Salutations,

At the urging of my genius game designer spouse, I recently read Mr. Lehrich's article on RPGs as ritual. I was inspired to post my own article to all of you for perusal.

Learning from the criticisms leveled at Mr. Lehrich’s paper, let me make a few clarifications.

Bricoleur is the term used for someone who engages in bricollage. That is, someone who uses available elements in new and innovative ways. By Levi-Strass’ own definition of bricollage, bricoleurs are not professionally trained in whatever discipline they happen to be dabbling. Hence, they are hobbyist innovators.

Thematic Apperception Test Stories: In this study conducted by Carol Gilligan (cited in the bibliography), she showed pictures of various scenes (a man standing looking over a lake, a young woman being pushed by a young man on a tire swing out in the country, etc., etc.). She asked people to look at the pictures and then make up a narrative about what the viewer thought was happening in the picture. What Gilligan found was that men made up these weird, paranoid stories about how the men in the pictures had been jilted, would be jilted, had just killed their girlfriends ... or how the women in the pictures had just finished knifing their boyfriends before going off to nip lunch with his two-timing best friend. I have to say, based on Gilligan’s study, that you men are a bunch of strange, sad creatures. No wonder we can’t all get along.

I wrote this 4 years ago as a final paper for a class I was taking. It overlaps Mr. Lehrich’s article in a number of ways. I am trained in ethnography (recording and interpreting people’s thoughts and experiences about certain subjects, usually people from other cultures). This paper is, I suppose, an ultimate anti-colonialist ethnography. The subject interviewed is myself, though I don’t detail the particulars of experience that brought me to many of the statements and conclusions.

I’m sure Mr. Lehrich will feel that this is “the most dubious sort of anecdotal data.” *hee hee* It is the job of the ethnographer to get the insider’s story. I just happen to be the insider this time. I am also ideologically opposed to Mr. Lehrich in that I am quite postmodern and believe that objectivity is a nice idea, but doesn’t actually happen in the real world. That just means we have to be aware of our biases and state clearly the position from which we are theorizing.

I think what follows could be useful both as a support and a critique of Mr. Lehrich’s article. I also think it will be useful for the game designers out there in understanding what it is about gaming that discourages women from playing. Maybe it will only reinforce the stuff y’all already know and have talked about.

I look forward to your comments and critiques.

http://www.galileogames.com/RPGNeoPaganpaper.pdf

Cheers!

Krista White

P.S. (Hey, Vince! Say hi to your wife and kids and rat drawing brother. This article is simply the academic "proof" of the subject I brought up at WhatsisCon in NY last November.)

Krista,

First of all, one point of clarification from me:

I am also ideologically opposed to Mr. Lehrich in that I am quite postmodern and believe that objectivity is a nice idea, but doesn’t actually happen in the real world.

Yes, this is very basic, not in depth at all. At the time, I was simply racking by brain to try to come up with something that was suitable as a final paper for the semester.

I'm aware of Edwards' work. I have a much wider experience with roleplaying than you realize. I actually hate D&D as a system and a game world.

The most useful bit about this article for the purposes of folks on the Forge would be, I think the section involving Carol Gilligan.

The edition of _Drawing Down the Moon_ I used was the most recent version. I never got the sense that she was going to repeat her survey - which would be incredibly useful.

I think from a statistical standpoint, Wiccan-type Neo-Pagans probably make up the majority. My own inclination is to categorize Neo-Pagans into three groups: Revivalists (Wiccans, Asatruists, Greek Revivalists), Synchretists (those who practice more than one religion simultaneously) and We're-Really-Trying-to-Test-Social-Boundary-ists (including Satanists and, I assume, Chaos Magickists - don't know much abou the latter).

No, I agree, this is VERY limited, and I would expand it more if I weren't trying to hold down a job and study for comprehensive exams and still have a family all at the same time.

My understanding from my spouse's summaries is that most discussions of women in role playing on the Forge get bogged down in the details of stereotype and such - and fail to focus on why the hobby is so male dominated. I think Gilligan is a place to start.

As I said, the statistics in this are old - but that's because there aren't any new statistics to be had. It would be useful to the hobby if folks who held cons started to do male/female headcounts at their events (at the very least).

White Wolf's games are, I concur, more attractive to women because they are narrativist. Yes, yes, I know people here object to that because it pigeonholes women into a "touchy-feely" roleplaying stereotype. I like a good knock-down, drag-out with the supervillain occasionally. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT KEEPS ME COMING BACK FOR MORE.

I think what might lie behind many of the objections to saying women prefer narrativist gaming (connected to the ideas of relationships in my own paper) could be two things that YOUR paper touches upon:

Women aren't taken seriously as gamers by many: I recently had an archetypical experience with this, where the group (all male), was tested out by my husband, and when they all came to play at our house and I expressed intrest, they found it amusing AND did everything they could within and without game play to discourage my participation.

In this last instance, had it not been for the fact that my children need me, I would have happily gone to jail for assaulting each and every one of these assholes with my son's aluminum baseball bat. By consensus, my husband and I did the sociall acceptable thing instead - we quit playing with them. Besides, our gaming style is narrativist/simulationist in nature. These guys were definitely firmly gamist.

"Get to the point, you old cow," you're saying to yourself. Well, my point is, that I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles. I don't feel uncomfortable making a broad generalization like this because A. I'm a woman too, and all of the women I know who game are also more attracted to the narrativist style of gaming; and B. I'm past the point in my own feminism of having to try to prove that generalizations and stereotypes aren't synonymous.


Let's ask all the women on this list, honestly, the following set of questions (I'll answer them, too, in the interest of forthright ethnography):

How were you introduced to role-playing games?

I was introduced to the hobby by my best friend's brother's best friend. I loved it. (BTW, the GM was definitely narrativist) In fact, my best friend and her brother stopped playing long after I did. I only stopped playing because I went out on a date with the GM, and I was too immature at the time to feel comfortable dating someone who was 3 or 4 years older than I was. I was 12 or 13, give me a break. When I wouldn't go out on a second date with him, I lost the only way I knew of playing D&D (the only game that existed at the time). So my experience is almost a complete inversion of Fine's analysis. (see my paper if you want to know who Gary Alan Fine is and what he was saying. That's a not-so-sneaky way of trying to force you all to read my paper.)

What is it you like most about role playing?

I like to try on new identies. I like to play characters who can do things I cannot, or who can do things I would like to be able to do. I've had superheroines in Champions and the Marvel system. I've played Scorpion Clan Courtiers in L5R. I've played Harrowed gunslingers in Deadlands, I've played town blacksmiths in Burning Wheel, I've played epic Sirkan knights in the Legend of Yore. I've played 5ft long space cockroaches in a space game adapted from Marvel. I've been a lovestricken Torreador sculptress in Vampire. I even played a male (WAY out of character for me, no pun intended) ex-Navy Seal vampire hunter in the White Wolf universe. The point is, the characters I've loved the most have either been female archetypes of my ideal self, or cathartic outlets for things I'd been trying to work out psychologically (the space cockroach).


Here's the REAL point of this ethnographic exercise: If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games? Be honest, ladies.

Hell no. In fact, I'm so far from the gamist side of the galaxy that I can't even stand to crunch the numbers anymore to make up characters. All that character creation nonsense (we hates it forever) just gets in the way of my roleplaying. I come up with a character concept and say to the GM "here's what I want to do." The GM gives me a range of choices and I tell her what I want (are you strong, are you tough, are you really smart?). I let other people deal with those annoying numbers. I've got too much to do with my life to bother with an aspect of the hobby I find tiresome. You want to know one of the reasons I think a lot of women like WW so much? Because they can fill in little dots and they don't have to deal with crap that looks like a statistics class. Statistics are for gamists and simulationists. If the other folks I hang with want to do a "kill the monsters, grab the treasure" thing to blow off steam, I'll happily sit in the living room and socialize with them while I quilt and they play the game. I have no interest in participating in purely gamist scenrios anymore, because they don't touch on what interests me: the relationships my character has with other characters and the social structure of the game universe. Done waving my narrativist flag now.

Wow, I digressed a lot. A fine talent I have. Back to my paper - I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of your criticisms, Mr. Lehrich (right down to my embarassing mis-spelling of Margot Adler's name). That paper is really just an introduction for a longer, more in-depth study. But I think it could be useful if people were to take the bits they like and leave the rest.

Krista

Hi Krista,

I'm completely unstudied on ethnography and the like, so you may have to bear with me a little on this. But I have some doubts and questions after reading your paper, some of which are for you and some for anyone.

When discussing the "goals or purposes" of the gamers and neo-pagans you assert that they're different, but the description of the goals makes them sound the same. The key to my take on this is that "spiritual allegiance" is a leisure activity. If you think that's incorrect, can you elaborate on why? I'm not convinced that "attempt[ing] to forge a religious belief system" is actually a different thing than "act[ing] out fictional scenarios." I mean, they have a distinctly similar feel to me. Specifically, see this thread for a suggestion of how gaming helps one forge a moral belief system -- which isn't really so different, is it?

If I got the count right, there are three different points in which you assert rampant misogyny in role-playing games as an apparently obvious fact. So what I'm wondering is this: Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?

My summary of page five is that you think fat dorks game so they can pretend to be thin and popular and that's the same thing (somehow) as Gygax suggesting people game to explore exciting situations that are not otherwise available. Is that what you meant? The assertion that there is some deep psychological motivation going on behind gaming is at one point supported by the idea that the fun of gaming "does not account for the copious amounts of time and financial resources that gamers put into their hobby." I wonder if you're not reading too much into this. How do you analyze stamp collectors or dollhouse furniture craftspeople? Gaming is the cheapest of my hobbies. It also makes me wonder about the various comparisons you draw between neo-paganism and gamers and which of them simply apply to all social group interactive settings. One in particular that you cite later in the paper is cultural construction.

When I was reading about the attraction of neo-paganism to women for the ability to become spiritual leaders, it occurred to me that it might be more important to women (generally) to have access to that role than it is to men, because of the differences in the role of group socialization between men and women (if you're willing to grant that such differences exist). It seems particularly backward, if there's anything to this idea of mine, for religious institutions to be patriarchially governed. I wonder why that hasn't reversed over time.

I'm uncertain of the meaning of internal v. external reality. I'm specifically thinking of "Playing the role of priestesses in a religion which foceses on the femaleness of divinity is an empowering experience for women. It allows them to integrate the internal reality of womanhood with the external reality of religion..." What makes one internal and the other external? And why isn't the same phenomenon experienced in role-playing games?

How is the sense of "spiritual power" different from the imagined power that RPGs focus on?

I'd be interested to hear the evidence that supports Gilligan's assertion that men find the "web of relationships" threatening and are thus not interested in neo-paganism.

Toward the end you note that "it seems that the very form each activity takes is tailor made for the sexes that dominate them." I wonder what, if any, the causal relationship is. Are they thay way because of the sexual predominance, or vice versa?

Chris

Hi,

Hmmm... an interesting article, and an interesting read. Mainly because I know next to nothing about paganism. I'd suggest that by directing the questions on this list only at women you're creating data, so...

How were you introduced to role-playing games?

If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?

No women he encountered had come to gaming on their own; they began gaming because a boyfriend brought them in to it.

Women aren't taken seriously as gamers by many: I recently had an archetypical experience with this, where the group (all male), was tested out by my husband, and when they all came to play at our house and I expressed intrest, they found it amusing AND did everything they could within and without game play to discourage my participation.

I should have included this above...

cthulahoops wrote:

No women he encountered had come to gaming on their own; they began gaming because a boyfriend brought them in to it.

He clearly hasn't looked very far. I know women who've come to gaming through: individual friends (both male and female), groups of friends, university societies, relatives and of course boyfriends. And of course, men come through the similiar links. (Though, I'm not sure I know examples of the last.)

Krista,

Your points on Neopagans seem plausibile; I'm sorry to hear that Adler hasn't updated her data.

On the issue of women in gaming, however, I think we're talking past each other a bit. For example:

Librisia wrote: White Wolf's games are, I concur, more attractive to women because they are narrativist. Yes, yes, I know people here object to that because it pigeonholes women into a "touchy-feely" roleplaying stereotype. I like a good knock-down, drag-out with the supervillain occasionally. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT KEEPS ME COMING BACK FOR MORE.

I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles.

A. I'm a woman too, and all of the women I know who game are also more attracted to the narrativist style of gaming;

Greetings

I've been lurking here for some months now, too lazy to write. But since I as a "RPGirl" belong in the target group of this query, I feel obligated to come out of the closet. Besides, this works pretty well as an introduction, too. Two Giant Green Fruit Flies with one strike, or something..

Librisia wrote:
How were you introduced to role-playing games?

What is it you like most about role playing?

If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?

One of the comments I found intriguing, in an odd way, was the contention that women are generally looked down upon in gaming groups, or not taken "seriously" as gamers.

I have to say this has never been my experience. When my wife first began playing (back before she was my wife), everyone quickly accepted her into the group. In fact, she quickly asked if she could GM a game, and her first session doing so was afterwards met with gushing praise; we all agreed that her GMing was superior. I note the game was also a very standard Gamist dungeon-crawl.

The first female in our high school gaming group was likewise respected by everyone in our group and quickly became one of the regulars, both in game play and outside it (our group tended to do things together outside of gaming).

I don't feel, and I know for a fact -- based on numerous statements made by both ladies in conversations later -- neither of these two feel or ever felt that they weren't taken seriously by the otherwise all-male gaming groups they joined.

Most recently, I was the second male in an otherwise all-female group for a number of years, and my own group held a larger female-to-male ratio (though it has evened out more in the past few years).

What I'm saying is that I'm rather surprised about the proposed regularity of this attitude towards women, as in almost twenty years of gaming I've never run into that behavior. Not that I am calling you a liar, Krista -- there are certainly things which might explain it -- I just find it strange that I've never encountered an apparently widespread phenomena in that time.

Christopher Weeks wrote: If I got the count right, there are three different points in which you assert rampant misogyny in role-playing games as an apparently obvious fact. So what I'm wondering is this: Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?

Buffalo Girl
...
Hindrances: Big Britches -3 [Deadland's version of Overconfident],
Curious -3, Heroic -3, Intolerance -1: Feminine women
...
Yee-hah! I'm the wildest thing this side o' the Pecos. I'm a whip-crackin', butt-kickin', pistol-packin' gal o' the plains.
I've seen some ornery lookin' critters out here in the West, and I aim to rope me a few. Maybe I'll catch one and sell it to a rodeo or one o' them newfangled zoos. Or maybe I'll just stuff the durn varmint and mount it on my wall.
'Course, I don't actually have a wall. The wide open prairie's the place for me.
Quote: "Yee-hah! Outta my way, boys!"

Gunslinger
...
Hindrances: Enemy -1: Someone's always out to prove he's faster than you, Heroic -3, Vengeful -3
...
I was brought here because I'm the best. You draw that pistol, and I'll show you what I mean.
You think you're bad news? I've seen things that would make you wet your pants. Now put that gun away, kid. And do it real slow like. The only live gunslingers are jumpy gunslingers.
Walk away. You don't have to prove anything. And I've got enough notches on my pistol already.
Quote: "Are you going to skin that smokewagon or whistle Dixie?"

Hi,

Just curious, I opened another book: Last Unicorn Games' "Star Trek Roleplaying Game" (the original series one). There are 15 one-page sections of fiction: one at the start of each chapter. In those, about a dozen Starfleet characters appear. Of these, two are women. I'll include the complete sample text where female Starfleet characters are mentioned.

The first is on page 25:

...Open a channel, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Danna complied, not without a certain nervousness. First-contact situations were fraught with peril. The six-inch scar on her left thigh was testament to that, a souvenir of the ship's first brush with the Matapedians. Everything had worked out okay in the end, thanks to Captain [Achilles] Diamond's quick thinking. Moments like this still made her edgy, though.

"Shall I open communications, sir?" Communications Officer Thursen's voice quavered slightly with the anticipation of announcing the arrival of the Yorktown.
"Wait until we're through the Ring, Lieutenant," Captain Foster advised. "It won't hurt us to get a little closer to our destination."
Thursen lowered her head to hide the slight flush that reddened her cheek. She wondered if her eagerness to take a more active role in the approach made her seem even more of a new recruit than her shipmates. She admired Lieutenant Vashenka's composure and Helmsman D'wara's complete concentration. Sometimes she thought her graduation from the academy was a fluke. She wondered if the others felt the same way.

clehrich wrote: And why do you keep calling me "Mr. Lehrich"?

james_west wrote: Further, the extent to which women weren't taken seriously in gaming probably precisely parallels the circumstances and extent to which they're not taken seriously in every other endeavour; this doesn't at all seem to be a gaming-specific social phenomenon.

Howdy, All!

(Woo hoo! I just figured out the quote thingie!)
Chris:

When discussing the "goals or purposes" of the gamers and neo-pagans you assert that they're different, but the description of the goals makes them sound the same. The key to my take on this is that "spiritual allegiance" is a leisure activity. If you think that's incorrect, can you elaborate on why?

Am I just completely oblivious? Does everyone agree with the stance that gaming as a pastime and an idustry is overwhelmingly misogynistic? And could I get a few examples of how this misogyny is expressed?

My summary of page five is that you think fat dorks game so they can pretend to be thin and popular and that's the same thing (somehow) as Gygax suggesting people game to explore exciting situations that are not otherwise available. Is that what you meant?

When I was reading about the attraction of neo-paganism to women for the ability to become spiritual leaders, it occurred to me that it might be more important to women (generally) to have access to that role than it is to men, because of the differences in the role of group socialization between men and women (if you're willing to grant that such differences exist).

I'm uncertain of the meaning of internal v. external reality. I'm specifically thinking of "Playing the role of priestesses in a religion which foceses on the femaleness of divinity is an empowering experience for women. It allows them to integrate the internal reality of womanhood with the external reality of religion..." What makes one internal and the other external? And why isn't the same phenomenon experienced in role-playing games?

How is the sense of "spiritual power" different from the imagined power that RPGs focus on?

I'd be interested to hear the evidence that supports Gilligan's assertion that men find the "web of relationships" threatening and are thus not interested in neo-paganism.

Toward the end you note that "it seems that the very form each activity takes is tailor made for the sexes that dominate them." I wonder what, if any, the causal relationship is. Are they thay way because of the sexual predominance, or vice versa?

He clearly hasn't looked very far. I know women who've come to gaming through: individual friends (both male and female), groups of friends, university societies, relatives and of course boyfriends. And of course, men come through the similiar links. (Though, I'm not sure I know examples of the last.)

I very much doubt that the remark about pigeonholing and so forth would arise here in that way. Not because we're all super-sensitive, or something, either: it's just that (1) I think WW games are usually read as Sim, by the GNS model; (2) I do not think that Narrativism is usually read as "touchy-feely"; and (3) Narrativism has nothing to do with quantity of combat. This is what I mean about your models being a little older, and why I'd be interested to see what would come of a reconsideration based on Forge data, female and otherwise.

But I don't think this sort of parallel-block structuring of RPG styles and gender/sex styles is likely to work. Just a guess, but I doubt it, and I think that this preliminary gesture to downplay data from Forge women --Quote:
I suspect that consciously or not, the women on this list fight the idea that women gravitate toward narrativist games because the game culture at large won't take them seriously if they don't exhibit a wide range of gaming styles.
-- is likely to skew your data pretty wildly.

What I'm saying is that I'm rather surprised about the proposed regularity of this attitude towards women, as in almost twenty years of gaming I've never run into that behavior. Not that I am calling you a liar, Krista -- there are certainly things which might explain it -- I just find it strange that I've never encountered an apparently widespread phenomena in that time.

John's examples are interesting, but it occurs to me that the clear sexism in them could be ascribed to accord with the source material rather than to the attitudes of the gamers (both Star Trek and Westerns are inherently sexist.)

this might be kind of a continuation of what we might call the "geek effect": since it does seem as though most nerd-types (I include myself) were a little later to blossom in terms of having success with the opposite sex, and since most seem to be male, I would think that this discomfort might extend as projection, in that the male nerd's discomfort and lack of success with women would play out in male-nerd-dominated gaming as a sphere in which such a player is dominant and he can feel that he's better than the women around.

Krista, as I read your questions and answers for the ladies, it appeared to me that you were somehow assuming that there was a baseline of male answers against which you could compare them--but I think that baseline is illusory. In any event, you need to distinguish "women who roleplay" from "women at the Forge who roleplay", in which case you would need a baseline of "men at the Forge" answers. After all, if (as is often suggested) there is a strong narrativist bias here, it would be seen in the women, but also in the men, and that would invalidate any suggestion that women generally were more narrativist than men, because it would demonstrate either that your questions produce narrativist answers from everyone or that the Forge is a self-selected group of narrativists.

Thus please permit me to answer your questions.

Krista a.k.a. Librisia wrote: How were you introduced to role-playing games?

For her second question, she wrote: What is it you like most about role playing?

Finally she wrote: If all you ever played again were "dungeon crawls," (in whatever universe or system), where character interaction was always going to be kept at a minimun, would you still love role playing games?

Apologies beforehand, because I have a feeling my following comments may sound quite edgy..

M. J. Young wrote:
On the female characters issue, yes, there were a lot of "males are better" ideas floating around in games; but that wasn't always the case.

Just to grab a few fragments from D&D--

• Drow females were not only more potent than drow males, they were more potent than nearly any other player character race; were it not for the assassin out to get you caveat, they probably would have dominated play rather quickly in many games.• Several pantheons were headed by female or androgenous characters. Amaterasu Omikami is one of the few Lawful Good pantheon heads in the old Deities & Demigods book, and one of the more potent. Corellon Larethian, of the Elfish pantheon, is trans-gendered.• Probably the most powerful player character in any D&D game I ever ran was a female elfin fighter/magic-user played by a girl.

Thuringwaethiel wrote: But what I've heard about drows, they are described as utterly evil species, much worse than your average "licensed to kill" orcs and kobolds. And they are a matriarchal community, lead by strong females. The message?

...errr...
am I understanding this right?

Because the Drow are pigmented black, have a matriarchal society, and are evil this is evidence of racism and sexism in RPG history?

I don't think PHP allows a font size big enough for me to type the word "nonsense" as emphatically as I'd like to.

Its a good thing that wearers of goatees and sharp little mustaches aren't a vocal minority or we'd be crying foul on Snidely Whiplash too.

Crimminy...

If you stare at a potato long enough, sooner or later you'll see the face of Elvis. But in the end...its just a damn potato.

Librisia wrote: Based on my "anecdotal data," *hee hee* I WOULD say that a great many gamers - myself included - are, to varying degrees, somewhat socially dysfunctional

Eowin had to look like she was going to barely be able to pull it off, no matter how much she said "I fear neither pain nor death" beforehand. THAT is the external reality that constantly tells me that, because I have a vagina and breasts, I can never be as epic a hero as the people who have penises.

I need to re-read the GNS model stuff about sims again, but I was not saying that combat can't be a part of narrativism. It's just not a focus...is often fudged in favor of story. Are you sure narrativism isn't read as touchy-feely? People need to take it like a man when they can't climb that mountain or kill a bad guy, right?

Let me ask you this: Have you ever witnessed a situation where women weren't taken seriously as gamers? If so, please tell the story(ies) (this is an official add to my other three ethnographic questions).

that the group of gamers is a safe place for men, and they can foist off their "web of relationships fear" on the game scenario, leaving them free to bond with the other men. When women get brought into game situations where the men are insecure and hostile to the presence of women, it may be because the presence of a woman destroys the "male bonding sphere" and the larger web of relationships they distrust has now been brought back into the metagame situation.

In reply to Mike's statement, black is the color of "evil" in Western culture, and was long before modern racial (skin color) issues even came onto the scene. It is a cultural holdover that has nothing to do with marking dark-skinned people as evil or trying to culturally oppress them. Rather, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Ainur Elmgren has a few things to say about this issue regarding Tolkien, and the fact that he made his orcs black. I don't necessarily agree with everything she states, but it is worth a read, I think.

No, I'm with Mike on this one. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, to be sure, but sometimes it isn't.* If you don't like his Drow example, here's one that seems oddly to confuse Americans (in my experience) but which Europeans seem to see instantly. Of course, this is totally anecdotal data, but...

In Star Trek: TNG, they introduced a new species/race/culture, the Ferengi. They were short and bald, had hook-noses and snaggle-teeth, and were 100% totally focused on money all the time. Furthermore, they had an entire culture founded upon a vast and complicated legalistic text, which was all about rules of acquisition.

Now for some reason, a lot of Europeans, as well as myself and a few Americans, all seem to read this as (unintentionally, to be sure) a really crass Jewish stereotype. I mean, every single element here is a classic. But lots of folks will swear up and down that we're over-reading.

Again, take Phantom Menace. Is it just me, or did this seem to be Battle of the British Colonies? Hong Kong vs. the Jamaicans, with the English looking on and not helping much.

I'm totally with Mike on the Drow. Considering that AD&D monsters were all graded into alignment, i.e. whether you were allowed to kill them just for existing, what's a little sexism and color-racism here and there?

Chris Lehrich

*During one show of You Bet Your Life, Groucho encountered a woman who said she had 9 children. "Nine children?" he exclaimed in some horror, to which the woman replied, defensively, "Well, I love my husband." Groucho retorted instantly, "Madam, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while." He got in a lot of trouble about that.

Mike Holmes wrote: But all the result of men doing the writing who'd been canalized by society to put these things in. That doesn't exonerate them. But it means that you won't see any change in RPGs until you see a change in society. You won't change anyone's mind on this level. That is, you won't get people to stop putting mysogynist (or racist) stuff in books until you educate them that it's a bad thing to do in general.

Why am I so confident that it's not related to something intrinsic to RPGs? Because there are better RPGs out there at about the rate that there are better people out there in society.

Mike Holmes wrote: Many RGPs, I'd even go do far as to say are subject to the feminist agenda - at the very least they're willing to make the slight bow to it and alter their text in the politically correct manner. In Hero Quest, they state that generic players are refered to as male, and Narrators as female. What are they saying there about power structures?

I agree; nothing intentional. But, again, I don't think there's an agenda to the earlier work either.

John Kim wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: But it means that you won't see any change in RPGs until you see a change in society. You won't change anyone's mind on this level. That is, you won't get people to stop putting mysogynist (or racist) stuff in books until you educate them that it's a bad thing to do in general.

RPGs can be educational -- just as movies and novels can be. Art (especially pop art) is hugely influential in social attitudes. Like other forms, RPGs can be and indeed are a forum for discussion moral and social issues. So, for example, when I played a woman in a Lord of the Rings campaign, it forced the players to think about issues of women's roles. When Jim decided to play a homosexual in my new James Bond 007 campaign, that also forced the other players to consider issues of sexual orientation.

Mike Holmes wrote:

Thuringwaethiel wrote: But what I've heard about drows, they are described as utterly evil species, much worse than your average "licensed to kill" orcs and kobolds. And they are a matriarchal community, lead by strong females. The message?

And they're black, too. Had that struck you at all? The evil elves are the ones that are black.

John Kim wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: Many RGPs, I'd even go do far as to say are subject to the feminist agenda - at the very least they're willing to make the slight bow to it and alter their text in the politically correct manner. In Hero Quest, they state that generic players are refered to as male, and Narrators as female. What are they saying there about power structures?

I agree; nothing intentional. But, again, I don't think there's an agenda to the earlier work either.

Hmm. There are several games which use this approach that seem pretty anti-feminist -- notably Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek and Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG which I gave text examples of earlier in this thread. I don't have HeroQuest, but this same pronoun convention was in Hero Wars. The feminist agenda (if any) of female GM seems balanced by the fact that the set of sample players and PCs are all male (Rick/Kallai, Peter/Rollo, and John/Rurik in HW).

clehrich wrote: there is a common (though not universal) acceptance that this (strife) can never be good gaming. So long as this is accepted as true, there is really no possibility for gaming to break out of its narrow social role as "fun" and actually have a transformative effect politically.

I guess it's the same claim that Artaud and the like made about theater: until we break out of the script that says "you can do this but you absolutely can never do that," we can't really make this art form challenge us or anyone to the deepest levels.

M. J. Young wrote:
I think that there are discriminatory actions that do not reflect attitudes as much as habits; these certainly need to be corrected, but it doesn't mean that those who have these habits are themselves prejudiced. At the same time, there are also sensitivities which are quick to impute such attitudes in the strangest places.

Re the Drow - to me they clearly aren't based on white male American stereotypes of black American culture, at any rate. They're matriarchal because they're based on notions of spiders, where the female eats the male after mating.

I'm not sure how recent the notion of the colour black representing evil is. I think in western culture black has represented death for a good while, and death easily becomes associated with evil.

The Ferengi = Jewish notion may be because Europeans are much more conversant with anti-Semitism than modern Americans are. I don't think it has any grounding in the writers' intent, I think Rodenberry & co in creating the Ferengi were intending to satirise US-style free market robber-capitalism. The STTNG Federation as conceived by Rodenberry is apparently communistic.

Edit: probably worth mentioning that Tolkien's orcs are based off fear of the British urban proletariat - they're black from the soot. :)

contracycle wrote: Whats the distinction between a habit and a prejudice?

Valamir, greyorm, M.J.

Sure, a cigar is just a cigar. But when you keep choosing the same KIND of cigar over and over and over and over and over and over, the cigar becomes a symbol of the way you view the world, no matter what the "origins" of your choice of cigar might have been. Fact is, if blackness as a marker of evil didn't fit with the racist agenda of U.S. cultural enterprise, it would have ceased to be used. Don't fool yourselves. Just because black was the color of the Judeo-Christian devil before slavery of Africans started as a business, that doesn't mean it didn't suit the slave trade's goals nicely. It did, in fact. As in written/spoken language, the meaning of symbols changes over time.

This also applies to M.J.s Proto-Hittite pronoun usage. Sorry, but He and She both mean specific individuals now - your training may make you more sensitized, but that is not the current language usage. Your example only heightens my own argument about the external/internal reality split in U.S. culture at large and gaming in particular

Nice one on the sooty proletariat in Tolkien, S'mon. Let me add to that reading: How many upper class people of African descent do you think there were in England in the 1940's-50's? :-)

I think M.J.'s Verse Three, Chapter One example actually takes an earlier point further (I'm sorry, I can't comb over the posts anymore to remember whose it was); more women in rping are needed to weed out sexism. Feminism (though I have not couched it in these terms) is about fighting injustice. So, what we need is a more balanced OVERALL DEMOGRAPHIC in rping to help improve it (as well as Mr. Kim's political usage of the game - you go, boyeee!).

I don't know how you handled that bird people situation, M.J., but it would have been an excellent way for the group to continue to explore the issue of racism with the help of the young black man in your group. He was right. She didn't see it because she was white. That's life. What would be racist in this situation is to fail to acknowledge the young man's point of view. I think in the U.S. (and maybe elsewhere) we perpetuate "isms" (racism, sexism, homophobia..ism) because we are too freaked out by our participation in those attitudes to own them and work to change them.

So the "cigar is just a cigar" argument fails here, because obviously, to myself and others in this discussion, it's NOT just a cigar anymore. It's difficult, but stop taking it personally. Why not ask us to help you understand why it's not just a cigar? By getting defensive and saying, "well I'M not sexist/racist/homophobic!" you're not necessarily worsening the problem - but you aren't being part of the solution, either.

In a general state of agreement with Kim and Lehrich's latest posts: Many of you don't see the problem with the examples regarding gaming here because the gaming industry is a mirror of yourselves, and what you see reflected in the mirror looks like yourselves. What many of us see in that mirror is distorted and maimed because all of the reflections given back in that mirror tend to look like YOU (white, middle class, male, heterosexual). Not only do we need feminist game design, we need womanist game design (African-American women's issues), we need Africanist game design, we need Queer game design... the list goes on.

I think it's possible, Lehrich, to have these kinds of game designs - or as Kim illustrated, to use current games to further these agendas.

*steps down off the soap box*
Sorry, I just can't get away from calling people by their last names. An academic habit, I suppose. Y'all will just have to put up with it. :-)

greyorm, yes, I DO need to go back and reread the gns stuff. When I do, I will happily post my corrections to my own statements so far. So, bear with the mistakes until I get to it, please ... :-)

montag, I think it's valid to say that the Ferengi can be read as both a Jewish charicature AND as an indictment of U.S. capitalist practice.

I intend to put up an ethnographic survey in the not too distant future. Taking into account input from this discussion, I think doing it off the forge would be most useful. I would be happy to have help constructing the survey, because I don't think it has to exclude data that would be of use to others here (and elsewhere). I'll start another thread to get that going so we can hash it out.

Krista

montag wrote:
Alternatively you might distinguish them in that habits are actions, behaviour, whereas predjudices are positions, mental stances. So you got (mobile/immobile) and (behaviour/mind) as two further dimensions.
Hope this helps.

Hi Librisia/Krista.

Re the colour black, I think you're putting the cart before the horse. I have never seen anyone but anti-racists use the connection between black as the 'evil' colour and 'black' as a skin colour to argue that people classed as racially black are 'evil'. White racists don't do that. If they did, Hitler wouldn't have dressed his SS in black shirts. Black is seen as the scary, 'cool' colour - black trenchcoats, black Goth outfits, black leather biker jackets. However hard you try, the colour and its association with darkness, fear & badness simply doesn't have a racial connotation per se.

From what I know* of racially sensitive Americans (ie, Americans who are attuned to the racial classification system of their culture, consciously or subconsciously), when they look at someone and decide if they're going to classify them as 'black', 'white' or Hispanic they look primarily at things other than skin tone - hair and especially facial features. You can be classed as 'black' in the USA while having a skin tone lighter than most 'whites'.

Tolkien came from south Africa originally. Despite that, from what I can tell he shared the concerns of his era and his country - primarily Class not Race. Class is still very important in the UK, although I think this is lessening. In the USA it's much less important, and Race is much more important. I guess it can be hard for Americans to appreciate that racial questions are less important in many other countries, and of course racial classifications are very different. No European truly understands the American concept of Hispanic or la Razza for instance (I know I don't!), which is particularly tough on Spaniards & Portugese visiting the Americas...

*I'm white male British, married to an American from Tennessee.

Librisia wrote:
Fact is, if blackness as a marker of evil didn't fit with the racist agenda of U.S. cultural enterprise, it would have ceased to be used. Don't fool yourselves.

Librisia wrote: Sure, a cigar is just a cigar. But when you keep choosing the same KIND of cigar over and over and over and over and over and over, the cigar becomes a symbol of the way you view the world, no matter what the "origins" of your choice of cigar might have been.

Librisia wrote: What many of us see in that mirror is distorted and maimed because all of the reflections given back in that mirror tend to look like YOU (white, middle class, male, heterosexual). Not only do we need feminist game design, we need womanist game design (African-American women's issues), we need Africanist game design, we need Queer game design... the list goes on.

I think it's possible, Lehrich, to have these kinds of game designs - or as Kim illustrated, to use current games to further these agendas.

Librisia wrote:
Let me add to that reading: How many upper class people of African descent do you think there were in England in the 1940's-50's? :-)Krista

Librisia wrote: So the "cigar is just a cigar" argument fails here, because obviously, to myself and others in this discussion, it's NOT just a cigar anymore. It's difficult, but stop taking it personally. Why not ask us to help you understand why it's not just a cigar? By getting defensive and saying, "well I'M not sexist/racist/homophobic!" you're not necessarily worsening the problem - but you aren't being part of the solution, either.

*edit: multi-post

*edit: heh, seems I posted in triplicate.

Chris, Amen

In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

Uh, just to be clear, I was being a tad facetious. Or rather, I don't see the problem with Drow. Hence my terse "All Terrible" was meant to be sarcastic (I didn't think a winkie emoticon would make sense there). For all you short memoried people, we've actually been over this point before in spades. My personal opinion, FWIW, is, like I said above, that people are probably unneccessarily reacting to these things. Moreover, my overall point was that it's up to you as an individual to decide what's offensive and what's not, and vote with your pocketbook.

John, I didn't say where any such education would have to take place. Nor even that it should. Just that this is where the ground up solution would have to come from in general terms, if one thought there was a problem.

I don't care what y'all think about whether drow are a racist portrayal or not. Won't affect my play, either way. And I don't see what you can do about these things if they do turn out to be problematic, other than changing your buying habits. To each his own.

Mike

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

I'm curious about whether you agree with my earlier examples, though, where I (for example) looked at all cases of female characters appearing in the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek book -- or in adventures like "The Greenland Saga".

Habits versus prejudices.

People have habits; it is a function of our mental and physical processing that makes it possible for us to accomplish things in this world: most of the things we do, we do because we have trained ourselves to do them that way. We don't think about them when we do them, and we learned them at some point for reasons which made sense at the time.

I'm an asthmatic; cigarette smoke is crippling. I consider very rude for people to smoke around me. If they ask if I mind, I try to explain that I do mind, because it doesn't take much exposure to the smoke to leave me gasping for breath. On the other hand, I don't think that people are being rude if they're sitting in the smoking section of the restaurant puffing on their cigarettes and the smoke drifts my direction. These are strangers; they have no idea that they're potentially endangering me, and have no intent to be rude. Now, if they were specifically blowing their smoke into the non-smoking area, that would be rude.

If I do something that offends you, even if I do it repeatedly, I need to be told that my habits are offensive, and given the opportunity to attempt to change them. If I'm doing something for reasons that offend you, that's different.

On a thread some time back, I used the word "Oriental" to describe people from the Far East generally, and someone said that was a very offensive word to use--"Asian" would be better. I had no idea that Asian people were offended by the designation "Oriental", but if they are, I'm certainly going to make an effort to change my usage. That's the difference between a habit and a prejudice.

Does that make sense?

--M. J. Young

Valamir wrote: 1) I'm real hesitant to take a couple (or even a dozen) exerpts from a book and draw a broad conclusion that they are evidence of endemic sexism. I'll grant you they deserve a raised eyebrow but barring more compelling evidence I'm inclined to conclude that at the end of the day, its just a potato after all.

Nurse Purvis uses her own Charm skill to resist Ensign Genchoks' romantic overtures (i.e., his attempt to use Charm on her), since they wouldn't make a good couple -- his blue skin tone clashes with her uniform.

Valamir wrote: 2) I believe that a source book (movie, novel, whatever0 that is attempting to emulate original material (historic or literary) should endeavor to do so faithfully. Looking back on OST you see alot of females of questionable nerve who stood in the shadow of stronger male characters. So IF one is going to point fingers, start with the original but I can't blame the new for being faithful to the old.

Valamir wrote: 3) Sex sells. Saying sex sells, and capitalizing on the fact that sex sells IMO does not constitute sexism. Call it bad taste. Call it capitalist greed compromising artistic integrity, but I don't consider successful sales tactics to be any sort of -ist. The marketers job is to sell product. The strategy might be pathetic, but if it sells then the marketer did their job.

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

John Kim wrote:
I agree with you that concluding from an isolated fictional creation like Drow is silly.

Yup, you and I disagree on a number of funamentals John

Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me. If you want to deliver a different "message" then come up with unique material. Don't take existing material and twist it into something else and then call it "artistic vision". I call it "too damn lazy to come up with completely new stuff and trying to cash in on someone else's fame"


Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.

Being a back stabbing SOB, makes you a back stabbing SOB. If by chance your target was black, that doesn't suddenly make you racist. To say it does is the very definition of inequality. Under this logic being a backstabbing SOB against a white guy means you're only guilty of a single offense. But if one then says its racist if against a black guy they've made it two offenses. As if somehow being horrible to a minority is a worse crime than being horrible to someone who isn't.

Being a horrible person is being a horrible person. Just because the target of your behavior feels that they belong to a "disempowered group" doesn't suddenly make you an -ist. You're still just a horrible person being horrible.


Are there legitimate issues that still need to be solved before all people are equal. Absolutely.

But too often words like "misogynist" or "racist" or "homophobe" have nothing whatsoever to do with helping solve that problem, and everything to do with one group using labels as a lever to gain power over another group. At this point these words become just another form of hate speech no different than nigger or faggot or dago.

NOT that I'm in anyway saying anyone on this thread was using them like that. But I do want to make the point that this is why I do not simply accept carte blanche every time someone (well intentioned or ill) says "aha...evidence of -ism". Real life doesn't ever fit into such nice neat little labels.

Ralph,

I think you’re overstating the case a bit on your refutation of John’s example. I don’t know how you can reasonably argue that the gender or race of the competition is immaterial when racial slurs have been made. I mean, how can you argue that race isn’t important if race is being used as a weapon? I’m really kind of stunned by the argument. I don’t think John was saying that whenever someone is horrible to a black person to get a job, whenever someone backstabs a woman to get the advantage, that it must be racism and sexism. But if someone uses racial slurs (or anti-woman slurs) as part of the package of gaining advantage? Yup. Sorry, I don’t see how you can argue that there is no racism or sexism there. Even if the person making the slurs doesn’t believe them (and I question this possibility as well), they are still contributing to the greater problems of racism and sexism in society.

I think one thing that you keep repeating, that is worth repeating, is that it’s important not to overstate the case. You’re pointing out where it seems to you that people are overstating their cases. That is fair enough—from the standpoint of argumentation, it’s possible to lose the audience by going at things too strongly. But I think you need to realize that you may be doing the same thing. No one here is making arguments that are purely reasonable and rational and apolitical.

And this is where I also have to note that I agree with you on what you said about power. Labels like misogynist, homophobe, etc. are used as labels to gain power over another group. Power is the issue here, and I think it would be disingenuous of someone to fight against prejudice and pretend that it isn’t about gaining power. Of course it’s about power. And here, I think, is where we come to a kind of sticking point. These issues are highly politicized, highly charged. People have power to gain here, and people have power to lose. And frankly, it’s just hard to talk reasonably about. Ralph, you seem to be arguing that (correct me if I’m overgeneralizing) humans disempower others to gain power for themselves. This is natural human behavior. It’s just the way things are. Is it fair to say that you think it’s a bit naïve not to recognize this as just something humans do? I’m not sure it’s possible to argue with “that’s just how people are,” except to say, “maybe it isn’t, or maybe it doesn’t have to be.” There are, as you pointed out yourself, some fundamental disagreements here, and this may be one of them. I don’t know that we are going to all agree on “how people are,” or what “natural behavior” is. So some people are going to disagree perhaps on philosophical grounds that you won’t accept. And likewise, some people aren’t going to buy your arguments because they won’t accept the philosophical grounds that your arguments are built on.

Rich

Valamir wrote: Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me.

Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.

But too often words like "misogynist" or "racist" or "homophobe" have nothing whatsoever to do with helping solve that problem, and everything to do with one group using labels as a lever to gain power over another group. At this point these words become just another form of hate speech no different than nigger or faggot or dago.

Valamir wrote: Movies portraying historical or literary events should endeavor to be as literal to the source as possible given the difference in medium. To do otherwise is IMO the height of hubris. The idea that some hollywood screenwriter can somehow "improve" upon a work of literature that stood the test of centuries is completely ludicrous to me. If you want to deliver a different "message" then come up with unique material.

Valamir wrote: Further I completely and utterly disagree with your definitions of racism or sexism being about depowering others in order to gain power for self. That's not an -ism. That's life. The proof is in your own example. If you compete for a job by using slurs against your competition...you may well be an untrustworthy, backstabbing, treacherous SOB. But its completely immaterial what gender or race your competition was.

Oh -- somehow I missed Rich's post, probably because it starts page 4. What he said. 100%.

One other clarification or confusion. Suppose we design a game in which all black characters (and let's make sure that all characters are black or white) are shiftless and lazy, but have rhythm; all female characters are weak and sentimental and inclined to hysteria, and also not basically very logical.

Is this game racist and sexist? Not necessarily. Suppose the point, in fact, is to force everyone to grapple with the force and absoluteness of these stereotypes; that's the Premise, if you like. Is that racist and sexist? Again, not necessarily, and apparently not by intention. Indeed, it seems that the intention might be the opposite.

Will it be labeled racist and sexist by some folks? Of course. For the same reason, Life of Brian was labeled blasphemous, despite the fact that Jesus actually appears in the film doing the Sermon on the Mount quite straight, making the point that Brian is not Jesus.

In other words, it's certainly true that claims of racism and sexism can be used as political weapons against the undeserving. Does that mean that all unintentional racism is OK? Is it perfectly OK that Jar-Jar Binks is a grotesque mush-mouf slur on feet?

If you look around on the web, or in the first Boondocks book, there is a Boondocks cartoon (by Aaron McGruder) which has Jar-Jar doing a Step'n Fetchit routine, complete with watermelon and o-tay. A later strip has Jar-Jar as Black Panther, having read The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and so forth. Is this unfair?

Chris Lehrich

I own Avalanche Press's 'Greenland Saga', I'd definitely agree that it comes across as sexist in several parts. The author would claim this was 'dealing with historical reality', but there's a-historical sexism there too IMO.

Re the quote from the Star Trek game, it seems like a faithful rendition of the 1960s source material; the sexism is exactly that inherent in the TV show's portrayal of female characters - pretty advanced for the time, I'd definitely say, but definitely portraying females as weaker and more emotional than their male counterparts.

Re the Drow - Gygax created them for the World of Greyhawk. He also created the Sueloise, a race of pale-skinned, blond-haired humans known for their villainy, scheming, cowardice and racism. Their Scarlet Brotherhood secret order uses a Nazi-like symbol. I haven't heard any complaints about this racist stereotyping of Nordic types or whatever, not that their culture bears any great deal more resemblance to real-world cultures than the drow does. The Scarlet Brotherhood are one of my favourite villains.

With reference to the trek book... Is there any text at any point that says anything along the lines of "Okay, this is representing late 60's US TV. The cutting edge of it, at times, but still late 60's US. So women have jobs... as glorified stenographers and receptionists. And all look hot in mini-skirts. We have a rainbow nation on board, but with the white, middle class, hormone on legs in charge.

"This may bug you: if so, change it. But we've decided to maintain the attitudes of the time in the game, warts and all. To do otherwise would be to produce "Classic Trek, but done the way we want it!" which we see as a waste of the license."

For some, that won't excuse, but without anything like that, we don't know whether these were genuine design decisions, or the natural attitudes of the designers.

Now I'm wracking my brains for the DS9 episode where Sisko states he doesn't want to enter the Holo-nightclub based around the 60's nightclub, because he sees it as legitemizing the endemic racism of 60's culture, however it's been "whitewashed" for the holo-suite.

BTW, I always read the Ferenghi as arabic racist stereotypes (especially given the etymology of "ferenghi" from, iirc, a mid-eastern term for foreigner).

Re your comment the Trek game - that sounds a bit over-laboured to me. I doubt there was a conscious design to abide by the norms of the setting - surely that's always the default assumption anyway? I'd think if they had decided to change those norms, that would be more worthy of comment.

That said, I suppose in design notes on a Trek game it might be worth mentioning the apparent changing roles of women in Star Fleet from eg the Pilot episode, where a woman can be Number One - the first officer - without it apparently being unusual, to the sexism, miniskirts and more limited equality of the classic TOS era, to the political correctness and men-may-not-be-sexual-aggressors era of TNG, and so on.

Of course the latest show 'Enterprise' raises particular problems since being a Berman/Braga show the society it presents has far more in common with DS9 and Voyager than it does with older Trek. It could be treated as a bad 'historical' late-24th-century holo-tv show set back in the 21st century, I guess, importing totally ahistorical norms of conduct into the era. >:)

Well, looks like with the Trek issue, we're back to the advice of "if you're working within a genre, you better damn well know and state the conventions you're using." Assuming "everyone will know what's conventional" looks like it's leading to thematic train-wrecks in ST, Glorantha and (name your favourite setting here...)

I doubt very much that the examples of inherent sexism within ST:TOS:RPG were accidental. There've been far too many discussion I've seen including the designers where they've been immensley proud of how the conventions of TOS, compared to TNG, they've included in each book. And they're not guys who'd pass up the chance to re-inforce the conventions of their chosen genre by any means necessary.

But why would it be "over-laboured" to state your conventions? I couldn't think of one setting that wouldn't benefit from it. I'm trying.

pete_darby wrote:
I doubt very much that the examples of inherent sexism within ST:TOS:RPG were accidental. There've been far too many discussion I've seen including the designers where they've been immensley proud of how the conventions of TOS, compared to TNG, they've included in each book. And they're not guys who'd pass up the chance to re-inforce the conventions of their chosen genre by any means necessary.

But why would it be "over-laboured" to state your conventions? I couldn't think of one setting that wouldn't benefit from it. I'm trying.

S'mon wrote: I expect a Conan RPG to present the in-game cultures and attitudes as sexist but allow for powerful female fighters (beautiful and scantily clad, of course). I'd expect a Gor RPG to present all the female characters as simpering slave-girls. I'd expect a TOS Trek game to present female Star Fleet officers as generally competent but less sure of themselves and more emotional than their male peers - and beautiful and miniskirted of course. I would also want it to let me play a wholly competent, more severe, less feminine 'Number One' type female officer, though, especially in the pre-TOS era of rollneck sweaters. I'd expect it to let me play a Vulcan, but have to put up with constant racist cracks about my species from the human crewmembers. And so on.

Fair enough. I know when I GM'd WEG's Star Wars RPG, a lot of my players wanted to play Imperials, which the game as written didn't support. This didn't annoy me though - I expected a Star Wars RPG to be about playing galactic freedom-fighting heroes, not Captain Piett's struggle for advancement within the Imperial Navy. So I adapted the game-as-written to run the kind of game we wanted to play, with lots of intrigue and backstabbing inside the Imperial military, and occasional scuffles with Rebels (including the Rebel PCs). It worked fine.

A tie-in game that tried to ban me from subverting the genre - for this Trek example, say by playing someone like Majel Barrett's 'number one' character as a Federation starship captain in the Kirk era - would be at most mildly annoying, possibly a bit ridiculous if it contravened the setting's 'background norms'. IE: In TOS Trek we don't see female starship captains, but the general feel of the setting implies they must exist (albeit as a minority), so it'd be stupid to say players couldn't play one. Likewise in STTNG, for a long time every StarFleet admiral portrayed onscreen was an African-American woman, but presumably there must be white, male and nonhuman Admirals within Star Fleet.

OTOH in a game set in real medieval Europe I'd be ok with the designers saying that all Knights Templars are male, or somesuch. It'd be my choice if I wanted to take this historical RPG and have ahistorical female knights as PCs or NPCs.

Okay, I'm quite explicitly not saying that an RPG rule text should state "Thou shalt not have strong women" to reinforce conventions, just they should state the conventions, not assume that "everyone knows them."

That way, you know what's an assumption of the setting that may or not be true in specific cases, which are hard-and-fast demands of the setting. Which leads to empowerment of players, not vague oppression by the implied gender roles rife in the rules.

Damn, I gotta watch those off-hand remarks.

What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?

Mike Holmes wrote: Damn, I gotta watch those off-hand remarks.

What does all this have to do with religion in RPGs again?

John's right.

Let's split those two topics into separate threads (start'em, whoever's interested) and let this one be done at this point.

Best,
Ron

pete_darby wrote: Okay, I'm quite explicitly not saying that an RPG rule text should state "Thou shalt not have strong women" to reinforce conventions, just they should state the conventions, not assume that "everyone knows them."

That way, you know what's an assumption of the setting that may or not be true in specific cases, which are hard-and-fast demands of the setting. Which leads to empowerment of players, not vague oppression by the implied gender roles rife in the rules.

Valamir wrote: In fact, I find taking legitimate important issues like racism and sexism and homophobia and trying to search for and claim evidence for them everywhere, including in adolescent RPG munchkin fantasy characters...simply cheapens the whole thing, and makes it much easier for nay sayers to point and say "see how ridiculous those people are".

Being a horrible person is being a horrible person. Just because the target of your behavior feels that they belong to a "disempowered group" doesn't suddenly make you an -ist. You're still just a horrible person being horrible.

M. J. Young wrote: Habits versus prejudices.
If I do something that offends you, even if I do it repeatedly, I need to be told that my habits are offensive, and given the opportunity to attempt to change them. If I'm doing something for reasons that offend you, that's different.

So there is no such thing as racism, just horroibleness, and therefore there is no problem that needs to be resolved.

Valamir wrote:
Right. If an action directed at a minority is horrible and should be stopped, then that same action directed at a member of the majority is equally horrible and should be equally stopped. The important thing here is the horrible behavior. "Racism" is nothing more than some group recognizing that horrible behavior spills onto their group more often than it spills onto another group. There is absolutely no way that this is a "problem that can be resolved". Only time and the passing of generations can reform public sentiment. You can't legislate morality and you can't legislate away hate.

What you can do, is make sure that the laws that protect the majority are evenly applied to all. Remove the overt, government sponsored, institutionalized aspects of oppression and then wait. As disparate groups live and work and play together without legislative obstacles (like enforced segregation,) standing between them, then each generation will draw closer together.

It is a long process but too many people are impatient and want to experience "perfect equality" today. It is my observation, however, that dwelling on these issues down to the minutia serves less to "resolve" them and more to highlight the differences between people, build walls around communities, and stir up resentment. There comes a point where the more you push against the injustice, the slower the injustice will change.

This is simply a quick update. I'm currently in the middle of Edwards' article, and am formulating a GNS descriptor of why I think women aren't as attracted to the hobby as men - though GNS isn't the only part of my hypothesis. I'll probably be able to post tomorrow or the day after (Saturday or Sunday in the U.S.)

I will reiterate something that was said on the Feminsit Game Design thread - how nice it is to see fellow hobbyists tackling these issues - not just feminism.

Back to you with a revised hypothesis,

Krista
(p.s. Can someone tell me how to do that 'link to the other thread' thing? Html just ain't my cup o' tea)

I'm having trouble reconciling statements like:

contracycle wrote:
Racism is more than just individually horrible behaviour, becuase it is articulated in a broad sociaety, as part of that societies values.

the issue is the way society works,

society is composed of individuals and their actions

If a society imposes a segregationist law, then it is insufficient to write this off to horrbleness; for one thing, this means that you have to then brand this whole state as "horrible". Is that even plausible, that like Gomorrah or wherever it was, not one good person could be found in the whole state?

Secondly, you have to deal with the fact that someone exhibiting such "horribleness" is seldom unsiversally horrible. I'd have to admit, some of the best people I've know were racist scum; how to reconcile this phenomenon?

By no means; I regard this as Utopian pie in the sky, as if all you have to do is change the rules and everyone magically toes the line.

even though what this "solution" proposes is that efforts to to change the prevailing sentiment and social forms should be suspended - i.e., the situation of disparity should be preserved.

I agree wholeheartedly, Ralph.

Valamir wrote: There is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change. The only thing you can do is make sure the laws don't favor anyone over any one else and that those laws get equitably applied. After that, the change can only come at the individual level over the course of time...even, as I say, generations.

Valamir wrote: Now drive past the local elementary school, where you see an entire rainbow of young children, playing, laughing, eating, and learning together.

Valamir wrote:
You seem willing to use "society" as a big homogenous thing when it suits you to say that racism is not simply individuals being horrible to each other, and then turn around and say no, you have to tackle each individual seperately when it suits you to promote that agenda.

You can't have it both ways. You can't argue its a "societal problem" when someone points out that the solution lies with individuals, and then argue its an "individual problem" when someone proposes societal changes.

Racism is either some thing that exists in a level above the individual, or its some thing that resides within the individual. I believe it resides in the individual and is a combination of personal belief, misinformation, and ignorance of other peoples.

These are not things that can be changed by proselytising. These are things that are changed when people live and work and play side by side.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. If such a law gets passed a law than the people who passed it were wrong, and the people who allowed it to be passed were wrong. Here again you are throwing around "society" as if its some entity that has its own existance.

But the other side of it is equally wrong. If a law passed to restrict the rights of a minority in favor of the majority is wrong, than a law passed to restrict the rights of a majority in favor of a minority is equally wrong.

Hardly. People don't magically change. That's my entire point. They aren't going to magically change when someone passes a civil rights law. They aren't going to magically change when someone calls them a racist. They aren't going to magically change when activists hold rallies and give speeches. They aren't going to magically change when a minority family moves in next door.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change. The only thing you can do is make sure the laws don't favor anyone over any one else and that those laws get equitably applied. After that, the change can only come at the individual level over the course of time...even, as I say, generations.

Completely incorrect...and rather insulting actually.

Now drive past the local elementary school, where you see an entire rainbow of young children, playing, laughing, eating, and learning together.

If change can only come over generations, and we do not change the way the oiur society is ordered, then we are directly saying, whether we like it or not, that those who suffer now will have to continue to suffer.

that anti-racist law is itself racist is something I take as insulting, or the statement that highlighting these abuses serves only to drive them deeper.

And this brings me back to one of my previous remarks - even when I see people behaving in a manner I feel is racist, or pandering to or defending or propogating racism or sexism, I do not feel it necessary or or useful to damn the person and all their works as "horrible". I can stake a step back from that and ask about the context and compare it to other things by this person and develop from there an opinion on whether they are just horrible IMO or merely mistaken. Approaching the problem as a social, ideological one is IMO the more constructive method than pious indignation.

I contend that this indicates that behaviour is a socialised one, a trained one, and that a society can unlearn it if it chooses to do so. The first step to doing that however means: not propagating the existing material that currently teaches it.

Mr. Mazza, I think the things that might have offended you here regarding role playing could be symptomatic of the, "I'm tired of being criticized" reaction. This is an understandable, human reaction. Many of us have it regarding any kind of prejudice when we are considered a member of the grop doing the oppressing.

I used to be freaked out about the possiblity about being considered racist. Then I had a personal experience that made me realize I COULD NOT GET AWAY FROM MY RACIST TENDENCIES. That experience made me own my own racism. As a result, I've stopped taking things personally when people begin to debate the topic of racism, and I am able to better empathize with and understand their point of view, even when the people talking say things that you would consider too "far out." I am now able to be more vigilant about my unthinking racist attitudes. Accepting my racism, and being willing to acknowledge it has made me (I hope) less racist. Whether you or anyone else on this list might have such an experience regarding sexism is not for me to say or accomplish.

I do not think it is either righteous or justified for you to try to stop people from criticizing the patterns of racism/sexism/homophobia that DO exist in the hobby. I read what you were doing as an attempt to shut down the argument by saying discussion you find outrageous actually harms the goals of the debate. You don't have to agree with the examples given or find the debate valuable, but talking about such things might be helpful or enlightening to someone who had never thought about them before.

To sum up: While each of the examples of sexism in gaming given here may not indicate intentional sexism/misogyny on anyone's part, the TOTAL PATTERN of these things indicates that those stereotypes of women are alive and well in the hobby. This is one of the reasons I surmised in the paper that women are a minority in gaming. The messages they get from game book texts and the play of other players can turn them off because it is a message that, at the least can make a woman uncomfortable and at worst can make her feel that others consider her less human.

Let me clarify what I mean by the play of other players. It can be an overtly hostile group like the one I described elsewhere that I experienced. It can also mean that the players, who are otherwise friends, might perpetuate harmful stereotypes *without even realizing it* during the course of play, either through the scenario being run or through the way their characters deal with female npcs or pcs in the game. My point is that these things can turn women off to gaming, and so they are staying away from the hobby in droves.

These aren't the only reasons, as I'll explain when I've finished working up my revised hypothesis.

Krista

Hi folks,

As someone deeply interested in both gaming and social justice, I'm going to point out that the issues here are way up on the hierarchy, and just as rules and techniques cannot fix a broken social contract, neither can the game fix the social issues.

As designers, we CAN portray different ethnicities and genders in a fair, inclusive, positive, and most importantly, well rounded manner. We CAN highlight the issues of social injustice through the conflicts presented in our games. We CANNOT ever make sure that someone "gets it", just as any playwright, author, or director cannot make sure that anyone "gets" a movie. In the end they either agree, disagree, understand, or fail to understand.

I agree that social issues pour into our gaming. Although I think we're overstepping the scope of what a game can do. I think if we focus more on what actually is within our ability, we will produce some solid results.

Chris

PS- For anyone interested in something which does work very well on the social level of increasing awareness:

http://www.peoplesinstitutewest.org/pages/381387/

Librisia wrote: Mr. Mazza, I think the things that might have offended you here regarding role playing could be symptomatic of the, "I'm tired of being criticized" reaction. This is an understandable, human reaction. Many of us have it regarding any kind of prejudice when we are considered a member of the grop doing the oppressing.

Librisia wrote: I do not think it is either righteous or justified for you to try to stop people from criticizing the patterns of racism/sexism/homophobia that DO exist in the hobby. I read what you were doing as an attempt to shut down the argument by saying discussion you find outrageous actually harms the goals of the debate. You don't have to agree with the examples given or find the debate valuable, but talking about such things might be helpful or enlightening to someone who had never thought about them before.

Er, people??

Ron already said to close this thread and split it into subtopics. I started a thread on Gender/Racial/Other Bias in RPG Texts. Also, while I am happy to debate about feminism and racism, discussion here should focus on RPGs. (I would suggest something like the Orkut group "Let's Argue About Feminism" as a general forum.

I've posted my revised hypothesis on [URL=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9841]Male Dominance in RPGs

Cheers,
Krista