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

[Ariosto]

Despite this, you are far more likely to find a female protagonist in early sci-fi than early fantasy.

A clear distinction between the two, in particular a mutual exclusion, did not (from what I saw) figure in D&D of the 1970s-80s -- but it seems to have become rather entrenched in some quarters of today's D&D fandom.

 

[S'mon]

I haven't read that blog, so I can't speak for it.

Please check out these slides from Stephen Pinker. He's a psychology professor at Harvard, or was the last time I looked.

Of course, they're slides from a debate. So you can check out the other side, too.

But there is a long, famous history of studies showing sex differences in cognitive ability.

It's often considered Politically Incorrect to talk about it, though...

A friend of my family is Paul Erwing, who did a famous study with Richard Lynn finding a 3 point IQ gap between adult British men & women. Which is a Politically Incorrect finding - but in any case it's really a very small gap compared to the large variations you find between different nations & ethnies, and is dependent on the weighting assigned to different elements (verbal, visuospatial) in the test.

 

[S'mon]

On principle, I hypothesize that WotC's rules-heavy approach probably has the opposite effect.

Yes, I've seen this first hand at my games club. The crunch turns off players who want to play a role without worrying about all the tactical optimised square-counting and powers use. Some of those are male*, but IME a high proportion of female gamers feel that way.

*Including me - at any rate, I think the crunch is way OTT. I can do my own PC's action in a few seconds, but having to weight 15 minutes for the next guy to do his super-optimised turn is really annoying.

 

[Starfox]

So? You're going to need more evidence than that to claim that the thread is sexist, let alone that it's VERY sexist.

I think that's my claim originally. And to me, its obvious that Witch Girls is sexist because it caters exclusively to one gender. But what I was trying to say was that in this case, this is a GOOD THING. It is empowering. And from this, I want to infer that sexism is only bad when we take offense at it.

Is it sexism for a man to hold open a door for a woman? Yes. Is it bad? It might be if done in a condensating manner, but generally it is just polite.

From this, I want to move on to say that "boys club" gaming can also be ok. Its not likely to recruit women into the hobby, but that's not making it bad or evil.

Of course, we all take offense at different things. There are people who take offense at Witch Girls or Boy's Club gaming. I don't want these people to win out - that would feel oppressive to me - but I think they have the right to say what they want and to be countered and debated and hopefully proven wrong. Ideas need to clash. That's how societies grow and values evolve and what makes threads like this one worthwhile.

 

[ryryguy]

I've read the thread. A lot of interesting discussion.

I agree that the current incarnation of the rules is not particularly sexist, and that the current artwork and marketing of D&D, while perhaps not perfect, is certainly worlds better than it has been in the past.

But why does the "boys' club" aspect of D&D persist? Why still such a gender imbalance among players - 80/20 in Rouse's best case scenario?

When I think about this, I have a hard time disentangling general gender relations in society at large, including instutionalized sexism, and the specific reputation of D&D and its impact on small group dynamics of gamers and how encounters between gamers and "outsiders" play out. This has been touched on tangentially in this thread but not really drawn out, I don't think.

For a number of reasons, not least the sexist 70's-era tropes from the roots of the game, D&D got tagged in the mainstream as an activity for geeky guys. That may be starting to shift a bit, but it's inevitably going to lag behind whatever changes have taken place in the rules and marketing. Thinking about potential new, young players, I think that just raises a big barrier to entry for girls and young women.

In a nutshell, to the extent that D&D is perceived as "uncool", those numberless teenage hordes who above all else desperately want to be cool will avoid it. There are of course just as many boys as well as girls who fall into this category, but add in the preconception that D&D is a boy's club, male pursuit, and I think the repellent effect will be stronger for girls.

Then, back to the young males who are actually playing. When they encounter an "eww, you play D&D, how stupid!" reaction from a "cool" peer girl, it's going to make them feel defensive. They may expect all girls will have the same attitude and seek to exclude them to protect themselves from further hurt feelings. Thus, the "boy's club" perception may be pushed further towards reality. It's a pernicious dynamic, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These are of course generalizations, not universal truths, but they do conform with some of my experiences. Again I'm talking in particular about younger players here - I think as players get older and generally less insecure, this dynamic eases. Anecdotally, women seem to have greater representation as the demographic gets older.

Finally, that sort of "you're lame" - "no, you're lame!" in-group/out-group dynamic forming around D&D does not always or exclusively break along gender lines. Not by any means. I just have a feeling that it's common for it to play out that way. Who knows, assuming that I'm not totally off base here, this might well be reflecting deeper sexist dynamics of the larger culture in the end.

 

[Starfox]

An interesting litterary case here is Orlando Furioso, published in 1532. It is the apex - and travesty - of the chivalric novel. While it has mainly male knights and female enchantresses, there are several strong female knights in it, as well as gender-transformations and love both homo- and heterosexual. And interracial/religious too, for that matter.

In Sicily at least, these stories are very much alive in the local puppet theaters. See them if you go there!

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that literature has cases of gender-role breakdown (or egalitarianism as we'd say today) long before modern times.

 

[Lwaxy]

For example, it doesn't hold water at all at young ages. They won't admit it, but teenage boys are massively preoccupied with their "look."

Very interesting. I thought my son was the only one - but he openly admits it. Out of his clique, he is the only one to have a good appearance, wears after shave and has his hair all perfect. Maybe that is why he has 3 girlfriends.

 

[vagabundo]

It's important to keep both those points in mind - (1) that men and women are different on average and (2) some women are more like men, and some men are more like women, in various ways.

For some reason many people deny one of these, either claiming that women are inherently the same as men, or that women are inherently all different from men. For instance, women have about 1/10 the violent crime rate of men, which is very important information to know if you're walking a city street at night. At the same time, some women are more violent than some men.

I've always found this misleading as, I believe, the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages. So the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender.

We have social norms that are a far greater influence than the minute differences between body chemistries. We are far more alike than different.

 

[S'mon]

I've always found this misleading as, I believe, the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages. So the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender.

I think that statement is wrong. If "the difference between individuals within a gender is greater than the difference between the averages" means "the average man is more X (eg, violent) than the average woman, but some women are more X than the average man" then it's just a restatement of what I just said. And it does not then follow that "the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender".

Eg: On average, women are less strong and aggressive than men. OTOH, some women are stronger and more aggressive than the average man. From this fact, many others follow, such as the disparity in violent crime rates I mentioned.

When dealing with groups of people, knowledge about the averages is very useful. When dealing with individuals, it may be misleading (hence why stereotyping has a bad rap).

So, it is not true that "the averages tell us nothing useful about the capabilities of a population of a gender" but it is true that "the averages are not determinative of the capabilities of an individual among that population".

Edit: If the statement is a claim that differences between the population averages are trivially small compared to the average difference between two randomly chosen individuals from the whole population, that would depend on what factor we're talking about. It would not be true of eg upper body strength. It may be true of other factors, such as propensity to violence. Yet where that factor is normally distributed, even a small difference can have big effects at the tails. Because few people commit violent crime, a small decrease in average propensity to aggression among a population can result in a big decrease in committing of violent crime.

 

[vagabundo]

@ S'mon, I agree with everything in your post above.

However - there is always a however, eh? - the reason that I think the averages tell us nothing useful is because I cannot use the averages to tell me anything about an individual. They maybe useful for governments in planning or for doctors or for other prefessional planners than need to take these factors into account when making discions that will affect a large population of people. I dont think I spelt this out clearly in my previous post.

But for me on a day to day basis these averages tell me nothing about the mental capabilites, physical or emotional state of a person that I only have the race or gender off.

In my job I have to go regularly meet people that I have no met before. I usually have a name and maybe some extra details about them. I can usually guess gender and maybe race - to some extent - from the name, but knowing these details does not help me at all, until I've met and assessed them personnally. Then I'd have a good idea about some of there capabilities.

That is the only point that I wish to make. I'm not claiming that these average differences do not exist, just that the majority of people should forget that they do as they are of no use to them at all. Preconceptions like "men cant multitask" or "blondes are dumb*", maybe they are founded on some averages somewhere, but are really useless in day to day life


*this is a silly example, no offence intended to any blondes out there.