born a man, right?

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

This is kinda a boys are blue, girls are pink type argument. If that was true, then the numbers of women playing videogames wouldn't be consistently rising.

Not strictly true. There could be a "natural" rate of women playing video games that's higher than we are now, but which is still below 50%. Or there could be a shift due to a shift in video game publications (say, less Halo XII and more Wii Sports). Or any number of other things.

I do think that there's a difference in the rates at which men and women like things like action movies filled with explosions and whatnot. I don't view that as any more unreasonable a thing to say than that there is probably a difference in the rate at which boys and girls like stories about ponies. (I know that there's a whole culture v innate traits issue here, I'm not really interested in getting into it since its not relevant at the moment.)

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by S'mon

But you were born a man, right?

Nope. Born with and still in possession of my lady parts.

[S'mon]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

Nope. Born with and still in possession of my lady parts.

Oh, I thought you said upthread you were transsexual/cross-gendered or some such.

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

Not strictly true. There could be a "natural" rate of women playing video games that's higher than we are now, but which is still below 50%. Or there could be a shift due to a shift in video game publications (say, less Halo XII and more Wii Sports). Or any number of other things.

I do think that there's a difference in the rates at which men and women like things like action movies filled with explosions and whatnot. I don't view that as any more unreasonable a thing to say than that there is probably a difference in the rate at which boys and girls like stories about ponies. (I know that there's a whole culture v innate traits issue here, I'm not really interested in getting into it since its not relevant at the moment.)

You are right that it's not strictly true, but I think the change in society (as in, we're less sexist) is a major reason why female participation has been increasing over time.

I think culture vs. innate traits is relevant, so my take on this is influenced by that. As the lovely Jewel put it, "what we call human nature in actuality is human habit"! But yeah, that's just my opinion.

[roguerouge]

Originally Posted by Mathew_Freeman

I need to my hands up and confess to being tired and to making a mistake with my post, for which I apologise.

roguerouge, you sound like you have a great job, and I've clearly riled you. I hope you can accept that it wasn't my intention, and that I've written unclearly.

thanks,

Matt.

XP for you. And, well, grading papers sucks, so that might have been a part of it. That and I've done debate, so I tend to put things in their most forceful manner.

[roguerouge]

Originally Posted by S'mon

Isn't a game about killing things, taking their stuff, and getting more powerful (better at killing things) a game that caters to male power fantasies, and thus inherently sexist? Some women enjoy those male power fantasies of killing and looting themselves, but most don't, and thus are inherently excluded.

This is what I was trying to get at with my question about how "butch" or "tomboy" DnD is in its standard game play assumptions. I'm a tentative yes on this issue, with the caveat that obviously you can use the system to play Diplomacy and Demagogues.

[Lwaxy]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

D&D isn't Call of Cthulhu. It's not Vampire. Both appeal a lot more strongly to women, imo.

I just noticed this comment now. I see a lot more female players into Vampire than males, mostly for the LARPs. But for Cthulhu - nope I only have one female player there, plus one occasionally playing a bit if her friend pushes her. Couldn't find much interest among females on the game fair either. Around here, CoC is an almost exclusively male thing. I wonder why this is.

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

Right. Women want their fantasy characters to look cool too, and not see artwork that assumes females are for the consumption of men. When it's no longer one-sided sexual objectification, sexism is not a problem.

This brings us to one of the complications on the subject of artwork. Last time I was in a discussion of this topic with a bunch of people in-person, one of them piped up to note that she was a lesbian, and how dare we assume that she *didn't* want to see women as sex objects. Another woman chimed in to note that if we were going to have sexy art, she also preferred looking at females, simply because she felt they were prettier, even though she was heterosexual herself, and again, *assuming* what she'd want to see was offensive.

So, you know, the matter of art really isn't all that simple. Some others will say that any "sexy" portrayal, even if there isn't a lot of skin (like, in the often mentioned White Wolf books), makes the pictured individual into a sex object, and showing women so is thus sexist...

Basically, we run into the issue that what people view as sexy/sexist appropriate/inappropriate is not simple at all.

[Scott_Rouse]

I did not read the whole thread but did look at the OP and the commentary on the first page and got an idea of where this was going (the same direction most threads on this subject tend to go) but a couple things stood out to me. I am not sure if any of my comments below were brought up but here is my take on a couple of call outs made by the OP with respect to marketing and the product itself.

Marketing) in the past the marketing as been targeted to males and featured male models in the advertisements etc... This was because D&D has been (and still is) a game predominately played by boys & men. Many data points indicate this is true including RPGA registration, community profiles (forums etc) and Market research. Research aside, our personal experiences have been somewhat different. We know females play D&D. We see this at game day events, we see this at Cons, we see it in our own games. So where are the female gamers and how do we reach them? Every survey I have seen shows the game is played by 95-99% males. Now you can get a false positive on the premise that D&D is game played by males by only surveying males but even in research that does not pre-screen for gender we either can't get a big enough sample of females to be relevant or the data supports the 1-5% female audience size. On the marketing front we have decide to not look at research, go with our guts, and concentrate more marketing at female gamers (and prospective gamers). We do PR outreach with media like Cerise Magazine. Although we have not used live models in an advertisement for several years, going forward when we do real people (vs artwork) it will include at least one female. In fact last year we went through a significant casting process to find suitable female models for use in advertising.

Products & Product Development) Over the years there have been some very notable women that have contributed to the success of the D&D brand including (but not limited to) Laura Hickman, Margaret Weis, Michele Carter, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Julia Martin, Gwendolyn Kestrel, Jean Rabe, & Elaine Cunningham. The current D&D brand team is made up of 8 people, of which three are men (myself included). The VP of Wizards Brand & Marketing (my Grand- Boss) is also a woman. There are many people who work on a book throughout all aspects of the product development process, and a lot of those people happen to be women. I know this sounds a lot like , "I am not a ____ some of my best friends are____" but I just don't see us putting out an inherently sexist product. There are too many women (and men) on the watch for this to happen.

I don't buy the idea that D&D is inherently sexist. Fantasy as a whole has certain tropes that are sexist (EG damsel in distress saved by strapping barbarian) but we go a long way to portray heroic female characters as strong, independent, intelligent, without always pandering to the strong = butch stereotype. The D&D art style in both 3rd and 4th edition has made great strides to move beyond many of the old sexist tropes of fantasy while still maintaining femininity and masculinity where appropriate. Text is written in mixed gender pronouns (his shield or her sword) or gender neutral (their armor). NPCs are a mix of male and female characters as are their depictions in artwork. For example in the yet to be released Eberron Player's Guide on my desk there are 52 pieces of art featuring at least one humanoid. Of those 52 pieces of art, 26 feature at least one female character sometimes in a mixed group and sometimes alone. one note about this book is that it has a number of pieces of warforged art (warforged don't have a gender) depictions so the art is likely greater closer to 50/50. It is my gut that if you did this tally among all 4e books you'd see similar ratios in character depection.

For these reasons among others I just don't buy the OPs premise.

[Bumbles]

Originally Posted by shilsen

Thanks. That's basically what I think, and while I figure a little loss of the existing fanbase in the short term is acceptable for a long term improvement, I don't think that really needs to happen. Hell, look at the way things are shaken up every time a new edition comes out. A more equitable form of the game is hardly as player-shaking as 3.5e or 4e was, and can be done easily enough.

So perhaps a little commentary on what changes have occurred? I actually looked at the core books recently myself, those I have anyway, and the worst example I saw was in the 2nd edition PHB on the page or 7th level Wizard spells....but there was other art which wasn't quite so gratuitous (like the dragon slaying page in the front of the book), and 3e especially struck me as an attempt to be inclusive.

[roguerouge]

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

I'm sure that more girls will have fun with this than get depressed over it, mainly because I cannot see an obese, self conscious girl try this out, or the teenager with the think hair that never looks right (or maybe that is a reason to be depressed as well). I still think the concept has not been thought through to the end. but then, it is based on a book and didn't have that much space to adapt, I guess.

Let's start here. We've got some commonalities between our differing positions. I do think that people will try this game, Witch Girl, out and have fun. As an RPG, I think that it allows MORE room to try out what it feels like to be disenfranchised due one's appearance than popular fiction or films. But I do agree with you that some illustration alterations are in order to facilitate that.

I raised the paganism angle for two reasons: one, I know one of the people at that site rather well professionally and I was confident that the publisher would learn a thing or two from someone politically active in that community who wouldn't reject the concept out of hand. (And we're past the stage of rejecting it out of hand.) Two, increasing traffic from a culture might be good business for the publisher and that was one of the thread's purposes. I thought if they got some guidance from the community, it had to be better than the alternative.

My concern about the lack of evidence was basically because you and I were having foundational disagreements. I do believe that femme gaming CAN be a legitimate form of play, just as butch gaming can be. So, I was looking for you to provide examples of what was setting you off outside of the art direction and the genre. Since you regard it as stereotyping rather than a subset of gender performance, I can now see why you would not feel like this kind of evidence was necessary. I don't agree with you on that, but I at least see where you are coming from.

I think you and I are never going to agree on the validity of gender-separate activities. I think that there's something virtuous about a game that deliberately markets to women in an industry that's so male-dominated (4/5 gamers are men, according to one market survey). I think it's a necessary intermediary step towards parity. You disagree. I believe that you think that I'm being separatist and defeatist because I don't really care about including men who don't gender-bend in their gaming. That's an issue on which reasonable people can agree.

Given that assumption, I'd prefer it if you didn't do this to me or others in the future:

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

Now you keep going on about "not presenting evidence." You should probably have read my posts better then. Do I need to post EVIDENCE in front of it all? Not that it would help much because you'd likely ignore it as not important.

It tends to make for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[rgard]

Originally Posted by S'mon

Oh, I thought you said upthread you were transsexual/cross-gendered or some such.

I think you read 'cisgender' in one of Proserpine's posts. I found it on Wikipedia:

Cisgender - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Cisgender (IPA: /ˈsɪsdʒɛndə˞/) is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual's gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one's sex.[1] Cisgender is a "newer term" that means "someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth."[2] "Cisgender" is used to contrast "transgender" on the gender spectrum.]

My thanks to Proserpine as her post and your response prompted me to look this up...and I learned something!

Thanks,
Rich

[roguerouge]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Every survey I have seen shows the game is played by 95-99% males. Now you can get a false positive on the premise that D&D is game played by males by only surveying males but even in research that does not pre-screen for gender we either can't get a big enough sample of females to be relevant or the data supports the 1-5% female audience size.

Is this a guess or a fact? Is this for 4e only? Sean K Reynolds posted to his web site WotC material pegging 3e's ratio at 4 men for every girl that plays.

Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0 -- Wizards of the Coast

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by resistor

I think the key phrase in your assertion is "the pursuits of white men." I'm going to hypothesize a bit here, but I do not believe that there is a single person in the world the entirety of whose identity is "white man." All those people you refer to as "white men" are American, or English, or Scottish, etc. Or maybe they identify by creed, or by profession, or by region of birth.

My issue with the concept of a unitary group of "white men" is that it implies that they are the default majority on everything, when for any particular is not. Every person is made up of so many different identity elements that the fraction of people who hold the majority identity on every single one is vanishingly small.

Who gets to decide which "heritages" are important enough to get months, and which aren't?

Let me put it this way. If you are black, you do not get to choose if your ethnic heritage is considered important by other people.