D&D 5E celebrating pride and lgbtq+ players 2021

I could not help this bad joke. Sorry.

"How does a French door express gender identity? La porte"

Edit: The full joke is not funny so not sharing it all. It is about a southern American visiting France with stereotypical accents, etc.
And yet some people here misconstrued that I did not support that broken X-Card, that is because as written its rules are ripe for abuse. Bad design..

Instead I have an A5 flyer for DM intervention when the social banter is off the rails, so DM steps in to briefly state to the table why...

dm_intervention_we_dont_do_that_here.jpg
 

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Generally sex and gender are separated now for discussion and clarity. You've described sex rather than gender.

Male and Female tend to be used to describe sex, while man and woman gender.

So for example a transwoman is male, but expresses gender as a woman. Cisgender or cis, just means their sex and gender match in the traditional sense.
I'm a Trans woman. There's nothing "Male" about me. Biologically I've got the same hormonal levels, muscle mass, and bone density as a hypogonadal cis woman of my height and weight. I have all the same disease risk factors, too. The "Biological Sex" distinction is based on misinformation and supposition.
It was a clumsy and needless addition to the (fantasy) game, but to play the devil's advocate here;
If they based their decision on biology of Homo Sapiens Sapiens from the "Realm of Earth" to apply to fantasy species or even humans from another world they would be correct. They didn't need to be correct on that one, but hey....
Wrong.

The overlap of strength in men and women is so close to identical as to make any distinction irrelevant. It only becomes "Relevant" at the absolute extreme of human performance in the modern era, where the most extremely trained athletes pull ahead and even then it's only due to differing social expectations.

Take Becca Swanson, for example. She's 5'10" tall, 220lbs, and she can deadlift 694lbs.

In the same weight category, an "Elite Male" Deadlifter should be able to lift 607lbs. But the world record for a 220lbs dude is 810.

Becca Swanson's competition for Strongest Woman in her weight category is -vastly- smaller than Andrey Belyaev's competition. Because women are specifically -discouraged- from weightlifting. If there were an equal number of women deadlifters, there's a good chance one of them would be as strong as Andrey Belyaev, or so close as to be functionally equal.

And before you get into questions of height and weight where men are bigger: I'm 6'2". I'm about 8 inches shorter than my mother was when she was in High School. If she'd decided to go into weightlifting she'd have crushed Andrey's weight record by having a greater mass than him.

Even without weightlifting training she could lift my 5'6" tall father and swing him around like a ragdoll whenever she wanted, but never did because he professed to hating it.

For reference, between 2012 and 2016 there were 6,000 women and 15,000 men in American Powerlifting. With more than double the sample size, and more men in higher weight classes because the women's weight class tops out at 84+ while men's weight classes go over 120+, it's easy to assume that women are smaller and weaker.

But tall women, like my mother and I, are -expressly- pressured not to do "Manly" things like sports. Mom did Basketball in High School but was not -allowed- to play in College due to her height. Meanwhile 6'10" players were -sought- after for the men's teams for obvious reasons.

If we could control for that kinda double standard in society... Woo boy.

But until then, the assumption that dudes are stronger is just a fantasy borne out by a society which explicitly tries to make it reality. And that's Survivorship Bias, Baby!
 
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I'm a Trans woman. There's nothing "Male" about me. Biologically I've got the same hormonal levels, muscle mass, and bone density as a hypogonadal cis woman of my height and weight. I have all the same disease risk factors, too. The "Biological Sex" distinction is based on misinformation and supposition.

A DNA test run on you will say differently. Nothing science can do to put you in the correct body can change this and bigots and haters will always have this one thing to use against pre- or post-op Trans people.
 

While D&D is a perfect environment to allow players to experiment with playing the role of any character of any gender, without all the prejustices of real life. I find it almost just as interesting to allow players to experience what it was like to be a man or a woman in a specific period of time.

LGBT people have always existed, but in the time period that my campaign emulates, people often had to keep up appearances. While plenty a monarch was secretly attracted to members of the same sex, they would often be in a very unhappy sham marriage because that was expected of people at the time. Anything else would be a scandal. And of course there was also plenty of sexism, with women not being allowed to occupy certain important positions.

I occasionally let my players experience these aspects of the time period, because it is interesting to reflect on it with our modern sensabilities.
 

Firstly, Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest female sprinter set a 100m distance record in 1988 at the Olympics, and that has not been broken since by other female runners, despite it a slower time than many male Olympic sprinters on record

But seems, this thread is escalating beyond the original premise, so rolling out my meme again...

dm_intervention_we_dont_do_that_here.jpg
 

A DNA test run on you will say differently. Nothing science can do to put you in the correct body can change this and bigots and haters will always have this one thing to use against pre- or post-op Trans people.
A DNA test run on me will say what my genetic makeup is. Nothing more. The interpretation of that genetic makeup is where various characteristics comes from. And that interpretation will always be based in the society it's in.

Like all humans, I have the genetics required to have ovaries or testicles. But depending on whether I've got SRY Sox9 active or FoxL2 active is the ultimate deciding factor. Someone who had a damaged SRY SoX9 in utero would be an XY person with Ovaries and develop as a woman at puberty. And an XX person with a damaged FoxL2 will wind up with testicles and develop as a man at puberty. XX = Woman and XY = Man are just generalizations we like to use because it's "Mostly" accurate.

"Biologically X" are just words that we use to try and create a "Gotchya" for trans people. Another layer of concern trolling and manipulation of science.

You know how almost every ant in a colony of ants is a female? It's wrong. It has to do with a cultural understanding of male animals having sperm-generation and female animals not having sperm generation. Notice how I didn't say ovum?

The only ant in a colony that produces ovum is the Queen. The rest do not -have- Gonads, of any kind. The things in their body that could have developed to make gonads instead produce caustic toxins that the ant uses as a defense mechanism. That ant isn't male or female. Their "Biological Sex" is -murder-.

But you tell a 19th century entomologist that and he'll laugh in your face.
 

I reject the notion that any characters should even have a defined sexuality. There is no such thing (and should be no such thing) as playing a character of a "different sexuality" than you because sexuality is not relevant to anything at all that can happen in most games. The only time it becomes relevant is when you make it relevant through stereotypes.
What you are asking for is literally "don't ask, don't tell"
Gay people can exist in the game as long as they don't actually exist
Heisenberg's homosexuals
 

There is nothing porno, but but as you described it, there is nothing pansexual, genderfluid or nonbinary about Chance either, except as specifically related to his/her organs and biology when he/she changes and if he/she was not a changeling even that would not be there.
There's nothing genderfluid and nonbinary about a character who can, and frequently does, change their biological sex at will?

I kind of want to hear what you think genderfluid and nonbinary actually means.

And I also want to hear what you think it would mean this to be relevant in game.

You say his sexuality came up here. Can you explain the context, because nothing above in this quoted part would seem relevant to his sexuality. Again if Chance is a trasgender homosexual man, or a cisgender bisexual woman how does this story change? Are you suggessting he can't pretend to bee a noble suitor if that is the case? That he must be genderfluid and pansexual to do this?
I can't help but note that, even though @AcererakTriple6 repeatedly used them/they for Chance, you are using he/his. Now, I am not going to get at you for deliberately misgendering a fictional character. (Just don't do it when it comes to real people.)

But you, right here, are showing why it's so important to include non-cishet NPCs in official products. It's so people like you can learn that being pan, bi, straight, gay, ace, cis, trans, genderfluid, or whatever isn't a person's defining trait. That's it's simply a trait that someone has, like having black hair or green eyes or being left-handed. That people don't "need" to be a specific gender or sexuality; that they simply are that gender or sexuality.
 

I'm a Trans woman. There's nothing "Male" about me. Biologically I've got the same hormonal levels, muscle mass, and bone density as a hypogonadal cis woman of my height and weight. I have all the same disease risk factors, too. The "Biological Sex" distinction is based on misinformation and supposition..
A DNA test run on me will say what my genetic makeup is. Nothing more. The interpretation of that genetic makeup is where various characteristics comes from. And that interpretation will always be based in the society it's in.

"Biologically X" are just words that we use to try and create a "Gotchya" for trans people. Another layer of concern trolling and manipulation of science..
Thank you for making these points more succinctly and diplomatically than I would. I will re-iterate the point: as a transfemme, I am a woman. Full-stop. That i am nonbinary means that my gender presentation is most accurately reflected as "¯\(ツ)/¯". Genetically, I am none of your :):):):):):):) business.

I can't help but note that, even though @AcererakTriple6 repeatedly used them/they for Chance, you are using he/his. Now, I am not going to get at you for deliberately misgendering a fictional character. (Just don't do it when it comes to real people.).
I've got the bad faith sealion you're responding to on block, but I will also say that as far as I'm concerned, we use the correct names and pronouns for everyone; real or fictional. TTRPG characters, because of how intimate their portrayal usually is (even NPCs) are very far from being an exception to that rule.
 

Generally sex and gender are separated now for discussion and clarity. You've described sex rather than gender.

Male and Female tend to be used to describe sex, while man and woman gender.

So for example a transwoman is male, but expresses gender as a woman. Cisgender or cis, just means their sex and gender match in the traditional sense.
The concept of at least four genders emerged thousands of years ago, from anatomical observations.

But these same four apply to gender-identiy as well. Among many ancient indigenous cultures (including various American aborigines), gender is a personal decision, which may or may not correlate with anatomy.

• Masculine
• Feminine
• Both
• Neither
 

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