[Circle of Hands] Rape: context and consequences

[Ron Edwards]

Also worth considering are the differences between:

i) in the book as text at all, in any way

ii) in the setting as background fictional content

iii) during play as fictional activity, whether Veiled or not being irrelevant

[Ron Edwards]

Chris: yes! I hear you and I agree.

[Ron Edwards]

I made some changes to the KS page and to the two download PDFS, based on the private dialogues. I recommend updating your copies.

[Moreno R.]

Can you point us to the pages that were changed? (to avoid comparing page after page to find the new ones to print, or print it all again)

[Ron Edwards]

Let's see ...

All right, the bullet point in the "rundown" document regarding "brutality toward women" is altered, much for the better.

In the playtest PDF, I've added the same warning to the introduction as I put onto the KS page. I've changed the paragraph in Chapter 2 concerning atrocities toward prisoners and treatment toward towns. And in Chapter 4, the section explicitly about gender and sexuality, and about women's experience as Circle Knights is changed. Some of the changes are mere clarifiers - for example, some people read the part about controlling sexuality exactly backwards from its meaning, so I rewrote it to make that impossible (or so I think).

One person is very, very upset about the Doll demon. I am reviewing its description to see if it means what I wanted it to mean, but as yet the text isn't changed.

[Joshua Bearden]

I want to say  I really really like the changes. Although, "sex and gender bias" is not as punchy as "brutal towards women" I feel worlds more comfortable with that slight change a it gives me a sense of freedom as a player. The same goes with your other changes.

What I get more from the text is that sex and power are built in sources of adversity and strife. I but i now feel like you are simply saying 'see for example the plight of women in the dark ages as they are popularly conceived' but you are not saying that example constrains my play. Under the new text I still feel that sexual exploitation, abuse of power, oppression, and injustice are essential elements of the mud shit setting. But I no longer feel that your text demands that orthodox play always assume textbook patriarchy is always in effect.

By eradicating church in the crescent lands, and shattering society into manageable community sized chunks, your game offers immense freedom to conduct social thought experiments, not in a Utopian or Star Trek sort of way but more like a Dr. Frankenstein with a crateful of unsterilyzed petri dishes.

Your clarifications now make me feel I could easily drop in a town organized like the one Fafrhd, in Fritz Leiber's Swords and Deviltry, grew up in. With the elder 'snow women' exerting powerful and oppressive sanctions over everyone's sexuality. They also makes it clear to any one who hasn't read your relevant essays that you aren't falling into the 'History dictates how we play fantasy games' fallacy, (see for example this article by a local gamer. Dymphna who wrote this is some one I would hope to play Circle of Hands with, so I took her take on the matter to heart.)

What I'm saying is that as brutal and grim as your setting is, it has hope and is fresh and exciting  because it's not rigid or stifling. The new text definitely strengthens that impression by removing what looked like an arbitrary gender related preconception.

[Ron Edwards]

Joshua, one thing that's really struck me about this whole discussion is how much setting information is read by people as directives for what absolutely will and must be depicted in play. The "you" phrasing in Chapter 2, for instance, is easily read as your character during play, and "women" in the bullet point list is easily read as your female character.

That's no light matter and served as my guide in revisions, and in revisions to come. I don't want to downplay my meaning about the setting itself - for example, many women in the setting conceive as many as twenty pregnancies during their lives, with six or seven children to show for it. I actually held off from talking about the typical age of marriage for gentry, thinking that I needed more time to think about how to say it, but a fifteen year old bride in that social rank would be at the very old end of the range. That's the sort of thing I mean by "brutal toward women," the extraordinary difference between modern middle-class American women's lives and the women in this setting, in plain and harsh variables which are hard for us to imagine. But the idea that playing a female character means being subjected to this, without fail, or living in constant horrific threat of it, is a different notion entirely.

These are major concerns. Some of the criticism I've received is not as literally important, because it comes from simple misreadings resulting in paraphrases absolutely reversed from my text; it matters, but my concern there is only to revise so that those misreadings would be as close to impossible as I can make it. But this other concern, based on this crucial reading of this is the setting as a directive, do this to women characters in play and describe it with relish, is a deep thing and it's going to take a fine-tooth comb through the text, with external readings, to deal with. I greatly appreciate your comments because they indicate I managed to get a little distance toward that goal.

[Ron Edwards]

Update: private conversations have been very productive, and in case you were wondering, also civil and thoughtful. No hate-screaming, no meanness.

One person will be posting the whole thing or major parts of it at their blog, which I'll link to when it's ready. I'll be lifting some or most of another conversation for posting here, probably tomorrow because I'm kind of tired. (Kid's birthday + other kids' birthdays + finals & grading + an important life-decision + one kid getting me up at 5 AM).

Hey, though - if any of you are out there defending me and the game in some other venue, I wish you wouldn't. For one thing, it's toxic promotion no matter what gets said, and for another, I am not impaired or feeble and can conduct the relevant dialogue with whoever wants to - just as I've been doing - so I don't need representation out there in the wilds of the internet.

[Joshua Bearden]

Ohhh add me to the ranks of seriously disappointed white knights!  ;-)

Seriously I'm really glad this game raised the issue the way it did.  It helped me get into interesting and productive conversations with a variety of people about sex gender gaming fiction and stuff.  I'm looking forward to more such discussions.

[Ron Edwards]

Kira has reviewed my transcript of our dialogue and given her permission to include it here.
Thanks Kira!

[Ron Edwards]

And Anna's transcript of our email exchange is here: A conversation with Ron Edwards about Circle of Hands and rape.

[Ron Edwards]

Forgot to include this earlier, from March 26, and it nearly got away from me on G+: Dialogue with Sara.

(editing in) Also, 30 pages as of this posting: RPGnet thread: A conversation between Anna Kreider and Ron Edwards.