Sexism in D&D and on ENWorld (now with SOLUTIONS!)

[esparkhu]

...Somehow, the number of powerful and important female NPCs in the setting is about a tenth of the powerful and important male NPCs, even though there is no logical or inherent reason why that should be the case. The result – it seems like a setting about and for men, even though it’s certainly not intended that way.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. It reminded me to make sure I have equal opportunity villains and sovereigns. I agree that the default bad guys and good guys are almost always that - guys.

 

[Mallus]

Caving in to pressure to play in a certain politically correct style is a defeat that can only hurt the game, just as it hurt D&D with 2nd edition when demons and devils were removed. The game, as an art form, should have what Keats called "negative capability." It should be art, without regard to political correctness.

Two things...

You're framing this as a conflict between artistic integrity on the one hand and the chilling effect of politicized speech on the other. That wasn't the case. I didn't have any grand artistic vision w/r/t gender roles in mind while working on the setting. I simply wrote more male NPC's than female, and then placed them in positions of power and/or narrative import. Frankly, I was a little surprised when shil pointed that out, but he wasn't wrong. Let me assure you, negative capability had nothing to do with it. It was an example of sexism by oversight, through unconcious default assumptions about societal, or, in this case, fictional societal roles.

(now I did write a few major female NPC's, one which is explicitly meant to comment on sex/gender issues, but the group hasn't met her yet... we'll see what they think about her in a month of so when I take over the DM's reins)

As for the whole 2e 'demon-devil' thing... that wasn't 'political correctness', that was a marketing decision made to head off any potential problems with a segment of the market. It was more akin to the re-naming "Super Sugar Crisps" to "Super Golden Crisps" as advertisers realized boasting about how much sugar your children's breakfast cereal contained wasn't going to go over so well with the buying public anymore.

And as for the phrase 'political correctness' itself... can we retire it? Please? it's really just an empty partisan slur, lacking the zing of a real top-tier partisan slur, say like Gore Vidal's classic 'crypto-fascist'. Now that was a slur with pizazz!

(make that three things...)

Don't sweat it if you're not taking time out to bean count the number of men and women in the spotlights of your stories!

But it's nice to know what assumptions your writing carries. Trust me, I wrote co-wrote the setting shilsen was talking about.

 

[S'mon]

And as for the phrase 'political correctness' itself... can we retire it? Please? it's really just an empty partisan slur...

I prefer 'cultural Marxism', personally.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As for the whole 2e 'demon-devil' thing... that wasn't 'political correctness', that was a marketing decision made to head off any potential problems with a segment of the market.

Or more accurately, the family and associates of a segment of the market.

I'm a practicing Catholic, and not only did I not have a problem fighting demons & devils, neither did any of my contemporaries...or even the priests at my private Catholic school.

My Mom briefly did (then I explained what I was doing), and "religious butterfly" godmother did, as did my born-again art teacher (Roberto Munguia), but the priests let me establish an RPG Club.

 

[shilsen]

My favorite one to do is make lizardkin where the females are large, muscular, and have dull colored scales, while the men are smaller and have very garish and brightly colored scales - why, the better to attract mates with, of course ;p.

I find it amusing that the set assumption for pretty much all races is that the women try to attract the men, so reversing that tends to lead to some rather interesting changes, since that's one of the more subtle details that people tend not to think about.

Nice one. It's always fun, for me, to take pre-existing presumptions that a lot of humans (esp. players at the table) share and tweak them somewhat in the fantasy world.

The individual primate is an ephemeral thing.

So is the individual species of primates.

What benefits a single grain of sand?

Who cares? I'm a lot more interested in what benefits a single human being. Especially since I get to game with individual human beings, not the species, and doing so in an intelligent, creative, egalitarian and fun manner seems to benefit us.

Like your lizardkin, the Tyraxids (my homebrewed draconic descendants in one campaign) had larger, stronger females who embodied all of the physical archetypes of their draconic forebears...while the smaller males concentrated more on magic.

That's a trope I've seen fairly often, and a pretty easy one to justify in the game world. Though, of course, one could do the converse by having a species find the use of magic so tiring that only the strongest and most durable could use it, while smaller/weaker individuals had to make do with more physical means.

OTOH, males in my as yet un-named anthro-Alligator Snapping Turtle race are just slightly larger...just like their RW counterparts.

Anthro-Alligator Snapping Turtle? That's beautiful

And another common homebrew thing I do is have asexual Dwarves- either because they're native quasi-elementals carved from stone (like scaled-down Stonechildren) or the Inheritors: pseudo-Cybermen who are a fusion of Warforged bodies with transplanted Dwarven brains that retain Dwarf culture.

Interesting. I find relatively less-sexual or asexual dwarves to be pretty common in fantasy settings, homebrew or otherwise. I've never been quite sure why, though I have a couple of vague theories.

Fertility rates are declining in most parts of the planet, with sub-Saharan Africa a partial exception.

Yup. I wonder when/if that's going to plateau out. Considering all the other factors in play, I doubt the human population is in any danger from diminished fertility.

In itself, that selects for pearls rather than for grains of sand. (My attempt being to suggest to Shilsen the factors under consideration in the earlier analysis with which he took issue.)

Unfortunately, I found that post too vague for me to get what you meant. Especially since the metaphor was way too strained to be of any use when discussing human individuals and groups, IMNSHO.

Edit: It's a bit ironic that the Welfare systems of Shilsenised societies, which allow for greater sex equality, reduce the incentives for monogamous pair-bonding and thus incentivise the promiscuous male. If the State will be father for his many offspring, he doesn't need to.

We just need to find a way for babies to be grown in vats and then neither gender will have to worry about the lack of (or disparity in) promiscuity in men and women

[/COLOR]

Thanks for bringing up this topic. It reminded me to make sure I have equal opportunity villains and sovereigns. I agree that the default bad guys and good guys are almost always that - guys.

Glad to help.

Two things...

You're framing this as a conflict between artistic integrity on the one hand and the chilling effect of politicized speech on the other. That wasn't the case.

True, but it's a damn good ploy to use. "Help, help - my freedom of speech is being trampled upon," is also often code for "Help, help - someone is calling me out on the fact that I'm sexist or racist or otherwise offensive in some way".

Or maybe I'm just a cynic

(now I did write a few major female NPC's, one which is explicitly meant to comment on sex/gender issues, but the group hasn't met her yet... we'll see what they think about her in a month of so when I take over the DM's reins)

I'm looking forward to it, and to you DMing in general. With the urban fantasy M&M game in the offing and getting started on the new semester's teaching, I think I won't be running the Port for a while.

And as for the phrase 'political correctness' itself... can we retire it? Please?

Seconded. Like what I mentioned above, I think it's a popular form of code too, for "Speech that I don't like to hear."

it's really just an empty partisan slur, lacking the zing of a real top-tier partisan slur, say like Gore Vidal's classic 'crypto-fascist'. Now that was a slur with pizazz!

I'd heard the phrase before but didn't know it was Vidal. Good to know. And yes, that is pretty good.

And back to more direct gaming stuff again, here are a few simple ideas I had for gender based on fantasy races, some of which I've used and some of which I haven't:

Elves - With elves having a huge lifespan and comparatively early maturity (esp. in 4e) as well as a low reproductive cycle, most elven males and females have any children that they do (normally one or two) early in life. Since the time spent on looking after children is a very small part of their life, elven parents of both sexes tend to focus almost exclusively on their offspring until the latter reach maturity. Then they go about their own lives. A result of this situation is that there's complete parity between the sexes in elven society, since both men and women have equal time and opportunity to achieve whatever they set out to do. This also means romantic and sexual relationships are as commonly (if not more) between individuals of the same gender as not, since most elves will have multiple romantic/sexual relationships in their lifetimes, only one of which is intended for breeding.

Dwarves - Dwarven men and women have the same capacity for hard labor and general strength/sturdiness, so they can generally fulfill all the same roles in society. More interestingly, the genders look exactly the same (stealing from Tolkien and Pratchett here), not only to outsiders but to dwarves themselves. The issue is exacerbated in most dwarven kingdoms, where men and women dress exactly the same way, drawing little attention to either their gender or garb. Except at one time, namely when they are specifically courting or looking to wed. A male dwarf seeking a bride will wear particular clothing (usually brighter and less functional than normal) to indicate this fact, as will a female dwarf seeking a husband. The clothing is designed to indicate the individual dwarf's gender and status. Interestingly, such clothing will never be used after the wedding, with both husband and wife returning to more functional clothing. In fact, dwarves don't really have terms for husband and wife, preferring to reference the individual's clan and occupation instead. Non-dwarves sometimes assume that the rare, brighter garbed dwarves are all female, which can lead to some (usually amusing) misunderstandings.

Changelings - Changelings have no natural gender and are able to change fluidly between the sexes in a moment. In fact, they can just as easily be hermaphrodite or completely lack any gender (as they do in their natural form). Hence, the conception of gender/sex is a very fluid one between changelings. Changelings do usually impersonate a male or female form when interacting with other races and use the appropriate terms for the chosen sex when wearing it. All changelings are capable of reproduction, simply needing to take on a female form and remain in it throughout the space of the pregnancy and birth. While changing shape during pregnancy is possible, it is undesirable since it puts the unborn child in danger. Hence it is also a very effective method of abortion in the case of undesired pregnancy.

Warforged - Warforged have no sex/gender and have some trouble understanding the concept or why it seems important to humans. For communication purposes they tend to use the words "he/she, her/his", etc. But this has little meaning other than identification, since warforged personalities tend to include both conventionally masculine and feminine traits. Of course, as the odd warforged has pointed out, so too do human personalities. Warforged who are particularly interested in fitting into human society will sometimes try to dress and act in stereotypically masculine or feminine ways, usually with poor results.

 

[Cadfan]

I prefer 'cultural Marxism', personally.

My favorite is "relativism." I recently read someone who is supposedly an intellectual and a editorialist refer to Kant as a "relativist." Yeah, that Kant.

 

[Ariosto]

I'm a lot more interested in what benefits a single human being.

If that's a flippant rationale for determined ignorance, then I can only offer that I have found as a rule such bull-headedness helpful to no one.

"Personally, I could do with a little less fertility on the planet," when concerned only with biological reproduction of the human species, is a myopic view applicable to the fecundity of many other things that make more graves than babies and that might from a moral -- or even a purely selfish, "I've got mine, Jack" -- perspective be most undesirable.

As a general principle, understanding how the world changes is an asset for those who would change it in one direction rather than another.

 

[Set]

I'm interested to see what sort of gender norms people can come up with that might be plausible for their societies. I'd prefer it if you would consider the racial rules as applying not just to PCs but to all members of the society. So, for example, there is no statistical difference in strength or dexterity (or any other ability score) between males and females, all elves do not sleep and have a lifespan of multiple centuries, all dwarves are able to carry large loads, etc.

What sort of social gender roles can you come up with for a human, or elven, or dwarven (and so on) society, and how do you explain it? I'll post a couple of ideas myself later.

Elves;
Elven write-ups very commonly mention low birthrates and declining populations (particularly in the face of much faster-breeding races) as being very real problems. And yet, the traditional elven god of archery, Solonor Thelandira, is male. The only god of swordsmanship, or in any way associated with the elven 'blade-dancers,' is the Realms Eilistraee, is female, and is worshipped by women whom Ed Greenwood describes as go into battle wielding bastard swords and 'naked, save for their hair.'

If *my* race was in danger of extinction, had horribly low birth-rates, etc. I'd want the elven god of archery to be a chick, and the elven god of running into battle nekkid with a big sword and getting yourself killed be a dude. I even wrote that into my Realms setting, setting up Solona and Eilistraen as sister and brother, who, squabbling endlessly, so pissed off Correlon that he cursed them to 'spend a time walking in the other's shoes,' so that the goddess of archery became a boy, and the god of swordsmanship became a girl. Then the whole Arashaulnee thing happened, and Lolth got custody of Eilstraee and Correllon got Solonor and the house in Elysium.


Dwarves;
Dwarven depictions are almost unrelentingly male. Parties of thirteen male dwarves decide to go out on a mission, and what do they decide would balance the party? A Halfling. Or possibly a pretty human girl named Snow White. For all the female dwarves portrayed in the genre, the entire dwarven race could be gay hermaphrodites, or reproduce by fission, or craft each other out of rock, for all one can see.

Given this 'out of sight, out of mind' portrayal of female dwarves, one could assume one or more of the following;

1) Dwarves gender roles are rigid, and female dwarves stay at home and run the business, home and / or family.

2) There are more male dwarves than female dwarves, and like unwanted young males of polygamous societies, young male dwarves are booted out of the dwarven kingdoms, so that the older (or better socially connected) men don't have to share the limited pool of potential wives.

3) Women have all the power in dwarven social relationships, and a male dwarf has to prove himself worthy of her hand in marriage, quite often done by going adventuring, accumulating millions of gold piece, crafting some Epic spells, and coming back to dwarf-home two years later with a pair of gold dragon cohorts. To find out she married the head of the smithy's guilds good-for-nothing Aristocrat 2 nephew. Life is funny that way.

4) Women have all of the political / financial power instead (or also). Women own property and businesses. Men only get to work there or live there, at a woman's sufferance, and the matron is quite prone to sending men who aren't 'pulling their weight' off on missions to ostensibly further the goals of the family / business, but also get them out of the house.

5) Dwarves are like Ferengi and keep their women nekkid and at home. Obviously, I don't care for that option, but the relative scarcity of dwarven females in the literature makes that option as likely as any other.


Gnomes;
Precipitously see-sawing between obsessive and flighty, I haven't seen any indication that gnomish males and gnomish females are in any way different. Both would be just as likely to get lost for a week in a library, reading book and finally passing out from hunger, face planted in a *fascinating* tome on the botonical uses of foxglove. Both would be equally as likely to fail to notice that the gnome they are arguing vociferously with over a difference of opinion that nobody else in a fifty mile radius even understands, let alone would care about, is a totally HAWT member of the opposite sex.

They must go into pon farr or something, or else there would never be little gnomes.


Halflings;
Depends, are we talking the sedentary home-body 'nasty hobbitses' or the pseudo-kender wandering pickpockets of 3.X? Gender roles would seem irrelevant to the gypsy types, and more typically human among the farm-folk with last names like Hornblowers and Boffins and Sockpuppets.

 

[shilsen]

If that's a flippant rationale for determined ignorance, then I can only offer that I have found as a rule such bull-headedness helpful to no one.

Nah, that's just a flippant response to what I thought was a meaningless metaphor. Just because someone doesn't think your phrasing is effective doesn't mean they are determinedly ignorant. Though I'm sure thinking so helps

"Personally, I could do with a little less fertility on the planet," when concerned only with biological reproduction of the human species, is a myopic view applicable to the fecundity of many other things that make more graves than babies and that might from a moral -- or even a purely selfish, "I've got mine, Jack" -- perspective be most undesirable.

Damn. That's why I have a hard time responding to a post of yours. I'm an academic and used to (though not a fan of) academic verbiage, but your phrasing tends to leave me uncertain what you're referring to.

As a general principle, understanding how the world changes is an asset for those who would change it in one direction rather than another.

Sure. But people can reasonably disagree about how the world changes.

 

[Ariosto]

Okay, academic. A circumspection that only leaves communication as clear as mud is hardly a virtue.

Unchecked, an army in the service of an ideological empire kills all who will not serve it. That might greatly reduce the total population of a continent or three; but who is left alive, and what ideas?

That is the very profound and powerful fact of nature at which you seemed to scoff. You were not required to say anything if you had nothing serious to say. Yet you pretended to have a serious argument -- and then fell back on mockery when your bluff (taken seriously and with respect) was called.

The cavalier attitude rubs me very much the wrong way, and I cannot help but let some passion creep into my response to it. (That does not mean that I will abandon reason, though; nothing so greases the rails to error as a sense of self-righteousness!)