Is this offensive?

[Set]

What physical activities show a clear advantage to a woman's body structure? In other words, in which physical competitions will women have a clear and decided advantage over men such that university female competitors can compete with elite male competitors?

One that wasn't designed by men, probably. What a freaking shock that we play sports and engage in activities that play to our strengths.

In my experience at the gym, it feels pretty darn manly to legpress the entire rack. It feels pretty darn unmanly when some chick half my size gives me a cocky grin and does the same darn thing, without all the panting and sweating and grunting. And the cardio-kickboxing-to-music thing that they do for two hours? Yeah, 20 minutes and I'm on the floor, gasping for oxygen in my best trout impersonation.

If women took physical competition and exertion for something that gives status, like we do, they'd have a bunch of crazy sports as well, and we'd probably suck at them, since they'd play to their strengths, just as our sports play to our strengths. It's pretty darn amazing that they can do so well in male-created and male-dominated sports when we, as a gender, are completely incapable of figuring out the rules of the games they play to determine status, and end up perpetually in the doghouse...

 

[dougmander]

Put me down as Offended.

Think about it from the point of view of a woman playing D&D for the first time. She's told that female characters are wiser and more attractive than male characters, but they're weaker -- but it's ok, 'cause men are more foolish, less attractive, and stronger.

What's the subtext here?

Male heroes are encouraged to kick butt and act like insensitive, impulsive jerks -- in other words, the classic tropes of the action hero in our culture.

Female heroes are encouraged act with more restraint, are more likely to be seen as objects of attraction/desire rather than seekers after same, and have their physical strength capped significantly below males.

Which one sounds more fun to play?

 

[Felix]

One that wasn't designed by men, probably.

So which one would that be? Is there an example? ... Bueller?

And the cardio-kickboxing-to-music thing that they do for two hours? Yeah, 20 minutes and I'm on the floor, gasping for oxygen in my best trout impersonation.

When I put my novice male rowers up against lightweight women that have been rowing for 3 years, the same thing happens.

But then maybe when I look at years of strength and technique training go up against absolute raw inexperience I see an unleveled playing field. You aren't unleveling the playing field in this example, are you? Have you been doing the cardio-kickboxing-to-music for years and still trout-face after 20 minutes?

If women took physical competition and exertion for something that gives status, like we do, they'd have a bunch of crazy sports as well, and we'd probably suck at them, since they'd play to their strengths, just as our sports play to our strengths.[/QUOTE]
Oh. I see. It's the sports that give us an unfair advantage. All of them? Ever?

Look, I'll even help you out, since that's the kind of guy I am. American horseback riding, hunter, jumper, dressage, 3-day eventing, etc, has a much larger percentage of female participants in the novice to amateur ranks. As you go up the experience food chain, however, men become a larger and larger part of the competition. At the top levels there is parity.

I will not say that horseback riding does not require strength, because it does; have you ever seen the thighs of a rider? Yeah, strong. But it requires other abilities to a greater degree than your own strength: reflexes, control, horse-rider relationship, etc. But I will agree that if horseback riding doesn't play to women's strengths, it at least plays away from a man's advantage. Which is his own inherent physical strength advantage, which is what this thread is about.

 

[Felix]

Which one sounds more fun to play?

*shrug* As a player whose characters are generally designed to outsmart an opponent, and a player whose girlfriend has often told him that she enjoys manipulating me to do things she wants done, I'd have to say that hitting things with sticks until it stops moving gets dull after a while.

...Was that the wrong answer?

 

[Drowbane]

...

Which one sounds more fun to play?

I'd say 90% of my characters would be *female* with such stat mods in place. Females would rule the churchs of the world.

 

[Elf Witch]

One of thes I have always found intersting in this kind of topic is that when discussing real life strength difference between the sexes one forgets that the game is not real life and that there is magic in the world both arcane and divine something that is not here in real life.

There is no reason to think that because of magic maybe arcane or divine did not lend a hand eons ago making woman able to be as strong as men.

Which is why I don't see the need for stat modifiers.

One of the thing that annoys me is the the stronest man is stronger than the strongest woman. I do think that is true but so what that strongest woman is still going to stronger than most men.

As a female I would be suspicious of a DM who wanted to do this. I would wonder how else he would want to limit my character.

I also think giving male players stat modifiers is limiting their choices as well.

Why would you want to do this?

With the race modifiers it is to make them different from humans but the modifiers are for both sexes you are singling one sex out over the other or penalizing both.

 

[jackston2]

A huge gain like a +2 to strength diminishes the value of racial stat bonuses. Even a +1 is ridiculously high. You'd have to start awarding decimal value adjustments to stats to keep things relative.

 

[Night Watchman]

I don't find it offensive but I do think that it is inaccurate. There may be inherit differences between the genders but there are so many exceptions to this rule that it's a non-issue in my mind.

 

[pawsplay]

It's not just rowing. In practically any athletic competition which involves the use of strength, the best male athletes, and in many cases, the college level athletes out perform the best of the women. There is a reason virtually every professional sport has different leagues for each gender. Men are physically stronger than women, that's just a fact. Why facts should bother anyone is quite honestly beyond me.

Try this fact: no one in this entire thread has argued what you are arguing against. No one has argued that men do not have, on average, more muscular power. The questions are twofold:

1. Are the differences consistent enough to align with what D&D calls Strength?
2. Is the difference significant enough to warrant a modifier?

While there is some dissent, I think we can safely say No, and No.

Yes, men outperform women in almost every athletic event. They are also out-participate women, and by a factor. Let's think of a women-dominated event like, oh, say gymnastics. Guess who dominates there? Women are oriented to the event because it plays to their strengths (flexibility and small size in this case) and the effect is magnified by more women competing. But arguing this is a basis for a +2 Dex would be farcical. Yet that's exactly what's being argued from rowing contests and baseball. In the real world, small differences can make huge statistical differences, but in D&D, stats are assigned based on very general conditions with lots of variables.

Women, in general, are less supported as athletes; are more likely to be interested in weight loss than muscle gain; have less leisure time during their child-rearing years; are not as valued as athletes in terms of prestige and pay; have a much shorter history of athletic competition in Western history. So the pool of women athletes is just much, much smaller. A small town has trouble fielding a football team against a large city, that does not mean people from small towns are inferior athletes. There is a word for a girl who participates in sports: tomboy. There is no such word for a boy. Instead, we have words like sissy or 98 pound weakling or couch potato for boys who do not conform to the norm.

So saying that any given woman does not have the potential for Strength and athletics is just taking our culture's sexism and then ascribing its effects to the nature of women. You might as well argue that women are inferior novelists, because look at their output in the 19th and 20th centuries, and so much for your Wisdom bonus.

 

[Ipissimus]

No, it doesn't offend me at all. I think that it can be a nice house rule that makes an additional facet of a character more important to gameplay. But then, I'm of the general opinion that diversity is something to celebrate rather than attempting to cast everyone in the same mold.

But then there are facts. Like the fact that girls don't generally grow as tall as men and have much harder time building up muscle. On the other side, boys aren't generally trained in the nuances of social interaction from a young age and their egos generally get in the way. Of course, I'm generalizing.

Is it worth sex being treated as a race? Possibly. It certainly puts a different spin on spells like Alter Self. Depends on your players and the campaign. One thing that must be remembered about the difference between races in the real world and in DnD is that OUR 'races' are all Homo Sapiens. That's not the case with DnD races, even if some can interbreed due to magical interference.

But I would never expect any major publisher to put in differences between sexes into their RPG. Having lived through the 80s politically correct craze and the big noise about using gender neutral 'she' the last thing anyone needs is to be tarred with the sexism brush for the sake of a little extra simulationism. It's a can of worms I really don't want to have to revisit again in my lifetime.