Sexism in D&D and on ENWorld (now with SOLUTIONS!)

[Mark]

The essence of comedy is timing. As a moderator, one of my most hallowed responsibilities is letting people know when they've screwed that up.

Who are you and what have you done with Shecky Katze?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Sorry mate, I was out of line there. It's a topic I feel strongly about, and in all honesty, I should do know better than to go shooting my mouth off about it. Again. Well, here anyway.

Now I actually will shut up (about this ), and leave you to your unenviable task.

edit --- . . . except to say that I just now read Jack's followup thread (er, post), and well, I have certainly misread him in this case. Well, kinda half-misread, so to speak. Gah, this is not a good day for such things, it seems. :/

 

[billd91]

On the issue of sexist art:

For men, appearance is a much more important factor in sexual attraction than it is for women. Sure women like to look at George Clooney but the actor's appeal with the opposite sex is, imo, based on a wider variety of traits than looks alone.

So visual art is inherently sexist. By choosing to create a picture one has chosen a medium which appeals more to male sexual desire than to female.

While there may be real studies suggesting that physical beauty (particularly related to fertility cues) may be a larger proportion of male attraction than female attraction, it doesn't follow that visual art is inherently sexist. Sexism will come from choosing to appeal to the viewer's sexual desires. Using sex to sell the product. And that does not define visual art as a whole.

 

[Bumbles]

BTW, I just did a quick scan of the art in the core books for 1e and 4e.

In 1E, I noticed 2 pictures of females in the PHB (one a female elf with the race pictures, the other a caster type at the end), maybe 8 or so in the DMG (I'm not sure whether or not to count the images at the bottom of the RDG page as one or many), and the MM had like 2 females that weren't on pages of monsters that were explicitly female.

In comparison, the 4E books had males and females for each of the races in the PHB, and females throughout the rest of the book, same for the DMG. For the MM, many of the monster pictures had male and female examples, including the player-character races, but some others like Goblins and Bugbears as well.

Note, I'm not bothering to compare the quality/style/amount of the art, just doing a quick look through the books for some perspective. And I really don't want to go through all the editions, but if somebody else does, hey, more power to you!

 

[Hairfoot]

I've opened similar threads on previous incarnations of ENworld, but I've mellowed since.

Fantasy worlds are usually sexist, but rarely downright misogynistic. I've also found that women (IME) aren't very outraged by it, and clearly see it as a target market measure and not a prejudice problem. If you look at the way women are regarded in most other male-dominated pursuits, the charge of gamer sexism looks weak indeed.

I will, however, never regard chainmail bikinis as legitimate, simply because they're absurd as fighting garb.

 

[Aus_Snow]

On a topic I find less bothersome (i.e., sexism - or rather, relative sexism - in gaming), I'd say that even among RPGs, which are by and large hardly the worst offenders out there, 3e and - to the best of my knowledge - 4e are remarkably un-sexist. Seriously.

Switching gender pronouns all over the place. Frequent and strong representation of women in adventuring and yes, even fighting roles. In both text and imagery, that is.

Sexism in [21C] D&D? Really? And EN WORLD, of all places? I am not kidding in any way, shape or form here, just for the record. I'm just struggling not to collapse in a fit of giggles at the very idea.

As for the 'evidence' given in the OP, in the vast majority it was people (including at least one moderator) takin' the proverbial pee, or just being harmlessly jocular. Otherwise, (maybe) one or two poor ignorant sods who truly probably don't know better. . . yet. Who knows, in a few years, growing up might sneak up on them. *shrug* Anyway, the targets here seem. . . odd choices indeed.

 

[TeutonicBerserker]

~ This post was WAY over the line, hence I'm removing it. I understand that these are some issues you feel strongly about, but this isn't the right place to talk about them. Plane Sailing ~

 

[roguerouge]

I would wager that few people reading this, whatever their race or gender, have actually been oppressed (beyond the standard economic exploitation and political despotism that characterizes the US).

"Standard economic exploitation and political despotism," in YOUR words, do not equal oppression? That's some stringent standards you've got there, fella.

Why do ideologically motivated individuals, invariably from the left (culturally speaking), feel compelled to bemoan the fact that other people don't see things the way they do?

You're new to posting to the forum, so you may not be aware that you're moving REALLY close to the line with this part of your post, especially combined with use of RW political hot buttons like Affirmative Action. To give you some sense of this, I had to really, really make the effort to be polite to you about a post that comes off as baiting at times.

I really wanted to bring up the usual arguments about US history that working class liberals like myself usually bring up, but... I'm going to try to assume that you didn't mean this post to come off the way it read.

 

[Lwaxy]

I disagree. I don't think roleplaying games in their current form (and I refer to content not presentation) can ever appeal to women anything like as strongly as they appeal to men. They are way too combat heavy, way too system heavy and way too number heavy.

I'm not saying girls can't do math, or that female geeks don't exist or that women can't be interested in some number-oriented activity like Bingo or Bridge. But in ttrpgs numbers fly around like clouds of bats, many of them serving no purpose whatsoever. You have to f---ing love them to play in a way few women do.

Rpgs that do appeal to women more are mmorpgs and Murder Mystery.

Excuse me?

OK, I', mathematically challenged (dyscalculia) and numbers do scare me on my bad days. However, the numbers in rpgs are all so basic even i get it - although I might have to look up tables to know what does what damage.

And I have yet to see someone who "loves" the numbers in rpgs. They are there for a reason, but if there was a way to get rid of them, I bet many males would love that, too.

I've met a bunch of males who were turned off by all the numbers, I don't think it has anything to do with what women prefer.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And I have yet to see someone who "loves" the numbers in rpgs. They are there for a reason, but if there was a way to get rid of them, I bet many males would love that, too.

*raises hand*

I don't advocate diceless RP, since I enjoy the random aspects. But if there were an easy way to never utter a number aloud, and instead somehow convey the numbers instantly and only ever describe the effects via the narrative, I'd be all over it.