Why is "women aren't allowed to do things" (which, incidentally, has never successfully prevented women from doing things) the breaking point of your suspension of disbelief. Women actually existed, and having them show up in important roles slightly more often doesn't seem like it should be so much harder to embrace than the goblins.
I'm getting the feeling, especially with your parenthetical note, that you're arguing against someone in your imagination with a position considerably more extreme than mine.
Of course women are going to show up in important roles in
any setting, no matter how sexist. Fifty percent of the species is women, and all the oppression in the world isn't going to shut down their intelligence or ambition. Throughout history, women may have been effectively children or chattel under their culture's customs, yet some were still able to wield a great deal of power. In fiction, I've already mentioned the example of Eowyn, and the conqueror NPC in my own campaign (who I'll admit owes a lot to Eowyn, with a dash of megalomania). I might add that even in fiction written in historically sexist times by male authors, powerful and independent women keep showing up as verisimilitude demands they must -- Shakespeare has characters like Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, the Norse sagas have Brynhild and Gudrun, the chivalric romances have Bradamante, Chinese folklore has Mulan. And finally, in the post you're quoting from, I stated explicitly that women characters should be played "as individuals informed by their culture rather than as robotic slaves to their culture". So if you're telling me that gender roles have never prevented women from doing things, then buddy, you are preaching to the choir.
So let me refine your question: Why is "Women aren't allowed to do things
(but they do anyway)" the breaking point of my suspension of disbelief? And the first and simplest answer is that it isn't. I hate to keep quoting myself, but I did say that "D&D is... far more open-ended and doesn't attach itself to any one setting or theme..." and that "If you want to run an original, Alera-like culture where women guards are unremarkable, great!" To this I only have to add that I play and run campaigns like this myself. I'm not just patting you on the head and telling you that you're allowed to go off and do your thing; I'm telling you that this is also
my thing -- sometimes.
So let me refine your question again: Why is "Women aren't allowed to do things (but they do anyway)" the breaking point of my suspension of disbelief
in particular campaigns inspired by the myths and legends of historical cultures? And the answer to that is simple: it makes the campaign less similar to those myths and legends, so if the goal is to be similar to those myths and legends, that's a bad thing. You keep contrasting women to elves and goblins, but that argument remains a nonstarter. Like I said (sigh), "in these worlds, both elves and women (and even elf women!) actually exist." The presence of supernatural creatures in the D&D campaign does not pull the campaign away from the legends because the legends contain supernatural creatures. The presence of women in the D&D campaign does not pull the campaign away from the legends because the legends contain women. Even the presence of
powerful sword-swinging women in the D&D campaign does not pull the campaign away from the legends because the legends contain powerful sword-swinging women (see again Brynhild and Bradamante). But a fully integrated gender-blind military force? That would be a little bit strange showing up in
Beowulf, so it also feels a little bit strange showing up in a
Beowulf-themed campaign.
Sure, if overcoming sexism is an important part of a narrative, sexism must exist in the setting. That's true.
Okay.
Now what about Susanna Clarke's
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, set in a Georgian England where magic is very real? The patronizing sexism of that culture is present in full force, and the plot isn't about overcoming it (although there is a subplot which touches on that subject). Clarke could have written the same basic narrative set in a fantasy world where men and women were full social equals. Do you think she ought to have done so? Or does embedding the narrative in Georgian culture add a vast amount of texture, depth, and character to the story? As in the Austen novels she's partially pastiching, there is more to the tale than a simple narrative of two magicians behaving badly; the sexism (as well as the racism) is delivered dripping with irony, and it is hard to miss that she is commenting on the subject even if her characters aren't really
doing anything about it. All that satirical value would have been lost if she'd set it in a less historical and more egalitarian society.
And what about Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy? Like
Strange & Norrell it's set in a magical world based on a sexist historical culture -- this time post-Roman Britain. Merlin, the first-person narrator and protagonist, is himself rather sexist (out of ignorance rather than malice). It's pretty obvious that Stewart is not endorsing what Merlin or the other male characters have to say about women, and the female characters themselves are fully realized. But like Clarke she never makes it a significant plot point, and unlike Clarke she doesn't even really make fun of it -- it's just presented matter-of-factly as an unfortunate thing that happens in this culture, like slavery and the odd human sacrifice. Again, she could have written the same basic narrative in an egalitarian fantasy world. But then it would not have been the story of Merlin and Arthur. The clever ways in which she weaves together myth, folklore, and the historical record (such as it is) are a large part of the appeal of the books.
And what about George R. R. Martin's
Game of Thrones?
And what about Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books?
Still, if important military characters are evenly split male and female, but common soldiers are all male... I've seen that, and it makes no sense. Here's how you fix it: Make some of the common soldiers female.
That is one way you could fix it. I wouldn't presume to tell authors that it's the
only way.
In
Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa is a high-ranking officer in a society where not only is the military entirely male apart from her, but wives are actually kept as slaves and referred to as "breeders". (If you know your Latin, even her title "Imperator" is masculine.) There is a big huge heap of gender politics going on in that movie, and Furiosa's position is both conspicuously odd and never really explained. And yet, the effect of this isn't "George Miller wrote a stupid plot hole", but rather "This woman has some really interesting backstory; there's more to her than we see on screen." The apparent contradiction adds depth to the film, the character, and the world.
