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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eric Tolle" data-source="post: 5550709" data-attributes="member: 53859">I myself think that once a game starts having characters that can destroy cities with a spell, or travel between planes, then reality is pretty much out the window. But it's amazing how people who won't bat an eye at the idea of giant flying birds, or humanoids a hundred feet tall, will suddenly start talking about the ramifications of skeletal structure and musculature cross sections when talking about about the strength of human men and women.And this is actually getting to the crux of the problem, which is more fundamental than simple stat bonuses; the depiction of men as the baseline for people, and the othering of women as something abnormal.Consider: why do you have the traits "Fairer Sex" and "Second Class Citizen", and not say, ", instead of say, "Masculine virtue" and "Gentleman's Privilege"? Why is the default assumption that a female character has to be essentially be a pretend male, and to be female, is to be weaker and oppressed- in other words, not suitable for adventuring? And don't EVEN try to respond with "realism"- we both know that actual historical roles for women were far more complex and variable than that. There were far more complex dynamics at work than the "weak oppressed manipulators" stereotype that games such as Pendragon (the John Normen of rpgs) would have us believe.I oppose gender-based stat differences because they always, invariably make the world revolve around men, make men the norm, and make women a deviation from that norm. They in essence state that the game is a man's world, with women as intruders. And you know, women have to deal with too much of this sort of <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> attitude in real life. They don't need it in their role playing games as well.</blockquote>

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