Pathfinder 1E Is there a male counterpart to the hag?

VelvetViolet

Adventurer
Are there any Paizo or 3rd-party books detailing a male counterpart to the traditionally all-female hags? The concept of hags is rooted in historical and folkloric sexism (whereas fantasy roleplaying is characterized by anachronistic 21st-century liberal attitudes), so I wanted to be just slightly politically correct without trying to shoehorn a message about gender equality or meet a diversity quota.
 

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I don't think you'd have any trouble finding examples of unpleasant and masculine bad guys. If anything, the rarity of obviously feminine monsters could be construed as unfairly favorable towards women, and many of the "good guys" in the monster books are specifically female (particularly various fey and good-aligned outsiders).

That being said, if you're looking for a male monstrous humanoid with powerful supernatural abilities, nothing comes to mind. The obvious thematic comparison would be one of the more evil and magic-y giants (they aren't all male, but males are usually the ones presented). If you're willing to consider 3e sources, the Verdant Prince from MMV seems sort of like a male hag. A number of evil fey in PF might also fit the bill (a grimstalker, perhaps).

Or you could just use the stats for a hag and say that it's male.
 


In D&D that role has been filled by male giants (particularly ogres and trolls). I think you could make a good argument for either being male-only.

I think the more important question is why monsters that are traditionally shown as largely (or exclusively) male only rarely get labeled as such. When Medusa becomes a race of female monsters, why does the Minotaur become a race whose gender dynamics aren't mentioned?

It's basically just because our society treats being male as the default. And I think it comes out that way in a lot of RPG campaigns as well. So they don't even have to mention that minotaurs are all men because they're going to be so overwhelmingly male in play that it doesn't matter.

In theory, we need a male counterpart to these races to even the score. In practice, the male counterpart to these races are all the other ninety percent of humanoid monsters.

Cheers!
Kinak
 

I don't think you are going to find one. Hag is a rather gendered archetype. The closest you might get would be a wizard or necromancer of some kind. You could just make a hag and then make them male, or you could just not use a hag.
 
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Isn't the Hag a take on the Crone, from the classic (?) Maiden / Mother / Crone triptych?

In any case, the background that I've seen for Hag makes them female, only.

Also, the notion of the hag relates to female infertility. That doesn't quite carry over to men.

In the case of the Medusa and Minotaur, these spring from mythology which has unique individuals: The classic Medusa having the face of a woman (and venomous snakes in place of hair), while the classic Minotaur has the head of a bull and the body of a man.

Thx!

TomB
 


As others have mentioned, the Hag, like your other thread on Medusa are iconic folklore legendary beings and neither technically belong to a race. Of medusa, there was only ever one individual in the entire world. Hags are common in many mostly northern European cultures, as representations of the maiden/mother/crone - being the crone version of the trinity. However, the Caillech Bheur or winter hag, is an ancient Celtic deity, said to be the matron of horned beasts.

However, the simplist solution is that the hag is kind of an ogre, so an ogre male, most likely would fit as a male counterpart (even though there really is no such thing as a male counterpart to a hag.)
 

That being said, if you're looking for a male monstrous humanoid with powerful supernatural abilities, nothing comes to mind. The obvious thematic comparison would be one of the more evil and magic-y giants (they aren't all male, but males are usually the ones presented). If you're willing to consider 3e sources, the Verdant Prince from MMV seems sort of like a male hag. A number of evil fey in PF might also fit the bill (a grimstalker, perhaps).

Or you could just use the stats for a hag and say that it's male.
I'm looking specifically for sources that are open game content, whether 3.5 or PF rules specifically. I was considering having the male use the hag's basic statistics with some modifications.

Wouldn't that be the haggis?
I've seen names like "hogre" and "krampus" used to describe the mythical male hag.

In D&D that role has been filled by male giants (particularly ogres and trolls). I think you could make a good argument for either being male-only.

I think the more important question is why monsters that are traditionally shown as largely (or exclusively) male only rarely get labeled as such. When Medusa becomes a race of female monsters, why does the Minotaur become a race whose gender dynamics aren't mentioned?
In the Puss in Boots folktale the ogre was depicted as an erudite monster that lived in luxury and could change his form. The closest equivalent in the SRD is the ogre mage, which is actually a type of fiend. How do we know that the minotaurs are always male? It's never explained how minotaurs reproduce, whereas the medusa is specifically mentioned as taking male lovers of other races with the implications therein. Although I like the idea of connecting two radically different monsters as being the sexually dimorphic sexes of the same race... maybe minotaurs or pegasi are the male counterpart to the medusa? (In mythology, Medusa was the mother of Pegasus.)

Isn't the Hag a take on the Crone, from the classic (?) Maiden / Mother / Crone triptych?

In any case, the background that I've seen for Hag makes them female, only.

Also, the notion of the hag relates to female infertility. That doesn't quite carry over to men.
The maiden/mother/crone is an invention of modern neopagans and doesn't actually appear in any ancient culture or religion, as any anthropologist worth their salt can tell you. In fact, the maiden/mother/crone dynamic is itself sexist as it implies there aren't any other roles women can fulfill besides those three.

One could write a depiction of a male hag, or krampus as I'll refer to it, that highlights the differences between the genders and uses them as a springboard for making krampus drastically different in behavior from hags. Where the hag has rejected the patriarchy that scorned her, the krampus embraces it with tongue firmly in cheek. The hag and the krampus, while fundamentally the same manner of being, hate one another with a fiery passion. A krampus, while as old and ugly as any hag (and often displaying physical mutations resembling parts of plants and animals), prefers to live in opulence and obsessive cleanliness. They claim abandoned castles in the wilderness as their lairs, adorn their homes with lavish luxuries and dress in only the finest clothes. The krampus has an insatiable sexual appetite and an endless stamina to match, as well as an truly amazing capacity for romantic self-delusion, keeping a harem of attractive young women kidnapped from nearby villages and doting on them excessively... but when their beauty starts to wane he kicks them out and sends them to the nearest village along with any children they had in the meantime. The krampus never really abandons any of his children, however, and continues to watch them from afar as they become adults... with the intent of inducting the most gifted (and invariably male) into the same dark magics he commands.
 
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Krampus idea is brilliant. Keep working on it - submit it somewhere when complete.

My understanding is that the hag - the one that isn't a representative of night terrors and sleep paralysis - is built on the childhood fear of how extreme age makes people ugly and creepy. Since women live to a greater age than men, the fear was disproportionally attached to women.

Ergo: the krampus description should contain that "creepy old man" feel wherever you can fit it in. Bony limbs, wispy beards, that weird smell - anything that ever made you want to back slowly out of a nursing home. (I hope I'm not offending anyone with this.)
 

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