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

[S'mon]

@ 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.

They may also be useful to businessses - companies making and selling Role Playing Games, for instance.

When it comes to individuals, knowledge of the averages is useful when you don't have anything better to go on. If you're on the street alone at night and you're afraid of being mugged, you know on average it's safer to walk past the strange woman (or group of women) than the strange man (or group of men). That's in the absence of further information. Clothing, demeanour etc might indicate that the women are actually more likely to be dangerous.

"That man looks dangerous - but it's sexist to think like that! Women can be dangerous too. I'll walk past him!" is not a good survival strategy.

 

[shilsen]

Any featuring drow? The most perverse and evil society Gary could imagine was one where women are in charge.

Heh! I wasn't even bringing up the drow because they're such an easy target, not to mention one which has been beaten on often enough. I've heard all the explanations for it, but the fact that the most famous and visible matriarchy in D&D happens to be eeeevil is a little much of a coincidence for me.

Careful, it seems like you're saying racism and other discrimination is ok in games, but not if it's gender-based. I really hope you didn't intend to open up that particular quagmire.

No, that's not what I was saying, though I should have dropped racism from my list to be clearer (since I was using race in the D&D sense, not the real-world version). I was responding to comments which seemed to assume that by advocating removing sexism I was saying that no campaign setting should ever deal with discrimination in game, which is absolutely not my intent. What I was saying was that games can explore discrimination which doesn't map onto real-world discrimination and which especially doesn't treat real-world discrimination as the norm. For example, the tried and true trope of elves and dwarves not getting along with each other. That's something which can be in a game and allows one to explore discrimination, if one wants to, without it having to be real-world discrimination.

Only if one believed that the USA created the Chimpanzees. I'm sorry, but your analogy is just so illogical you should be hit with a wet trout. Your comments would be far better without such an obviously unsupported comparison.

Fair enough. It was a hyperbolic analogy, but mainly because I was trying to illustrate how hyperbolic and illogical I think the argument I was commenting on is.

How? Leaving off that bit is kind of a problem, even if you have mentioned it before in bits of pieces, if you're going to bring up the advice again, a specific path here would improve your words considerably.

Well, this thread was originally intended to start a discussion about the existence of sexism in D&D, but you're right that offering some solutions might be in order. I'll post some shortly.

There's a bit here:

Half Sigma: Biological basis for sex differences in math ability

I'm sure there's lots of other studies you can find.

Note, I am explicitly and sincerely not interested in arguing the merits of this, I'm merely posting this to acknowledge the existence, and I do not wish to get into a discussion of the subject here. So I won't.

Thanks for the qualifier. In that case I won't argue about it and will just state my position, which is: (a) I don't buy it, and (b) even if it were true, I think it's irrelevant.

Prenatal environment and hormonal effects was actually my field for a few years, and I can tell you that's a pretty impressive load of tripe. I'm trying to track down the primary sources on it and keep coming up with nothing but contradictions.

That's not my field at all, but it certainly seems like a load of tripe to me too.

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.

...

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.

...


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.

And that's basically my take on the subject too.

And, that said, now I have to come up with a post of suggestions for ways in which sexism can be diminished or ameliorated. Be back in a bit.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Re testosterone making you better at math, seems unlikely. In my school in Northern Ireland, I was in the top class for math...

...aren't you the same DM who doubled Lolth's (1E) 66hp on her home plane to 122hp.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Thanks for the qualifier. In that case I won't argue about it and will just state my position, which is: (a) I don't buy it, and (b) even if it were true, I think it's irrelevant.

Neither do I, fwiw. Why? Oh, because it ended up concluding nothing at all regarding the issue brought up in this thread. That's not my opinion, that's fact. Just going on the text that is there, kinda thing. As in, all of it. Including the latter part, in other words.

And as for that Uni debate, I found each set of slides approximately equally compelling. That is to say, not very. I don't know the answer one way or the other, so I'm keeping an open mind to biological, sociological, or biological/sociological as the 'culprit' here. I have a strong suspicion it's the second or third one, and a sense (based on anecdotal stuff mainly, I guess) that it's the second, but I don't know. And neither does anyone else, it seems. That I've heard, read, seen, etc.

 

[shilsen]

...aren't you the same dm who doubled lolth's (1e) 66hp on her home plane to 122hp.

Ooooh - BURN!!!!

 

[shilsen]

A FOLLOW-UP – SOLUTIONS:

Since someone made a reasonable suggestion above that it would be helpful to suggest solutions to the sexism which I see as existing in D&D, I figured I should try to post something to that end. I thought about it for a bit and figured I would divide it into two parts. The first would be for people who don’t want to deal with issues of sexism at all and (presumably) just make the game world not an inherently sexist one, so they can get on with, well, the game. The second would be for people who do explicitly want to engage with the issue of sexism but do so without actually being sexist themselves. So, having established the two categories I’m using, here are a few of my suggestions.

When you don’t want to deal with sexism at all:
1 – Make the primary game societies non-sexist: This is a pretty simple thing to do. When you have societies which your PCs will inhabit and deal with on a regular basis, simply don’t make them sexist. Have men and women equally valued and influential in society, so that nobody thinks twice about the fact that a country is ruled by a king or a queen, or bats an eyelid when the ruler’s consort is male or the general of the army is female. Have pantheons which aren’t skewed towards any one gender. And so on.

2 – Have similar gender representation in NPCs: When your PCs see and interact with NPCs, try to have roughly equal numbers of men and women present. Don’t have all the movers and shakers be male (or female, for that matter). If it’s perfectly fine for some PCs to be female, then don’t have the female NPCs in the society be under the thumb of the patriarchy, since that immediately makes the PC’s gender very important and her position very different. When the PCs have allies and enemies, let them sometimes be male and sometimes female, with neither seeming special and different from the norm.

3 – Don’t treat female PCs (and players) differently than male PCs (and players): I don’t think this needs much explanation, does it?

4 – When using standard fantasy tropes, vary the genders: There are tons of standard plots and tropes from fantasy, literature and myth which tend to show up in D&D games. When using them, just don’t use the same gender positions every time. Maybe the PCs have to rescue a captured princess. And maybe they have to rescue a captured prince. Both of them work.

When you do want to engage with and think about sexism and gender roles:
1 – Think about how gender could be different in a D&D society: Give some serious thought to how the existence of non-real-world elements would affect and change the societies of your game. How does the fact that the most accomplished of men and women are exactly as strong, durable, dexterous, smart, wise and charismatic as each other change society? How does the existence of magic affect society? How does the existence of multiple intelligent species in the same world change society? How does the fact that some species live longer than others, that some are shorter, that some don’t sleep, that some can fly, etc. affect their societies? How does the fact that some of these species can interbreed affect society? There is no one answer. But there are a lot of plausible answers which are creative, interesting and far more so, in my estimation, than just assuming that such a world will be like medieval Europe. And once you consider such answers and ramifications, consider how gender might be treated in such a society or societies. For example, if running an Eberron game, I would consider what people might think of gender in a world where a species (changelings, doppelgangers) can change their gender at will or have no gender at all (warforged). And how that is mediated by the fact that D&D magic allows people to change their gender in appearance (using spells like Change Self, Disguise Self) and/or physically (polymorph).

2 – Have variety in your gender roles and sexism: Come up with different gender roles and, if you plan to have sexism, forms of sexism among different societies. Maybe the dwarves are a species where women are few and far between, which means they are essentially forced to remain at home and have offspring, and where an adventuring female PC dwarf would be ostracized by her clan. Maybe elves have a matriarchal structure where women are always the leaders, whether in politics or in war, since they believe that women are inherently more rational and better at short-term tactics as well as long-term strategy. Maybe gnomes naturally have no gender at all, with every gnome capable of giving birth, which it does in an asexual manner by growing a little bud on the back of its head which is removed and planted in the breeding garden so as to bloom into a new little gnome. And maybe societies where various species’ interact with each other have a hodge-podge of competing and contrasting gender roles all flowing through, around and into each other. In short, have some creativity and variety and don’t treat real world gender roles and sexism as the norm.

3 – Explore the ramifications of gender roles in your different game-world societies: Following on the point made in the previous paragraph, explore – and let PCs interact with and perhaps affect – the results of gender roles (and, if necessary, sexism) in the various societies which make up the world. Maybe the result of the dwarven society is extreme objectification of women, where they are treated less like individuals and more like valuable objects to be hoarded or traded away. Maybe the result of the elven society is the creation of males who are utterly faithful and will follow any order from a woman, but who also lack initiative and identity. Maybe the result of the gnome biology is that they play male and female roles when interacting with humans, partly to fit in and partly to manipulate humans based on the latters’ preconceptions. Have matriarchies. Have patriarchies. Have societies where gender doesn’t matter. And again, don’t treat one as inherently better or more natural or logical than the others.

* * * * *
I threw the above together in just 15 minutes of thinking about the subject, so pardon me if they’re not the best thought-out or creative solutions. But I hope they’re at least a decent starting point for thinking about the subject and how it can be dealt with in interesting ways.

Thoughts and feedback?

A caveat: I should note that the above is purely focusing on sexism and gender roles because that’s the premise of this thread. The same can be done with just about any other –ism, of course.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I like the description of sexism as being about "keeping the status quo". Sure, fantasy might have been male-dominated. But why should we keep that status quo? Is fantasy less fun with less male dominance?

Where the game comes from, and where it will lead to can be different things. Things change. Change might not always good, but the status quo can always be improved upon.

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but this hit me as I finished page three and I wanted to get it out.

Gaming is a male dominated hobby. That's factually true. So, it can't really avoid being sexist - when 4/5ths of your audience is male, you're going to cater to that audience. That's not so much sexism as just business.

However, trying to claim that there is no gender bias in the fans is not true IMO. Think about it for a second. When did the demographics of gaming change? When the Storyteller system came out. Vampire did far more to make the hobby accessable to women than D&D ever did.

Yet, even today, we have posters, multiple posters, telling all and sundry that storyteller, or narative to use the Forgism, games, "aren't really roleplaying". They're not "true" roleplaying games. They should be called something else, since, after all, anyone who plays these games aren't actually engaging in role playing.

I've seen posts exactly like that multiple times just in the past few weeks, never mind in the dark ages of the early hobby times.

So, how can that not be considered sexist and exclusionary? When male gamers publicly argue that the games that female gamers often prefer aren't "real" rpg's and don't really belong, how can that not be considered sexist?

whoandwhy99 are you talking about?

 

[shilsen]

I like the description of sexism as being about "keeping the status quo".

Hi, Mustrum. I was wondering when you would show up.

Sure, fantasy might have been male-dominated. But why should we keep that status quo? Is fantasy less fun with less male dominance?

Unfortunately, for some people (hopefully not the majority), I think the answers to those questions are "Because it's the status quo" and "Yes." Obviously, I don't buy t.

Where the game comes from, and where it will lead to can be different things. Things change. Change might not always good, but the status quo can always be improved upon.

The Archchancellor speaks truth.

whoandwhy99 are you talking about?

And the Archchancellor is a bad, bad man

 

[Desdichado]

What do you think?

I think your proposal, that D&D is inherently sexist and that's because our society is inherently sexist, are both flat-out wrong.

Oddly, you didn't even really attempt to build a case for it either; you pointed out a few examples that you had to have gone way out of your way to find, and a couple of odd characterizations of the "ENWorld vibe" when someone reveals that they're a woman, etc.

The null hypothesis isn't that we're all sexist and therefore activist marketing by WotC is required to cure us of our ills. First, you've got to do a much better job in building a convincing case that this is a real problem and not just a few chip on their shoulder activists who like complaining.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Let me put it this way. If you are black, you do not get to choose if your ethnic heritage is considered important by other people.

This is, to a certain extent, what I was trying to get at when I stated that men cannot understand what it feels like to a woman to live in a sexist world, because they don't experience it.

I agree that you can empathise with it, you can try to understand it, but it's not ever going to be the same experience.

For myself, I'm aware of my privilege as a man in the UK, and I choose some of the activities I get involved in to fight against the problems that I see in our society by attending rallies and marches that are Pro-Feminist.