Sexism in your campaign settings

[Lord Pendragon]

So again, with the other women who are having problems with their gaming groups, I think the problem isn't some kind of inherent sexism or endemic social crisis, its your gaming groups.

I disagree, for reasons I think I've already made clear.

I'm curious, though. Does your female player's female character encounter the kind of scenario that you described every session, or is this a rare incident? Any setback for any reason can be a unique challenge once. It's when it pervades the campaign that a problem arises.

 

[Dirigible]

(I think it's partly because I'm a woman - StalkingBlue has been ignored in the group too, and is far more assertive than I am - and partly because I've been slovenly in the past about objecting to it.)

Which makes it sound like there could be an element of real sexism (in the other players and GM) involved here.
Which brings me back to me 'swift kick' solution

~ Diri 'female emancipation through gratuitous violence!' gible.

 

[S'mon]

Well kicking the GM is a bad idea if you wish to continue playing of course...

 

[randomling]

Which makes it sound like there could be an element of real sexism (in the other players and GM) involved here.
Which brings me back to me 'swift kick' solution

~ Diri 'female emancipation through gratuitous violence!' gible.

Hiya Diri - swift kicks towards some of the more sexist players might be fun, but I don't think attacking the GM is such a good idea....

Seriously though, I'm dealing with it by learning to call them on it more often.

 

[Nisarg]

I disagree, for reasons I think I've already made clear.

I'm curious, though. Does your female player's female character encounter the kind of scenario that you described every session, or is this a rare incident? Any setback for any reason can be a unique challenge once. It's when it pervades the campaign that a problem arises.

The situation in question has only just arisen in this particular campaign. Whether it persists or not depends on whether the party stays in this part of the world for the next while. In other words, it will persist as long as they choose for it to persist.

However, again, in other campaigns I have had situations where women (or other kinds of particular groups) were treated differently (sometimes denigrated, other times just held to different standards), and this has never become a problem in any of my campaigns.
In terms of the character choice, what you're arguing is really no different than saying "I want to play a Jedi in star wars but not have to be a padawan or follow any of the jedi code". Well, in my Star Wars campaign, if you choose to play the Jedi (who have certain advantages, granted) you will have the disadvantage of having to follow the much more rigid social and ethical rules and insitutionality of the Jedi order. Of course your character CAN choose to turn away from that, but then that also has its own price.
Likewise, you can't ask to be a wookie who can speak basic. If you want to play a wookie, you will have to deal with the fact that most of the times you can't easily communicate. It isn't "species-ist against wookies", its just part of the package.
In certain fantasy games, if you play a female character, you have to accept that your female character will be treated differently. You can choose to play with that treatment (ie. use your femenine status within the system to your advantage) or you can choose to go against it (ie. rebel and choose to break the rules for women in that setting). All of it, if you've been forewarned of the situation and have a caring DM who wants to make sure you maximize your game experience, will lead to more interesting challenges for your characters. After all, in any RPG I've ever seen, the PCs who end up being the most "real" are not the ones who've had easy sailing and +5 holy avenger swords all the way through, its the ones who've had to suffer, who've had setbacks. All of my characters have their setbacks, their challenges, bad things happen to them; just each in different ways.

Nisarg

 

[knitnerd]

I am in a sexist campaign but I learned how to use it to my character's advantage. I was told at the begining that women who fought were rare and I had to demonstrate my shooting ability before I could join the party(have to borrow those dice from the DM,Rolled 2 20's and a 19). People didn't notice me and I overheard all sorts of interesting things. No one ever shot back at me. I had to get a male NPC to go with me when I first wanted an audience with the prince,even though I had done as much as the rest of the party to rescue him. He eventually learned to listen to me. When he asked us to train the farmers and merchants to defend themselves, I said to train the women too. That idea was shot down. Now goblins are kidnapping women for sacrifice because they are easy targets. But it was EVIL, not sexism that drove Ivy to ride off into the sunset with a warband hunting demons.

 

[mythago]

In terms of the character choice, what you're arguing is really no different than saying "I want to play a Jedi in star wars but not have to be a padawan or follow any of the jedi code".

This assumes that the Jedi Code is to a Star Wars game as sexism is to a DnD campaign. That is, a pre-ordained, immutable part of the game universe. Since DnD, or even faux-medieval-style DnD, isn't a single, fixed campaign world with single, fixed and rigid mores, this makes no sense. You're comparing apples and oranges.

There are games where, yes, sexism is part of the world and that's how it is. You can't play Godlike and expect to be in a co-ed Army unit; if you're playing Call of Cthulhu in a classic 1920's setting, your female dilettante is going to be running into some archaic attitudes. That's because the alternate-WWII world of Godlike and 1920's CoC are, like Lucas's universe, fixed social settings.

DnD isn't a fixed social setting. It HAS them--Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, whatever you the DM dream up on your own--but there is nothing in the rules of the game that requires sexism.