Nit pick about female frailty

[Albert the Absentminded]

Why, in the name of the King of Life, are frontier women expected to be frightened of mice, insects, horses, or guns?

-Albert

[ChefKyle]

It's the audience. The target audience was urban women and men.

Urban women were offered by the prosperous male film producers a fantasy - of being rescued by a big strong man. If they had fantasies of being the big strong woman who rescues herself, well, the male producers weren't aware of that:)

Urban men, busy in rather un-manly jobs like accountancy or travelling vaccuum cleaner sales, also had the fantasy of being a big strong male. Just notice the physiques of most of the heroic movie men of the time, the John Waynes and William Shatners. These guys weren't Hercules. They had, for their time, big chests and big bellies. Just like the store manager who played football in high school, and was sitting there watching the movie with his wife.

Movies, like roleplaying games, often present people with their own life fantasies, just in a different setting. Why do you think in rpgs there's so many beautiful princesses riding dragons, lesbian stripper ninjas, and big strong warriors? It's fantasies of what they could be, or who they could sleep with.

Movies haven't really change, either. Consider Van Helsing. Alexa was extremely capable, but Van Helsing must have been a wight or something, draining her experience levels, because the longer she hung around him the more useless she became.

[lumpley]

Hey Albert, did you notice that unmarried women are expected to, among other things, overcome their girlish fears?

-Vincent

[Albert the Absentminded]

That's true - I was a bit confused by the following line where girls were supposed to have no fear of blood. I suppose I'll just interpret that as they are expected to overcome any fear of blood at a far earlier age.

By the way, does the Faith have any provisions for women deciding that their husbands are unworthy creeps and divorcing them?


BTW, have you read Orson Scott Card's Women of Genesis series? I think it's good source material for how life is _supposed_ to be in a Faithful household.

-Albert

[lumpley]

By the way, does the Faith have any provisions for women deciding that their husbands are unworthy creeps and divorcing them?

That's up to you and your fellow players when you play. I've said everything about the Faith I have to say.

-Vincent

[Brand_Robins]

By the way, does the Faith have any provisions for women deciding that their husbands are unworthy creeps and divorcing them?

It seems to me this would be a great thing for Dogs to rule on. Heck, you could have a whole series of towns where one of the things going wrong involves marriages ending. Which ones are acceptable? Which ones aren't? When is divorce alright? Abandonment? And it all ties into infedelity, sex, and family relations -- potent story stuff.

[MajorKiz]

By the way, does the Faith have any provisions for women deciding that their husbands are unworthy creeps and divorcing them?

It seems to me this would be a great thing for Dogs to rule on. Heck, you could have a whole series of towns where one of the things going wrong involves marriages ending. Which ones are acceptable? Which ones aren't? When is divorce alright? Abandonment? And it all ties into infedelity, sex, and family relations -- potent story stuff.

Just be sure of your audience. Players who happen to be recently divorced (or whose parents just got divorced) might well want to avoid the topic.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

What, is this "protect your players" day? Avoid all possibility of emotional involvement?

Criminy. Those are exactly the players who might like to express themselves in the context of creating a story.

MK, your post is like saying, "Hey, country and western singers, don't write any songs about your woman leaving you, 'cause folks in the audience might have, you know, just had a breakup."

Best,
Ron

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

What, is this "protect your players" day? Avoid all possibility of emotional involvement?

Criminy. Those are exactly the players who might like to express themselves in the context of creating a story.

MK, your post is like saying, "Hey, country and western singers, don't write any songs about your woman leaving you, 'cause folks in the audience might have, you know, just had a breakup."

Ron, I think you're right on with the analogy, but I also think that this stuff has to be taken into account, for better or for worse, by a GM.

I was put in the position of a police officer in a sort of cyberpunk, fascist environment by a GM of mine ages ago. I couldn't do it. I couldn't play the thing I hated most. Now, 15 years later, if I had the right friends involved, maybe I could, but the game basically evaporated as I got more uncomfortable with it.

I have two players in my krewe with fathers who are dead or dying. Games that confront family relationships, in particular dysfunction between parents and children, are strictly out for them. I've tried. Might someone in that position want to play a game like that? Sure. Do they? No. They want adventure and they want to enact their moral scheme in a world where what they do matters.

If a GM goes contrary to those wishes, however arbitrary they seem, it will quickly erode the trust between players. How could it not?

[clehrich]

Anyway, back to divorce...

I was just reading Carol Karlsen's The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, a marvelous analysis of witchcraft accusations and prosecutions in colonial New England, for a course I teach.  And in the present context, I was thinking it might be interesting (as an option; no, Vincent, I'm not telling you to include this in DitV) to take on some of their notions of gender and property.

Basically the way this works is that women don't own property once they're married, because the man owns it and they own it together; as a legal entity, the woman disappears for property purposes upon marriage.

This, incidentally, includes a woman's reproductive power.  So when a married woman sleeps with another man, she is actually guilty of theft: she is stealing reproductive power from her husband and the marriage.

Now where this feeds into divorce is that you could rule, if you like, that a woman either owes this property debt or she doesn't.  If the marriage is of such a kind that it should not have valid economic status, then divorce is a good idea because in fact the marriage has never occurred.  Consummation does not a marriage make; rather, it is the total unity of body, mind, and property.  If, on the other hand, one partner has previously taken on the full responsibilities of the marriage, which would be indicated by the use of property, and has then decided to abdicate them, this would be theft or violation of contract, and thus not a legitimate basis for divorce.

Of course, in ancient Jewish law, that would be a good basis for divorce, but the wronged party would be owed quite a lot.

Another place you could look for divorce stuff is in the Mishnah, that wonderful old block of Jewish law, neatly translated (in a huge tome readily available from a library) by Jacob Neusner.  The fun thing about the big chunk on marriage law is all the stuff about sex.  Yup, sex.  See, if she's not getting it often enough, she can divorce.  Got that?  Very enlightened, really.  Nothing to do with kiddies, either; just whether she's being satisfied.  He has to get some as well, but that won't surprise you as much.

Now complications arise.  What if her husband is a caravan-driver and so is away for 4 months at a time?  She can't divorce him just because he hasn't had sex with her for a month; no fair.  So we need a nice exception.  And so on and so forth.

I say let it rip.  Go dig up some great stuff like this, pick your favorite legalistic faith, and apply that there law.  Just remember that there are always exceptions, and the Dogs must interpret these, and that there is this danger that people who know about the intricacies will start to believe false doctrines, and you know where that goes....

[dunlaing]

That's true - I was a bit confused by the following line where girls were supposed to have no fear of blood. I suppose I'll just interpret that as they are expected to overcome any fear of blood at a far earlier age.

12 or 13, I'd guess. (although I've read that in the 1800s, the average age of menarche would be about 17). Hopefully their mothers would have prepared them much earlier though.

[DannyK]

It seems to me that there's a lot more scope for story and drama when marriages are difficult and painful to dissolve. (Yeah, they are in modern Western society, too, but I think you know what I mean.)  The guy who's living in sin with his lover because his spiteful wife won't grant him a divorce, the woman whose husband mistreats her until her brothers step in and give him a good thrashing... and he still won't set her free, all great Dog-fodder.  

(I have a rant saved up about how changing social mores have destroyed the genre of romantic comedy, but that's for a different time.)