“In the game… the only differences between the two genders are cosmetic.”
I don't believe this is true in real life. I also don't think it is nearly as relevant as some people think it is, as I don't think whether or not the only differences between the genders are cosmetic matters much. That is to say, whether or not the only differences between genders are cosmetic, men and women would still be equally valuable, deserve equal rights before the law, and deserve equal opportunity to pursue their respective happiness. Likewise, whether or not the only differences between the two genders are cosmetic, it says almost nothing about the individual - as my daughter put it just last night, "Just because [the fastest] men are faster than [the fastest] women doesn't mean that you are faster than a girl just because you are a boy." At best, it's really a sort of red herring in the debate, I think, and a debate that if you engage in it all that much mostly in my opinion shows you aren't that comfortable with notions of masculinity or femininity. At worst, it's taking a false pride in someone else's accomplishments as if they were your own, as if somehow sharing a gender with someone made you heir to the glory and success they had achieved. The truth is, we are more individuals than we are members of a group and more different than we are the same, regardless of whether or not statistical trends can be found within groups, and regardless of the origin of those differences. That's the really important debate in my opinion, that technical questions like whether or not there really are no differences between the two genders ignores.
I say its an important debate, but to me it seems as self-evident as the fact that there are more than just cosmetic differences between the genders. But then, people have never been particularly good at acknowledging even self-evident truths.
In any event, that particular debate is one that gaming is taking part in as part of the larger society it is contained within. The particularly ludicrous debate that is particular to gaming as a culture seems to be on whether one is immoral if the societies one explores do not recognize these obvious truths that so often real world societies have managed to ignore. Regardless of the setting there seems to be an enforced egalitarianism you are required to have, lest it reflect on you somehow and not - for example - on historical realities or present difficulties. Beyond that, I'm starting to think that we are reaching a point where our professions of egalitarianism are really just hiding a deep seated discontent with reality, and borders on a pathological hatred of women. It starts to feel after a while as if we are only comfortable with women, if they are in fact men with only cosmetic differences. It would be like suggesting that the best person at being a woman is a man. And I think that comes back to grounding our sense of worth in the wrong things, like this idea of 'equality', which never was in fact the basis of equality. It's not like if someone is faster or stronger than someone else, that we think they have different worth. Unlike an RPG, in the real world the value of a person is not based on the number of points on their character sheet.
To be perfectly honest, this seems like a false debate, ginned up for the purposes of demonstrating one's virtue, like one of those corner evangelists standing on a milk carton box, screaming at everyone, "Sinners go to hell. Repent now!", not because he is particularly concerned about the individuals he is screaming at, or their particular challenges, or out of any sort of real empathy for them as persons, but because he thinks that doing so is good for his own soul, and earns him brownie points. He's just engaged in a show of community service so that he can say he's a good person, and this comes out in the sort of things that they do and say (and how ineffectual they are at achieving their stated purpose). In the same way, I find these repeated debates have almost no bearing on actual gameplay, and they don't organically come up in play, and they aren't even something that anyone is usually interested in exploring when they sat down to play. I don't think that anyone is making nearly as important of a statement as they think they are making by having this or that sort of game with this or that sort of feature. At best, I think it just signals membership in a particular tribe - much the same way that the soapbox preacher is mostly signaling membership in a tribe - and ironically does so in a way that doesn't reflect well on the tribe.
Is the comic itself sexist? The word is so slippery that I honestly don't know. Why do we have the virile sexually aggressive girl character in the comic anyway? Are virile physically and sexually aggressive females really that 'woke' to include in media normally considered to be targeted mostly at young introverted men, or is it in fact entirely unsurprising to find that sort of characterization? What traditional gender roles are on display in the comic, and should we care? What gaming stereotype is on display in the comic and should we be calling it out as destructive rather than treating it as a joke? And that's not to get into the people that are going to argue that the quote at the top is horrible because it thinks that there are only two genders.
Eh, it doesn't matter much. I don't 'deal' with gender and sexuality. They happen to be things that exist. I deal with them like I deal with cruelty, indifference, charity, justice, fairness, poverty, oppression, ignorance, arrogance, sacrifice, deception, tradition, piety, madness, pain, sickness, death, freedom, birth, subservience, childhood, innocence, bullying, war, tedium, power, struggle, and the thousands of other important elements of the human condition that can make up the background or substance of a story. They just are. That's not the same as ignoring them, it's just rarely am I trying to make a statement about them, and rarer still do I want my players or audience to draw some conclusion about what I actually believe from the substance of a fantasy story. Indeed, that's I think fraught with peril, since in my head the point I might be trying to make might not at all be straight forward given the vast differences reality and the fantasy actually have.
