Celebrim
Legend
I don't think you were trying to start a flame war, but I do think that you managed to hit upon a theme that is even more conversation provoking than 1st edition D&D's 'inferiority'. 
Some women are stronger than some men, but that would only be a counter assertion if my assertion was that all women are weaker than all men - which I never asserted. I merely suggested that average strength and maximum strength are both lower than in men. For example, if the strength modifer for being female is -4, then the strongest women (str 14+) will still be stronger than 75% of all men, but the _average_ man will be able to lift almost twice what the _average_ woman can (which is in fact true).
I know what you are talking about. Those are the PC things to say when you discuss sexual equality. But they don't have necessarily a whole lot of basis in fact, and I personally feel that it is wrong to base the issue of sexual equality on some sort of balance between attributes.
Although I have seen and heard of extreme examples of pain tolerence in women, I have heard similar stories about men, and I don't notice in my daily affairs that average women tend to bear discomfort better than average men. In fact, quite the opposite - and this is that 'take care of yourself better' thing that I mentioned. Sometimes 'pain tolerence' isn't the best survival skill. If you actually examine the 'evidence' that leads people to assert that women have higher pain tolerence than men it seems to lie wholly in a feminist assertion that women bear pain better than men because women give birth. This is not evidence.
And I might add to that that pain tolerence is not a particularly important aspect of CON in D&D anyway, since pain is rarely actually implemented in D&D. D&D is famous for letting you act without hinderence right until you hit 0 h.p. and then suddenly you are almost dead. Even if we believed that women had superior 'pain tolerence' than men, I think we would be better off implementing it as 'shock resistance' of some fashion (and having seen people enter shock, women subjectively seem to physically cope with shock better than men do, but again that may be just an unconscious sexist perception that a 'delicate' women shouldn't handle that much pain as well as they do and not real measurement at all), than implementing it as a gross CON bonus. 'Reduced Shock' is something we could do in GURPS, but not something easily done in D20.
As for 'better communicators', I'm inclined to think that that belief has alot to do with sexist perceptions by both men and women more than it has to do with reality, but since it is _believed_ to be true, it may actually at some level represent a real CHR bonus because CHR is itself a subjective attribute.
Well, maybe life is unfair. I don't think that there has to be a counterbalance. I don't think that a women's legal rights have anything to do with whether a counterbalance exists, though I have known plenty of women whose self esteem unfortunately seemed to depend on whether they believed a counterbalance existed. However, I do find that forcing a female character to be inferior is not conducive to fun gaming, however unrealistic it may be.
Actually, the one gamable advantage that you can definately base on reality I know of is reduced succeptibility to 'called shots'.
Some women are stronger than some men, but that would only be a counter assertion if my assertion was that all women are weaker than all men - which I never asserted. I merely suggested that average strength and maximum strength are both lower than in men. For example, if the strength modifer for being female is -4, then the strongest women (str 14+) will still be stronger than 75% of all men, but the _average_ man will be able to lift almost twice what the _average_ woman can (which is in fact true).
I know what you are talking about. Those are the PC things to say when you discuss sexual equality. But they don't have necessarily a whole lot of basis in fact, and I personally feel that it is wrong to base the issue of sexual equality on some sort of balance between attributes.
Although I have seen and heard of extreme examples of pain tolerence in women, I have heard similar stories about men, and I don't notice in my daily affairs that average women tend to bear discomfort better than average men. In fact, quite the opposite - and this is that 'take care of yourself better' thing that I mentioned. Sometimes 'pain tolerence' isn't the best survival skill. If you actually examine the 'evidence' that leads people to assert that women have higher pain tolerence than men it seems to lie wholly in a feminist assertion that women bear pain better than men because women give birth. This is not evidence.
And I might add to that that pain tolerence is not a particularly important aspect of CON in D&D anyway, since pain is rarely actually implemented in D&D. D&D is famous for letting you act without hinderence right until you hit 0 h.p. and then suddenly you are almost dead. Even if we believed that women had superior 'pain tolerence' than men, I think we would be better off implementing it as 'shock resistance' of some fashion (and having seen people enter shock, women subjectively seem to physically cope with shock better than men do, but again that may be just an unconscious sexist perception that a 'delicate' women shouldn't handle that much pain as well as they do and not real measurement at all), than implementing it as a gross CON bonus. 'Reduced Shock' is something we could do in GURPS, but not something easily done in D20.
As for 'better communicators', I'm inclined to think that that belief has alot to do with sexist perceptions by both men and women more than it has to do with reality, but since it is _believed_ to be true, it may actually at some level represent a real CHR bonus because CHR is itself a subjective attribute.
Well, maybe life is unfair. I don't think that there has to be a counterbalance. I don't think that a women's legal rights have anything to do with whether a counterbalance exists, though I have known plenty of women whose self esteem unfortunately seemed to depend on whether they believed a counterbalance existed. However, I do find that forcing a female character to be inferior is not conducive to fun gaming, however unrealistic it may be.
Actually, the one gamable advantage that you can definately base on reality I know of is reduced succeptibility to 'called shots'.
