D&D General “‘Scantily Clad and Well Proportioned’: Sexism and Gender Stereotyping in the Gaming Worlds of TSR and Dungeons & Dragons.”

[Horwath]

So, -so-, true, Bestie! I've been at tables where the act cleaned up -fast-. The "Civilizing Force" of women is definitely a thing that -can- exist in a man-dominated space.

And I've, sadly, been at tables where things got -worse- because there was a woman present.

When I came out as trans to my D&D troupe, one of my friends -immediately- asked me if I'd "Ever date a guy like him" while he was driving me to work.

I'd lived in the same apartment with this guy for 6 years or so. We'd talked, at length, of his absolutely abhorrent attitudes toward women. He'd told me about the online girlfriend he had when he was 17 who -finally- got the opportunity to fly down and be with him after a 5 month online relationship. How they'd had sex by candlelight and with roses the first night she was there and then he ended the relationship because she was 'A Slut' for having sex with her boyfriend on their first in-person date. Like she was staying for a week at his place and he KICKED HER OUT the next morning.

Nevermind that he didn't balk at the opportunity to have his way with her. That's -totally- normal dude behavior. But she was a bad person. HE SET UP THE BEDROOM WITH ROSES AND CANDLES. But she's a slut.

I hadn't even talked to a physician or a psychiatrist about being trans or to get on HRT or anything, and here I am having to tell this guy "No" as gently as possible because HE WAS DRIVING THE CAR AT THE TIME.

He got pissed at me for being Friendzoned and refused to drive me to or from work after that. Had to get a lift from a coworker.

Similarly, that attitude carried over into games whenever I'd RP a female character. He doubled down on being an absolute sexist pig at me whenever he got the chance.

Oh, for sure. It's -way- less common, now, than it used to be. There's also a generally stronger push on hygiene in general, these days.

Unrelated note "As Snarf is to Brevity" is now my go-to simile for this forum!

hehehe,

this gave me a good chuckle. and got a bit angry at the same time.

Now, for "when he was 17" story, I can understand that.
we were all completely idiotic when we were 16-19. Maybe not in that way as he was, but certainly my 30yo self would beat the life out of my 17yo self for being that dumb.

but to see that kind of behavior in his 30s, that is simply horrible.
some people really never grow up.

maybe he never got the much needed attitude adjustment in his life(read: getting punched in the face for being an complete ass)

 

[Dioltach]

Back in the days of 3.0, Dragon had a cover depicting a close-up of a bare-chested male elf. A few issues later, they published a letter that someone had written complaining about how they couldn't leave that issue lying around, because they didn't want to have to explain gay erotica to their children.

I remember thinking at the time, "But I bet he was okay with all the illustrations of female characters..."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Spirit of the Night lol. Thought it was reasonably tasteful.

How is this any different to prides and Satanic Panic telling everyone else what OK to like?

The truth is often a pretty great differentiator.

It's art and arts always subjective often offensive. Stick a warning label on it or don't buy it. It's really simple.

"Because this is subjective, you're never allowed to have a problem with it" is not an acceptable argument.

Something subjective can still be a problem.

If you're telling people what's wrong you're just as nad as the Satanic Panic crowd. It's not any different.

American prides.

Nah. There are two valid (and compatible!) responses to this critique: Stop publishing women near-exclusively in sexy, scantily-clad, male-gaze poses; or start publishing men heavily in female-gaze poses. (Which do exist! They just almost always do things many men aren't comfortable doing IRL, like symbols indicating emotional availability and sensitivity, and lacking things men tend to prefer, such as being of relatively modest or even slight build rather than jacked).

As always, the issue isn't "this one specific image is Horrible and Should Never Have Been." It is, and always has been, the collection overall reveals a flawed pattern. That pattern is portraying women only, or almost exclusively, as sex-objects to be viewed, manipulated, and controlled by men, while portraying men only, or almost exclusively, as power fantasies to be enjoyed (and identified with) by men.

The solution is not, and has never been, to tell people to STOP creating. It is, and has always been, to have people make MORE content. MORE speech. MORE variety.

Turning this into "oh so you want to silence everyone?" is an attempt to play a victim card and transmute this issue into one where you can just ignore all issues forever. It won't fly, and it especially won't fly on this forum.

 

[Staffan]

There's nothing -wrong- with masculine sexual -or- power fantasy. Scantily clad women in fantasy environments men wish they could be with and big burly powerful men swinging giant weapons they wish they could be is totally fine and dandy.

It's the "Clearly, a woman's power fantasy is to be scantily clad in a fantasy realm and ogled by dudes while ogling big overly muscled slabs of man meat, herself, is her sexual fantasy" that bugs me.

These things don't translate 1 to 1, but people pretend like they do in order to shove their head in the sand and not acknowledge that something is catered specifically, and exclusively, toward them.

(That isn't to say there aren't women out there with such power and sexual fantasies, it's just not the average and them getting benefits from young heterosexual men being catered to is at best an afterthought)

Nightwing. She's describing Nightwing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nah. There are two valid (and compatible!) responses to this critique: Start publishing women near-exclusively in sexy, scantily-clad, male-gaze poses; or start publishing men heavily in female-gaze poses. (Which do exist! They just almost always do things many men aren't comfortable doing IRL, like symbols indicating emotional availability and sensitivity, and lacking things men tend to prefer, such as being of relatively modest or even slight build rather than jacked).

I think you mean stop in the first case! That's the sort of typo I'd make!

The second case is interesting because I think it would cause fewer waves than one might guess. It's an interesting illustration of present-day sexism that male characters in videogames who are of a more diverse build/appearance almost never attract criticism even from the anti-woke crowd, because even those freaks don't want every male character to be huge and jacked. But that's just another sexist double-standard, because female characters who go outside a narrow norm do get criticised constantly (especially if they're dark-skinned). Because the issue today isn't really "equal opportunity cheesecake", which might have flown in the 1970s (or even arguably 1990s), but rather just men wanting to control depictions of women's bodies, as part of a general desire to control/enslave women (I don't use the word enslave lightly, but it's literally what people like Andrew Tate propose).

I do think the "male ideal = jacked and huge" thing is definitely damaging to men as well as women - I think it's part of why we've seen so many youthful idiots start thinking Tate or Logan Paul or the like are people to look up to, rather than steroid-twisted sex criminals. And it's pretty unattainable/unsustainable for most men in real terms to be huge/jacked like that. I think ironically there's also a side of pro-exercise culture which is trying to be positive but is so "Yeah anyone can get jacked bro!!!" over-positive that it helps perpetuate the problem.

Nightwing. She's describing Nightwing.

I get that you're mostly joking, but the pedant in me (well, I may be the minority owner of me compared to the pedant!) if forced to note: some depictions of Nightwing, sure, but not the majority of them, even if we only went say, post-2000. Even your example picture has a ridiculously jacked Nightwing pulling a slightly angry face, much as he might be giving us the classic female superhero pose of ass-towards-reader. The Wikipedia image for him similarly has him angry/threatening and implausibly jacked.

There's no difference in physique there with say, Captain America, and he's ultra-jacked, just not also huge.

Something more like this is more in line with what is being described:

But that's a rarer depiction of Nightwing, and one usually only seen when he's in the context of Teen Titans, rather than operating solo (and often accompanied by truly hilariously sexualized depictions of Starfire).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you mean stop in the first case! That's the sort of typo I'd make!

Correct. I have edited to fix that.

I will note that my emphasis with the males-depicted-for-female-gaze was not simply on doing it at all, but rather, doing it as the clear majority going forward, just as the overwhelming majority of depictions of women (and, lamentably, girls) are still pretty blatantly sexualized.

If (say) 85% of depictions of male comic book heroes were like Steampunkette's comic reference, with lean builds and kissable lips and large emotive eyes etc., etc., I'm pretty sure we'd see a much more substantial (and negative) reaction from men. Especially if the men being depicted in the male-power-fantasy way were themselves strongly affected by a female-gaze reinterpretation, e.g. big hulking man = sexual predator so the only way to be a buff guy is to be a villain. (Matching how the only way for women to have independent voice and get equal footing and proverbial "screen time" with men was, and sadly often still is, for them to be sexy dominatrix villains--a woman getting to be herself and express her own thoughts and feelings and act without being restrained or controlled by men only because she's a villain.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If (say) 85% of depictions of male comic book heroes were like Steampunkette's comic reference, with lean builds and kissable lips and large emotive eyes etc., etc., I'm pretty sure we'd see a much more substantial (and negative) reaction from men.

We might right now, with Tate and so on having their hooks in - I don't think we actually would have if that had started in say, the '70s or even '90s though, I think it would have just been normalized, if it was genuinely female-oriented. Batman is kind of interesting here in that if we look at '80s Batman, it's an actor very much more towards the big-eyes kissable-lips end of the scale (Michael Keaton), as is the Batman of today (Robert Pattinson), but the in-between Batmans, whilst both handsome, were clearly more male-aimed (Bale, Affleck - Clooney is harder to say). But in comics Batman has been pretty relentlessly depicted in a male-appealing way despite that.

That's also very different to what you described, which was a more straightforward and diverse female-gaze-centric approach, rather than merely mirroring a narrow male-gaze approach.

Especially if the men being depicted in the male-power-fantasy way were themselves strongly affected by a female-gaze reinterpretation, e.g. big hulking man = sexual predator so the only way to be a buff guy is to be a villain.

Is that actually female-gaze though? I don't think it is (in my infinite male wisdom of course...). That's just a kind of cheesy role-reversal, and attributing that to "female gaze" feels actually kind of sexist to me, sorry (especially given how significant a proportion of heterosexual women are attracted to large/strong men). I think if you just flip-the-script it's probably best to just call it role-reversal.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We might right now, with Tate and so on having their hooks in - I don't think we actually would have if that had started in say, the '70s or even '90s though, I think it would have just been normalized, if it was genuinely female-oriented. Batman is kind of interesting here in that if we look at '80s Batman, it's an actor very much more towards the big-eyes kissable-lips end of the scale (Michael Keaton), as is the Batman of today (Robert Pattinson), but the in-between Batmans, whilst both handsome, were clearly more male-aimed (Bale, Affleck - Clooney is harder to say). But in comics Batman has been pretty relentlessly depicted in a male-appealing way despite that.

That's also very different to what you described, which was a more straightforward and diverse female-gaze-centric approach, rather than merely mirroring a narrow male-gaze approach.

Is that actually female-gaze though? I don't think it is (in my infinite male wisdom of course...). That's just a kind of cheesy role-reversal, and attributing that to "female gaze" feels actually kind of sexist to me, sorry (especially given how significant a proportion of heterosexual women are attracted to large/strong men). I think if you just flip-the-script it's probably best to just call it role-reversal.

I'm no expert on women's studies or the like. I used the example because what I've been told by several different people (both cis women and trans men) that that association (large muscular man is an implicit threat, very high likelihood of being mistreated by such men especially in a sexualized way) is one that they've had to address sooner or later. And, if I may be so bold, I will note that your own exemplars of skeevy gross men...were roid-abusing sexist jerks who encourage sexually violent and sexually coercive behavior toward women. That is, the invoked example was in fact exactly what I'm talking about: big hulking man = sexual predator. (This justifiable fear is what prompts the pernicious and useless "not all men" response, as if noting that some men don't do horrible things merits a cookie.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Good discussion.

And I am particularly glad that most people seem to agree that it is about the aggregate, and not the individual pieces of art. And having actually worked as an illustrator in the RPG industry (for White Wolf), I want to say that the art director plays a huge role. Individual artists do not see the big picture. They will be asked to draw some pictures for a book, they don't usually know what everyone else is doing (I sometimes did a bit, as I knew some of the other artists.) And different artists have different interests and strengths and weaknesses, and the art director should know them, as well as endeavour to recruit a diverse collection of artists. (This of course applies to bigger companies that have resources to do this, if we are just talking about some pet project of one or couple of people, it is different.)

I worked with the Exalted line and it tried certainly to be egalitarian, whilst not shying away from more adult themes. Though I still remember for several times asking whether I could swap genders of some people depicted (from male to female) as I sometimes felt there were not enough female presence in the art notes. And there certainly was way more nudity than you would ever find in a modern D&D book, and I'm sure the intent was to be equal about it. Though two of the three times I was asked to tone down the nudity were about male nudity. (And the third time was about female nudity they had explicitly asked for, and most hilarious thing about that was that the same picture also depicted an ape-man about to butcher a human baby for food, which to my European sensibilities seemed a tad more controversial!)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(Matching how the only way for women to have independent voice and get equal footing and proverbial "screen time" with men was, and sadly often still is, for them to be sexy dominatrix villains--a woman getting to be herself and express her own thoughts and feelings and act without being restrained or controlled by men only because she's a villain.)

I think one of the real un-noted but implied factors here is actually acceptability of facial expressions and implied emotions on drawn characters. If you just make "Hot Batman" with kissable lips and big eyes, but then have him doing all the usual Batman frowning and sneering and growling, I think the fact that he had big eyes etc. would just WOOSH past most male readers. They might think "Oh this depiction is a bit odd/anime-ish but w/e". However, if you have Batman pulling a coy/flirty face as per the shortpacked.com comic, then suddenly you're going to get a lot of (somewhat dim) male readers being "uncomfortable" in the way described.

I think this also ties in to your "sexy dominatrix villain" point - the point isn't really that they're sex criminals or whatever, but the key difference is they're allowed to be angry, unpleasant, to snarl, to frown, to sneer and so on. And that is what the misogynist seems to truly hate - women who are allowed to have many emotions of their own, especially anger/rage - hence they have to be villains. "Good" female characters in comics are only allowed to smile, be coy, cry, be shocked or maybe, for a treat, look kind of stern but not too stern. I think that's part of the whole uncomfortable issue - you have this restricted emotional range that's allowed.

I used the example because what I've been told by several different people (both cis women and trans men) that that association (large muscular man is an implicit threat, very high likelihood of being mistreated by such men especially in a sexualized way) is one that they've had to address sooner or later. And, if I may be so bold, I will note that your own exemplars of skeevy gross men...were roid-abusing sexist jerks who encourage sexually violent and sexually coercive behavior toward women. That is, the invoked example was in fact exactly what I'm talking about: big hulking man = sexual predator. (This justifiable fear is what prompts the pernicious and useless "not all men" response, as if noting that some men don't do horrible things merits a cookie.)

Sure, but I think calling it "female gaze" is a bit off. Male gaze isn't all generalized male attitudes towards women, it's more specific, likewise female gaze. Hence my suggestion re: role reversal.