Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

Eltab · Jun 7, 2018

Bagpuss said:
I think there is enough evidence that if you want to include a PoC in any historical RPG set in Europe you can probably come up with an excuse for it.

Shakespeare wrote Othello as a Moor, and gave him a (brief) backstory.

He also wrote everybody else commenting on the fact that Othello WAS a Moor, to the point that reading it is repetitious. But if the actor playing the part wasn't Moorish (so no visual cues provided), the reminders make sense.

Were I producing the play today, I'd look for a talented actor who hopefully also looks the part, and remove the comment from all characters except Iago (the villain). Iago's motivation is already murky, and if my audience decides "Iago's not just a selfish conniving manipulator, he's also an all-around jerk" that's OK by me.

Bagpuss · Jun 7, 2018

Eltab said:
But if the actor playing the part wasn't Moorish (so no visual cues provided), the reminders make sense.

You really don't think they wouldn't have used blackface back then? They still use it today in parts of Europe to represent Moors.

Eltab · Jun 7, 2018

Bagpuss said:
You really don't think they wouldn't have used blackface back then? They still use it today in parts of Europe to represent Moors.

I don't know when blackface was first / widely used - before The Bard or after him. Do you have a date (or era)?

billd91 · Jun 7, 2018

Bagpuss said:
That recently got overturned in the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case - although the ruling was very narrow and doesn't set a precedent. Gay wedding cake ruling reaffirms that businesses can't discriminate something along the lines of an Artist (which the cake decorator in this case is) cannot be forced to make something they object to.

Well, that's a wrong reading. They overturned nothing about the rules governing discrimination against gays looking to buy wedding cakes. The decision affirmed the rights of gays to not be excluded. What the case was decided on, very narrowly, was the prejudicial attitude of the commission toward the baker's religious objections to making a cake for a gay wedding. It wasn't about artistry - it was ultimately about procedure. It's more akin to a convicted criminal having their conviction vacated because the court followed inappropriate procedure - such as a judge issuing blatantly biased instructions to a jury.

Bagpuss · Jun 7, 2018

Eltab said:
I don't know when blackface was first / widely used - before The Bard or after him. Do you have a date (or era)?

All the references I can find seems to point to Othello being played in blackface by a white actor from it's inception, and that it was common even before then.

http://black-face.com/blackface-history.htm - No references unfortunately. So could be entirely made up, but this podcast discussing it has images of blackfaced actors from the 18th century.

Dannyalcatraz · Jun 7, 2018

What the case was decided on, very narrowly, was the prejudicial attitude of the commission toward the baker's religious objections to making a cake for a gay wedding.

And by my reading of that case, even that was a supreme (NPI) stretch. Some of the statements quoted by The Court as exemplars of hostility were actually demonstrably provable statements of fact.

I will also note that legal experts on the left and the right- even those on Fox’s payroll- have basically said it was a dangerous case. That case could be taught in future ConLaw classes as historically bad.

Lanefan · Jun 7, 2018

Riley37 said:
But before we go much further into the details, remember that this is a multi-national discussion, run from Canada, and the rulings of courts in the USA are not everyone's context.

Nitpick: unless Southampton somehow recently underwent a very significant relocation, this is actually run from the UK.

Which does raise an interesting question: it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of what countries ENWorlders are from. It's pretty obvious the large majority are from the US, but after that...?
[MENTION=52905]darjr[/MENTION] , got any stats on this?

And it's relevant not just for quasi-political discussions like this. In quite a few gaming discussions recently I've been noticing* significant trends by area or region, one example being that tables in the UK seem to use minis/grids much less than tables in North America.

* - though this may simply be a badly-failed perception and-or interpretation check on my part...

Lanefan

Sunseeker · Jun 7, 2018

Riley37 said:
That depends on what each of us wants from TRPG. You, with your goals, don't have that need. But you have no authority on what Hussar wants and needs, nor on what I want and need.

If Hussar's fullest enjoyment of TRPG includes visualization of the party, and not just treating them as abstract statblocks, then I wish Hussar luck in finding fellow gamers who are willing to play with that level of detail and visualization. If he enjoys D&D better with a hand-drawn illustration of each PC, then that too is his way. If you do not share his way, then leave it to him, but don't tell him what he does or doesn't need from gaming, eh?

I wasn't suggesting that Hussar didn't need to know it. I was suggesting that non-rule-based visuals are an optional extra.

darjr · Jun 7, 2018

Here are the top 10 geo for an unspecified time frame.

aramis erak · Jun 8, 2018

Bagpuss said:
Does that really put you off playing someone that doesn't share your own gender/ethnic/sexuality identity?

Gender/SI? ABSOLUTELY DOES.

getting it "wrong" often results in accusations of parody or even hate. Far far more often than mild ethnic does. And at least as often as not, by persons not of that identity.

People see and understand ethnic stereotypes of the milder versions as simplifications of truths, rather than parodies.

And, let's be honest, pretty much ANY ethnic identity is built around adhering to certain stereotypes/archetypes.

Comfort withcross gender characters based on your gender

Comfort with cross gender characters based on your gender

I am male and am uncomfortable with cross gender characters

I am male and am indifferent to cross gender characters

I am male and am comfortable with cross gender characters

I am female and am uncomfortable with cross gender characters

I am female and am indifferent to cross gender characters

I am female and am comfortable with cross gender characters

Eltab

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Bagpuss

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Eltab

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darjr

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aramis erak

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