Genders - What's the difference?

[JamesonCourage]

I call this the Wal-Mart problem.

Cool. What did you think of what we actually discussed?

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Just a small note to whomever protested against the fact that I used the word "gender".

I just didn't want to use the word "sex" in the thread title. Please forgive me.

Carry on.

 

[pawsplay]

Cool. What did you think of what we actually discussed?

Let's look at the half-feat bonus thing. Say, males get Athletic, or +1 bonus on top of athletic.

If you want Athletic + a different trait, males have a lower opportunity cost
If you want Athletic + whatever trait females can snag, males and females are equivalent
If you don't want Athletic, males have a higher opportunity cost
If you want to be an especially athletic male, you pay the same cost for a lower relative benefit of any other character choosing a feat, but it's the only game in town (you pay more for the peaches)

So what's the end result:
If you want to play an athletic character who also does Y, you would prefer a male. Unless you also want to do X (female bonus trait), in which case it's a wash.
If you want to play a maximally athletic character, you play a male. Except almost no one plays maximally athletic characters, since it's disproportionately expensive for the benefit.
This leads to the result that most athletic characters are male, but female characters who are athletic are no less athletic than the vast majority of athletic characters. A few outlier males surpass them.

Are you satisfied with this result? It both discourages female characters and gives them a lower maximum potential compared to male characters, while at the same time not actually representing a real mathematical difference in the majority of affected characters. But it does it to a small degree. The cost is exacted against some characters not not others. The opportunity cost for females is quite high; rather than Athletic, wouldn't most fighters prefer to simply snag another combat feat?

If you want to run a game where women are "differently able" then I think you have found your solution. Only determined players will attempt to make a female character who is the physical equivalent to a man. Only sufficiently determined players will create male characters who are physically superior to those determined players, but they can do so. My feeling is that, socially and psychologically, this reinforces the "no girls allowed" meme that female players probably already experience.

I'd probably prefer to simply assign a half-strength bonus, just +1 to Climb and Swim, for instance. Now females still have a lower maximum, as before, but they don't pay a special price for choosing to be more athletic (and they are more athletic than non-athletic males) and males aren't penalized if they want to be especially athletic.

Simply giving men and women a bonus feat, chosen from a list, is also a fairly soft approach, so long as each list has some actually good options in it.

There really is no getting around the question of whether you want there to be a hard cap difference or not, or an opportunity cost to playing a gender-transgressive concept or not.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Well, as far as I can tell, you're telling me that if I make there be a mechanical difference between the sexes, then people could theoretically optimize one to be better than the other. And that, depending on how I do it (hard cap versus soft bonus), it's either very heavy-handed or it's pretty hands-off.

But, those seem like really obvious things to point out. So, I guess I'm missing the majority of your point on this one.

I think that a misc. +1 to Climb and Swim for males and a misc. +2 bonus on all checks that Endurance gives a bonus on to females is near-literally the same thing as giving them the feat and letting them take the feat again for half the effect, except that the bonuses are initially halved. I'm not against that at all. If that seems more appropriate, I have no problem with it.

If, however, the problem in your mind arises from when one sex can be mechanically superior to another in any field, than I don't see how pointing that out is too productive in a thread theoretically dedicated to rationally exploring possible differences.

If you have more good ideas or suggestions on possible ways to create a mechanical difference between the sexes that is fairly light-handed, I'm very interested.

Edit: I'd also point out that in my example (Endurance versus Athletic), I'm not actually saying who is the better athlete. Males would be better at climbing and swimming, certainly, but women would be much better at endurance competitions. Both are superior athletes in different areas under the very briefly discussed "free feat" concept.

 

[pawsplay]

But, those seem like really obvious things to point out. So, I guess I'm missing the majority of your point on this one.

My point is that it may be possible that in your quest to delineate what you perceive to be the realistic differences between sexes, you will create differences in characters which do not reflect expectations based on the real world. For instance, it would not be much like our real world if fighters are typically male while rogues are typically female. In the real world, women have been underrepresented in adventuring professions, and in fact in the majority of professions of important not related to domestic science or implied or actual copulation. If you want to delineate real world differences in activities, you have to make the game unfair to female characters. If you insist on some measure of "realism" but then you apply the "realism" in a fair way, you end up with a fairness which is unreal. In history, rogues, bards, and monks were not typically female, even though it's quite reasonable to suppose that women gain a bonus to Tumble and some sort of bonus to interaction skills that is favorable to them at least in some scenarios.

An increase in detail does not always result in an increase in precision.

In this case I am really struck by how different PCs are from average people. It takes a lot of storytelling to explain why women are not as often cat burglars, despite being more petite and flexible. We know that in the real world, most cat burglars have been men. We can pretty much toss realism out the window here. Reality doesn't agree with our limited model. Real world people are not optimized along the same dimensions as RPG characters.

Do you want PC fighters to be disportionately male? Do you want cat burglars to be disproportionately female?

Which brings us back to this: is there some advantage to the game in favoring one concept over another, based on gender? Is it better in some way than simply offering both conceptual differences as options, and letting the player decide which option best fits their character, irrespective of gender?

If, on the other hand, you want to be realistic, "fair" goes out the window. In the real world, some concepts do fit more neatly with nature. Men can throw baseballs. Women can do things on parallel bars. The mechanics of those tasks, specifically, speak for themselves. Thus, in D&D, it makes sense that men could carry more weight by Strength, while women are better at surviving famine... mind you, carrying stuff comes up a lot more often that famine!

There is a whole list I could make of things that men or women are NOT better at in an appreciable way. Neither is better at math in a consistent and holistic sense. Neither is better at multi-tasking, although women do it more often (meaning that men more often screw up by focusing when they should be multi-tasking, while women are more likely to screw up by multi-tasking when focusing would be more efficient). Neither has better "pain tolerance" whatever that means; pain has only a limited relationship to physiological distress; it is primarily a psychological phenomenon. The same woman who gives birth to three children might balk at getting her ribs cracked in a friendly game of football. Men and women both achieve in every art and science. Both succeed at almost all professions to some extent; I know a male midwife. Neither is more "right-brained" or "left-braineD" whatever that means; women tend to use more decentralized thinking, but A) that is only a typicality, not a universality (i.e. not true of all or even necessarily most men and women) and B) brain activity obviously involves strategy choices as well as physiology, and men and women are socialized to approach problems differently. Neither is more verbally adept, although women develop their conversational skills sooner and use them more as adults; women are not however better listeners. Women and men both are capable of anger, cruelty, and bullying. Although the top shootists are men, I can't discern any reason to believe women are not as good or nearly so at aiming and firing a gun. Neither is better at withstanding G-forces; women can (on average) take more acceleration change but men tend to have more upper body strength helping them withstand more acceleration absolutely; of course exercise softens both differences (cardio health for men, upper body muscular structure for women). It's doubtful they differ much in empathy, although women are often perceived to be more empatic.

A handful of actual differences: women survive famines better. They live longer. They are more flexible, and stay that way longer, on average. They are more prone to depression (although there are reasons to suspect social factors rather than physiology, or in addition to). Women can give birth. They have fewer sex-linked genetic disorders. Women can produce milk. Men have more upper body strength. They also have the ability to rotate their shoulders with more momentum. Men are more prone to schizophrenia, and autism. They not uncommonly inherit sex-linked genetic disorders like color blindness and male pattern baldness. They can impregnate multiple women. They have a longer stride. Men continue to grow in height and musculature well into their twenties, and could gain muscle even into their 40s if active. Men are capable of reproduction until almost the end of their lives. Boys are more kinetic when young, take longer to potty train, and develop vocabulary more slowly until later in life. Men grow beards and more body hair.

The only differences I would find even potentially useful in a game, setting aside the cost-benefit discussion that has already been highlighted, would be men's greater lifting capabity and throwing ability, and women's greater stamina under extreme conditions and greater flexibility. .... That would be a wash for 3e rogues, monks, and barbarians, but would favor male fighters, male halflings, and female rangers.

I'm just not sure I see the benefit of letting women be Alluring, but not men be Dashing, each granting some kind of social skill bonus, or men be Powerful but women not being Agile, each granting some kind of melee attack bonus.

 

[pawsplay]

Edit: I'd also point out that in my example (Endurance versus Athletic), I'm not actually saying who is the better athlete. Males would be better at climbing and swimming, certainly, but women would be much better at endurance competitions. Both are superior athletes in different areas under the very briefly discussed "free feat" concept.

I think you end up with an odd situation where rangers are gender-neutral, while fighters and barbarians are more likely to be female, and rogues male. Rogues are not likely to be distance runners but are likely to climb and swim. Fighters and barbarians can generate high enough Climb and Swim numbers if they choose, but free Endurance (and hence sleeping in armor) is hard to pass up. Female rangers get slightly taxed at 3rd level when they get Endurance a second time, but men can't match them in potential.

Many horizon walkers would be female, as would many defenders. The tale of the Marathon run, in this world, would probably involve a female runner.

The situation is a little odd because in real life, hard training tends to reduce gender differences for complex tasks. However, specific athletic feats may accentuate differences, such as males power lifting, or females doing gymnastics, because physiology is so important for such an optimized task.

 

[Nightson]

It's doubtful they differ much in empathy, although women are often perceived to be more empatic.

Study mention time. I don't have the citation but the relevant details should be googalable should anyone desire.

Researchers invited people in for an experiment. They were told there was a problem and they had to wait in the waiting room for about five minutes. The people engaged in small talk.

Then the researchers invited them back, gave them video of their conversation. They were shown themselves and asked to stop and note down anytime they remembered feeling a particular though or emotion.

Videos were then switched and people were shown the footage of the other person with the video stopping where they had noted an emotion. Then they had to write down what they thought the other person was feeling.

And the results of this study showed... no gender difference at all. But! The tale is not over. While they continued to find no gender difference a few more times and in different countries, all of a sudden the gender difference was present, women were outscoring men where they had been equal before.

What changed? A question was added to the test asking the participants to rate how accurate they felt they were. That reminder that women are supposed to be the emphatic ones was all it took to create an actual difference in results.

 

[Fifth Element]

What changed? A question was added to the test asking the participants to rate how accurate they felt they were. That reminder that women are supposed to be the emphatic ones was all it took to create an actual difference in results.

I was reading about something similar recently, about girls' performance in math tests. Before taking the test, girls read a story which included many gender-stereotypical roles for females. Their results from the subsequent math test were significantly worse from the control of when they did not have such a story before a test. Reminding them that they're not supposed to be good at math made them worse at math.

 

[Celebrim]

On the contrary, it is an honest question...

No, it's not.

Let's look at the paragraph again:

There is a quote by GK Chesterton that runs something like: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed." I'd be uncomfortable having my daughters read fairy tales wherethe heroines overcame dragons by main force alone, any more than I'd be comfortable with fairy tales that said strength didn't matter. Really this trope is as old as dirt. The oldest version of this story I can think of is Athena and Ares. Athena represents the feminine virtue of war, and in the stories is held in higher esteem than her brutish but stronger male counterpart. Athena always bests Ares in battle, not because she is stronger, but because there is more to her than just strength. If as sexist of a people as the ancient greeks can be comfortable with this, I wonder why we are having so much trouble with it.

Now, for the question to be honest, there would have to be some reasonable belief that I might answer the question either yes or no. There is in my opinion no possible way to read what I said and be confused over my position with respect to the possibility of women defeating dragons whether in fantasy or metaphorically in reality.

...and my curiosity is pretty charitible.

Principle of charity

Do you still insist that you are interpreting what I said in the strongest possible light, that having read my statements you ask the question, "Can girls defeat dragons?" Honestly, is there any way to interpret that statement in a less charitable fashion than to ask me whether I think girls can defeat dragons? One does not immediately come to mind.

I would really like to know how you address this question.

Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in what I actually wrote wouldn't have to ask how I answer the question.

Sadly, it appears you are refusing to do so.

Yes, I do refuse to answer such a question. It is insulting and I have no intention of dignifying it.

 

[pawsplay]

I was reading about something similar recently, about girls' performance in math tests. Before taking the test, girls read a story which included many gender-stereotypical roles for females. Their results from the subsequent math test were significantly worse from the control of when they did not have such a story before a test. Reminding them that they're not supposed to be good at math made them worse at math.

Right. And African-American males, across the board, starting getting higher test scores the year Barack Obama became president.

And keep in mind that athletic achievements are well known to be affected by psychological effects.