D&D 5E 5e's new gender policy - is it attracting new players?

[Celtavian]

See, on the one hand, you have a point - most of the women I know, put up against an equivalently trained and fit man, would have a hard time of it. On the other hand, the extremely key words in that sentence are equivalently trained. I know one or two women (and know of quite a few more) who could disassemble any man I've ever personally met without breaking a sweat. Not because they're big Amazonian types, but because they know exactly what they're doing and aren't afraid to take swift, violent action to defend themselves if they feel the need.

So I don't really struggle at all with female adventurers in gaming, for instance, even in my most gritty and non-magical games - that's perfectly real to me, that a woman can and will kill the hell out of you (almost) as efficiently as an equivalently trained man. And once you move into the world of ranged weapons or endurance fighting, even that physical comparison you're talking about gets pretty muddy.

Most women, because of cultural programming and general environment, don't learn these things. We spend our whole lives being told that we're fragile, delicate creatures that can't compete with men physically and that our best response to a threat from a man is to run or scream for help, not to crush his throat or put a sharp object through a major artery. The main barrier to effective women warriors has always, always been access to training and the social expectation that violence is an exclusively male passtime.

It isn't true. Height and reach and muscle mass count, but training and the willingness to put your opponent on the ground or six feet under it count for a lot more.

You're speaking of the modern world. It's much easier to justify in the modern world. The old world didn't have birth control, weights, martial arts training, and the like with the same availability as the modern day. Women had to protected for the survival of the species. It you allowed women to fight any mass scale, you risked the survival of your entire group. It takes nine months for a human woman to produce a child, protecting them like treasure was the job of the male for the survival of the species. That isn't just socialization. The modern day is so soft and protected, they have no idea what the world would look like if we lost women on a mass scale. It would be an incredibly ugly world with males killing each other for the right to breed with the few remaining females. Females would be hidden away and protected again because the survival of the species would depend heavily on female survival.

Females are far more valuable to the survival equation than males. Males can complete their part of reproductive process quickly and be back ready to kill in a short period of time. Females are at risk for nine months. Severe damage to a female even early in the reproductive process can lead to the death of the offspring. Our ancestors understood this biology. They built societies and rules to take this into account including ensuring the survivability of the female by keeping them as far away from war time activities as possible.

How do I take into account this biological reality and yet write realistic ancient societies with female warriors given the cost of losing a large number of females in war is the destruction of your entire society due to an inability of the group to reproduce? The only way I could come up with is write in exceptions or toss out societal conventions created due to biological pressures.

How do you view the biological value of a female in the reproductive process? If you were to discard your modern ideas of gender, and instead look at the biological value of each gender, what would logic dictate you do if one gender requires nine months (more if you take into account the weaning process) to complete the biological process and the other a few minutes?

 

[rollingForInit]

(and this is with Star Trek, as forward thinking as it is on many topics).

Is it, though? I mean, most people want and would benefit from the utopia of future earth. Honestly, it feels a bit like how I imagine some D&D tables are like. It's all good and progressive in theory, but doesn't really touch on the progressive subjects. Given how progressive Star Trek is supposed to be, it's embarrasing how little has been mentioned about sexual orientation. There was that one TNG episode with the alien that might've been transsexual, but other than that ...

So a bit like D&D. The settings are generally progressive, the universe in theory supports it, then it's up to the tables to include it if they want. Some will, and some won't.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The settings in question are not set in the ancient world. Rather they're based on the ancient world, and rather loosely at that. Having gender be less of a factor in a world where power can be obtained in a variety of ways doesn't seem far fetched.

Especially not when compared to many of the other elements of the setting.

 

[seebs]

It's hard to write female characters, especially as warriors in the ancient world. Men are so physically dominant. In a world where physical power is power, it's hard to write females as being able to actively pursue power in that type of world other than to marry and manipulate it. It's just easier to toss out the physical power difference in genders and write females as males reacting in the same aggressively violent manner that allowed men to dominate. I know in my own dealings with females, it's very hard to not feel like you have to treat them with a soft touch since the natural inclination is to protect them from male aggression. It's just so damn hard to write females in an interesting manner. I wish it were easier.

It's actually not nearly that hard, if you're familiar with the history of women as warriors througout basically all of human history. The primary way in which men have been dominant in history is through carefully glossing over the things women did, when writing or summarizing histories. The reason you don't know more about women in combat isn't that women weren't in combat; it's that women were generally not permitted to go to college during a lot of the time when historians were being trained and establishing the basic sources people rely on for their history.

For instance, archeologists used to assume that people buried with weapons were men, from which they concluded that warriors were all men. Then someone had the clever idea of looking at, say, hip bones and things instead of "with or without weapons" and discovered that many people buried with weapons were obviously women.

 

[melichor]

For instance, archeologists used to assume that people buried with weapons were men, from which they concluded that warriors were all men. Then someone had the clever idea of looking at, say, hip bones and things instead of "with or without weapons" and discovered that many people buried with weapons were obviously women.

This I would be interested in learning more about. Can you point me to that study?

 

[seebs]

This I would be interested in learning more about. Can you point me to that study?

Ugh. It'd be hard to find, it went by in passing, and there was some oversimplification in reporting on it. Ah-hah!

Initial reporting was over-enthusiastic.

A lot of people reported this as "half of all viking warriors were women". That's not what the study showed. However, it showed that if you looked at bones instead of burial goods, you got different numbers, because not all people buried with their swords were men.

But there's a huge difference between "women don't fight, women aren't strong enough" and "some warriors are women, even though they are a minority", which is much bigger than the difference between "a minority of warriors are female" and "half of warriors are female".

 

[Celtavian]

It's actually not nearly that hard, if you're familiar with the history of women as warriors througout basically all of human history. The primary way in which men have been dominant in history is through carefully glossing over the things women did, when writing or summarizing histories. The reason you don't know more about women in combat isn't that women weren't in combat; it's that women were generally not permitted to go to college during a lot of the time when historians were being trained and establishing the basic sources people rely on for their history.

For instance, archeologists used to assume that people buried with weapons were men, from which they concluded that warriors were all men. Then someone had the clever idea of looking at, say, hip bones and things instead of "with or without weapons" and discovered that many people buried with weapons were obviously women.

You are incorrect. The problem statements such as yours have is that if the inequality did not exist in the first place, it would have never happened to begin with. If women warriors were as capable as men, they never would have been subject to "glossing" over as you put it. I am very familiar with female warriors for exactly the reason I stated: I'm trying to write them in a realistic manner. I have not found a single society were female warriors were dominant or have conquered or have built civilization. Not one other than the mythical Amazons that have no credible historical evidence.

There are occasional legends of female warriors, but no real standouts on the battlefield. There are a few female war leaders (relative to male war leaders) of note. Boudica and Joan of Arc amongst the most well know. Hind and some other female Arabic tribal leaders. They didn't take up arms. They were the motivational rulers of the tribes. They have had some women that trained to fight and were employed as harem guards or elite bodyguards for kings, but they didn't actually see time on the field and have very few notable forays into combat. The Gaelic people employed female warriors during the early Roman occupation using guerrilla tactics. They proved no match for the Roman soldier.

So no, you can't cover up that much human history. There has been no known or documented civilization where women were dominant in combat or generally used as soldiers. It's very easy to see why when a woman and man square off in physical competition. Even in the modern world when a woman is thrown into physical combat with a high level male athlete her size, she doesn't last long. If she is thrown in against a larger male athlete, she gets destroyed. How do you account for this? Or are you claiming it is due to a lack of skill? That is provably untrue. Men are substantially stronger than women, even women that use steroids. This has been clearly shown in physical competition such as weightlifting and the difference is pretty vast.

This is not to say women have not been denied credit for things they have accomplished. War is not something that allows historical denial. It is brutal. The winner writes the history. If equality ever existed between male and female in the field of warfare, we would not have inequality as you see it today. It would not have been possible to the degree it has occurred worldwide. It goes back to basic biology. The male has a biological purpose that only peace and prosperity has allowed to alter. The purpose is to violently dominate for the purpose of protecting the female. He did not do this due to socialization. It started out as survival. If females couldn't find physically powerful, intelligent dominant males to protect them for the nine months of child birth and additional time weaning, we would have died out long ago. The human male has been so successful at this biological purpose, he now has zero threats to human dominance save for other human males.

A female tribal leader of high station can be buried with weapons. Weapons buried with a body often came from loyal retainers who laid their weapons with the body of the person to show their loyalty to that person. It doesn't mean they were a warrior themselves.

Therein has been the problem. I can find no examples of a female warrior that actually dominated on the field of battle against males. I've found quite a few war leaders and even women that took up arms. But no female Miyamato Musashi, William Marshall, or crazy Viking berserker guy holding bridge against a hundred men until they speared him from the below the bridge after he drove them back alone. I could write a female war leader as the inspirational leader of her group, a queen to serve. I'm looking for more of a realistic Red Sonja. Very hard to find.

 

[seebs]

You are completely missing my point. I didn't claim that women were historically dominant as warriors. I said there were a significant number of women who fought, and did so competently or even expertly. Which means that female warriors are "realistic". You don't have to go to some incredible lengths to write realistic women warriors; they're a historical fact. The claim here is "women who fought competently", not "cultures where absolutely all warfare was dominated by women".

You've shifted the goalposts a ton, and that's not helping. I also note that magic, like technology, radically alters the question.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Ugh. It'd be hard to find, it went by in passing, and there was some oversimplification in reporting on it. Ah-hah!

Initial reporting was over-enthusiastic.

A lot of people reported this as "half of all viking warriors were women". That's not what the study showed. However, it showed that if you looked at bones instead of burial goods, you got different numbers, because not all people buried with their swords were men.

But there's a huge difference between "women don't fight, women aren't strong enough" and "some warriors are women, even though they are a minority", which is much bigger than the difference between "a minority of warriors are female" and "half of warriors are female".

A cautionary note about the interpretation of archaeological evidence:

Just because a person is buried with weapons doesn't mean they regularly fought with them in life. After all, Norse people were also customarily buried in boats or boat-shaped graves, but that doesn't mean they were all sailors. Grave goods often have symbolic or ritualistic value. It would be a mistake to infer a warrior from the presence of weapons. I'm certainly not saying they weren't; I'm saying that's not a conclusion we can safely draw from this evidence. What we can conclude is the Norse saw no incongruity in associating women with weapons.

Personally, I suspect that most of the weapons in women's graves, and also most of the weapons in men's graves, can be attributed to the need for home and community defense. Like how most households in the American Wild West had rifles -- didn't mean either the women or the men were soldiers, but both probably knew how to use them when they had to.

 

[seebs]

Yeah, archeology is full of guesswork. However, there's a fair bit of evidence that there have been female warriors in a whole lot of cultures over time, and the "no women in combat ever" thing is an anomaly, not the default. Certainly, they've been common enough that it shouldn't be hard to write one.