The Hidden Sex Keyword? [split off from NPC demands]

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I usually try not to promote my products too openly in discussions here, but in this case, it's impossible not to: my book Sex & Sorcery is explicitly written to address the concerns raised in this thread, and to my knowledge it is the only existing unified text to do so for role-playing.

Yes it did help me - I wish I'd had that one years ago. It could have saved me a lot of grievance over unfun play experiences if I'd been able to put a finger on them sooner.  

People may also be interested in reading my article Goddess of Rape in Daedalus #1. (The "redeeming" in the article's title was added by the editor)

Best,
Ron

Heh. I remember I stopped reading that one a couple of paragraphs in the first time round, but I'd read other stuff by you so I couldn't help wandering back and finding out the rest of it.

That must have been one incredibly powerful game, I thought when I managed to get through the article - some very difficult limits to push there.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

To further legitimize Ron's claim here, I have to say that some of the ideas I have above come, if not directly from Sex & Sorcery, from the same theoretical discussions that I think lead to Ron putting down his ideas on the subject. That is, there have been many discussions of these issues here before that have been very illuminating, and Ron has been the lead on several of them. He knows this stuff cold.

Mike

Do you have a favourite one that you could point me to, perhaps?  An end to start pulling on, so to speak?
I'm kind of boggled by the sheer amount of material on these forums, and especially on this topic I'm quite lost among the trees.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

My only question at this point is whether or not what I've pointed out above makes sense given all of this context. Have I missed addressing the issue in some way? Is there anything we can do to help rescue you from this problematic sort of play? Or do you feel that in the new game that you're on the road to recovery yourselves?

Well, speaking for myself, this discussion is already great for a number of reasons:
- it has helped me unbottle some tightly bottled-up feelings (before I even managed to write a halfway coherent first post for this thread);
- it's helping me define what I think I can expect and demand in roleplaying games, both for myself and for others;  
- it's confirming me in the impression that there are groups out there that don't suffer from this particular dysfunction, and that they aren't just rare freak occurrences.  

I was really thinking about HQ keywords when I started this because I'm beginning to run my game in it and am fascinated (and at times boggled) by the new vistas opening up.  

I'm currently not in any sexist game, I am in one that isn't sexist and am hoping to give another one a try that will have other female players and a GM who sympathised with me when I left the sexist game.  I'm running a game that wasn't free of sexist players at first, but is by now; well, I've only got two left... both of whom appear to like my approach.  Lucy has posted about it here and I've talked about the Asian player a bit above. So things are looking good, up to a point things were looking good even when I started this thread.  

If anything I'd like more example of how to encourage players to push limits and explore difficult issues (only if are interested of course and only if it's fun for everyone in the group, this is roleplaying not group therapy).  Certainly not more horror stories.  I'm well served with my own and I'm glad there's an end to those.  

Want to make characters for my IRC HQ game?

Mike

Ooh.

Aw.  Do you think you'll still be playing in a little while?  In a month or two? Anyway, what is IRC?  (it's online, is all I know)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Hey Lucy - good to see you here.

What I need is to know that there's a reasonably sensitive and friendly atmosphere for me to explore these issues in at my own pace (rather than have them forced on me or snatched away when I've got something to say, I guess).

Yup, here's the safe space again.  

Now, you might say that I've just been lucky, but it's at least in part because I would never allow these attitudes into play. Basically, one has to take steps to make good play happen. This means the following:
1. Explicitly establish a code of conduct for play.
2. Talk openly about potential issues (don't hide it).
3. Confront any bad bahavior when it occurs.

My instinctive reaction to that was "oh God, that would be horribly uncomfortable", but on reflection it would be a good and useful thing to do in Kerstin's group (not that we're having these kinds of problems in that game right now).

:)

See, here's one thing on which I completely lack your kind of sensitivity.  The way I've been brought up, when there's a problem, you talk about it because how else resolve it?  And when you anticipate problems you talk about that beforehand to avoid bad feelings even cropping up.  (Not that it always works, I can only try - and often I don't even notice problems clearly enough to bering them up, so there.)  

I'm aware of the fact that sometimes I bring up things in such direct ways that it makes you gasp - sorry 'bout that, I just don't know any other way.  

I can only assume that I must have been getting something out of it that kept me there - although in comparison to the game I'm involved in now, it seems rather pathetic. I do enjoy gaming a huge amount, though, and apparently it's sometimes enough to ignore some fairly major issues in the group.

Hm yeah.  Also somehow when you leave a group, you leave all of your creative investment behind, which after all is a part of you.  It ain't easy, cutting your losses.

If it's enumerated on my character sheet, there's less opportunity for other players to decide for me what is or isn't part of the Female keyword.

Yeah, that was my initial view on this also.  Now really, isn't that sad?  We feel we have to write things down on our character sheets so other people in the group can't take them away from us?!  That looks all wrong to me.  There's got to be a better way.  

Finding the right group is important, ok, I can accept that - and it's a relief to be confirmed in this especially after that discussion we've had with our last GM who insisted that the "flavour" of his world "naturally" had to take precedence over the game fun of both his female players.  But there's also another dimension - my own approach.  

If I can define and communicate what I want and don't want to happen in a game, I can weed out players or entire groups much earlier than I did in the past and can save myself really nasty hurtful stuff happening.  And in some lucky constellations, I just might be making a cool contribution to the game that no one in the group has ever thought of or dared try before.

Does that make sense?
 

True, but I also think that a Sex keyword that didn't deal with culture somehow wouldn't be of much use in helping to deal with the issues that we're talking about.

Yay!  A shred of HQ discussion!  

In HQ, cultural aspects would be covered in the Homeland keyword I think. Such as Katrin's "Rally the Clan" common magic ability, which Dornish men don't tend to get taught.

Again, that's just me, and I know my tendency to shut up and endure hurts me...

Just don't you dare shut up and endure in my game...  ;-)

I was playing a very chaste character who had devoted herself to a goddess of love (who unexpectedly turned out to be a goddess of wanton and promiscuous sex - sigh). She seemed to be constantly being hit on by male afficionados of her deity, and always turned them down gracefully, but it disturbed me a little (OK, a lot) because it seemed to me like the GM wanted me to completely U-turn on my character so she would fit in with his very sexually active idea of a devotee of this goddess.

Grrr. I hadn't even heard this one. How could such a thing even happen in the first place? And once it had happened, once you had decided on "romantic love" as the focus of that goddess, surely the GM could at least have made up a branch of her religion that worshipped that aspect of her, never mind whether waht any books or in his homebrew world notes or whatever said before you came along?

[Mike Holmes]

Do you have a favourite one that you could point me to, perhaps?  An end to start pulling on, so to speak?
I'm kind of boggled by the sheer amount of material on these forums, and especially on this topic I'm quite lost among the trees.

Some of the most crucial stuff comes from this set of discussions started by Ron: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9782

As for the IRC game, I intend to play indefinitely (I call my style Soap Opera, though I'm starting to see it more like a string of mini-series). Come on over whenever. IRC is an old chat protocol that has the advantage that it's programable. So we have things like "dicebots" that simulate dice, etc. Has some advantages.

Anyhow, let's move any queries there off the thread.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Although on a side note, race and sex are two cups of tea.  As my Asian player put it when we were talking about it a little while ago:  when you play an Elf in racist game, you may be quite a bit of an outsider but you have compensations because you can do cool stuff no one else can.  When you play a female character in a sexist game, there are only drawbacks and no compensations.

There is a very real degree to which Ron nails this on the head -- it's because race in RPGs is rarely about race, whereas sexual bias really is about just that. My experience is that if you played a game where real races were really problematic then you'd start to get into some of the same squicsome issues.

I was agreeing with Ron there, yes.  My player and I did have a bit of a clash when he was doing his usual "race thing" - only this time he was doing it in a setting where race actually means something.  (The particular subrace of elves he chose for his character is dark-skinned and feral - his take on them is "aboriginal".) And those aren't even real-wrold races, they are still fantasy races, nothing like your example!  Yet we clashed until I realised something was wrong and we worked it out.

The funny thing is that we're capable of making race not about race, but can't make sex not about sex – which I suppose says something about how intrinsic they are to our nature. Or at least how important they are to our psyche.

Well, I'm not so sure. In traditional RPGs all humans are white.  As my Asian player says, in Tolkien even Elves are fair-skinned and blond!  In a way he has a similar problem to female players in a game in which you can't reasonably play a female character (because the system makes their stats inferior so they're no fun to play, or because the setting limits females in a way that would invalidate the character with the type of game the group wants to play):  in those games I am forced to ignore one entire dimension of myself because I have to play a male character.  (I do enjoy playing male characters sometimes btw, that's not a problem.  But I don't want to be forced into it.)  In traditional roleplaying games, other "races" permitted or no, the Asian player is forced to ignore one entire dimension of his personality because he's forced to play a "white".

(Not that I would be keen on running a game in any kind of sexist game environment, I don't think I'd be comfortable with that at this point even if players were to ask for it.)

Considering your history, you may be wise to trust yourself.

However (did you hear it coming?), there is a point at which you may eventually want to step past this.

Of course. In fact I wondered whether I should add that that when I wrote the sentence above, but I thought it was so obvious that I decided to drop it and save space.

[Mark D. Eddy]

Just as a quick correction about Tolien's elves: Almost all of the Elves in Middle Earth have black hair. The Sindar (wood-elves) are black haired and have golden skin and brown to hazel eyes. The Noldor have black hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. The Teleri have golden hair and blue or green eyes. Galadriel is half-Teleri, and is a blue-eyed blonde. Legolas is a wood-elf (son of the King of Mirkwood) and has black hair and golden skin. Celeborn, Cirdan, and Glorfindel are all Noldor and should have black hair and blue eyes. Elrond and his family are half-elven Noldor/Dunedain, and would have black or brown hair, blue eyes, and either fair or ruddy skin.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

This isn't to say that you have to be good friends with everyone you play with. It does mean (and I believe this is a Ronism) that the people you play with have to be people that you wouldn't mind hanging out with if the game weren't being played. That is, the game itself does not constitute alone enough reason to play with somebody. Roleplaying must be appropriately social before it can be fun.

I wholeheartedly agree.  I haven't tended to hang around games (nor other leisure activities) when I couldn't stand the people in the group.  

Hm, Social Contract level - yes in fact, that's it. By having a "hidden" sex keyword, you cement something unspoken in the Social Contract and pretend that it is a part of the rules (hence not to be argued with when some exploit it to the detriment of others in the group).  

Again, you're creating a construct that I'm not at all comfortable with. Yes, there can be hidden agendas. But this is never encoded in the rules. If it does become encoded in the rules, then you know that the social contract problem existed first.

I don't mean to create a construct, I'm just trying to explain what your term of the "hidden sex keyword" triggered in me - I agree now that this is a social contract matter (I wasn't clear on that at first but you're right actually), but I don't think that is very clear in many groups, and somehow abusive players seem to find a way of using this "hidden sex whatever-you-wish-to-call-it" for their abusive play.  

I'd find it hard to believe that Ian's game would be anything but sensitive. So that just confirms what I know about him. It's always good to play with world renowned GMs - they have a higher level of scrutiny leveled at them, and probably wouldn't be world renowned if they were jerks. :-)

Hey do I seem to have said anywhere that Ian is a jerk? I hope not. And stop poking fun at me already, no I didn't know everyone knows him apparently, sorry for being ignorant again.  I didn't even meet him on these forums.   Grr.  

I wish I could say that.  I left a game only last autumn after finally being told by the GM (after about a year's play) that "of course" female PCs had a harder time succeeding at things because "of course" it was a sexist world, because that was one thing that made his game world "plausible" and thereby "superior in flavour" to commercially published ones.

So you're saying that he'd encoded sexism into his system? Yes, that happens explicitly, and regularly, often for the reasons you claim (there was a long and acrimonious design thread on this subject a while back).

Well, if it had been explicit, I could have said no to it.  Instead it was latent and I never found out about it until I mentioned to the GM how frustrated I was getting that with all the creative effort I put into the game, I was feeling my character wasn't getting anywhere when other players' characters were.  

This was the game Lucy was talking about above, in which she tried to play a number of character concepts that didn't work out.  I enjoy tactical stuff and had had fun in the combat-oriented phase of that game, but then the game moved on from a combat focus to a political power game - still very Gamist although this time I felt I didn't "get" the rules, I didn't know what to do and I wasn't getting anywhere.  

So I spoke to the GM and he told me, well, after all I was playing a female PC.  I asked, huh, what does that have to do with it.  (Up to that point I hadn't even noticed the "successful" characters were male characters played by male players and the "fading-into-the-background" ones were the females in the group, played by Lucy and me.)  

Lucy and I ended up having a long discussion with him trying to get our concerns through to him.  No go.  I didn't go back for another session.  

So yeah, it was hidden all right until I stumbled upon it.  (Except there was one player in the group who's blatantly sexist, he actually believes women don't belong at the gaming table, much less as players of warriors with a big sword.  Then again he's half my age and no one takes him especially seriously, so he didn't count.)  I spoke to some of the male players later, who were puzzled by what I told them - apparently they hadn't noticed the game world was supposed to be sexist, either.  

Excellent. And? What were the results?

In one case the group I left ended up ditching their GM and letting me know about it so I came back (until I moved here and had to leave them behind).  

In the other, more recent case, I'm minus one terribly wrong game.  Sad really because I had some good moments in that game and invested an awful lot of creativity in it, but once I realised what was going on - and what the GM was thinking he was doing with his game and that he is far too self-centred and too dependent on his creation he started when he was a kid decades ago to be prepared to listen to anything I might have to say - , well then I decided walking was the only way.

Yes, but, again this is the thing about timing. Don't let it get to that point. This is why you have to address all of this up front at chargen. You can't wait for the problem to crop up in play, and then address it - you'll be seen as having been complicit up until that point, and then trying to change things to your own way for your own reasons. It might work, but more often you'll have to walk. Why let an investment get to that point?

Hm. I'm maybe not too good at this yet, but if so I don't think I'm the only one. I've yet to see a new player in a group who doesn't stop and say, Hey wait minute, I thought ... after play starts.  I try to discuss things with players in advance when I run a game but at first play still tends to be a bit choppy, until everybody has worked out everybody else's assumptions about the game and a solution is worked out.
When things are latent (if you don't like the word hidden) it may take quite a while to catch on to them.

I know, because you didn't know. Well, that's all in the past. What's the first thing you're going to do now, going forward?

Hm, I'm not doing too well trying to communicate clearly here.  I thought I'd said that but apparently not.  I'm cautiously trying out gaming with other groups, although I'm damned touchy on this particular topic, so I'll see how well that works.  I'm hoping I can heal some wounds and still keep playing (rather than taking a break) without bringing emotional baggage into my new games, but there's been moments when I've sat behind my own shoulder watching (so to speak) and groaned inwardly at what trivial things can set me off currently.  And I hate it when that happens, I gotta say.

I'm also trying to keep doing what I've been doing in the Midnight game I run.  Relief - that's one thing that won't need changing in that game!  Tomorrow we play the first "proper" session of HQ Midnight with the players' own, converted and reinvented characters.  

It sounds to me like you showed up on Ian's doorstep ready to play, never really having talked to him. I mean, I'm guessing that if you'd spent ten minutes with him in the pub before the game, that you'd have seen that he's the sort of guy that just isn't going to make anyone uncomfortable in play.

Oh, I agree. I usually make a point of meeting people first.  This case was a bit special I guess.  My original approach was to ask Ian whether I might join for a session or so to see HQ rules in play because I was considering converting my game over but had never played or run the system. He was kind enough to invite me in (merely only on the basis of a couple or so e-mails, and the group meets in an RPG club and is apparently used to people simply wandering into their game) and ended up making an NPC for me to play - or to be quite precise, a choice of two NPCs based on my answers to some questions he'd asked about my preferences.

Have you ever considered that the people who play sexist must not worry too much about you leaving the game? I mean, subconsciously they have to be thinking, "What do I care if she gets hurt? She's not a friend of mine." Again, would a friend do any of this to you?

I'd say no, but I've had people tell me I'm just fussed about things that aren't really big issues.  (To them, I might add.  Some people just don't bother to look beyond the rim of their own plate.)  

I'm not sure why it takes me longer to see these things in perspective in gaming, I'm pretty much fine in other walks of life.  (I run my own business, amongst other things.)

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You'll get people looking at you like you're a freak. I can envision it, "Before we play, I want everyone to know that there's an implicit Female Keyword for my character, and it includes, X Y Z." Gah!

Er, gah! indeed. Did I suggest that?  I hope not.

"Hey, I like to play strong female characters, not silly stereotypes. You're all OK with that, right?"

I've done precisely that.  It hasn't worked too well for me, people say, "Yeah, sure," but it may not mean a thing about what's really going on in their heads and other bits. (Partly because if they are in-denial types, they themselves don't know.)

I do have the social skills to immediately weed out people who blatantly, glaringly obviously don't fit my bill.  I'd also have no problem walking out of those types in the middle of the first session before I started investing for real in a game.

Well, I think that it's actually quite cliche, but I've often said that cliche is the best friend of the roleplayer. But it sure is fun to anticipate the outcome. Tune into the game this Thursday - I don't think it'll be resolved so soon, but if it is, it would be cool to be there for it. Lurkers are welcome in my game.

Good to know for future occasions.  I won't be able to make it this time round I think, as we're playing Midnight that night.

My point isn't that you have to take away the power of the GM to have final say about what happens.

I didn't think you were.

[Adrienne]

I meant to reply to this sooner, but I've been in computer hell this week.  I hope it's still topical.  :)

One more question: Mike said that the way you designed the character, she could get pretty much whatever she wants from men.  Can you describe that in more detail? What were you aiming for here? Seeing that you say you'v had bad play experiences in the past, what made you decide to go this way with this character anyway?

Mike summarized it pretty well in his post above--I didn't seek out any appearance-related abilities or seductive wiles for the character.  She enters social contests with abilities that would be equally appropriate for a male character.  I did especially enjoy the moment a few sessions ago when a suave male character was flattering her, and she resisted with her Jaded augmented by Elitist (and won).

As of this week, both of the male characters in the game who might have been interested in her have decided that "sleeping with the boss" is a bad idea, and veered away.  Of course, since she's now "Conflicted about Okhfels 1W", it may not be so easy for one of them.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, budding love triangle brewing in terms of Okhfels now courting another woman who he's decided is less complex.

Wouldn't it be nasty of me if I were to, say, make her turn out to be somehow incompatible as well? Making Okhfels have to consider whether or not the more confident and competent woman was really worth another look? And if I, perhaps, further complicated things by bringing in the other woman's old boyfriend? And then mixed this all up with other duties and obligations that stretched all of these relationships? Wouldn't that be just an awful thing to do to a pair of characters?

Nah, I'm waaaay to nice to do that. But NPCs do have a mind of their own... ;-)


Back on topic, the key is always the same for every player. You have to make sure that their character is the sort of protagonist they want to see in play. That doesn't mean that they don't have problems, or that things don't go wrong for them, quite the opposite. What it means is that you don't mess with the player's vision of the character. If the player sees her female character as competent, then that should come out in play. This doesn't just apply to this one issue, but to all play.

For example, last night, Thomas's character did another origami trick to impress a little girl, making a flower for her to gain her trust. He rolls a critical failure. I could have narrated that he stumbled presenting the flower and crushed it. I could have narrated that he became tongue tied in presenting it. I could have narrated that his pants fell down. But none of these would have been "Sebastian-esque." Sebastian is a cool, if understated, customer. So instead, I narrated that the flower turned out to look something like a flower that symbolized death to that culture, and her parents have recently died. So the attempt backfired making her scared of him. But not because he wasn't cool, or because something happened that made him something he was not. Simply because circumstance (represented by the die roll), worked to thwart him.

Always, always, always, maintain the means by which the character is a protagonist. I would never assume that Adrienne's character would just fall into bed with somebody because that's not how the character is cool.

I watched a neat movie the other night called Dangerous Beauty, about a famous Venitian Courtsean. She, of course, fell into bed with whomever could pay. But the character was no less a protagonist for it. In fact her occupation was entirely the source of her character's story.

So, it's not that playing a character who falls into bed is somehow anathema to the character being a protagonist. It's only so when it doesn't match the player's intended means for the character to be a protagonist. Because then the person forcing this issue is making a statement about women in general, and then we're back to the problem we've been talking about above.

Again, yes, sexism is rampant in RPGs. But the overall principle isn't just to not allow sexism to ruin your game, but, more stringently, not allowing anything that might damage a character's perception as a protagonist, as the player wants to see it, to come through in play.

It's a simple subset of the social contract: I won't let your character look "bad," because that can't be fun for you.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Mike's point carries with it an important corollary: that when you do want your character to fail miserably in the classic crit-failure sense, you can have that happen too. Either way is good - what's bad is when what another person imposes upon your character de-protagonizes them. The actual details of what's happening in the imaginary space (success, failure) are not the issue at all.

Mike's totally right that sexist and sexual manipulations of person A's character by person B are a sub-category of this basic problem. He and I are completely agreed that a person B who would do this at all is displaying grossly disturbing behavior at the entirely human, social level, using the mask of "role-playing" as a form of hypocrisy.

Best,
Ron

P.S. These posts of Mike's and mine in this thread are kind of an amalgam of Sorcerer text (my stuff), Paul Czege's ideas, and Vincent Baker's, as well as Mike's powerful experiences of play over the last few years especially.

[James Holloway]

Yay!  A shred of HQ discussion!  

In HQ, cultural aspects would be covered in the Homeland keyword I think. Such as Katrin's "Rally the Clan" common magic ability, which Dornish men don't tend to get taught.

I think this is very true. Note, for example, the differences between men and women in the Typical Personality Traits sections of the keyword for Esrolia. On the other hand, note that Esrolia -- the society where the women run the show -- is the only Homeland in the corebook that has different homeland keyword elements for men and women (well, apart from occupations, that is, but they're not part of the Homeland keyword per se).

I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere, but I think it's kind of neat that Heortling males will tend to find Dara Happan males "girly" (thoughtful, cautious, orderly) while Dara Happan males will also think that Heortling males act like women (sensitive, exciteable, impulsive). It puts Heortling women in a very interesting position in relation to the Lunar religion, which has a space for Ernalda (as the wife of a half-ass god like Doburdun, sure) but not one for Orlanth.

I have an idea that the above notion might be a difficult one to pull off in a gaming session because of the ways in which players' perceptions about the nature of male and female personalities will inform their understandings of their characters regardless of the cultural norms regarding males and females in their Homelands.

[Mike Holmes]

I think this is very true. Note, for example, the differences between men and women in the Typical Personality Traits sections of the keyword for Esrolia. On the other hand, note that Esrolia -- the society where the women run the show -- is the only Homeland in the corebook that has different homeland keyword elements for men and women (well, apart from occupations, that is, but they're not part of the Homeland keyword per se).

I think that, for example, the Grazer limits on occupational keywords are, in fact, an important part of the keyword. I mean, it really says something about how they view the sexes by what they allow for occupations. I sense a very mid-twentieth century America level of sexism - women can be other than housewives, but they can only be teachers, nurses, etc.

All in all, again, Glorantha is a relatively egalitarian place. Yes, the Heortlings make the women warriors follow Vinga, but they're allowed. This is more advanced than the USA right now where women are just being allowed into combat units in limited roles. There are some places in Glorantha where women are definitely second-class, or worse, but they tend to be the exception it seems.

I think that this actually comes more from laziness than anything else, actually - people just don't want to work out how men and women differ in these cultures. But that works out just fine, IMO. Women get to play the fantasy of living in an actually egalitarian world.

Mike

[Ian Cooper]

I think that, for example, the Grazer limits on occupational keywords are, in fact, an important part of the keyword. I mean, it really says something about how they view the sexes by what they allow for occupations. I sense a very mid-twentieth century America level of sexism - women can be other than housewives, but they can only be teachers, nurses, etc.

I would see gender restrictions in game world as one off a number of possible 'problem' areas. By this I mean occupational more than biological restricitions which don't really affect HQ. I think the important thing is to allow people to tell powerful stories.

Of course the key question here is whether a game should accept any gender limitations at all, because doing so might prevent them from telling the kind of story they want to.

One answer is to allow some characters to be the exception to the norm. HQ does allow exceptions such as Vinga or Heler, though it does not cover all the options: last week we saw a gender limitation for male healers who were not Chalana Arroy pacifists. The other answer is to create fantasy worlds were such distinctions do not exist.

But are we limiting ourselves by removing these issues? I'd like to quote Chris in another thread on the Forge, because I think it applies to how gender restrictions on character occupation affect a game:

So, a Samurai built for a typical RPGs session, say in feudal Japan, is going to behave like a Samurai. If he stops behaving like a Samurai, then he's doing it wrong.
In a Narrativist game, it's the opposite. If this same Samurai falls in love with the ghost of a woman who commands him to betray his code, he might well do that... and that's great – because it will provide stress with the PCs wife, his lord, his son and so on. HeroQuest provides lots of strictures for behavior based on the background of Glorantha. But it is the choices the PCs (and NPCs) make to follow -- or not! -- those strictures that provides compelling story.

So one answer is to say that it is fine for a game world to have gender restrictions as long as breaking them is a choice that players can make and perhaps may even want to make.

BTW, just to set the record straight I'm sure I have been a jerk at times in my life ;-) I'm grateful to Kerstin for choosing to trust us.

[Ian Cooper]

While this debate uses the term gender we should probably acknowledge that some of these isues are not just about gender but about predjudices based on sex/sexuality. Gay gamers can encounter just as many issues. In fact there may be more because a gaming table that seems perfectly happy resolving male-female gender issues may find homosexuality uncomfortable, and game worlds which may not possess gender predjudice may have inbuilt predjudices based on sexuality.

As an example the Glorantha community has had some 'issues' in the past when religions that accept homosexuality, Nandan and Heler spring immediately to mind, have been documented. Let's just summarize the problems as: not everyone was comfortable with their inclusion, or reacted to thier inclusion positively.