Sexism in Table-Top Gaming: My Thoughts On It, and What We Can Do About It

[billd91]

But it seems to me that judging gaming and gamers by the standards of a few creeps, (and every group of people will have creeps) is the same category error as judging all feminists by the actions of that crazy person who shot Andy Warhol.

It strikes me as cheap grace.

I don't think anyone's judging all gamers by the actions of a few, rather, the presence of those few indicates there are still sexism issues in gaming and that issue is one of them. And that's clearly the case. The topic comes up periodically on gaming message boards (including here), but I'm at least encouraged that the number of discussion participants who feel it's pointless to include such gender-based modifiers seems to dwarf the number who advocate for them. Yet here we are in the 21st century, decades after the 1ed PH included the gender-based difference, and there are still some who advocate for it.

 

[Salamandyr]

I don't think anyone's judging all gamers by the actions of a few, rather, the presence of those few indicates there are still sexism issues in gaming and that issue is one of them. And that's clearly the case. The topic comes up periodically on gaming message boards (including here), but I'm at least encouraged that the number of discussion participants who feel it's pointless to include such gender-based modifiers seems to dwarf the number who advocate for them. Yet here we are in the 21st century, decades after the 1ed PH included the gender-based difference, and there are still some who advocate for it.

I guess in this case we have different standards. I don't expect perfection. I don't think it's possible to completely eradicate all negative attitudes from any large group, so the presence of a tiny group, even a vocal one, does not necessarily indicate that there is a problem with the group.

The overwhelming majority of times I hear about sex based attribute mods is in threads like this one, where people are attacked for having an opinion they haven't even posted on the forum!

 

[Salamandyr]

Interesting note: in doing research for the previous post, I noticed that the world record for men in clean and jerk (closest to D&D's weight lifted over head number) is 266 kg (585 lb), and for women it's 187 kg (411 lb).

According to the Pathfinder Encumbrance chart (I can't bring up d20's at work), that's the difference between a 22 and a 23 strength. Not even a two point difference. So you advocates of strength limitations for female characters, at the level of abstraction D&D works at, it's not realistic for female characters to have strength limits.

Additional Note: It's looking like, when Next comes out the door, strength scores will be even less granular than before, what with all human capacity being limited to a 20 score. So limitations for women make even less sense in that game.

 

[Morrus]

That's a very unfair characterization of the argument. No one, not even the most ardent fan of strength limitations, is arguing against physically strong women.

Nah; I shortened my post after I realised I'd typed out lengthy descriptions clarifying each time that we were discussing the upper end of human performance and went with the shorthand of "physically strong women" rather than the lengthy post it was beforehand. Again, one of those things I mistakenly thought would be painfully obvious given the context, since that's specifically what we're discussing; guess that's why I'm not a writer, since this keeps happening....

If you like, substitute the phrase for a longer, clearer one.

 

[Salamandyr]

Nah; I shortened my post after I realised I'd typed out lengthy descriptions clarifying each time that we were discussing the upper end of human performance and went with the shorthand of "physically strong women" rather than the lengthy post it was beforehand. Again, one of those things I mistakenly thought would be painfully obvious given the context, since that's specifically what we're discussing; guess that's why I'm not a writer, since this keeps happening....

If you like, substitute the phrase for a longer, clearer one.

OK, fair enough. I did a bit of that yesterday.

But just to be clear, do you really find players who want real world differences between men and women to be reflected in the rules "creepy"?

If you want to go with "wrong", we see eye to eye. At the level of abstraction D&D works at, as I showed in my previous post, there's no functional game difference between the two. But creepy?

 

[Morrus]

OK, fair enough. I did a bit of that yesterday.

But just to be clear, do you really find players who want real world differences between men and women to be reflected in the rules "creepy"?

If you want to go with "wrong", we see eye to eye. At the level of abstraction D&D works at, as I showed in my previous post, there's no functional game difference between the two. But creepy?

I've never met one. But I find the idea of it pretty creepy, yeah. While I understand that some folks characterize it as "verisimilitude", the cynical side of me is unable to view a man telling a woman that she cannot play a female character who is as strong as the male characters as anything but creepy. The image in my mind of who wants to enforce such things, and more importantly, why (I mean, seriously, why?) is just not pleasant. That said, I've never met such a person, so it's just a mental construct of a hypothetical fictional person in my head.

 

[Kursk]

I'm a very libertine (freedom of life or conduct; unrestrained liberty) type of person. I believe in freedom of association and, freedom of non-association. If you don't like the group you play with, start another game. That is the best way to make change. If one thinks it is needed.

 

[Salamandyr]

I've never met one. But I find the idea of it pretty creepy, yeah. While I understand that some folks characterize it as "verisimilitude", the cynical side of me is unable to view a man telling a woman that she cannot play a female character who is as strong as the male characters as anything but creepy. The image in my mind of who wants to enforce such things, and more importantly, why (I mean, seriously, why?) is just not pleasant. That said, I've never met such a person, so it's just a mental construct of a hypothetical fictional person in my head.

Thank you. BTW, most of the high flown rhetoric from me yesterday, that seemed so confusing, was me trying to tiptoe around saying exactly what you just said in that post there. I find people appointing themselves fun police deeply creepy as well. The unfortunate difference is, I have met people like that.

 

[Kursk]

Interesting note: in doing research for the previous post, I noticed that the world record for men in clean and jerk (closest to D&D's weight lifted over head number) is 266 kg (585 lb), and for women it's 187 kg (411 lb).

According to the Pathfinder Encumbrance chart (I can't bring up d20's at work), that's the difference between a 22 and a 23 strength. Not even a two point difference. So you advocates of strength limitations for female characters, at the level of abstraction D&D works at, it's not realistic for female characters to have strength limits.

In AD&D (where the rule existed), the weight difference you listed is close to the difference between a Str of 18/50 and 18/00. Which matches the female/male Str rule. So, it is simply a matter of likeing or not liking a rule set. And, this rule set is ~35 yrs old.

 

[Salamandyr]

In AD&D (where the rule existed), the weight difference you listed is close to the difference between a Str of 18/50 and 18/00. Which matches the female/male Str rule. So, it is simply a matter of likeing or not liking a rule set. And, this rule set is ~35 yrs old.

Yeah, but I'm not advocating retroactively changing AD&D, this was directed at any advocates of bringing the rule back. They seem kind of thin on the ground, but I'm sure there are some.