Gender and other Norms in Keywords

[Mike Holmes]

In this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13774

I said that I thought that the gender issues provided in keywords, such as what occupations were allowed for different characters, are important. And I'll stand by that.

The counter to this argument by Ian was to point out that PCs are often exceptions to the norms. And I totally agree. My response is that one cannot be counter to the norm if there is not a norm.

I'll put this another way. I see the occupation restrictions in the HQ keywords as merely indicative of the norms. As such, they're important because, again, they point out how the culture deals with gender. What occupations one can be in, what cults - it all says volumes about the culture.

But I'm also the guy who wrote the article on Improvising Keywords over at the Issiaries web site: http://www.glorantha.com/support/na_keywords.html

It's my opinion that all keywords are merely suggestions, examples of norms. When a character concept does not fit the keyword, simply alter it. The difference between the original keyword and the new one can say a lot about the character. "I'm not from exactly the same place." "I'm from a different social class." "I'm part of a sub-culture." "I'm not one who conforms to this norm."

My point is that, no, the player should never feel limited by the keywords, but simply be informed by them. Nothing wrong with conforming to a keyword, either - it's just an option.

Now, a slightly separate issue is that of "comfort" with the keyword. But here, again, I think that the solution is for the GM to alter the keyword to suit everyone's comfort level. If, in fact, your Glorantha (or whereever) doesn't have any sexism, because nobody wants to deal with that issue in play, then it's just as easy to alter the keywords to eliminate the telling differences.

All I'm saying is that gender roles can be interesting to investigate (if only, in many cases, to prove that they are a bad idea as constructed), and that to have them "hard coded" into the game, reqires these sorts of notations in the keywords.

Questions to clarify, or debate on the subject welcome.

Mike

[Ian Cooper]

The counter to this argument by Ian was to point out that PCs are often exceptions to the norms. And I totally agree. My response is that one cannot be counter to the norm if there is not a norm.

I agree that it is good to have a 'norm' for their the heroes to be abnormal from. In fact I prefer my heroes to begin as part of society and move out if their story takes them that way, than to start outside out. Hence I think it it is important to appreciate that say, Heortlings, have cultural norms for gender occupations, but its important to allow characters to confront those.

But I am aware that some gamers have enough confronting of gender roles to do OOC that they find settings that have those attributes undesirable as entertainment. Glorantha is pretty tough on this issue. In a lot of cases acting outside gender norms is permissable, but it makes you special. And while 'acting out of gender' maybe an interesting story sometimes it is is not always.

Make sense?

[James Holloway]

The issues of societal expectation is particularly engaging in HQ because it matters more than it might in a lot of other RPGs. Community support is a big deal. If your clan or league or congregation think you're rocking the boat, it may be harder to get the community support you need for that HeroQuest.

Part of this is that unlike many games (unlike, AFAICT, RuneQuest, for example), a big part of HQ is about grounding the characters within their communities. Which makes it difficult: for me, the fact that social expectations aren't just 21st-century-western ones ported into another setting is one of the key selling points about Glorantha. I know that's true of others; it's part of what Ron's talking about when he talks about looking for the gaps. But it can also narrow the range of available player options because it's hard to gloss over something so important.

[Mike Holmes]

Again, I agree with you on this, Ian. It might be an issue. But I'm glad to have the information for my part. And I think that it's generally less of a problem eliminating the offensive parts than they are to build.

Now, if somebody is using these things in a bad way, or using the gender information despite some player's complaint that it's uncomfortable, yeah, that's bad. But it's nothing that the rules can deal with. Any rule is abuseable, in theory. Stopping that abuse can only occur, IMO, at the social level.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

But I am aware that some gamers have enough confronting of gender roles to do OOC that they find settings that have those attributes undesirable as entertainment. Glorantha is pretty tough on this issue. In a lot of cases acting outside gender norms is permissable, but it makes you special. And while 'acting out of gender' maybe an interesting story sometimes it is is not always.

Make sense?

I agree with both your points, the OOC one and also and especially the IC one.  

The OOC problem can be tricky and frustrating to deal with, with the roleplaying scene what it is;  we discussed that in the other thread and I don't want to go back to that here.  

More important to me here is your IC point:  as you say, while acting out or/in gender (or for that matter, any stereotype) may be an interesting story sometimes, it isn't interesting all the time.  Whenever I've played a female warrior type, I found her being cast in a bit of a freak role by the GM and the rest of the group.  Not a freak in the sense that they hate her and want her (or me) to go back to more "girl-appropriate" roles.  But in the sense that shes perceived as being a warrrior despite being female, not simply a female warrior.

What I'd like to see are options for different takes.  At first glance it looks like there are three options:  sterotype;  anti-sterotype;  or genderlessness.  

(1)  Sterotype:  an option to play out / play against traditional stereotypes is fine. Not that I'm keen on it currently but I agree that it can make for an interesting and powerful story if people are interested.  

(2) Anti-stereotype:  options turning traditional sterotype on its head can be interesting, I'm sure.   From its brief description in the rule book Esrolia doesn't grab me, although to be fair I haven't tried following it up by reading more.  I guess what the bits in the book say to me is "parody" - I'm aware that this may be a complete misperception and serious games may well be possible in Esrolia.

(3) Genderlessness: eliminating gender differences is one "option" that I feel tends to gets used out of despair more than anything - game developers trying to secure their markets in the cold winds of "political correctness", GMs (like me) struggling to give female players a safe space in which they can decide whether to take on or leave aside gender issues.  

I don't find this genderlessness particularly satisfying, to be honest.  It feels like a workaround more than a real option.  
(This is the reason why I originally started the "Hidden Sex Keyword" Mike links to in in his first post:  I was looking for options to move on beyond genderlessness without necessarily having to fall back on sterotype.  I wasn't able to articulate this clearly enough at the time and in any case what I said about my own roleplaying experiences shouted out louder and triggered quite a different discussion, so that part of my initial question got lost.)

So what other options can we think of?  Is there, can there be options (4), (5), (6)?  

I made some very tentative steps when I adapted/rewrote Keywords from Scripty's Midnight conversion for my Midnight game a couple of months ago or so.  Scripty uses strong gender bias in most or all of his races - stronger even than the Keywords in the HeroQuest rulebook, which I decided to get rid of for my game.  

In a first step I eliminated those differences and made everything available to everyone.  Result:  genderlessness.  Hm.  I didn't like that much, either:  taken out whole dimensions of human depth and put in nothing in return.

I ended up including gender differences that were (a) small enough in scope for players to use/play against/ignore completely if they chose, and (b) didn't scream "sterotype" but left cultural interpretation open.  

In my Midnight, Dornish women tend to learn "Rally the Clan" as a common magic ability, Dornish men "Craft Ancestral Weapon".  
Sarcosan women tend to have "Breed Horses" and men "Trade Horses".  

So what kind of gender bias do Dorns have that you could tell from those abilities?  
Maybe the men go out and fight with their fine ancestral weapons (which have a facet of an ancestor's spirit bound to them, hence the name) while women stay behind, rally their families around the hearth and home or, if need be, to evacuate to safety.  Or maybe men tend to be craftsmen and women speakers and chieftains?  Or the men do the soldiering while the women rally them and lead them in war?  Or it's merely that men are religiously involved with the ancestors' cult and women with the living? Or all of this, or none of it and instead something else that you find interesting.

I'm aware that to really make this fly I should include far more gender differences than one single ability.  But when I did it I wasn't even sure how far I or my players wanted to go or whether it could even work (by now I'm hoping that yes), and as Mike has put it elsewhere, I have this habit of sneaking up on solutions inch by inch. :-)


Edit:  Just to clarify, I'm not proposing to eliminate options (1) to (3).  Heortlings, Esrolians and genderless cultures can all be cool in the right circumstances.  I'm merely trying to add more options if we can.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Now, if somebody is using these things in a bad way, or using the gender information despite some player's complaint that it's uncomfortable, yeah, that's bad. But it's nothing that the rules can deal with. Any rule is abuseable, in theory. Stopping that abuse can only occur, IMO, at the social level.

Mike

Agreed. (Although having gender bias established in the rules when you're having to deal with OOC sexism in a given group puts you at, shall we say, a slight tactical disadvantage.  Hence the possible confusion between the rules issue and the social contract one - I fell into that trap at first, too.)

[xenopulse]

I would hope there's another option, namely the one we should strive for in real life:

(4) an appreciation of differences that is non-oppressive.

This would be a state in which general differences are understood to exist, but they are not used to keep people from self-determination, nor are they laden with value judgments. I know that my wife, for example, has a different biology at work than I do. By taking that into account without either holding it against her or dismissing it, we can get along wonderfully. That's a mutual thing, of course. And gender differences are only one level of the diversity that exists among people, none of which should be used to oppress or dismiss others.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

So how would you put that into keyword terms?  Would you want to limit gender-specifics to how biology works (in which case it would only affect the sex keyword in the biological sense)? Or would you also be in favour of including "general [ cultural ] differences understood to exist" (my insertion)?  In which case, do you have more specific suggestions or examples for what such differences in a cultural (ie Homeland) keyword could look like IYO?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Kerstin, my answer for that issue is pretty simple and doesn't need to break (e.g.) Keyword: Female into abilities like Womb 17 and Breasts 21, etc.

In our Hero Wars game (which frankly had much simpler and more sensible Keyword rules than HeroQuest), we used the Heortling Keywords from Thunder Rebels. Starting Heortling Keywords were slightly different for men and women, in terms of occupation.

That was it. It worked fine. Everyone saw these abilities as emblematic of gender roles in the society, and picked their other abilities relative to those roles. One player even picked an off-gender god to be an initiate of (Andrin the Lawmaker; female character).

The result was a highly gender-relevant set of conflicts during play.

Effectively, we had two versions of the Heortling Cultural Keyword: Heortling Male and Heortling Female. I think that's a very strong and useful way to do it, and if anything involving (e.g.) male or female biological function came up in play, we would use that value for that keyword.

It's also nice because it kicks the stupid Bio/Culture dichotomy out the window. Characters in HeroQuest therefore end up being members of their culture and stinky social primates, in a familiar and understandable way, without needing to get all hung up about it.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Ah! Forgot to link my Thunder Rebels review.

[xenopulse]

Well, I was thinking in general terms of "world building" -- I must confess to not having enough insight into HQ to tell you how to build keywords around this solution. But Ron's approach seems to work well. I don't know if I would even go so far as to necessitate gender-specific keywords. I would probably make keywords for characters who specifically emphasize differences and make a habit of playing them up, but in general, most differences would be too subtle.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not seeing your objection to number 1. Besides calling it a stereotype, which is sometimes considered a derogatory term.

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again, there's nothing wrong about stereotypes per se. What's wrong is when people assume that all members of a group associated with a stereotype belong to that stereotype, or when the stereotype is incorrect. For example, it's not incorrect to say that women tend to be shorter than men. It's incorrect to then assume that all women are shorter than all men, or that the tallest person must be a man, but that's a missapplication of the stereotype. If one were to say that women were less intelligent than men, that would be an incorrect observation, and so, of course wrong.

But where the stereotype is accurate, and where it's understood to be a generalization, and used properly, it's a potentially effective tool.

In this case, it's not even a statement of the potentiality of women a priori. When a homeland keyword says that women can't be warriors, and yet the next culture over says that they can, the game cannot be saying that females are intrinsically unable to serve as warriors - indeed the notion is laughable. It's simply saying that the culture in question generally does things to prohibit people from crossing it's gender norms.

Again, this means that there can be exceptions. You can still play a warrior, in this culture, you just have to deal with the social ramifications. Just as you might have to deal with their proscription against touching certain sorts of trees if your character does that, too.

There is no option 4 or 5. You either play with gender norms, or you ignore them. Those norms may be typical, or "reversed" as in Esrolia, from what we're familiar with, but they're all just norms. BTW, Esrolia is dead serious from everything that I've seen. How it seems a parody to you is just beyond me (I'm guessing that you're assuming that the authors and people who play have the same notions of gender as those who were sexist in your other games). In my Shadow World game, I have a similar culture called Sarnak, and one of the PCs is from there. A woman warrior from a culture that, in fact, considers males to be second-class citizens to really turn things on their heads. Heck, it goes so far as to reverse the physical dimorphism to explain this in part (not really neccessary, but...) - the women are substantially larger than the men.

It's all dead serious.

So, again, I'm not seeing the problem. Might be that I lack the persepctive, but, if so, you're going to have to explain it better for mooks like me to be able to help.

Anyhow, as Ron points out, you get to significantly modify your character from norms and stereotypes in chargen, even if you don't modify the homeland keywords (which I encourage). So I'm quite sure one can make a character an individual, no matter what.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I'm not seeing your objection to number 1. Besides calling it a stereotype, which is sometimes considered a derogatory term.

You weren't addressing this to me, were you?  I wasn't objecting to it.  

There is no option 4 or 5. You either play with gender norms, or you ignore them. Those norms may be typical, or "reversed" as in Esrolia, from what we're familiar with, but they're all just norms.

You're not getting what I meant.  I agree that you can either play with gender norms or ignore them - there's no third thing.  

However, _if_ you choose to play with norms, why can't there be options in addition to either "typical" or "reversed"?  Once more, I have nothing against either of these two, both can be fine if people are interested in playing them.  But in addition to them I'd like to see other options.  
I've tried to start going a more "open" route with my Dorn keyword, did that one make any sense to you or did it feel all wrong?    

BTW, Esrolia is dead serious from everything that I've seen. How it seems a parody to you is just beyond me (I'm guessing that you're assuming that the authors and people who play have the same notions of gender as those who were sexist in your other games).

Hell no, that's not what I was thinking at all.  I was looking through the keywords for guidance when I did my Midnight conversion stuff and somehow couldn't click with Esrolia.  

Maybe the way it's summarised in the book ("... and then men took control and everything went wrong...") makes me feel that way. I have a bit of a problem getting into anything written about Glorantha in the rulebook because the writing style doesn't work too well for me (that's not true for most of the material on the Issaries website btw), and for Esrolia that half-aloof, possibly ironic style simply goes over the top for me.  But that's just me.  

So, sorry if I rubbed you up the wrong way, not sure what happened there.  I genuinely wasn't sure whether Esrolia is meant to be serious or not, but if you say it is, then ok, I have no problem believing you.  

Anyhow, as Ron points out, you get to significantly modify your character from norms and stereotypes in chargen, even if you don't modify the homeland keywords (which I encourage). So I'm quite sure one can make a character an individual, no matter what.

Again, no disagreement here at all.  

My question above, which I tried to illustrate with my Dorns (that doesn't look like it worked too well) was: what about keywords that invite creativity about gender norms?  (Or other norms for that matter.)  Does that approach make sense to you at all or doesn't it?  Or am I off topic from what you wanted in this thread?

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Effectively, we had two versions of the Heortling Cultural Keyword: Heortling Male and Heortling Female. I think that's a very strong and useful way to do it, and if anything involving (e.g.) male or female biological function came up in play, we would use that value for that keyword.

Ah, that's going to the other extreme.  I like this a lot, certainly for games in which you want to play with the norms.

[Brand_Robins]

So, again, I'm not seeing the problem. Might be that I lack the persepctive, but, if so, you're going to have to explain it better for mooks like me to be able to help.

Anyhow, as Ron points out, you get to significantly modify your character from norms and stereotypes in chargen, even if you don't modify the homeland keywords (which I encourage). So I'm quite sure one can make a character an individual, no matter what.

I think that part of the problem comes from the outsider position of not wanting to always have to play the outsider roll, but not wanting to completely ignore the issue either. That is, many settings/games make assumptions about women that are so standard, so embedded, that they come to be simply assumed. If you're a woman warrior then you're an oddity, and must play with that oddity status. If you're a male caring nurturer then you're an oddity, and must play with that oddity status.

It can, quite frankly, get really old really fast. One does not want to confront the same issues every time one plays, just because the assumptions around the issue never change. It makes it even worse when the only change is "oh, if you don't want to be the freak, then we'll ignore your status completely." I've never had to deal with this from such a essential position as race or sex, but I have dealt with it in terms of religion and background in games – and I do know the pain.

However, having said that, I'm going to have to now argue that the point of it isn't in a theoretical or abstract system. The devil is in the details. Let's assume, for a moment, that we aren't going to play a generic default setting where everything and the kitchen sink are all present at all times, but rather that we construct the settings we're going to be playing in as a group – even if the full extent of that construction is in choosing what parts of the game we want to use and explore.  

Once you make that assumption, a lot of the problems start to go away. If the players have a voice in the setup of the game, in which cultures they're going to be and in what context their characters will interact with that world, then they get to choose the conflicts they want by the characters they choose. Because we're looking at the conflicts the game is going to bring ahead of time (in a lose sense, at least) we get to decide which conflicts we want and how much we want them.

To put it in HQ specific terms, if we know that we're playing a Lunar game based around the Dara Happan traditionalist resistance to the flux of Lunar social codes, then players can start making decisions about where they want their characters to fit into that milieu. If the player wants to not be the freak, they can play a good Dara Happan woman fighting for traditional values or a Darjiini follower of Gissullee, the six-breasted mother. If she wants to be a fighter, but one accepted by most of society, they can be a devotee of Natha. If she wants to be someone who is putting gender front and center all the time, then she could be a woman warrior who is trying to become a devotee of Shargash the Destroyer. The setting contains a lot of points where there is a gap, and by choosing which gaps their character spans, the players get to decide which issues they're going to face.

There's going to be a similar (though perhaps less well developed) set of circumstances in a game like Midnight as well. Snow Elven women are as much warriors as their men, and no one looks at them twice – play one if you don't want it to be an issue. Erenlander women come from an adaptive culture, where women can do things but may not normally do them, so a player of an Erenlander woman can have occasional oddness without constant conflict over gender roles. Someone wanting a hard-core reversal of expectations could play a male dwarven pacifist and healer – one who will even help a wounded orc.

The issue of the divide between stereotype and no gender isn't one that you can find easily in theory, but one that you can usually work out easily enough in practice. Setting up the game, and defining some of the questions/themes/premise before play lets the players chose where they want their character to fall because it is in the actuallity of the situation that the shades of grey between "typical" and "reversed" start to come out.

[Mike Holmes]

However, _if_ you choose to play with norms, why can't there be options in addition to either "typical" or "reversed"?  Once more, I have nothing against either of these two, both can be fine if people are interested in playing them.  But in addition to them I'd like to see other options.  

Sorry for the misunderstanding. But I think that there are infinte "options" here. That is, starting with the homeland, a creative GM can probably come up with all manner of nuance on these things. Even the differences between the "reversed" Esrolia, and my "reversed" Sarnak, are telling, I think.

Now, if you say that's just a matter of nuance of the typical/reverse spectrum, I'd say that it's unavoidable. "Typical" means familiar to us, and "reversed" means unfamiliar to us to some extent. So that's unavoidable. If you mean "reversed" only to mean a direct role reversal, and you want to look at unfamiliar structures that are other than this, I think that can be done, and is done in games.

But do you want a specific example, that's "tangential" to the typical/reversed spectrum? How about association? Looking at cultures where males and females spend more or less time with each other? I've read of fantasy cultures where the men and women live separately, but otherwise equally, only coming into contact with each other ritually. Or cultures where every man is always in physical contact, or as close as possible, with one woman.

I mean, the possibilities are endless. But I sense that I'm still somehow missing your question, as these are individual ideas, and not categories (which is what 4 and 5 seem to imply).

I've tried to start going a more "open" route with my Dorn keyword, did that one make any sense to you or did it feel all wrong?

Actually, I don't understand what you mean by this at all. From your example, it looks precisely like any other typical gender norm. Men fight, women cheer them on. How very American Football. :-)

Maybe the way it's summarised in the book ("... and then men took control and everything went wrong...") makes me feel that way. I have a bit of a problem getting into anything written about Glorantha in the rulebook because the writing style doesn't work too well for me (that's not true for most of the material on the Issaries website btw), and for Esrolia that half-aloof, possibly ironic style simply goes over the top for me.  But that's just me.  

Ah. Consider that this style is how actual myths are told, and indicative of a "primitive" (meaning actually something most like non-industrial) mindset. It's not ironic, it's quite literal. When the woman says "and then the men" she's being dead serious.

Sound like sexism, females for males? Well.

So, sorry if I rubbed you up the wrong way, not sure what happened there.  I genuinely wasn't sure whether Esrolia is meant to be serious or not, but if you say it is, then ok, I have no problem believing you.

We can ask Greg, but I'm pretty darn sure.

That's not to say that there's no humor there. Take Ducks for example. They are, in fact, a running gag in Glorantha. Yet the in-game explanation for how they operate is quite serious. We're talking in-game vs. metagame here. Ron has often said (as James points out above) that it's actually important that we as players have different opinions about things than the cultures in which we play do. Because it's through those differences that we can really create theme best. I mean, what's more thematic than proving that your entire patriarchical culture is wrong through the story? That only happens when we posit a patriarchical society, and don't forget who we are as players.

So, if there is any irony there, it's for the players, not for the characters who are gonna find the Babeester Gor Devotees quite horrific as they lop off your various appendages.

My question above, which I tried to illustrate with my Dorns (that doesn't look like it worked too well) was: what about keywords that invite creativity about gender norms?  (Or other norms for that matter.)  Does that approach make sense to you at all or doesn't it?  Or am I off topic from what you wanted in this thread?

Not off topic. But I don't get what you're saying. Or how it differs from the Grazers not allowing women to be warriors. I mean, I'm sure there's some Gloranthan explanation for why the Grazers are the way they are regarding the sexes (in fact, I think I already know the reason). But that wouldn't stop me from investigating it in play. Or changing it to something more interesting. In any case, the mechanical part of the rules, the part that I'm saying is important, doesn't say why. It just says "no women warriors" (amongst other things). Leaving it up to the players to establish just what that's all about.

This is why I play in Shadow World, and not Glorantha. I know in SW that they haven't taken the time to establish these things. Which means that I can't be doing it "wrong" when we decide the meanings behind the rules.

Mike

{Edited to note the cross post with Brand. I agree with Brand, generally. Again, as far as the "hassle" of the basic idea being a cliche, play with it or don't play with it. I don't see the third option. Put another way, just because you throw out the sexism, doesn't mean that you have to throw out the femalness of the character. Just because the character is allowed to do waht the males do, doesn't make that character male. Is that what's being suggested? Because it's so simple to avoid that this might explain what I'm missing here. Sexism is just one "issue" related to gender. Others include, say, love. You're not saying that throwing out sexism requires throwing out love, are you?

Again, if you want some other issue than female empowerment, then, sure, put that in, too. I like Brand's idea of having a lot of potential angles and allowing the players to come at it any way they like. Again, I think Glorantha is pretty good for this. I mean, if you're doing the "heroes from all over" let's see what options you have:
*Peloraian - second class citizen
*Dara Happan - sexist
*Grazer - Strong gender roles that relegate women to certain areas, but otherwise seem to value women.
*Heortling - patriarchical, but otherwise eglaitarian (the conflcit between the Earth and Storm Pantheons is really interesting, IMO).
*Darjiini - no apparent difference in gender roles, but sex is way important (I've started to think that the Darjiini are a metaphor for the 70s)
*Teshnos - no apparent differences at all, and no particular issues.
*Esrolia - slight reversal of gender power split.

I'm sure I'm mischaracterizing here to some extent, but my point is that there are a lot of choices for female characters, and also for male characters. Consider that playing a male character, you may have to take on the offensive role of an opressor of women. Which is, again, not a problem neccessarily, because it can, in fact, be something to play about.

}