Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[Sunseeker]

As should be pretty obvious from the tone of my posts, I prefer the more alien approach to Elves that this change creates. In fact, I will simply assume that all non-Drow Elves have this blessing and it's up to the individual players to decide if they want to do something with it in terms of character development or if their character is quite happy with how things turned out when they reached "adulthood", thanks. The days of Elves simply being the pointy-eared beef/cheesecakes with cool racial abilities/bonuses, but are really just like humans, are gone forever in my games. Male and female elves will default roll on the male height and weight chart unless they indicate they want to use the old chart for some reason.

I will have this in my next game starting later this week and will keep you posted if this thread continues to show interest.

Well I'm interested in a play report. Though curious: are your players familiar with your desire to present a more "alien" elf? Or will your overall presentation (including the Blessing) be fresh to them?

I mean, to add a little context to this whole discussion, it might be helpful for us all to lay our cards out on the table as to how we like the presentation of elves, though that might be something better handled for a whole thread on its own.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I will allow them in a game if a player asks about it.

I've been gaming and running games since the early days on D&D 2E. These days I am less inclined to make my games pedantic and less likely to take rules and settings as proscriptive. I don't need to lecture the players on transsexual issue via elves. But if someone asks about these elves in some capacity, then I will happily allow it. By some capacity i mean, expressing an interest in running such an elf or asking if they exist in the game.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You want alien elves, make alien elves.

In one campaign, “Elves” were actually crashlanded Greys who used chameleon holography tech to resemble super-attractive humanoids (in order to smooth relations with the dominant life form- humans) becoming the elves of folklore, and whose tesseract, stasis & wormhole tech are the basis of legends about the odd geometries and time distortions of Underhill...

 

[superstition]

A few points:

1) "(As gender is a social construct.)"

No. Masculine and feminine are not social constructs. They are the result of humans being quite sexually dimorphic. There are significant differences due to the influence of male and female hormones. What is a social construct is the rigidity of the gender roles. That is where it gets artificial, going over/above the natural differences.

Rigidity = "Boys don't cry", "Men can't enjoy cooking", "Men can't wear pink unless they're gay"

Natural = "Boys like action video games and girls like games where they dress avatars in a variety of neat outfits", "Boys fidget more, especially in school"

I've seen more than enough evidence of that natural example that I am certain it is more than just social programming, although it is true that boys are programmed to "behave like boys", too. Work in an elementary classroom, though, and watch what the two sexes choose to do with their free time when they have iPads. The vast majority of girls choose, without anyone prompting them, to do the avatar customization stuff and the boys choose the action games — even if they're playing solo with no peer involvement. And, boys do fidget more than girls. I've seen it time and time again. They want to be up and moving around. Girls are, as a rule, much more content to be less physically active. Girls are generally more socially polite and thoughtful in elementary school, too (with exceptions, of course). The differences are too common to be all due to socialization.

Of course, there is plenty of overlap between gender stereotypes. However, there are real differences between typical male and typical female behavior based on sex hormones.

2) "Androgynous". Androgyny should be looked at with a grain of salt. Except for chromosome abnormalities, like XXX females and XXY males, true androgyny is almost impossible to find. Now, an XXY male is the closest one can get to it. Also, often enough, the more androgynous-looking men are not more attractive. To me, the bodies of XXY males can have such womanly body shapes that I don't find that attractive at all. It's a matter of taste but masculine males are more common because that's what more women have found attractive enough to reproduce with.

Makeup, hormones, and plastic surgery can make people look more like the opposite sex but that's not the same thing as being naturally androgynous. I've seen some people who are quite androgynous without being XXY or XXX but it's rare and not necessarily more or less attractive, merely different. Being androgynous does not make you more beautiful by default. I know someone who could pass as a lesbian if he were to make some adjustments. However, he is neither as beautiful as women I would call beautiful nor as beautiful as men I would call beautiful.

3) The sexist idea that androgynous males are more beautiful than masculine males. This is based on the heterosexual male point of view that the female body is more beautiful. So, based on that bias, the male that looks the most female is the most beautiful. That is a bias, not a universal fact. Erasing the masculinity erases the maleness, so you're just saying that females are more beautiful in the end. Not everyone shares that particular bias. I was not particularly impressed with Paizo's Arshea due to this. The implication seems to me to be that male beauty has to be "males who look more like women than men" or "males who look really female, androgynous, are the most beautiful". That's either a heterosexual male point of view or the point of view of a transgendered person, or a heterosexual woman, or something. It is not the point of view of most gay men, hence the usually clear dichotomy between bara and yaoi. In Yaoi, males who look more androgynous are considered more attractive. In bara, males who look masculine are considered more attractive. Different biases. Bara males, though, are more true-to-life. Yaoi males tend to be rather alien-looking, stylized.

It is true that people (at least a statistical random sample in America) tend to see male faces with larger eyes, smaller noses, and other features more typically associated with women as being more attractive. Some of this (small noses, for instance) can be cultural bias. However, there is a big difference between being male-looking and attractive and simply looking like a mannish woman. It's complicated to explain but it's too simplistic to simply state that "male faces that look more feminine are more beautiful".

4) "Elves are historically depicted as androgynous." Elfin features are actually representative of a genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome. Whenever you read about the syndrome the faces are described as elfin. I bet folklore came up with the elf look concept, in part, based on this syndrome. The notion that elfin faces are more beautiful than regular human faces is one that I don't agree with. I was just looking at the drawing of the elf and half-elf in the 1e book yesterday and I didn't think either of them looked particularly gorgeous, especially the half-elf male with his bug eyes. I've seen plenty of Williams Syndrome faces. If you ignore their teeth (which are usually not well-formed) I don't think you'll find that their facial shape is more beautiful than a non-Williams non-elfin face. In fact, it's just unusual.

Male faces, in particular, tend to be wide, "flared", especially around the cheeks as I recall — and compressed in height around the eye area. The compression in particular seems to be the most common thing with male faces. The flare/compression runs contrary to the narrowed stretched elfin look. However, it is interesting that the 1e book's half-elf did have a wide face, although with a heart shape jaw.

5) "Elves switching sex is uncomfortable." I can understand why. A person's sex and gender are very strongly related to their core self-concept. I don't think it's transphobia, as someone suggested. I think it's mainly due to it being difficult for us to relate to a creature that doesn't strongly feel/see one sex/gender or the other as being strongly-linked to their core self-concept. It's like a creature that can switch from being old and young when it wants to. That is difficult to relate to. Elves are already quite difficult to relate to because of their very unhuman relationship to mortality and aging. Gaming/gamers have glossed over this difficulty a lot in the way elves have been depicted and behave. In reality, any creature that's as intelligent as an intelligent human that lives that long is going to act very differently than we do, at least the vast majority of us. Mortality, and the brevity of our lives (especially at our physical peak) plays an extremely important role in influencing how we behave and see the world.

Sex/gender switching makes elves even more difficult to relate to, more supernatural. The more supernatural something becomes the tougher it is for us to understand it and feel comfortable with it. The distance between us and it increases the more supernatural it becomes. This isn't a matter of phobia. It's a matter of basic intelligibility. One can more readily understand what is the most familiar. This is why men understand men better than women do and women understand women better than men do. It's why the concept of peers is important. Peers are more similar because of age and such, and thus typically easier to relate to.

Now I have to read the remaining 54 pages.

 

[TheSword]

A few points:

1) "(As gender is a social construct.)"

No. Masculine and feminine are not social constructs. They are the result of humans being quite sexually dimorphic. There are significant differences due to the influence of male and female hormones. What is a social construct is the rigidity of the gender roles. That is where it gets artificial, going over/above the natural differences.

Rigidity = "Boys don't cry", "Men can't enjoy cooking", "Men can't wear pink unless they're gay"

Natural = "Boys like action video games and girls like games where they dress avatars in a variety of neat outfits", "Boys fidget more, especially in school"

I've seen more than enough evidence of that natural example that I am certain it is more than just social programming, although it is true that boys are programmed to "behave like boys", too. Work in an elementary classroom, though, and watch what the two sexes choose to do with their free time when they have iPads. The vast majority of girls choose, without anyone prompting them, to do the avatar customization stuff and the boys choose the action games — even if they're playing solo with no peer involvement. And, boys do fidget more than girls. I've seen it time and time again. They want to be up and moving around. Girls are, as a rule, much more content to be less physically active. Girls are generally more socially polite and thoughtful in elementary school, too (with exceptions, of course). The differences are too common to be all due to socialization.

Of course, there is plenty of overlap between gender stereotypes. However, there are real differences between typical male and typical female behavior based on sex hormones.

2) "Androgynous". Androgyny should be looked at with a grain of salt. Except for chromosome abnormalities, like XXX females and XXY males, true androgyny is almost impossible to find. Now, an XXY male is the closest one can get to it. Also, often enough, the more androgynous-looking men are not more attractive. To me, the bodies of XXY males can have such womanly body shapes that I don't find that attractive at all. It's a matter of taste but masculine males are more common because that's what more women have found attractive enough to reproduce with.

Makeup, hormones, and plastic surgery can make people look more like the opposite sex but that's not the same thing as being naturally androgynous. I've seen some people who are quite androgynous without being XXY or XXX but it's rare and not necessarily more or less attractive, merely different. Being androgynous does not make you more beautiful by default. I know someone who could pass as a lesbian if he were to make some adjustments. However, he is neither as beautiful as women I would call beautiful nor as beautiful as men I would call beautiful.

3) The sexist idea that androgynous males are more beautiful than masculine males. This is based on the heterosexual male point of view that the female body is more beautiful. So, based on that bias, the male that looks the most female is the most beautiful. That is a bias, not a universal fact. Erasing the masculinity erases the maleness, so you're just saying that females are more beautiful in the end. Not everyone shares that particular bias. I was not particularly impressed with Paizo's Arshea due to this. The implication seems to me to be that male beauty has to be "males who look more like women than men" or "males who look really female, androgynous, are the most beautiful". That's either a heterosexual male point of view or the point of view of a transgendered person, or a heterosexual woman, or something. It is not the point of view of most gay men, hence the usually clear dichotomy between bara and yaoi. In Yaoi, males who look more androgynous are considered more attractive. In bara, males who look masculine are considered more attractive. Different biases. Bara males, though, are more true-to-life. Yaoi males tend to be rather alien-looking, stylized.

It is true that people (at least a statistical random sample in America) tend to see male faces with larger eyes, smaller noses, and other features more typically associated with women as being more attractive. Some of this (small noses, for instance) can be cultural bias. However, there is a big difference between being male-looking and attractive and simply looking like a mannish woman. It's complicated to explain but it's too simplistic to simply state that "male faces that look more feminine are more beautiful".

4) "Elves are historically depicted as androgynous." Elfin features are actually representative of a genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome. Whenever you read about the syndrome the faces are described as elfin. I bet folklore came up with the elf look concept, in part, based on this syndrome. The notion that elfin faces are more beautiful than regular human faces is one that I don't agree with. I was just looking at the drawing of the elf and half-elf in the 1e book yesterday and I didn't think either of them looked particularly gorgeous, especially the half-elf male with his bug eyes. I've seen plenty of Williams Syndrome faces. If you ignore their teeth (which are usually not well-formed) I don't think you'll find that their facial shape is more beautiful than a non-Williams non-elfin face. In fact, it's just unusual.

Male faces, in particular, tend to be wide, "flared", especially around the cheeks as I recall — and compressed in height around the eye area. The compression in particular seems to be the most common thing with male faces. The flare/compression runs contrary to the narrowed stretched elfin look. However, it is interesting that the 1e book's half-elf did have a wide face, although with a heart shape jaw.

5) "Elves switching sex is uncomfortable." I can understand why. A person's sex and gender are very strongly related to their core self-concept. I don't think it's transphobia, as someone suggested. I think it's mainly due to it being difficult for us to relate to a creature that doesn't strongly feel/see one sex/gender or the other as being strongly-linked to their core self-concept. It's like a creature that can switch from being old and young when it wants to. That is difficult to relate to. Elves are already quite difficult to relate to because of their very unhuman relationship to mortality and aging. Gaming/gamers have glossed over this difficulty a lot in the way elves have been depicted and behave. In reality, any creature that's as intelligent as an intelligent human that lives that long is going to act very differently than we do, at least the vast majority of us. Mortality, and the brevity of our lives (especially at our physical peak) plays an extremely important role in influencing how we behave and see the world.

Sex/gender switching makes elves even more difficult to relate to, more supernatural. The more supernatural something becomes the tougher it is for us to understand it and feel comfortable with it. The distance between us and it increases the more supernatural it becomes. This isn't a matter of phobia. It's a matter of basic intelligibility. One can more readily understand what is the most familiar. This is why men understand men better than women do and women understand women better than men do. It's why the concept of peers is important. Peers are more similar because of age and such, and thus typically easier to relate to.

Now I have to read the remaining 54 pages.

Well they’re certainly valid opinions but I’d be a bit more cautious presenting gut feeling, stereotype and personal anecdote as fact.

- plenty of girls like action games
- plenty of girls couldn’t give two hoots about dressing up
- think you’re reading too much into elven attractiveness. Slim with good bone structure is probably as far as elven attractiveness goes. Williams syndrome inspiration seems like quite the leap. I’d put 1st ed elves down to bad art.
- Heaving read a lot of responses it’s clear that it is transphobia for some people (not all)

 

[Mouseferatu]

Let's not pretend that elementary school kids haven't already received enormous amounts of cultural conditioning where gender is concerned.

Every well-meaning relative who buys pink and frilly clothes for girls vs. little sports jerseys for boys; every cartoon modeled toward one or the other; every commercial for toys; the existence of gender-specific toys; every comment from passing adults about her being a princess or his rambunctiousness just coming down to "boys will be boys"...

By the time they so much as hit kindergarten, children in America have had their brains absolutely flooded with stereotypical gender roles and preferences.

 

[superstition]

Well they’re certainly valid opinions but I’d be a bit more cautious presenting gut feeling, stereotype and personal anecdote as fact.

- plenty of girls like action games
- plenty of girls couldn’t give two hoots about dressing up

I specifically wrote that there is overlap between the gender stereotypes and that there are exceptions. Of course individuality matters and there is also a spectrum of masculinity and femininity for both sexes. Also, a person's socialization does have influence.

My post isn't just gut feeling, personal anecdote, and empty stereotyping. The notion that males and females are the same, except for some physical differences, is proven false by a lot of hard scientific evidence.

I think you’re reading too much into elven attractiveness. Slim with good bone structure is probably as far as elven attractiveness goes. Williams syndrome inspiration seems like quite the leap. I’d put 1st ed elves down to bad art.

I was speaking to the concept of elfin features. Elfin features are found in Williams Syndrome. That may be the cultural origin for the idea of people with elfin features. Legends, mythology, and the like have some kind of root in reality. The concept of elfin features means something. That is the word that is used in every source I've seen by professionals to describe the appearance of people with Williams.

 

[superstition]

Let's not pretend that elementary school kids haven't already received enormous amounts of cultural conditioning where gender is concerned.

Every well-meaning relative who buys pink and frilly clothes for girls vs. little sports jerseys for boys; every cartoon modeled toward one or the other; every commercial for toys; the existence of gender-specific toys; every comment from passing adults about her being a princess or his rambunctiousness just coming down to "boys will be boys"...

By the time they so much as hit kindergarten, children in America have had their brains absolutely flooded with stereotypical gender roles and preferences.

There is a difference between recognizing the power of socialization and claiming that there aren't significant innate differences between the sexes.

Pink clothes and footballs don't make boys fidget in elementary schools the way they do. It is beyond socialization. The blank slate hypothesis has been disproven. I learned that in social psychology at university. We are not blank slates. We have innate qualities. Not only that, are affected by the influence of sex hormones, both on an ongoing basis and in terms of their affect on us in the womb.

Some research has even found that gay people tend to have hybrid brains to some degree. The study found that gay men were, like heterosexual women, more likely to ask for directions when lost. Gay women, like heterosexual men, were less likely to ask. Of the four categories, heterosexual men were the least likely to ask and heterosexual women the most. I am gay and have known plenty of mannish lesbians. There are also some who look very masculine, like the tennis player Mauresmo. She is a good example of an androgynous person, in terms of natural appearance. It's not just socialization. It's physical difference. Other brain scan research found differences in the way intense brain activity tends to be distributed. The brains of intelligent females, in this research, show less intensity in localized areas than the brains of intelligent males. The take-away from those scans is that the male brain seems to heat up more in certain areas in order to accomplish the same work. The research was published in Time magazine. A feminist wrote about how, around age 8, boys begin to speak lower and girls begin to speak higher, despite having identically-sized larynxes. No one tells the boys and girls they need to start speaking differently at the age of 8. If it's socialization, why would there be that kind of uniformity? Well, one possibility is the pruning of neurons, a biological process that happens in the brain at that age.

From my experience as a teacher, I have come to the conclusion that it is probably more ideal to have single-sex classes until high school. I know that's not a popular opinion. The trend has been to put everyone into the same room, even people who aren't fluent speakers of the language and people who have very different IQs. I don't think it's particularly efficient, especially for the higher-level students. It's interesting that the alleged innovation is to return to the one-room schoolhouse model from something like Little House on the Prairie, only with less age mixing.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There is a difference between recognizing the power of socialization and claiming that there aren't significant innate differences between the sexes.

Pink clothes and footballs don't make boys fidget in elementary schools the way they do. It is beyond socialization. The blank slate hypothesis has been disproven. I learned that in social psychology at university. We are not blank slates. We have innate qualities. Not only that, are affected by the influence of sex hormones, both on an ongoing basis and in terms of their affect on us in the womb.

Some research has even found that gay people tend to have hybrid brains to some degree. The study found that gay men were, like heterosexual women, more likely to ask for directions when lost. Gay women, like heterosexual men, were less likely to ask. Of the four categories, heterosexual men were the least likely to ask and heterosexual women the most. I am gay and have known plenty of mannish lesbians. There are also some who look very masculine, like the tennis player Mauresmo. She is a good example of an androgynous person, in terms of natural appearance. It's not just socialization. It's physical difference. Other brain scan research found differences in the way intense brain activity tends to be distributed. The brains of intelligent females, in this research, show less intensity in localized areas than the brains of intelligent males. The take-away from those scans is that the male brain seems to heat up more in certain areas in order to accomplish the same work. The research was published in Time magazine. A feminist wrote about how, around age 8, boys begin to speak lower and girls begin to speak higher, despite having identically-sized larynxes. No one tells the boys and girls they need to start speaking differently at the age of 8. If it's socialization, why would there be that kind of uniformity? Well, one possibility is the pruning of neurons, a biological process that happens in the brain at that age.

From my experience as a teacher, I have come to the conclusion that it is probably more ideal to have single-sex classes until high school. I know that's not a popular opinion. The trend has been to put everyone into the same room, even people who aren't fluent speakers of the language and people who have very different IQs. I don't think it's particularly efficient, especially for the higher-level students. It's interesting that the alleged innovation is to return to the one-room schoolhouse model from something like Little House on the Prairie, only with less age mixing.

Look mate, I realise that there are generalities that can be drawn from the behaviour of children and such generalities are the basis of the common gender stereotypes. I know about nature and nurture and also that there are long tails to the distribution of behaviours where both nature and nurture can get decidedly odd.


But why plant all of this down on a discussion of genuinely alien imaginary fairies, we had just started discussing what if androgyny and gender fluidity was a dominant trait in elves and what would the society be like.

 

[superstition]

If people are considered with anti-trans bias they should remember that the claim that gender is purely a social invention, not something that has an innate biological origin at all, are essentially arguing that there is no solid basis for being transgender. That strikes me as anti-transgender bias. It reduces it from being a very powerful force (the correction of a mismatch between one's biological/innate sex and the outward physical attributes) to being a matter of fashion that's dictated by social programming. That strikes me as a reductionist stance along the lines of the thoroughly debunked belief that the percentage of gay people born, per capita, in a culture is determined by how positive the culture views gayness.

You asked me why I discussed the things I did. I tried to contribute a bit of what I know and have considered to the discussion. On the first page I saw the claim that gender is a social construct, a common claim. It's not that simple, though. People worry about stereotyping, but that claim is an oversimplification. The blank slate is still very popular but it has been disproven. Parents, for instance, are often shocked to learn that their parenting is not often as influential as they think in a variety of developmental areas. Yes, it has a strong influence in certain areas but peers can exert a stronger influence and innate genetic personality is much stronger than most know. Many other psychological concepts continue to be accepted as common sense, even if they have been disproven, like the catharsis hypothesis. The evidence shows that, rather than reducing negative feelings and behavior, catharsis therapy (like screaming into a pillow or breaking tennis racquets) behaviors serve as practice for more negative behaviors and feelings. The Cognitive Behavioral Model in psychology is illustrative in that our future behavior is strongly guided by the practice we have already had. In that respect, certainly, it suggests why socialization can be quite powerful. Also, environmental factors make a difference. But, the third part of the model is genetics/physiology.

But why plant all of this down on a discussion of genuinely alien imaginary fairies, we had just started discussing what if androgyny and gender fluidity was a dominant trait in elves and what would the society be like.

The concept of elves isn't merely imagination. It comes from a long folklore tradition. It's impossible to discuss fantasy without also discussing how it relates to reality.