Women and Children first?

[loseth]

One good model for a matriarchal society is the lion pride one, which also fits some real world human societies quite well. Basically the females do the work, effectively head the family groups, organise the societal structures. The males laze around and fight each other.

I agree that a lion-like culture would be extremely interesting. Mostly, you end up fighting the female warriors/hunters, but every now and then you run into a male and think, 'Holy ! Are those muscles for real?!' And then you back away very slowly, saying, 'Nice mister lion-man, nice mister lion-man...'

 

[WayneLigon]

Do all races in your game live in patriarchal: male-dominated socieities with females viewed as the 'weaker' gender?

For monster races, unless it said otherwise in the monster description, almost always. For the more human-like ones, it depended on their culture. Elves, for example, I've almost always played as having little distinction between the genders.

Have you even considered the issue?

Not really, no.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I think the non-humans are any way you want to play them. If you want patriarchal or matriarchal orcs, it's fine as long as that's okay with your players. If you want male and female orcs as equal, that is fine as well. I've not tended to game that in depth where we've worried about that level of detail of dwarven, orc or goblin society and if the females or males are second class citizens. I think we might have gotten into it a bit in relation to elves, just because elves are probably the most common non-human PC and half-elves are probably the most common "mixed" race.

But, to be honest, I've not given it much thought. PC sex & romance has generally been handled "off screen" as in like "and your character goes off and has a passionate encounter with the (fill-in-the-blank)" and we generally leave it at that, and I've been gaming for 30 years now. I'm certainly not going to give a blow-by-blow account of the courtship and what comes afterwards.

For humans, I've generally had women adventurers be a minority, but not an unusual minority. None of my players would be shocked if they were temporarily joined by a female fighter, or a wizard or sorceress... in fact, in my last big battle, a couple of female NPCs played key roles, and one of the main bad "guys" was a female duskblade.

 

[Kesh]

Excellent post.

You resurrected a two-month old thread just to say that?

 

[Set]

One good model for a matriarchal society is the lion pride one, which also fits some real world human societies quite well. Basically the females do the work, effectively head the family groups, organise the societal structures. The males laze around and fight each other.

During the day, this is what the tourists see.

At night, a completely different lion society emerges, where males and females hunt together, and different pride members are 'in charge' depending on what they are hunting, as the different pack members specialize in different prey species and end up taking the lead in those situations. (Something rarer in the human world, where the least-qualified for a given circumstance may well be the 'leader.')

Since the males feed first on these nighttime hunts, the females aren't as 'full' during the day, and sometimes get up and kill something during the day, when lions don't traditionally hunt, and the males sit back and watch, bored, only getting up when the kill is complete to take a symbolic 'first bite' before wandering back to continue their daily nap.

The males aren't lazy, they're just selfish and end up hogging the best meat for themselves in the nightly hunts, leaving the females hankering for seconds later in the day.


As for the general topic, I don't have any gender roles set for gnomes, portray halflings as much like rural humans, and various dwarven clans fluctuate from gnome-like gender blindness to human/halfling like gender roles, which can sometimes be cause for animosity between different dwarven lines ('Your females are disrespectful!' 'Well if you treated yours better than cattle!').

Elves are insanely protective of their womenfolk, with the adventuring elven female being essentially a runaway from smothering elven society. Elven women are encouraged to, at best, study the arts of archery, so that they can stay out of physical combat. Elven men are encouraged to learn swordplay and fabulous displays of 'bladesinging' or 'sword-dancing' or other flowery displays to both impress their womenfolk and also encourage them to stand between them and the dangerous front-lines (There are practical sides to this. Elven 'Bladesingers' practice combat expertise and sit at the front lines defending for all they're worth, while their wives and sisters and mothers and daughters rain down death upon their foes from the trees. It's not *all* pig-headedness...). Elven women range from quietly tolerant of this chauvanism to quite fed up with it, which explains elven adventuring females almost entirely, 'fragile young flowers' who have grown sick and tired of the patronizing of their elven males and go adventuring to get away from them.

Kobolds have no gender disparity. The females lay eggs, which are kept warm by rotting vegetation or warm sands or something and need minimal tending, so the she-bolds are right there on the front lines fighting with the he-bolds.

Orcs keep their womenfolk back in the caves tending the young, uneducated, pretty much beaten into submission.

Hobgoblins do the same, but actually have status for their women, and a female Hobgoblin is going to consider herself the forge that produces warriors, much like the Queen of Sparta, and while the male hobgoblins run certain aspects of society, the females have their own specific areas in which they are in full control.

Gnolls are matriarchal, with the females beating the crap out of, and killing, and *eating,* any male who questions their status.

Bugbears and Goblins, despite the whole child-rearing thing, tend to barely recognize gender differences, and rule is determined and respect gained by acts of viciousness, not gender. Physical strength is roughly equal between the genders of both races anyway, and is not relevant in the staggering acts of treachery and betrayal they commit upon each other to gain advantage.

 

[roguerouge]

Much as westerners are loathe to talk about it openly or in mixed company, humans have a large degree of sexual dimorphism. Though there are individual differences, in general human men are both larger and stronger than human women--and quite significantly so. (Compare the average, median, and mean height and weight of men and women in any study if you doubt this--or if you want to look at extreme cases of both sexes, compare the height and weight of NBA players to that of WNBA players). That's genetics. It's not true of every real life species (and in some it even works the other way) but it is most likely one of the more significant reasons that women have not generally taken a combat oriented role in most (evolutionarily speaking) successful human societies.

The problem is, of course, that that's irrelevant for fantasy races. There's absolutely no necessary reason to have dwarven men be larger and stronger than dwarven women. Not even one race has women be the dominant culturally (like gnolls based on hyenas might be) or in adventuring (like lionesses and hunting.) Nor is biological reproduction a necessity: I'd love to see a campaign where elves were cuttings from trees or in which dwarven children were made from the shaving of a female's beard, for example. Every race's gender is a pathetic copy of the human.

When a company like WotC replicates these kinds of gender disparities for EVERY RACE except for the evil black one, then it's pretty clear that it's either a failure of imagination on their part or an implicit statement on that company's perception of the limitations of its core customers.

 

[roguerouge]

Since orcs are evil, the answer is obviously....sexism....so are those females mortal evil enemies? Or oppressed victims to be helped?

If the latter, that would be a much more awesome origin story for half-orcs, as the half-orc women are liberated or escape from their society and find others' more to their liking.

 

[Corathon]

IMC, the roles of the sexes vary from species to species. Some of it dates back to an old Dragon article by Roger Moore (maybe called "the Humanoid Point of View" - I'm not sure, as it's been a long time).

The evil humanoids (goblinoids, orcs, kobolds, gnolls, etc) are all patriarchal, with the gnolls and hobgoblins treating their females the worst, and the goblins treating them the best.

Trolls and drow are matriarchal.

Some species (e.g. medusas and harpies) have no male members, using human males to reproduce (and as slaves/cattle).

Male dwarves outnumber female dwarves, so the latter are rarely adventurers.

Elves are the most nearly egalitarian of the races.

Humans are the most variable in terms of sex roles. In my home-brew world there are patriarchal, matriarchal, and nearly egalitarian states.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd love to see a campaign where elves were cuttings from trees or in which dwarven children were made from the shaving of a female's beard, for example.

If you lived in D/FW, I'd invite you to play in my upcoming campaign, in which the various "Elves" are replaced by 3 species of Fey- one of which is plantlike and reproduces by seeding.

And in another campaign I had Dwarves as asexual quasi-Elementals who reproduced by carving new Dwarves out of stone, and performing a ritual asking Moradin to give the sculpture the breath of life. (BTW- since they were, by necessity, masterwork creations, they could be enchanted...)

 

[WayneLigon]

When a company like WotC replicates these kinds of gender disparities for EVERY RACE except for the evil black one, then it's pretty clear that it's either a failure of imagination on their part or an implicit statement on that company's perception of the limitations of its core customers.

Or, you know, the fact that people play and respond best to races that have a strong basis for familiarity. There are plenty of racial books out there that present wild and different races, but I've never seen anyone actually use them. People gravitate towards the familiar.

In other words, not everything is a conspiracy, a failure, or laziness.