Gender in Mechanics

[LeifVignirsson]

Again, all point of view (which was where I was going with my first post). If we all think it is evil and want to see it gone, then yes... people are going to want to see that group gone, period. I believe that we are going for the "groups on equal ground" and "what happens when the good guys get to the village and see the wide eyed little child who is crying because daddy is dead".

The Aliens analogy is amusing, but incorrect. The movie is predator vs. prey, IMO. It is prey (human) trying to fight against predator (Not Predators, but that is the same thing in that movie too). These movies are meant to be a "poke" at humanity that there might be something out there higher on the food chain than us and is ready to kill us because of it. More of a natural angle than a "war" or "genocide" angle.

Really, it doesn't matter too much in this bland society anyways. We hide teh strengths of our differences because we are afraid that we will offend someone because it is thought that men are stronger than women and that might offend the buffed out "Chyna" women and the stick figure-esque men.

And that is the bottom line! Oops, sorry... Threw in the Chyna wrestling reference, had to do the Stone Cold.

 

[Turjan]

Good point, Henry. And one still being debated in the alignment threads. Some of us think genocide *is* acceptable..under an absolute alignment system, when dealing with irreddemable creatures that are evil by nature (which ones those are varies by campaign.) See my above post on the Aliens movie....where Ripley and company are continuously attempting genocide. And we are all rooting for them.

Keep in mind that the 3.x Monster Manual usually says for monstrous humanoids (e.g., for orcs) something along the lines "often chaotic evil". The word "often" implies that the alignment is not a given absolute for this race. This leaves Henry's genocide as a valid point.

 

[fusangite]

Turjan, you're right about there being no general social pattern regarding the social standard of people who perform child-rearing functions. My assumption that evil humanoid societies would accord low-value status to those who raised children had more to do with their assumed militaristic and evil natures as outlined in the MM and other books. In my view, there is a predisposition on the part of evil and militaristic societies to accord low value to childcare, with the possible exception of the former East Germany.

As for your point about Gloranthan trolls, I must differ with you. I can no longer recall which supplement said it, but trolls and other darkness creatures are evil; they are just our allies in the war against chaos. Runequest does have a good-evil axis of lesser importance than its law-chaos axis but it does have one.

But, in general, I think there are too many exceptions to STR, CON, CHA, WIS, etc to justify a + or - by sex.

In statistics, there is no "way too many exceptions" in any absolute numerical sense, only as a proportion. Calculating an accurate average for a group of 6 billion people is easier, not harder than calculating one for a group of 10 people. There most certainly is overwhelming statistical evidence that men are 10% (or more) stronger than women.

While making a similar argument about other attributes is more difficult, especially with the way that mental attributes are less quantifiable than physical ones, in the interest of game balance, a proportional reward would simply have to be offered to female characters to make this work.

I remain more inclined towards Wisdom, because of its correlation in the game to sensory perception: women are less likely to have tunnel vision, more likely to notice things in their field of vision that men would likely be oblivious to, less likely to be colour blind; they also have, and I understand there is some statistical validity to this, a better sense of smell, on average.

Failing wisdom, I think Charisma is reasonable if one is running a society like this one. There is no way it would fly in ancient Greece or Rome but in this society, people (both men and women) are more likely to buy magazines with pretty girls on the cover. Still, I think the Charisma case is weaker -- men continue to dominate in areas where Charisma is an active force, rather than a passive one, like politics, even if women are now in the lead in the latter area.

Constitution is a hard case to make. Yes, women can do certain extremely painful, constantly painful or stomach-churning things better than men but many of the things that make them better at these specific tasks reduce their overall Constitution, such as the specially designed circulatory system.

Women, as the rules are written, are just as likely to be cobatants as men.

Where in the rules does it say this?

It doesn't. This is left entirely in the province of the GM.

Psion, can you explain to me how exactly you guys are disagreeing? Jack said the rules take no position on something; you countered by arguing that the rules take no position on something.

In my opinion it should depend on cultural limitations and roles how genders build up their atributes/abilities, and I say no to flat unchangable rules ... because they rob us of diversity. Howgh

What you say would be literally true if it were not for the fact that sex and gender map 1:1 in most human societies. If people of the female gender were equally likely to be of the male sex as the female sex what you are saying would be true of humans. Of course, it is not because in our society, mapping 1:1 between sex and gender is so important that we spend a lot of money, public money even on sex change surgery so that people can switch gender roles.

I think it is pretty unrealistic to have an identity in physiological performance between creatures across sex unless they are a hermaphrodite species that switches sexes. As long as there is a greater than 0:1 correlation between sex and gender, though, your argument won't really fly with species of non-hermaphrodites.

I think Ursula Leguin is pretty much bang-on in Left Hand of Darkness and even there, sex and gender are still somewhat conflated because some of the creatures are predisposed to spend more of their time as one sex than another.

 

[drothgery]

But, in general, I think there are too many exceptions to STR, CON, CHA, WIS, etc to justify a + or - by sex.

I don't know about the rest, but if you were trying to "realistic" on this point, and talking only about humans, it'd be hard not to say that men get a bonus to STR, or women get a penalty. I think that realism on this point is probably detrimental to a good game (because there's no obvious way to balance it, and unbalanced genders among humans is almost certainly a Bad Thing; if I were being pedantic on this one, I'd just say that in The Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, or wherever, there's less difference between human men & women on this point than in the real world), but it's certainly true that an average adult man is stronger than an average adult woman, and it's certainly true that the strongest men are considerably stronger than the strongest women.

 

[fusangite]

What the statement "killing the women and children" implies to me is not sexism - it's recognition of genocide. If you kill the males of a society, but leave the females and children largely intact, then the society continues (through the male and female children if nothing else). Killing Men, Women, AND children implies genocide - wiping them out.

That there are women combatants is not the issue - the issue is, do you draw the line at wiping an entire culture out, or not?

Keep in mind that the 3.x Monster Manual usually says for monstrous humanoids (e.g., for orcs) something along the lines "often chaotic evil". The word "often" implies that the alignment is not a given absolute for this race. This leaves Henry's genocide as a valid point.

Why do we oppose genocide today? We oppose it because we believe cultural and biological diversity have intrinsic value; such a belief is modern and fairly unique -- certainly not universal, anyway.

EDIT: For most medievals, the idea of leaving a non-Christian culture intact with its religious beliefs would be not only stupid but immoral. Why wouldn't we use whatever amount of tough love it took to make sure that these people joined us in heaven? By these standards, if we had a culture that believed in nurture over nature, the last people you would want to leave alive would be creatures who were actively parenting -- they would be preventing you from abducting their kids and raising them yourself to ensure that they took on good Christian values. I know some people would like to imagine that our ancestors who ran Indian residential schools were evil; but most were not -- they were just wrong.

I don't think it's a value one can rely on fantasy societies having. And even we have limits when it comes to our belief in the intrinsic value of difference -- none of us have a problem with genocide against AIDS, smallpox, syphillis, or the like.

"Extinction" is never an actual issue anyway in warfare. And how would a fighter on the side of humanity have any idea whether the particular goblins he was killing were the "last intact community of Misty Mountain Blue Goblins" anyway?

Finally, I'm assuming, from your argument, that you are allowing the idea of genocide against creatures with "always" in their descriptor to go ahead.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

Keep in mind that the 3.x Monster Manual usually says for monstrous humanoids (e.g., for orcs) something along the lines "often chaotic evil". The word "often" implies that the alignment is not a given absolute for this race. This leaves Henry's genocide as a valid point.

I believe I said that it was acceptable when fighting irredeemable evil *which varies by campaign*. I did not say genocide was acceptable when dealing with creatures that are 'often evil'.

Leif, the Aliens analogy is *not* incorrect. There are a huge number of intelligent species in D&D that see humans as prey. If it is ok to exterminate the Aliens, as the protagonists would obviously love to do (in self defense) then it is Ok to exterminate Red dragons. Kythons. Orcs (in those campaigns where they are always evil rather than just sometimes, which includes my current one).

edit: No matter your view on it, Ripley is *killing the babies of sentient species* in that movie, and i agree with her reasons for doing so.

When both predator and prey are sentient, hunting and war cannot be considered greatly different. Except less corpses get wasted. (See the cannibalism thread.) What part of predator vs prey is incompatible with war in your world view? Among humans, wars often start because those guys have something the other guys want. It makes no difference if the thing that the other guys want is your flesh or your gold...if they kill you to get it, you are just as dead.

 

[Turjan]

Turjan, you're right about there being no general social pattern regarding the social standard of people who perform child-rearing functions. My assumption that evil humanoid societies would accord low-value status to those who raised children had more to do with their assumed militaristic and evil natures as outlined in the MM and other books. In my view, there is a predisposition on the part of evil and militaristic societies to accord low value to childcare, with the possible exception of the former East Germany.

That's right, something along this line is said about the orc society in many supplements. And I did not deny that this was the case in our society, either (just look at salaries in educational/childcare jobs). I just objected the general statement .

As for your point about Gloranthan trolls, I must differ with you. I can no longer recall which supplement said it, but trolls and other darkness creatures are evil; they are just our allies in the war against chaos. Runequest does have a good-evil axis of lesser importance than its law-chaos axis but it does have one.

Yes, of course, you are right .

Why do we oppose genocide today? We oppose it because we believe cultural and biological diversity have intrinsic value; such a belief is modern and fairly unique -- certainly not universal, anyway.

I agreed with Henry on the concept that fighting non-combatants may be frowned upon as genocide. I agree with you as far as the consequences go. That's basically what I meant that I do not penalize my players when they clean out a dangerous goblin cave next to a terrorized village. Otherwise they might find themselves in the awkward position of playing babysitters for little goblins. The easiest solution is to just not mention any goblin children.

 

[Turjan]

I believe I said that it was acceptable when fighting irredeemable evil *which varies by campaign*. I did not say genocide was acceptable when dealing with creatures that are 'often evil'.

Okay, I see that our standpoints don't differ very much. I just wanted to point out that D&D made a few steps away from assigning absolute alignments to any races. On the other hand, extinguishing absolute evil is one of the hallmarks of D&D; there I agree.

When both predator and prey are sentient, hunting and war cannot be considered greatly different. Except less corpses get wasted. (See the cannibalism thread.) What part of predator vs prey is incompatible with war in your world view? Among humans, wars often start because those guys have something the other guys want. It makes no difference if the thing that the other guys want is your flesh or your gold...if they kill you to get it, you are just as dead.

Well, war under humans is something different. Don't devaluate your predator vs prey example by opening this can of worm. As far as genocide of a race that preferentially eats humans is concerned, I don't see any problems; a prudent thing to do .

 

[Silveras]

Where in the rules does it say this?

It doesn't. This is left entirely in the province of the GM.

Exactly. As I read it, the rules make no gender-based distinctions about Adventurers, but they say nothing about the societies from which they come.

 

[John Morrow]

Sorry. Meant to say that the rules as written *imply* that the likelihood of females being combatants is as high as males because there is no mechanical reason whatsoever why they should not be. Cultural reasons will of course always be within the purview of the DM.

What gets lost in the anachronism of fantasy is that without baby formula or the ability to store milk, without a daycare system, and without things like disposable diapers, raising a child is a full-time chore that's going to require more female involvement than male involvement, at least when we are dealing with mammals. Historically, women dominated those professions that were compatible with child rearing -- gathering, cooking, textiles, etc. Elizabeth Barber discusses this in her book Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years.

In addition, modern Western birthrates are catastrophically low because of the liberation and economic advancement of women, the development of birth control, and the devaluation of parenthood (related, in part, to how expensive it is to become a parent). As a result, much of Europe and Japan are well below replacement levels with some countries having a birth rate in the range of 1.3 children per women. Projected out, that yields empty countries in a few hundred years. In a fantasy setting with nasty monsters killing people left and right, it's a complete disaster. So if you want to sustain your fantasy society or have it grow, you need women who are willing to have children and raise them, at least as infants. Of course the presence of healing spells and such means that women don't need to have nearly as many of them as they did in historical times, nor will childbearing be as deadly.

Are there ways around this to allow the women to be more liberated? Sure. I suggested one approach in an essay I wrote that was published in the Tribe 8 Companion. Basically, in one society, I described a system where the women warriors were expected to have several children when they were young and hand them over to wet nurses and elders who have survived into old age for training. Then they could go off and get themselves killed if they want. Basically, women need to produce babies before they die or you have a problem.

I suppose that one could also create spells to solve part of the problem -- Create Milk and Phantasmal Babysitter. But the reality is that most games, like quite a few people in the Western world, ignore childbearing and upbringing for much the same reason -- it's incompatible with a freewheeling and fun lifestyle. Suddenly, you're life revolves around this child that needs a lot of help and can't be dragged off into danger.

Of course that points to the problem of going the other way and modelling your fantasy society on a real Medieval society and making women the childbearers and caregivers. It basically relegates women to a role that's not a lot of fun and is incompatible with adventuring. That's not going to be a whole lot of fun for women (or men) who want to play women characters. Basically, it puts all of the sexism back on society that women have fought so hard against. I doubt that many women role-players (nor quite a few men) really want to deal with that in their escapism.

There are, of course, middle grounds. It's possible to imagine a society where most women fill traditional childbearing roles just as most men fill traditional farming and craftsman roles. The adventurers are drawn from among the exceptional, both male and female, and are given the respect of their station regardless of gender (remember that even some of the most sexist societies still had the odd queen or woman warrior). It's also a good idea to eliminate the nastier elements of sexism from the entire society in the process, from not giving women a voice in politics or the ability to inherity property to wife beating and forced marriages. This would basically allow you to have a traditional society where the "women and children" are generally non-combatants (going back to the original point) while some exceptional women are combatants and are given the same respect that a man would have with the same abilities. That's pretty much how my setting currently works.

Of course there is also nothing wrong with just admitting the D&D is fantasy and simply let your fantasy world operate without regard for whether it would all actually work or not. If differentiating the sexes bothers you or your players, by all means handwave the problem away.

In the real world, while the sexes are equal overall, there are significant differences. Females have stronger lower bodies than males, on average. The reverse is true for the upper body, on average.

Actually, I've seen no evidence for stronger lower bodies in an absolute sense, though women might have better balance because of their lower center of gravity. It's true that women have proportionally stronger lower bodies but they are not generally stronger than men in any way at the average or extremes (individual cases, of course, vary). The military has studied this for obvious reasons.

I've been through long discussions about the relative strength of the sexes on several forums (Usenet, RPGnet, Pyramid Message Boards) and it's generally a very heated topic, in part because it touches on real world beliefs and has real world implications. But the bottom line is this:

Strength is based on muscle mass which is a function of size (weight) and the proportion of muscle to fat. Men, on average and at the extremes, are significantly larger than women. Men also have the ability to maintain a much lower percentage of body fat than women an remain healthy. That's because a woman's body is designed to retain fat to support a potential pregnancy while a man's body is not. Combine those two factors and you wind up with (A) a man will generally be stronger than a woman of the same weight and build and (B) men are stronger on average and at the extremes than women because they are larger on average and at the extremes than women. Yet another factor is that due to testosterone combines with body fat retention, women have to work harder to develop and maintain a lean muscular build than men. Finally, there are a bunch of minor issues like knee structure that also come into play.

Now, it's conceivable that a woman could be as large and strong as the strongest man. There is, in theory, nothing biological stopping that. But she'd look more like an old East German woman weightlifter than Xena (though Lucy Lawless is a very big woman). She'd be a "she-man". You could always wave your hands and erase the size dimorphism in your fantasy setting and simply gloss over the body fat issue if you want women as strong as men. And given that it's fantasy, there is nothing stopping you from allowing Xena-like women who are as strong as men if you want, though you'd have to ignore size, too.

Just as most women (and also men) wouldn't enjoy being told that their female character needs to stay at home and have babies, they also wouldn't enjoy being told that their female character can't be as strong as the male characters. In fact, in one of the more civil discussions, one of the women said that it basically came down to not finding that sort of limitation very fun in her fantasy. So overall, I'd suggest handwaving this particular issue away when it comes to PCs and maximum strength. If you still want dimorphism in your games, make the women on average weaker than the men but I'd suggest allowing exceptional women to be just as strong as men, whether you demand that they look like East German weightlifters to justify it or allow them to look like Xena.

The reason why those East German women looked that way is that they were pumped full of male hormones to boost their performance, despite the fact that it greatly damaged their health. So can the very lean bodies that gymnasts and other female athletes achieve, because stopping menstruation can cause the same osteoperosis problems that women face after menopause. This also counters the argument that women only perform less well than men in athletics because they aren't trained as well or encouraged to be athletic. The truth is that the Soviet Bloc nations did everything they could to boost the performance of female athletes and they still didn't catch up. In fact, once drug testing improved in the Olympics, the gap in performance actually increased in some sports like running.

As most weapons are wielded in the hands, this makes males more likely hand to hand combatants in a pre-technological age. As unarmed combatants, things are much more equal, presuming equal levels of training.

I think that movies and television tend to grossly overestimate the effects of skill on combat. Yes, skill matters but it's not everything. There is a reason why they seperate the participants in combat sports like boxing into weight classes and why women athletes rarely ever compete directly against male athletes. In fact, the categories used in boxing are probably one of the best illustrations of just how much size corresponds to strength and how much it matters in hand-to-hand combat.

Women tend to have higher pain thresholds, and can sustain extended effort better, men have more 'fast twitch' musculature and snap into action slightly more quickly. Etc.

I'm not sure how much of that is true, either. The evidence about pain and endurance is sketchy, from what I've seen. Of course there are things that women can do better. There is some evidence, for example, that women can outperform men in shooting competitions.

edit: I'm waiting to be pummeled...

These discussions never end well, in my experience. But this one, so far, is much more civil than most that I've seen.