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

[ajanders]

Shilsen, the answer is simple.

You and your girlfriend will just have to start running a D&D "Arcane Female" campaign.

All characters are female and use the arcane power source. Any race applies.
Monsters must be either flammable or fit inside a tendriculos.

I'll look for the Story Hour.

Seriously.

The sexism you're decrying is not part of the D&D rules: it's part of the D&D setting and players.
Greyhawk and the Realms are sexist because they date back to the 70's: given the cultural baggage of the 70's, I'm grateful they retained sexism and not bell-bottoms and platform shoes: I acknowledge that opinions differ.
That sexism has been retained because nobody really wanted to blow up Greyhawk and the Realms to satisfy some poorly defined notions of gender equity.

Eberron was fresh-written by much more enlightened people in a new century, so it's much more gender equitable and presumably makes gaming more attractive to people of both genders. Wait another thirty years and someone might write a setting you feel appropriately balances both genders.
(By then, of course, we'll be post-singularity and the emergent AI's will be complaining about the treatment of warforged. I look forward to being dead by then.)

All I really can say at this point is that if you want a setting that treats females to your tastes, you'll clearly have to build it yourself and release it into the Internet. If five billion people download it and start playing D&D because of it, Wizards will either buy it from you or cease and desist you for violating their license arrangements.
I don't believe that will happen: I believe if there was a vast audience of people looking to play the female friendly fantasy of Mercedes Lackey, Blue Rose would be a booming game and and Green Ronin would be the leading FRPG company of the industry.
That's not my understanding of the reality of the FRPG industry today.

[Obryn]

Originally Posted by Korgoth

....

So do you usually find parodying people you don't agree with productive to a discussion?

-O

[shilsen]

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

Could it be that the way fantasy art portrays women is part of the problem?

Definitely, in my estimation.

A few years ago I knew a young woman who was a really good artist. She, too, while being rather the tomboy, portrayed females the usual, sexy looking way in her fantasy art. She did this because everyone else did it.

I'm not surprised. That's one of the issues I have with the "but women are doing it so it's not sexist" argument. People tend to reinforce the status quo in most fields, and if the status quo is sexist, whether you're male or female it's easy to end up being sexist too.

I may be wrong, because the same type of art is on book covers and those books are bought by females.

I don't think you're wrong. Just because you buy a book doesn't mean you have to like the cover. I obviously think a lot of fantasy art is lousy. But I still play D&D. I just also start a thread and bitch on ENWorld

But I can imagine non-artist females may not bother to look beyond the outward appearance of some fantasy in general, and especially RPGs where still more men play.

Quite possibly.

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

Yeah true. However, girls ARE more sensitive about their appearance. I'm not sure if this is only due to the media, but it certainly plays a part.

Agreed. I touched on this earlier in the thread, when someone mentioned discrimination based on appearance. That absolutely exists in our society, but it impacts women far more often.

I would much rather see an rpg where the average sized, average looking PC of either gender can be as much or even more the hero than the pimped up supermodel fighter

Same here. And I'm not just saying that because 5 ft 4 inch tall Indian men lget no love in fantasy art

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

Now that you mention it... I never paid attention to that.

I think a lot of people don't think twice about it, esp. in places where being Caucasian is seen as normative.

Maybe the market was originally aimed at caucasian people? Or maybe it is just because the artists were white. We tend to portray ourselves in our art, as i have noticed.

A combination of both factors, I think.

[Ariosto]

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?

The sexual stereotype above is inherently sexist -- albeit actually reflective of broad demographics -- but not the game itself. Likewise, there is nothing inherently sexist about a bare breast, but in some societies there is a sexist taboo that makes it improper.

That the morality of a game with such a premise is not controversial, but that perceived sexism associated with it is, would in some quarters seem a pathological inversion of priorities.

The 1E urban encounters table includes harlots for the same reason as beggars and brigands; drunks and demons; gentlemen and goodwives; laborers and lycanthropes; and so on. Like the whole of AD&D, it was a reflection of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign -- which in turn reflected, through a personal lens, the genre of sword-and-sorcery and planetary romances. The city depicted is one not too strange to a reader of Leigh Brackett, Robert E. Howard or (perhaps above all) Fritz Leiber, whose Lankhmar bore some resemblance to the Los Angeles he knew.


Human evil, evil by desire and deed, is a central theme in the sources. They are rather short on fantastic monsters "color-coded" as Existentially Evil. There are predators that would treat adventurers as prey, which is to the latter an inconvenience -- but not a matter of morality. Greed, hatred, and all the other sins that produce injustice in the world pertain to people; and most of the people in the world are as human as any in ours (without even the distinctions of pointed ears or hairy feet).

The suggestion in this day and age that a historical fiction need be bowdlerized for the sake of feminine sensibilities would, I think, be obviously patronizing -- and obviously ignorant of the contents of "romance novels".

I do not see that such an element in the basic rules text is necessary. There was no urban encounter table in the original set. More to the point is that 4E (unless I missed them) seems to provide not even underworld and wilderness encounter tables.

On the other hand, I have but a little patience for those who (in any of a number of areas) embark on crusades to make D&D officially something else. There are plenty of somethings else from which to choose, and there is as much room for more as there is real demand for something different.

[Canis]

This is all very aside from the point, but I guess it underlines how pervasive these problems are even in the places that are supposed to be "above" sexism, so here we go....

Originally Posted by Dannyalcatraz

Now that confuses me...I'm the grandson of 2 graduate profs, I've been through a few graduate programs (and graduated from 2), I can't say I've seen institutional sexism there in any greater force than elsewhere in our society.

What you seem to be describing isn't so much the school, but in the field the school is supposedly preparing you for.

There isn't really a clear line between graduate school and academia (not in the research institutions my wife and I graduated from, at any rate). I guess I should have said "academia" instead of graduate school, because it's really just as much about the post-graduate period as it is about the environment in school.

My wife and I both melted down and exited with Master's degrees, and she is in the process of getting a second master's in a different field. Before I became a grad student, I worked in technical and writing capacities in academia... and I'm back there now. We have been all up in for a while. And it is quite sexist. Her first field was the classic "good ol' boys" applied nonsense. There are about 2-3 departments in the country where you can be a woman and be evaluated fairly alongside men for any position, and forget about tenure. Mine was just the usual run of the mill "try to get tenure before your ovaries give out" nonsense that billd91 touched on. But when the average number of post doctoral fellowships before professorship continuing to rise at a ridiculous rate, time is not on your side.

Of course, baby-making isn't currently on our agenda at all, so those issues didn't keep us up at night. In my case, working with neuroscientists and psychologists who couldn't keep their bias (gender and otherwise) out of their experimental design sort of flipped my switch. And my wife's was flipped by a combination of factors, including dreadful communication and obstructionist behavior from everyone involved, academically and socially. A desire to get married was seen as a distraction from her work and she was castigated for it, especially by other women (for that extra bit of sickness). I can't imagine what they would have done if we'd been talking about procreation.

Furthermore, the vast majority of the successful women we knew in academia had given up a lot more to get where they were. The politics-as-usual really reinforce a male gender role, even in fields where they allegedly understand those social dynamics.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

The suggestion in this day and age that a historical fiction need be bowdlerized for the sake of feminine sensibilities would, I think, be obviously patronizing -- and obviously ignorant of the contents of "romance novels".

D&D isn't based on historical fiction, all the books in the DMG 1e appendix are speculative fiction. Conan lives in a world that never existed, likewise Cugel, Elric and the Gray Mouser.

[billd91]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

It's the default mode of play. It's by far and away the most strongly supported by the rules. The classes are all good at killing things, or assisting in killing. The DMG has extensive rules for making dungeons and (prior to 4e) lots of space devoted to magic items. The MM is nothing but monsters to kill.

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

The default mode of play used to revolve around individual characters taking on missions to support medieval armies. It also used to revolve around exploration as much as killing creatures and taking their stuff, as well as establishing strongholds and attracting followers. But limiting D&D to killing things and taking their stuff requires looking at D&D through a pretty narrow lens.

The DMG used to include substantial rules for building castles and finding expert hirelings to work there. And the Monster Manual included monsters that could be encountered in quite a variety of ways, perhaps for alliance and cooperation, maybe advice, and not always with hostility.

If D&D now truly has become a smash and grab game and that fails to appeal to female players, then you're basically saying WotC's efforts to gender-neutralize the rules is tilting at windmills. I'm not convinced that's the case because I'm not convinced that women aren't attracted to the smash and grab game from time to time. But then, I'm convinced that D&D is far more than that... or used to be.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally Posted by billd91

But then, I'm convinced that D&D is far more than that... or used to be.

I see all the editions as pretty similar in this respect. 2e got furthest away from it but it was still the default. You mention exploration as a big part of the game, sure, but I don't see "finding things, killing them and taking their stuff" as expressing a majorly different concept than "killing things and taking their stuff". Strongholds were never strongly supported, outside of Birthright which actually does have a different default mode of play than the core rules.

[Dannyalcatraz]

Originally Posted by billd91

Some graduate programs are grueling in the number of hours they require the student to put in. Hundreds of pages of effective reading, classes to teach, hours in the lab, and so on, every week. And this is right around the time a lot of people start to have families as well. And as far as society has come, the underlying assumption is that the mother will be the primary parent to take off time - first for prenatal care, maternity leave, when the kids get sick, the whole 9 yards. How compatible is that with some of the more grueling graduate programs out there? Are the expected workloads for those programs geared toward society's view of the male parent role? If so, that's some institutional sexism right there and you can certainly expect more female drop-outs as a result.

Graduate programs of any kind are not for the weak. My Dad (an MD) knew at least one fellow in his program who had a psychotic break.

Personally, I watched people take up smoking, become alcoholics, and saw someone pass out babbling at the Tx Bar exam.

Another buddy of mine was taking the Cali Bar exam in another location when another person had a heart attack...and only 2 people stopped to render CPR. They weren't given extra time to complete the test until there was a public outcry.

My MBA program was only marginally better.

And into that kind of pressure cooker you try to start a family? Not the best of ideas.

However, I will say that of those people I knew personally, the primary childrearing was usually shared. The students were in a grind, yes, but none of their working spouses had significantly more time either. When serious time binds for one cropped up, the other picked up the slack...and vice versa.

Probably an artifact of the modern American family and changing expectations...

The one common difference I did notice between the grad students of varying genders was that when the Mom was the student, the Dad and kids got a crash course in what she did around the house. Daddy students rarely seemed to have any house-crucial tasks to spread around- though there may have been some "honey-do" type things that didn't get mentioned (IOW, Mom gets to fix the wobble in the table, and the kids do the yardwork, not Dad).

As for compatibility with the family lifestyle, I'm seeing more and more programs adopting significant numbers of online classes, and some have abandoned a graduation schedule completely. You take classes at your own rate.

For instance, Texas Weslyan Law School in the D/FW area is set up specifically for working adults. Most, if not all, of their classes are in the afternoon or night. AFAIK, they don't even ask for students to graduate between in 3-5 years.

But the grind is still there.

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by billd91

If D&D now truly has become a smash and grab game and that fails to appeal to female players, then you're basically saying WotC's efforts to gender-neutralize the rules is tilting at windmills. I'm not convinced that's the case because I'm not convinced that women aren't attracted to the smash and grab game from time to time. But then, I'm convinced that D&D is far more than that... or used to be.

I agree with this a lot...

Seems some people are being reductive about D&D in order to justify the male-centrism. Just the fact that people play so differently means that no one can pigeonhole D&D as a "smash and grab" activity, or (referencing some earlier arguments) something that is too "mathematical!!!" for the typical woman to enjoy.

[resistor]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

My point is, these things aren't interchangeable, since one gender has historically been subordinated to the other in many areas, including gaming. Think of it this way (and I'm not trying to play oppression olympics, just trying to intellectualize the issue): you (hopefully) wouldn't call Black History Month racist, or Women's History Month sexist. Because... well, every other month is about the pursuits of white men.

Actually, I have an issue with the idea behind BHM and/or WHM: they claim that some people's "differentness" is more important than other people's "differentness." I don't begrudge the existence of BHM/WHM per se, but I do resent the implication that certain heritages are more deserving of recognition than others.

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? So, why don't I have my Scottish heritage month? What about Southern pride? (OK, I knew people growing up for whom every day was Southern pride day, so that one might be a bit moot...) What about Catholics-in-the-USA?

I am white. I am male. But that is not who I am. I, too, have heritages that are part of my identity, and resent the implication that they're not important.

[Ariosto]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

D&D isn't based on historical fiction, all the books in the DMG 1e appendix are speculative fiction. Conan lives in a world that never existed, likewise Cugel, Elric and the Gray Mouser.

Do you mean to derive some conclusion from that observation?

To make plain my own point: I see no reason for a double standard.

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by ajanders

Shilsen, the answer is simple.

You and your girlfriend will just have to start running a D&D "Arcane Female" campaign.

All characters are female and use the arcane power source. Any race applies.
Monsters must be either flammable or fit inside a tendriculos.

I'll look for the Story Hour.

Joking or not, that's a ridiculously rude and patronizing response.

The sexism you're decrying is not part of the D&D rules: it's part of the D&D setting and players.

And guess what? It's problematic. Hence the post. I don't know why some responders keep mentioning the mechanics and rules: we know they aren't sexist. But what you mentioned is, and that's not okay.

Greyhawk and the Realms are sexist because they date back to the 70's: given the cultural baggage of the 70's, I'm grateful they retained sexism and not bell-bottoms and platform shoes: I acknowledge that opinions differ.
That sexism has been retained because nobody really wanted to blow up Greyhawk and the Realms to satisfy some poorly defined notions of gender equity.

Well, if WotC wonders why it isn't attracting new players, I guess they can look towards "nobody" (which, funnily enough, narrowly includes people that have already been playing the game for awhile) not wanting their escapist fantasy game to cater equally to both sexes. I am younger than the average person here, and it's really jarring to play in settings that, for no rhyme or reason, are disproportionately male with regards to the pantheon (which barely has any historical justification, as even super sexist Greeks had interesting female goddesses in near equal proportions, both minor and major) and the leadership. It. Is. Dated. It is also implicitly sexist. Both are bad. Admitting to the former and making it seem like a good, awesome thing doesn't make the latter okay all of a sudden.

All I really can say at this point is that if you want a setting that treats females to your tastes, you'll clearly have to build it yourself and release it into the Internet.

So giving equal gender representation and encouraging better player attitudes towards females requires a new setting? Even as a female, my desire game wise is the same as many guys - I just don't think it makes sense to treat a particular gender unequally in something that should serve as an escapist, fun activity for everyone.

[billd91]

Originally Posted by resistor

Actually, I have an issue with the idea behind BHM and/or WHM: they claim that some people's "differentness" is more important than other people's "differentness." I don't begrudge the existence of BHM/WHM per se, but I do resent the implication that certain heritages are more deserving of recognition than others.

But you have to realize, and this is what a lot of the backlash against BHM and WHM misses (in many cases, intentionally), is that the history of the US has made these very differences critical, far more critical in the long run than the differences between most European ethnic groups most often lumped together as "white". That's why these particular differences matter and are called out in specialty history months.
There's all sorts of diversity out there, not just gender and racial. But some have been more important to the development of the US and are more relevant today than others. And these are the ones that require the extra attention.

[Proserpine]

Originally Posted by resistor

I am white. I am male. But that is not who I am. I, too, have heritages that are part of my identity, and resent the implication that they're not important.

Hello there. I was expecting for someone to take issue with that. My response would be way too political and get into some fancy feminist and race rhetoric, which isn't really appropriate for this forum. So I'll leave my response to this: even if I disagree, thanks for phrasing that so politely.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally Posted by Proserpine

Seems some people are being reductive about D&D in order to justify the male-centrism.

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.

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

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.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

I think Shilsen's call for more equal numbers of male and female NPCs... is quite reasonable

Heh... that's because you're not the guy who has to create a whole bunch of new, and hopefully well-characterized female NPC's for shil's campaign.

At least I'll have help .

[S'mon]

Originally Posted by Lwaxy

And if I had a daughter, she likely would have inherited my obesity and would be overweight in her teenage years. I very much doubt that some ideal weight characters would hold much appeal.

I've known obese male and female players, none of them ever had any interest in playing obese PCs. A PC may be an idealised self, or completely different, but most people play RPGs for escapism, not to replicate their own problems. I don't get the impression that female players have a problem with idealised depictions of female form in RPG art. Some don't like male-gaze sexualised depictions, which is a different issue.

[S'mon]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

But is it true that women don#t enjoy these power fantasies, too? Is making a general assumption on this not potentially sexist?

Many do enjoy them - my wife, for instance. She'll happily hack through a high level Neverwinter Nights module*. Conversely, my mother in law is of the opinion that women are inherently peaceful and mild, if they were in charge they would never start wars, etc. Both strands are common in feminist thought - "women are just like men" and "women are better/more peaceful than men". Neither is wholly true - that's the problem with generalisations. But it less common for women to enjoy fantasies of violence and power.

For all that,lots of women clearly do play and enjoy D&D, including hack & slash D&D. IME the RPG genre least attractive to female gamers is crunch heavy military sf like Traveller, especially Traveller: The New Era.

*She still has a strong interest in designing the fashion of the clothes her PC wears, though.

[shilsen]

Originally Posted by ajanders

Shilsen, the answer is simple.

You and your girlfriend will just have to start running a D&D "Arcane Female" campaign.

All characters are female and use the arcane power source. Any race applies.
Monsters must be either flammable or fit inside a tendriculos.

I'll look for the Story Hour.

I'll assume you're being facetious here. And nobody, not even me, would suggest that a campaign should be all Luna all the time. That way lies madness.

Seriously.

The sexism you're decrying is not part of the D&D rules: it's part of the D&D setting and players.

Proserpine's already commented on the above, so I'll just say that's precisely what my original post is about. I just think that can change and is slowly changing, a setting like Eberron being a case in point.

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.

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.

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've had more than a few people comment on that before, face to face and on forums. I think Eberron very explicitly moving away from the faux-medieval setting approach was very helpful to that end.

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.

That's a possibility, but I think it's possible it could be made to appeal more - or be less exclusionary - than it does now.

Originally Posted by Mallus

Heh... that's because you're not the guy who has to create a whole bunch of new, and hopefully well-characterized female NPC's for shil's campaign.

No pressure.

At least I'll have help .

I presume you're referring to Rolzup, but I'll obviously chip in there. And had started doing so in-game well before this thread, actually. It's just that you two do way more interesting NPCs than me.