What.
Sexism in D&D and on ENWorld (now with SOLUTIONS!)
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Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Not a question mark but a period.. is everyone confused?
DreadPirateMurphy
Explorer
Human psychology is a lot more complicated than we give it credit. We all discriminate, we all pre-judge and make snap judgements, and we all underestimate how much sexuality influences our behavior.
What matters is how we choose to deal with these feelings, how much empathy we show other people, and how much self-awareness we have.
Immature men behaving badly around women makes more mature men feel embarassed and upset, just as it offends women. Unfortunately, you cannot get away from a certain percentage of the population behaving this way. This will be true in ANY environment that includes a mixed age demographic. We will never escape this.
The sexuality inherent in RPG marketing is more offensive because it is crude, and so speaks to baser feelings. There is a tremendous amount of more sophisticated sexuality in advertising that we don't even notice, because we are so acclimated to it. Open up ANY magazine -- it doesn't have to be GQ or Glamour -- open up Time or The Economist, and look for sexualized themes and images in ads. It will take you about five seconds, if you're truly attentive. The less-sophisticated imagery is one of the things that marks RPGs as being targeted at adolescents (possibly not deliberately, in all cases).
The prevalence of NPCs may or may not be evidence of sexism. A male DM may struggle to create realistic female NPCs, just as a male author sometimes fails to do justice to female characters. There may be a subconscious selection factor at work.
D&D is inherently sexist because human beings are inherently sexist. What we need to do is call out bad behavior when we see it, and strive as individuals to act in a fair and thoughtful manner. We also need to understand how youthful bravado and inappropriate behavior is sometimes used to cover insecurity or discomfort.
(This post doesn't flow as well as I hoped, but it is late.)
What matters is how we choose to deal with these feelings, how much empathy we show other people, and how much self-awareness we have.
Immature men behaving badly around women makes more mature men feel embarassed and upset, just as it offends women. Unfortunately, you cannot get away from a certain percentage of the population behaving this way. This will be true in ANY environment that includes a mixed age demographic. We will never escape this.
The sexuality inherent in RPG marketing is more offensive because it is crude, and so speaks to baser feelings. There is a tremendous amount of more sophisticated sexuality in advertising that we don't even notice, because we are so acclimated to it. Open up ANY magazine -- it doesn't have to be GQ or Glamour -- open up Time or The Economist, and look for sexualized themes and images in ads. It will take you about five seconds, if you're truly attentive. The less-sophisticated imagery is one of the things that marks RPGs as being targeted at adolescents (possibly not deliberately, in all cases).
The prevalence of NPCs may or may not be evidence of sexism. A male DM may struggle to create realistic female NPCs, just as a male author sometimes fails to do justice to female characters. There may be a subconscious selection factor at work.
D&D is inherently sexist because human beings are inherently sexist. What we need to do is call out bad behavior when we see it, and strive as individuals to act in a fair and thoughtful manner. We also need to understand how youthful bravado and inappropriate behavior is sometimes used to cover insecurity or discomfort.
(This post doesn't flow as well as I hoped, but it is late.)
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Flowed nicely to me... I liked
Yeah, I feel slightly embarrassed to see my spur-of-the-moment posts reanimated as rotting shambling hulks...
Yeah, I feel slightly embarrassed to see my spur-of-the-moment posts reanimated as rotting shambling hulks...
To do that, one would have to use the Necrolexonomicon!
Rel
Liquid Awesome
I just felt that the post which preceded mine had considerably more "primate penis" than is probably necessary for ENWorld. Particularly for the first post of a new user (if it's not an alt). I used the red text because I wanted to make it an official policy statement.
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