Gender and other Norms in Keywords

[Brand_Robins]

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.

Ah, an opportunity to give a specific example.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I played in Mike's game and played a character called Thomas. Thomas was a bad ass. Thomas kicked the crap out of villains large and small. Thomas was hard and tough and stern. Thomas had women coming at him from all angles (often using him like a puppet, but hey...), from sexy slinky sorceresses to ethereally beautiful bird-maidens. But his true love was an amazon woman – a woman bigger and stronger than he was.

Thomas wasn't the opposite of the norm, he wasn't a weak knight who needed to be protected by a woman, but he wasn't the norm of the strong man who protects the damsel in distress either. He was a very mixed up individual in love with a woman he shouldn't be, and who wasn't supposed to be in love with him either. There was a lot of potential there for examining the roles of gender and violence/protection in romance – and most of it was far from stereotype.

It's in the places like that, where it stops being theory and becomes a story, that you get your gradient.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, Sarnk Amazons who actually fall in love with men are generally ridiculed in thier culture as weak. So having 6' 3" Alitia fall in love with 5' 10" Thomas the knight (I assume, given that he didn't have tall at all), was fun to deal with. Right, no sweeping this damsel off her feet, it's more like trying to keep up as she runs throught the city looking to avenge herself on her former captors.

As complicated as ya wanna be.

I am saddened that we never resolved all of this - Brand had to drop out of the game. You realize, Brand, that Alitia was taken captive and sent to the White Wood in the new phase of play by the same demonic forces that caused the fall of the city, and that Serama's new Amazon sidekick, Elle, is her sister, and that they're looking for her? Didya? I can't wait for her to get loose again, and wreck some more hearts both with her looks and with cold steel. (Y'know she woulda kicked Fahja's butt if it hadn't been for his Hero Points).

Sure you don't wanna play again? Thomas could be coming upriver as we speak...

Back OT. The point is that in making up the characters, one can easily mess with the gender norms to make whatever issues one wants. At least that's been my experience.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Even the differences between the "reversed" Esrolia, and my "reversed" Sarnak, are telling, I think.

I'd agree, even from the almost-nothing I understand of Esrolia and from what you said above about Sarnak.

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.

Ah, right. That's the sense in which I was using the word and I was assuming you were, too.

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 wasn't looking for categories as such - merely struggling to explain that I think there could and should be options other than "traditional" and "reversed" in the sense that I understood those terms (which it now turns out you didn't, so we didn't have a disagreement there).  

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. :-)

Ouch. :-)

Ok, I kinda get you for "men fight, women huddle around the children". It's a "traditional norm" interpretation and it works with these abilities - but it's not supposed to be the only way to interpret these abilities.  

What about men being craftsmen and women chieftains?  How's that American Football?

And what about men being soldiers and women war leaders (ie, generals)?

Or men focussing on ancestor religious stuff and women on life-related religious stuff?  

To my mind neither "Craft Ancestral Weapon" nor "Rally Clan" say that it is the men who fight, much less that the women cheer them on.  
"Blessing" weapons by binding a spirit into them doesn't mean you're necessarily the one fighting with them - like in wars in Europe, priests would bless pieces of artillery before a battle.  
Also "Rally Clan" shouldn't automatically become a cheerleading ability only because it's women who are commonly taught it. I dunno what Scripty was thinking when he wrote it;  but the way I see it, it could mean magically calling on the clan's fighting force to gather if you think in military terms.  Politically, it could mean bringing clan members on your side together for support in an imprtant strategic debate etc.  

Ouff, I hope that's making it clearer.  Sorry, I was trying to make a general point, not veer off on a tangent.  

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.

Ah ok. It being mixed in with all that weird 1970s-psychedelic/humour stuff (or whatever it is, such as ducks, floating eggs etc.) I simply didn't get that.  If I put it in a mythological context it starts making a lot more sense.  
Sorry, you have the advantage over me, you've known this setting from other texts.  (I'm beginning to see more specifically why people complain that the HQ book doesn't do Glorantha justice.)  

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.

Great point - and one that might argue against the approach I was taking above, with an "interpretable" culture.  If you make a culture clearly "American Football" (or whatever other norm you choose, as long as it's drastically clear), you are sure to get a strong reaction either in favour or against, so you have a strong theme.  If you have an interpretable culture keyword, you don't have a theme at all unless and until the group agrees to put one in.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

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.

Yes.

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.

Sure, assuming the group has a consensus on what culture they'd like to play in that should work fine.

[Brand_Robins]

Sure, assuming the group has a consensus on what culture they'd like to play in that should work fine.

Or at least a scope of the cultures and themes. If'n you're in Midnight you don't all have to play Snow Elves -- but if you're playing a northern game based around the Shadow's big push to finally end the resistance then you're going to get elves and Dorns and Ernelanders and maybe a few others, which gives a clear idea of the general setting and thus the most common gender assumptions that will be faced.

Really, it all has to do with making the game first (as a group) and the characters second -- a big change from the usual D&D trope of "make any character you want, they'll all work in this campaign."

[Mike Holmes]

I wasn't looking for categories as such - merely struggling to explain that I think there could and should be options other than "traditional" and "reversed" in the sense that I understood those terms (which it now turns out you didn't, so we didn't have a disagreement there).  

No, I accepted that you might be using that meaning. But I still don't understand your point, then. You, again, seemed to be looking for some "other" thing, as if it needs to be tracked down and identified. Well, my point is that I can't see how you can miss all the "other" that's already out there everywhere. It's like you're standing on a beach, and saying, "But what does the sand look like?"

Again, we can talk specific examples til we're blue in the face, if you like. Is that all you're talking about? Or is it something else that I'm missing?

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. :-)

Ouch. :-)

Ok, I kinda get you for "men fight, women huddle around the children". It's a "traditional norm" interpretation and it works with these abilities - but it's not supposed to be the only way to interpret these abilities.  

What about men being craftsmen and women chieftains?  How's that American Football?

Ah, I see the problem. I took your one interpretation of the abilities in question as your conclusion, when it was just an example of what could be extrapolated.

My response is, uh, sure. Great. Having different skills is one of the things that we mentioned was a way of creating gender differences. And, yeah, it's been precisely my point that you don't have to interperet anything anyway but how you want to. So, Yeah. Sounds like what I've been talking about all along...

Ah ok. It being mixed in with all that weird 1970s-psychedelic/humour stuff (or whatever it is, such as ducks, floating eggs etc.) I simply didn't get that.  If I put it in a mythological context it starts making a lot more sense.  

Well, there might be some seventies in there, given that Greg wrote a lot of this around then. Some in the sixties, in fact, before there were RPGs, actually. But I think it might have more to do with the fact that Greg's an actual bone fide shaman than anything else.

Sorry, you have the advantage over me, you've known this setting from other texts.  (I'm beginning to see more specifically why people complain that the HQ book doesn't do Glorantha justice.)  

Well, first, I don't really have mor texts. I'm not the RQ guy converted over to HQ. I'm working off of my personal reading of the Esrolia text added to what I've seen of prep for play in Esrolia - a thread on this forum. That is, for my part, working from just the book, we ended up with this really deadly relationship map prep for play that was just...dead serious. In fact, I stole the R-Map from a very old Robert Wagner film that dealt with some very serious issues of territory and race, which got converted in play to stuff about gender roles.

I mean, just working from what's in the Esrolia text in HQ, it would never occur to me that Esrolia was other than dead serious.

I completely disagree with people who say that the HQ text doesn't do Glorantha justice. I think the people saying that are the Gloranthaphiles who already know oh so much more about the setting. For me, less is more. I really like the HQ book descriptions for what they don't say, and leave me to use. It's precisely because there are other texts out there that I don't play in Glorantha. If there was only the HQ book - they I might play in Glorantha. Or, to quote Josh, who is narrator sometimes and uses Glorantha, "I just use what's in the book, and ignore everything else."

So, OK, you read it differently than me. That's bound to happen. But I think it's just as easy to read Esrolia from the book as dead serious as it is to read it as ironic. I did. And it was definitely the first thing I'd read about Esrolia. Ever.

Great point - and one that might argue against the approach I was taking above, with an "interpretable" culture.  If you make a culture clearly "American Football" (or whatever other norm you choose, as long as it's drastically clear), you are sure to get a strong reaction either in favour or against, so you have a strong theme.  If you have an interpretable culture keyword, you don't have a theme at all unless and until the group agrees to put one in.

Well, that wasn't my argument, precisely. I've been saying all along that, yes, it makes sense to have these issues to work off of, but all I'm saying there is that you have to have some spark for creativity there. Now, that can either be something solid, or something interpeable. In fact, my claim is that everything is interperable. Or at the very least alterable. What I can't get past is that, worst case scenario, if there's some built in theme that's unavoidable the way that the current keyword is enumerated, that all you have to do to avoid that issue is to drop the offending part out of the keyword. This may mean just saying that the male keyword (or the female one, depending) is just what everyone uses. Very easy.

So having these things in there as food for thought is only problematic, if, again, there's some social contract problem, and the narrator refuses to see your problem and alter the keyword for play. In practice, I can't see a player who says, "Hey, I want to play a Dara Happan, but one who comes from a Dara Happa where they're completely egalitarian?" getting turned down by the narrator (unless the sexism of Dara Happa had been previously noted in play). As it says in the HQ book, it's the players "Glorantha" too, and they should be allowed some control of the content. This sounds like precisely what the doctor ordered here.

So, again, sexism in a culture, racism in a culture, nosepicking in a culture, these are all bad habits by our assessment, but they all might provide something interesting to play about. So I think we're better off having them presented, and then allowing people to alter them as they like. Again, in Glorantha, it's not like you aren't given a plethora of options regarding the topic of gender looking at all of the homelands, already. But, where those don't work for you, you can also change these parts of the keyword. So, I'm pretty sold on their inclusion.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Well, my point is that I can't see how you can miss all the "other" that's already out there everywhere. It's like you're standing on a beach, and saying, "But what does the sand look like?"

This may well be true.  My apologies for cluttering up your thread.

[Bryan_T]

Kerstin;

Reading through this thread, I *think* what I heard you saying is:  "Is there a way of playing it so that while gender roles exist, playing around with those rolls does NOT require that this be the primary conflict that the character is about.

Or to try and say it another way, that going against cultural norms does not mean you want your bangs to mostly be about the conflict between gender norms and your chosen occupation.

So that for example, you could play a female warrior, who's main conflicts are about say, the cold detachment from humanity that she needs in order to kill, versus the human passion that she needs to help free the slaves.  

Is this close to what you were trying to get at?

Regards;

-Bryan

[Mike Holmes]

Well, my point is that I can't see how you can miss all the "other" that's already out there everywhere. It's like you're standing on a beach, and saying, "But what does the sand look like?"

This may well be true.  My apologies for cluttering up your thread.

I apologize, I didn't mean to be insulting. I just keep getting this feeling that you've got some important point, and that I must not be getting it.

In any case, it's not off topic.

If it is, indeed the point that Bryan supposes, then I'm completely behind you. That is, even if you have a character who comes from a land where the gender roles have one of the more standard sorts of conflicts, that doesn't have to be the defining conflict for that character. In fact, often you can ignore it altogether in play - especially if abroad.

Again, these issues are meant to inform, if included, not to tell you that you must play your character some way, or about some one thing.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Bryan, Mike - That was part of what I was trying to say, yes.  Brand has already expressed that in his post about how it gets old to be forced into the very same set of conflicts every time.  

The other part (related to the above) was that I'd like to see more cultures with non-standard gender conflicts. Mike says I'm standing on a beach not seeing the sand, fair enough.  I'll give that a think.

[Mike Holmes]

Well, I think the reason that you tend to see the built in conflict that you do is an artifact of creating the cultures to be resonant. Not that the only gender conflicts that can resonate are the standard ones. But that we usually build cultures as amalgams of ones that we know. So, in a fantasy game, we use our knowledge of ancient cultures so that they match the technological level of the game. If I want a violent culture, I pick the Vikings to model off of. If I want an empire building culture, I pick the Romans. Democracy? Greeks. Esoteric religion? Egyptians.

What happens then, is that the norms of those cultures get converted in by default. As it happens, the vast majority of cultures that you can name for these purposes ranged from treating women as slaves to high levels of sexism at best.

So it's no surprise that you get these cultures. Why do we get the "reverse" culture? Well, because of the Amazon legend, and because it's simple "sci-fi" logic to look at something by turning it completely upside down. I think Plato was simply a sci-fi writer before his time when he came up with the Amazons.

Then there's the question of "realism." That is, given that the societies in fantasy are generally portrayed as less than enlightened in general, the question becomes why would they do any better than the real world human cultures who were in the same place.

Of course this is fantasy, and we can do anything we want. So these arguments for why fantasy cultures are the way they are, isn't a good one. But it is why these things exist as they do.

Again, all in all, Glorantha does a better than usual job of giving you a range of options in terms of gender issues as relates to societal control. It also, BTW, does a lot in terms of adding other interesting issues of gender. Consider, for a moment, Nandan. I'm not too familiar with him, as he's not in the HQ book, or in any text that I've read, but I've been given to understand that he's the god of men acting as women or somesuch. There are hints that it's about sexual orientation somehow, but the most commonly cited ritual is one in which a man can become pregnant. (Somebody joked that the ritual involved the man's wife going into the hut with him, and then having to stay there with him the whole nine months to tend to him in this arduous ritual, whereupon the man comes out of the hut carrying the newborn child, but I think it's meant to be serious).

Again, just looking at what is in the book, Vinga is interesting in that it's not precisely role reversal. As I understand it (and I could be wrong here), the Vingans are thought to become men more or less. Sorta the opposite of Nandan, then. It's not the normal role reversal issue, it's more of a transgendering issue.

To get back to that "sand" that I think is everywhere, I think that, in fact, the best way to come up with "other" gender issues is to ignore the cultural power split, and focus on more universal issues as they impact gender for this culture. For example, there's the issue of mating ritual. Who calls on who in this culture? What are the sexual norms? I think that one issue we see all the time in games like this is that of the sort of puritanical timeframes of these rituals. That is, in many cultures men and women are only allowed to come into contact under certain controlled circumstances, and then these circumstances may continue to be controlled for a very long time. One culture might only allow the males to come and stand outside of the windows of the women who they woo, and sing to them, until several months have passed (or even longer). Wherupon, perhaps the male has to compose a poem that is either acccepted or rejected by the female.

A lot of this stuff is actually based off of the romanticization of the medieval period by Victorian writers that has stuck since that time. That is, in fact, these sorts of rituals were rare to non-existant in many of the emulated cultures that we see in fantasy. But they're fun to contemplate, again, in a sorta sci-fi way. "What if" such rituals existed?

Another gender trope that gets abused somewhat in fantasy, but can be interesting, is that of the prostitute. Un ugly issue by our modern standards, there are some ways to look at this without abuse, and in ways that can be interesting to play out. Yes, I mean to say that a female player could find it interesting to play a prostitute in certain circumstances, but also male prostitution can be examined, and there are a plethora of ways to look at it. For example, in some real world cultures, prostitutes were respected or even revered. Take the Sumerians - each year the king had to ritually copulate with the prostitutes of certain temples to ensure the flow of the river. It's generally thought that these women were held in high regard by the community as a whole.

Sex as power, generally, is a cultural issue that can go a lot of different ways. From both male and female perspectives. Consider the Don Juan male type. He's held in esteem by some, and considered immoral by others in the typical culture in which such a character is set. Put him in another culture, and things can get very weird. I have such a character in my current game, but in a society in which lying is punishable by death. So he's constantly being found out, and chased off - interestingly, in the society, infidelity isn't as bad as lying about your infidelity. So he's had to become nomadic from tribe to tribe in order to keep up his favorite passtime of seducing other men's wives.

Note that in all of these cases, what's inescapable, is that they're all about cultual norms. That is, the way that culture and gender interact is by norms (it could be said that culture is nothing but norms). So when we're talking the two here, there really is only one question with regard to any norm - does the character conform to the norm, or does the character break the norm? So, from that POV, you can't escape the "normal/Reverse" dichotomy.

What you can escape, however, is what the "normal/reverse" issue is about. No, it doesn't have to be directly about gender roles. Again, the female character who breaks with mating tradition to be with the man she loves is breaking a norm. The one prostitute may be caught up in issues or morality or power as the norms they might be tempted to break. The Don Juan type is caught between a set of double-standard norms in his society, and is breaking one, to avoid breaking the other (but, often thematically ends up changing back to the other norm when he/she falls in love for life).

I could go on and on. There's really very little that happens in life that's not impacted by our gender in some way. Culturally there are rules implicit as well as explicit about how the genders are supposed to behave as they go through life. The question of whether or not one adheres to a particular norm does not have to be about a rejection of their gender, as is implied with the standard role-reversal situation. That is, it could be just as "female" to fall in love with somebody and break a dating norm as it would be to follow that norm.

So all you have to do is to identify those norms, and you're off and running using gender as one way to create issues that the character has to deal with.

And this is only looking at culture, too. As I've said elsewhere, if you want other issues, just look at places other than culture. I mean, the easiest way to get away from gender as a cultural issue, is to deal with it on a more primal level (that Gender Keyword again). That is, simply put a male and female character together alone somewhere, and there's are suddenly potential issues. Not ones that have to be explored, these, too can be ignored. But as soon as one of the characters says to the other, "Hey, you look pretty good tonight" we have an issue that has to be dealt with. Again, this is bang with the most fidelity of all (no pun intended). As soon as one character indicates a sexual interest in another, no matter how benignly stated or innocent, the other character's response is instantly interesting. In our example, perhaps the compliment is returned, and we see a new relationship forming. Or the character is rejected, which is thematically interesting as well.

And this is just the simplest of male-female interactions. Once they have a relationship, then, as they say, things get complicated. The obvious thing to do then, is to introduce a third party, creating the most used conflict delivery system known, the love triangle. Most used because it's so damn consistent at providing an interesting result. Again, I could go on and on, but there's absolutely no reason that the only gender issue to hit play has to be "comformity to role/nonconformity" or role-reversal. Because there's more to cultural gender identity than that, and there are also considerations of gender that are culture-universal if you will. There are also probably other sorts that I'm missing here - occupational gender issues perhaps, or belief-based issues. I mean, what if your god tells your character to remove their gender associated body parts to become "genderless" for them? How much do you value your gender (and eschew pain), and how much do you love your diety?

To say nothing of the basic phyiological issues of gender. Yes, I think that getting pregnant, or getting a sexually transmitted disease, or getting a sex organ damaged in a fight (The Sun Also Rises), are all potentially very interesting issues to deal with.

Note that, to some extent every gender issue is cultural in one way. That is, the characters ideas about gender have to have been formed somewhere, and I think that almost always, you can trace this back to the culture in some way. But, then, I'd say that this is true of every sort of issue. That is, a character can't have any opinion that's not in some way informed by his cultural upbringing. Even if the character runs counter to his culture. So I think this isn't important to point out, really.

Now, all I've said in this thread is that gender roles are still interesting to point out, and can still be interesting to play about as an issue. Further, I think that pointing out gender roles can be a good first step to informing the players about what the other norms might be like - they can be inspirational there. But, again, if in fact one finds that somehow the gender roles end up playing too big a part in informing what play is to be like, then axe them. Fine. But that doesn't mean that the culture doesn't have norms at all, or ignores gender. Just keep on making up norms as you go. Even if they're  of the "everyone is equal" sort (which can, interestingly, be played off as an issue by characters who want to make themselves subservient to others - See the movie The Secretary).

And play those issues as they show up.

Mike

[Donald]

Again, all in all, Glorantha does a better than usual job of giving you a range of options in terms of gender issues as relates to societal control. It also, BTW, does a lot in terms of adding other interesting issues of gender. Consider, for a moment, Nandan. I'm not too familiar with him, as he's not in the HQ book, or in any text that I've read, but I've been given to understand that he's the god of men acting as women or somesuch. There are hints that it's about sexual orientation somehow, but the most commonly cited ritual is one in which a man can become pregnant. (Somebody joked that the ritual involved the man's wife going into the hut with him, and then having to stay there with him the whole nine months to tend to him in this arduous ritual, whereupon the man comes out of the hut carrying the newborn child, but I think it's meant to be serious).

Nandan is described in Storm Tribe. It is basically the opposite of Vinga - i.e. the cult for men who are socially women. That is they do women's work, dress as women and take part in the Ernaldan rather than Orlanthi rites. According to ST they cannot bear children but I have seen mention of a HQ which allows them to do so.

Nandan is the only serious attempt at writing up how a man could take the female role in a typical fantasy society that I've seen. That's the key to playing around with gender roles - if you want a character to act outside the role their society places on their gender you need to work out how such action could fit into that society.

The other good source for different gender roles is history. Look for the individuals who didn't fit the roles their society defined for them and base your character on them. For example Lady Hamilton is well known as Nelson's mistress yet if you rely on the Jane Austin view of the period she only fits in as the stereotypical fallen woman. Read up about her and the women like her and you'll find a whole different society.

Again, just looking at what is in the book, Vinga is interesting in that it's not precisely role reversal. As I understand it (and I could be wrong here), the Vingans are thought to become men more or less. Sorta the opposite of Nandan, then. It's not the normal role reversal issue, it's more of a transgendering issue.

I'd describe Vingans as women who are socially men. This is a lot easier than Nandan for modern western society to understand because women acting as men is usually socially acceptable whereas the reverse rarely is.

[Mike Holmes]

Excellent way to put it Donald, it's a social transformation. Not physical (didn't mean to imply that, if I did), but that the culture considers their gender to be changed in terms of how they deal with such people. IOW, they are accepted into the new role. As opposed to role-reversal where the character acts in a role that normally isn't allowed for that gender. So a Vingan warrior is socially a man acting as a warrior. Whereas a woman not in the Vinga cult who is a warrior is a woman acting in a role normally reserved for men.

Gender can get unbelievably complex. There's the question of physical gender, personal gender identification, societal gender identification, gender appearance, gender roles, sexual orientation (which doesn't have to coincide with any of the others in any specific way particularly), transgendered state (very common in anime), transexual state (surprisingly common in fantasy, remember Tomb of Horrors), etc.

Mike

[Bryan_T]

Speaking of gender-bending in Glorantha....

The Hsunchen are a widely scattered set of peoples.  Each has an animal that it is associated with, like the Rathori (spelling?) being "bear Hsunchen."  They view themselves and their totem animals to be essentially the same, all one people, just some in animal form and some in human form.  Their magic allows the more dedicated to transform partially or fully into the animal form.

Anyway, where gender enters into it is that I recall reading that while generally these tribes have very strong gender roles,  *all* of their shamans undergo some degree of gender change when they become shamans.  In some Hsunchen people it is very symbolic, like changing the style of clothes they wear.  In others it is literal.

Besides keeping the classic adolescent male power gamer from wanting to be a hsunchen shaman, I always thought that could make for interesting role player territory, if a close relation became a shaman and comes back with a different take on gender roles.  What do you do if your mother now acts like a man, or your father like a woman?  If your one time shield brother is now a frankly attractive woman?  If the little sister you protected now is not quite female, but not taking on a man's role either--what is your role as protector now?

Of course, there are other, possibly deeper, changes involved in becoming a shaman which may tend to swamp the gender issues.

--Bryan

[Bryan_T]

Still on gender roles in Glorantha....

Amongst the Heortlings, aside from Vinga and Nandan who socially transform gender, there is also Heler. Heler is originally from the water tribe, and water is mutable.  Not every helering plays this up, but they just don't have the same clear cut views on gender than most Heortlings have.  Their god has one sub-cult in which he is a goddess, and likewise many helerings seem ambiguous about gender.

There are more ways to play around with gender expectations than just reversal....in fact I suspect that many people actually have a harder time with ambiguity than with reversal.  At least with reversal they know what the role is.....

--Bryan