Hello, all !

Some discussion in the 'more on religion and role-playing' thread made me think about what a game meant to address feminist/race issues would look like. I surveyed the existing discussion here on the Forge using the keyword 'feminist' and didn't find anything along the lines I'm thinking. Previous discussions seemed to focus around whether RPGs were sexist, and whether this drives women away from the hobby. I'm interested in thinking about feminist game design in a positive, aggressive sense.

Let me have as a caveat that I certainly do not propose that every game ought to be feminist, any more than I propose that every game ought to be about Vikings. If you were, though, how would you do it?

Here's my thought:

Feminism is not something you do by avoiding sexism. It's something you do by explicitly addressing gender issues in your game. Same thing for race. It's not enough to treat women fairly; you have to explicitly deal with the issues confronting them in modern society. This is a bit of a kicker, actually - the modern society part. My first thought when this came to mind is to set the game in the past, when these issues were more extreme - but that's very much avoiding the issue. If you set it in the past, you allow folks to say, "Sure, we were racist/sexist/whatever THEN, but it's all different now."

The other problem is how you make a game that addresses gender or race issues without yourself seeming sexist or racist. For instance, I might include a stat called 'alienation' which would increase whenever they were explicitly oppressed by the power structure. But then, I'm sure, people would complain that not all minorities respond through alienation. Perhaps ... but should I even care about this complaint?

To sidestep a little, whether Paul meant to or not, his game, My Life with Master, can be very easily read as being about abusive relationships. Since he's thrown it into a different context, though, he doesn't get grief about how not everyone responds to abuse with weariness and self-loathing. Thus, perhaps it might be easier to do a game about racism if you set it in Palestine, rather than in the U.S. - but might this also not allow one to displace? Place is as bad as time, perhaps, although since we so closely identify with the Israelis, perhaps it wouldn't be too bad.

Race, for me, is easier than gender, in thinking about how you'd design a game. Both from the stories of colleagues who grew up in inner city Harlem before becoming medical doctors (and the race-related problems they -still- face), and from my interaction with folks who are still 'in the ghetto' through my social work, it is clear to me the sort of blatant, no-way-out discrimination that -poor- minorities still have to deal with. Essentially, I've seen folks work out the problems inherent in different ways, which makes the problems themselves a lot clearer. I think, following similar lines to Paul's, my first step would be to have something like an 'alienation' metric, which made it harder to deal with authorities of any stripe, but easier to deal with subculture folks. I might also have a stat called something like 'humility', which is a willingness to take sh*t without responding. One might question my ability to write a game like this, as a white, middle-class, bookish type; my point is that this is not a game -for- minorities, it's a game -for- white, middle-class, bookish types to understand the frustration inherent in trying to get by as a member of certain subcultures.

Writing a game to address feminist issues is a little harder; I can see the problems women face. One of my techs just had a kid; I got a lot of grief and resentment for giving her six weeks paid leave (it was considered excessive). In general, it is obvious to me that, even in my circles, I get more respect than my colleagues -because- I'm one of the (now relatively rare) white males doing medical research. Really no idea how I'd make these themes strong enough to make an engaging game, though.

To be clear, let me restate that my interest is not how one makes -all- games less sexist, but how one would write a game specifically designed to address gender or race issues, but make it as much fun as "My Life With Master", and avoid preachiness.

- James

Hi James,

My take on this very thing is provided in Sex & Sorcery. It's probably not the final answer by anyone's standards, but it's what I had to say.

The thesis of the supplement is that the imaginary content of the game-events is subordinate to the actual gender-based interactions of the real people in and out of play.

Therefore one does not correct, fix, alter, or improve the real-world issues by focusing on the imaginary content - the other way 'round, yes indeed, but not from in-to-out.

Best,
Ron

james_west wrote: Hello, all !

To be clear, let me restate that my interest is not how one makes -all- games less sexist, but how one would write a game specifically designed to address gender or race issues, but make it as much fun as "My Life With Master", and avoid preachiness.

- James

Hi James,

just as good, issue addressing books, movies or plays are made, I don't think there is a way to assure play itself will address the issues in a reasonable fashion.

I mean, you could develop a game that is anti-sexist, anti-racist, and it could just devolve into a hack and slash of nazi kkk chauvinist pigs....which doesn't really teach anybody about anything. Compare the difference between how Princess Mononoke and Captain Planet both deal with the issues of ecology vs. economy and society for examples of same theme, handle well, or very poorly.

I do think it is possible to "load" up these themes in a game, but unfortunately the people who would be able to really utilize them are the people who least need the message.

What is easily within reach, is the portrayal of strong, positive gender(and race) characters. All artists know that you everything you do, is conscious, or unconscious, and either way, your art says something about how you view things. If you include certain things, or exclude them, you are making a statement. These are things within your control, beyond that, well, the best you can do is hope that someone is gettings something from it.

Chris

PS- For an example of portrayal that never happened, Greg Stafford apparently envisioned much of Glorantha as brown. Check it out here:
http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd9/2003.08/2529.html

The problem with trying to address these issues is that it takes alot of knowledge from both sides of the fence. (This is probably why these issues rarely get resolved in the real world.) This is because the different sides often have different perspectives on what issues are/aren't important. A game that only addressed issues from one side might seem meaningful to that side, but might seem totally useless to the other. Also, different sides also have different mindsets, so they approach the same issues differently.

How would you practically design a meaningful game? Don't ask me, I don't know. My only guess would be to find a partner that belongs to that other group. First work out what issues/ themes are important, and then work out how those issues should be resolved. Then translate it into game form.

james_west wrote: Writing a game to address feminist issues is a little harder; I can see the problems women face. One of my techs just had a kid; I got a lot of grief and resentment for giving her six weeks paid leave (it was considered excessive). In general, it is obvious to me that, even in my circles, I get more respect than my colleagues -because- I'm one of the (now relatively rare) white males doing medical research. Really no idea how I'd make these themes strong enough to make an engaging game, though.

John Kim wrote: Well, what are feminist issues? For example, you could have a situation/setting where care for children is important -- the PCs are heading a clan, family, or perhaps school. This is something that was used in X2, for example, which was feminist without seeming at all preachy.

I think that addressing issues of bias against women (misogyny) or simply bias for
men (androcentrism) through attempting a strictly feminist game misses the point.

For one thing, there are more than twenty different schools of feminism, many of which
disagree pointedly. Put an Essentialist Feminist, an Equity Feminist, a Radical Feminist,
and a Liberal Feminist together, and ideologically they will tear each other's throats out!

A more important issue is that such a game misunderstands the cause of such problems
(IMHO in my humble opinion).

The cause of bias against women is the same as the cause of bias against men in this
country : oppressive gender roles.

In the United States, women most often become frustrated with gender roles because they
restrict their opportunities in (for example) politics and employment and general social
authority. Men most often become frustrated with gender roles because they restrict (for example)
their opportunities in family care and domestic issues.

To help people understand women's issues, you need to help them understand gender role
issues or it becomes lopsided because it addresses only part of the picture.

I would recommend that such a role-playing scenario would be one which specifically places
women (and men) in situations in which their gender roles conflict with their goals. In general,
individual women almost never feel personally restricted when it comes to the right to care
for children and individual men almost never feel personally restricted when it comes to the
right to work a physically laborious job. So the scenario needs to require that the female
characters accomplish a task which does encounter such restriction (same with the male
characters). To make this incite insight rather than simply recreate social problems, have
the male characters be played by women and the female characters be played by men.

A "masculine" female character does not problematize gender roles, it reinforces them by
showing women as having to behave within the restrictions of either one gender role or
the other but never free of gender roles in general. A male or female character who is
neither continuously masculine nor continuously feminine points out the artificiality of gender
roles far more effectively -- and often disconcerts people far more than do strictly feminine
or strictly masculine characters.

To point out the invisibility of gender roles and their oppressive aspects by way of a campaign
setting, the description for the races might actually address gender role issues, ideally outside
romanticized stereotypes -- the AD-&-D drow lampoon patriarchal oppression by substituting
matriarchal oppression, but in making the matriarchal oppression exotic and even dominatrix-sexy,
they end up trivializing gender-based oppression in general.

For a simplistic problematizing of gender roles for a feminist game, I suppose one could
give stats bonuses which defy conventional gender stereotypes, such as giving all female
characters +1 CON +1 MOVE and all male characters +1 CHA +1 EMPATHY or somesuch;
I think this would work best if each fantasy race had different gender roles and different stats
bonuses then.

Or imagine an SFRPG scenario in which only women are allowed to take care of children
and the player-character is a single father trying to keep from losing his child and in which
only men are allowed to pilot a spaceship and the player-character is a woman who is
the only person with the necessary piloting skills surrounded by women and men who are
genuinely terrified by the "unnaturalness" of defying gender roles even for the sake of
keeping the spaceship on course.

I'm sure there are other ways to play off this idea.

Doctor Xero

I agree with Doctor Xero. By "feminist issues" I meant more than just simple misogyny -- I meant gender roles. For example, I consider "The Full Monte" to be a feminist movie because of how it questions male gender roles.

Which brings to mind another idea for a feminist RPG: "The Left Hand of Darkness: The Role-playing Game". For those who don't recognize it, LHoD is a science fiction novel by Ursula Le Guin. It is set on a world where everyone is hermaphroditic. Most times they are effectively genderless, but they go through a fertile period every month or so, known as "kemmering". During that time they tend to find a mate also in kemmer, and each will express as opposite sexes (randomly).

Here the issue arises naturally and regularly from the setting. With every NPC they interact with, there is a sudden disjoint where the players subconsciously try to fit the character into familiar catefories, then realize that it doesn't quite work.

It's a bit lacking in cool hyper-tech toys or magic for most RPGers, so I'm a bit concerned that it would only be preaching to the choir. You'd have to come up with some sort of cool twist on what was shown in the book for it to really work, I think. Hmmm...

I like the direction that Doctor Xero and John Kim are going with this; projecting the issue onto an SF or fantasy society is a good way of examining touchy issues in isolation. Now that I think of it, to a certain extent that's the original raison d'etre of SF as a genre ...

- James

I had this idea of a game that parodies WW and their typical caste systems, with the game based on the creature Human with two seperate castes, Man & Woman. Each having a written doctrine on how they view the other. Guess it's a lot lighter than what people were aiming for in this thread but it's intereasting as a different method.

LHoD: well, LeGuin managed to get at least one novel out of it, so there should be enough to get at least one session of a game ;-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it all about the politics? (confession: I've been following the Guardian's recent UKL kick, so I'm better "externally informed" about her stuff than I have bene for a long time). In the novel, there's at least two big political situations: the slide into war, and the intervention of the Ekumen. Both of these are subtly informed and modified by the hermaphroditism of the Gethenians.

(linkage: The King is Pregnant, UKL Q&A)

So, you take any archetypal (even stereotypical) rpg situation, and drop Gethenians into the situation, and Gender roles immediately become a theme, because of their necessary absence in a Gethenian society.

Next question: why is questioning gender roles necessarily feminist?

pete_darby wrote: LHoD: well, LeGuin managed to get at least one novel out of it, so there should be enough to get at least one session of a game ;-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it all about the politics? (confession: I've been following the Guardian's recent UKL kick, so I'm better "externally informed" about her stuff than I have bene for a long time). In the novel, there's at least two big political situations: the slide into war, and the intervention of the Ekumen. Both of these are subtly informed and modified by the hermaphroditism of the Gethenians.

Next question: why is questioning gender roles necessarily feminist?

pete_darby wrote: LHoD: well, LeGuin managed to get at least one novel out of it, so there should be enough to get at least one session of a game ;-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it all about the politics? (confession: I've been following the Guardian's recent UKL kick, so I'm better "externally informed" about her stuff than I have bene for a long time). In the novel, there's at least two big political situations: the slide into war, and the intervention of the Ekumen. Both of these are subtly informed and modified by the hermaphroditism of the Gethenians.

Next question: why is questioning gender roles necessarily feminist?

This thread got me thinking about something I did in my Freshman game design effort. In it, I created a fantasy nation dominated by women, with almost a complete reversal of traditional (fantasy RPG) gender roles, with men taking care of children and the household and women assuming all exterior social duties--wage earning, property ownership, fighting, leading troops, etc. Some things, like physical labor, are still performed by men outside the home, but the general rule was to swap gender whenever a standard assumption was made.

What makes this interesting from the feminist gaming standpoint is how players reacted to this. In general, female players found it amusing and enjoyable to imagine this society. Many male players reacted in a similar fashion. A significant proportion of male players, however, had a very strong negative reaction, and these players typically make this society an evil/adversarial one in their own games. Among some men, this reaction was extremely strong.

I'm not sure what this says about the individuals involved (although I have my suspicions), but it was a very interesting experience, and it brought many gender issues to the fore in the games.

pete_darby wrote: LHoD: well, LeGuin managed to get at least one novel out of it, so there should be enough to get at least one session of a game ;-)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it all about the politics? (confession: I've been following the Guardian's recent UKL kick, so I'm better "externally informed" about her stuff than I have bene for a long time). In the novel, there's at least two big political situations: the slide into war, and the intervention of the Ekumen. Both of these are subtly informed and modified by the hermaphroditism of the Gethenians.

Next question: why is questioning gender roles necessarily feminist?

Hey James:

First, it's really cool to see a thread where a bunch of guys are talking about feminist issues, and I think it's awesome of you to want to explore the stuff.

My take on feminism is that it has everything to do with empowerment. Who's making the decisions about women? Can women make all the same choices that men can? With the same ease?

To make a successful game that focused purely on that? I dunno. My fear is that it'd be too easy to rely on loud stereotypes and say, "that's not me," which would run contrary to the whole point.

Where I work, we have maybe 8 women in a company of about 60. How do you deal with something like that in a game? I'm sure nobody here thinks they're sexist, but there's still an imbalance and nobody really talks about it.

One other thought: MLwM is easy to "get" because we have a pretty solid understanding of what a healthy relationship is supposed to be. There are plenty of real-world examples. Where is there such an example regarding gender-equality?

Hi all,

My take on addressing gender issues and sexism in a game is one I'm developing called Breaking the Ice. It's a two person game where you play a character of the gender (or ethnicity, politics, sexual orientation etc), of the other player. Each person is a player and gm or guide in turn, and the goal is to create complex, satisfying characters. The setting is a series of dates that the characters go on.

I've been working on this for a good while, but finally it's in (at least alpha) playtestable form. I'll have to get it out on the indie game forum soon.

I have hopes for it being a good approach to create dialogue about gender expectations and roles, as well as to break them down. The funny thing to me about writing it is that I don't believe in gender except as a cultural construct. So here I am writing a game based on these differences as part of the premise!

Yrs,
Emily Care

Emily Care wrote: The funny thing to me about writing it is that I don't believe in gender except as a cultural construct. So here I am writing a game based on these differences as part of the premise!

I've been privileged to see a little bit of Em's game, and it's going to be wicked cool.

I think that the "problem" of feminist games is very much like the problem of Christian games. To genuinely take on the issues, you have to take them on at the player level, not the in-game level. That means: you create gender-charged in-game situations for the players to pronounce judgement on. And that in turn means: you risk the players coming to the "wrong" conclusions. You can't have a game that both provokes actual thought about an issue and preconstrains which side you'll come down on.

Provoking actual thought about gender is what makes a feminist game, I'd say, at least according to my own feminism. For men, simply thinking about gender is a feminist act; discussing and examining it with other people is admirable and pretty hardcore.

Given that, My Life with Master is a feminist game for sure. I can't imagine how you'd play My Life with Master without making moral judgements about gender and gender-based relationships. Notice, for instance, that right there in the rules it says that Master isn't married. However that plays out in your game, it's a feminist issue you'll be addressing.

Trollbabe's another one. Gender issues you'll have to confront, right in the title of the game.

And Nicotine Girls!

-Vincent

Much to respond to . . .

pete_darby wrote: Next question: why is questioning gender roles necessarily feminist?

Thuringwaethiel wrote: That means everybody are homosexual by default (and if someone happens to be straight, they'd be in trouble
since there is no opposite sex)

Thuringwaethiel wrote: Of course in our world vast majority of abuse is by man and upon a woman

sirogit wrote: I had this idea of a game that parodies WW and their typical caste systems, with the game based on the creature
Human with two separate castes, Man & Woman. Each having a written doctrine on how they view the other.
Guess it's a lot lighter than what people were aiming for in this thread but it's interesting as a different method.

Emily Care wrote: My take on addressing gender issues and sexism in a game is one I'm developing called Breaking the Ice.
It's a two person game where you play a character of the gender (or ethnicity, politics, sexual orientation
etc), of the other player.

Hello,

Doctor Xero wrote:

Actually, that's a falsehood propagated by gender role blinders and ideological incredulity -- according to
gender roles, women must be the victims (this idea was popularized by the Matriarch Feminists in 1600s
England to evoke sympathy for the plight of women), so it's easier for most people to imagine women as
victims of abuse, and according to gender roles men must be empowered or lose all identity rights, so it's
easier for most people to imagine men as the force of authority (and therefore the victimizers) in such
situations.

sigroit, I think using humor is an excellent idea. It would allow people to explore the issues in a non-threatening way. This would address the concern Matt had about the "not me!" element.

abusive relationships are not always one-sided. Co-combative relationsips involve partners abusing *eachother*.

Doctor Xero wrote:

However, the most accurate studies have shown that the majority of victims of non-lethal spouse abuse are
men not women.

Librisia wrote: I am skeptical (to quote a recent breakfast cereal commercial).

Doctor Xero's post is so filled with hooks to hang comments on, it's hard to resist ... but to attempt to stay focussed, I think that my take-home message is; distinguishing one's experience as an individual from one's experience as a member of a class is difficult, for any given individual. Or, perhaps, even our ideas about what gender issues are, are biased by our ideas about what gender issues are.

Emily's game is interesting, because I'd been thinking of a 'virtual experience' game design, whereas hers sounds like more of a 'collaborative storytelling' game design for exploring gender issues. Which is probably a superior design, or at least an easier way to make a design that reflects the players' priorities in this area, than injecting ones' own prejudices into the design by trying to make a decent simulation. This seems especially true given Doctor Xero et al's thread about mistaken ideas about gender issues.

While Lumpley's comments about many games inherently including gender issues is well taken, and probably true, they're not really front-and-center in either MLwM or Trollbabe.

- James

There are some things missing, it seems to me, from the above analysis of spousal abuse. The violence legitmised by patriarchy against women is not limited only to the husband; it can apply to brothers and fathers too.

Obviously, violence by fathers against daughters is very underreported, sanctioned as it is by a general willingness to permit parents to use force against their children. But equally, as in the case of honour killings - in which, for example, a provocatively clothed daughter is murdered by her male relatives for "bringing shame upon the family" - they are often under-investigated too. The point here is that addressing only spousal abuse may obscure a much broader issue of male on female violence generally, rather than specifically within marriage.

I understand that women are substantially more likely to die at the hands of a man known to them than men, who are proportionately more likely to die at the hands of a stranger, although I cannot cite the reference for this claim.

In regards the commutig of sentences, I think it may be dangerous to presume that this occurred becuase of an unwillingness to accept female violebce as something that happens for the following reason. Maxine Carr, like Myra Hindley before her, has had her judicial tarif extended unilaterally by the home secretary; the reason for these extensions is that the crime (child murder) is somehow more grievous because it was committed by a woman (although Carr was only an accessory after the fact). This is in line with a stereotypical view of women as "natural" mothers and being "naturally" nonviolent; therefore such "dangerous women" are in violation of more than the law, but the "natural order", and the punishment reflects this outrage. Therefore I say it may be quite reasonable to cast doubt on a judge or juries decisions to impose a sentence if it is believed that they would NOT have imposed the same sentence for the same offence if it were perpetrated by a man for whom violence is "natural".

A few things:

Misogyny

This started with Krista's essay and has continued as these related discussions progress. I always thought misogyny was, as the dictionaries indicate, a hatred of women. But is seems that the folks around here believe that, as an example, old Star Trek is an example of misogyny.

Is misogyny now taken to mean any deviation from the belief that men and women are identical?

sex v. ethnicity

Does it matter, in game design/play or other life-interpretations of these issues, that there is a genuine difference between the sexes but not between the races? I mean, skin color and other physiological attribute associated with a race/breed can be interbred with, usually, many gradations of effect. But no amount of breeding is going to get a cross between males and females because of the inherently binary nature of the chromosome. (Well, OK, so maybe lots of time might do funny things to this genetic construct, but that's a silly point for this conversation, I think.)

The nature of predjudice

Am I the only one who thinks of me prejudices as useful psychological instruments? Sure, if I let them control me, that's bad, but otherwise they help me to sift through huge amounts of incoming data and make decisions much more quickly than I might otherwise. I judge people on the way they're acting, the way they dress, the company they keep, the care they take of their teeth, their grooming, their music, their skin tone, their sex, and everything else I can detect. And so do you. Why pretend it's a bad thing or that it's unique to "bad" individuals? I don't see how that helps anyone.

I feel like I have more to write, but I'm on my way out of town and late.

Chris

Christopher Weeks wrote: A few things:

Misogyny
Is misogyny now taken to mean any deviation from the belief that men and women are identical?

sex v. ethnicity
But no amount of breeding is going to get a cross between males and females because of the inherently binary nature of the chromosome. (Well, OK, so maybe lots of time might do funny things to this genetic construct, but that's a silly point for this conversation, I think.)

The nature of predjudice
Am I the only one who thinks of me prejudices as useful psychological instruments? Sure, if I let them control me, that's bad, but otherwise they help me to sift through huge amounts of incoming data and make decisions much more quickly than I might otherwise. .... . Why pretend it's a bad thing or that it's unique to "bad" individuals? I don't see how that helps anyone.

Sorry to digress from the current topic. I haven't figured out the cross-post functions yet, so bear with me.

I'll be posting revised statements regarding my hypothesis about the male dominance in rpgs tomorrow or the day after.

As veterans of the Forge's culture, can you please advise whether I should post here or the other thread?

Thanks,
Krista

John Kim in 'religion and role-playing' wrote: For example, a religious practice may include storytelling such as parables -- but that story has a goal in the real world beyond just being fun to hear.

Christopher Weeks wrote: Does it matter, in game design/play or other life-interpretations of these issues, that there is a genuine difference between the sexes but not between the races?

Librisia wrote: I'll be posting revised statements regarding my hypothesis about the male dominance in rpgs tomorrow or the day after.

As veterans of the Forge's culture, can you please advise whether I should post here or the other thread?

contracycle wrote: There are some things missing

contracycle wrote: Obviously, violence by fathers against daughters is very underreported

contracycle wrote: The point here is that addressing only spousal abuse may obscure a much broader issue of male on female
violence generally, rather than specifically within marriage.

contracycle wrote: In regards the commuting of sentences, I think it may be dangerous to presume that this occurred becuase of
an unwillingness to accept female violebce as something that happens

Christopher Weeks wrote: Is misogyny now taken to mean any deviation from the belief that men and women are identical?

Christopher Weeks wrote: The nature of predjudice

Am I the only one who thinks of me prejudices as useful psychological instruments?

OK, I'm going to be topic cop for a moment. If you want to argue about whether RPGs are sexist or not, I started a thread on Gender/Racial/Other Bias in RPG Texts.

This topic is about feminist game design -- and it should be for those interested in playing or designing feminist RPGs.

That said, I was thinking more about "Left Hand of Darkness" RPG. I'm not sure that the specific setting is ideal for an RPG, but I think the principle could definitely be used. So what about a science-fiction or fantasy RPG where the PC race is one which is hermaphroditic, perhaps with a similar arrangement to LHoD? Suddenly I'm picturing something similar to Orkworld or Ork! or RuneQuest's TrollPak, maybe.

james_west wrote: When I hear minorities talk about ways in which the system f*cked with them, their responses seem pretty much identical
to what mine would be under the circumstances

John Kim wrote: So what about a science-fiction or fantasy RPG where the PC race is one which is hermaphroditic, perhaps with a similar arrangement to LHoD?

james_west wrote: A game set in modern day USA (well, you could tweak that a little), but the characters are some sort of oddity (aliens? dopplegangers?) that can -choose- to be male or female from scene to scene (there's your power). Moreover, you have different, explicit mechanics for how your characters' interactions work, depending on whether you're male or female at the moment. Thus, each player would have to decide, from scene to scene, which stereotypes they wanted to take advantage of. To make it concentrate on social, rather than physical, differences, you -wouldn't- make the male form bigger and stronger, but you would give it the social edge in, say, situations where authority was important, whereas the female form would have the edge in situations where seeming harmless was important.

OK, perhaps not very heavy, but it puts gender issues front and center.

Hello, all -

I wrote a game this morning along the lines discussed, and posted it in the indie game design section. If folks are interested, could you tell me if you think it meets the design goals, as iterated in this thread?

This ought to link to the thread.

- Thanks !

James

An interesting thread. (Special thanks to Doctox Xero for the references to studies.) I thought I'd mention a campaign / setting I came up with.

A few years back when I was starting a fantasy campaign I decided to create a world basicly from scratch. (I have studied cultural anthropology and have always been interested in history, politics and religions, and I found it easier to create a believable-yet-interesting world from scratch rather than trying to fix all the holes in the existing games I knew.)

A female player wanted to play an "axe-swinging amazon-type female warrior", since she'd always gone less physical types. This was fine since the group could use some muscle, but on then again I didn't want the character to be a "freak". I wanted cultural realism, and issue of a female warrior could just create unwanted fuss. I went for a "simple" solution, and created a race where male and female are physically equal. The bonus was that I didn't have to twist the players heads to make them forget the urban-postmodern-politically-correct genders-are-equal way of thinking. Basicly the gender-culture is very much what you'd have, if you had a Middle-European early medieval culture with the gender issues resembling those of todays liberal youth added with the fact that the genders actually are physically equal. (Of course, that equation takes a lot of solving to get the end result. I'll skip that here.)

Since the campaign was about epic fantasy action-adventure, gender issues didn't really come up that much, except for the fact that some players and myself kept hitting themselves in the head with things like "a soldier/robber/guard/merchant/general/smith is not necessarily male".
After three years I still have to roll for the genders of improvised NPC:s, because if I didn't, they'd mostly be male. (As an interesting detail: if a characters gender is not stated/implied, everybody presumes it's a male, regardless of their own gender. If it's a female, it's assumed to be mentioned. Try it if you don't believe it. Maybe with a female GM this would be different, but I doubt it.)

Personally, I found this to be the most illuminating experience of my life, concerning my own gender-related presumptions. It was especially interesting because this was not supposed to be a game about gender issues. There's not even really any sex or romance in the game. Just had to try and accept one specific thing and get on with it. "Genders are equal. No need to think about it, just live with it. Soldiers can be women." Repeat ad nauseum. It still doesn't stick. Interesting.

I have been playing around with the idea of creating a different (more GNS-narrativist) adventure/campaign based in this world, in which gender-issues would on the front stage (with some other things). The race I mentioned have recently conquered a neighbouring race, which has a very patriarchal culture, and their genders are physically proportioned like normal humans. (I gave them pointy ears, because I found the reference funny.) There are a lot of things to play with here.

1) Occupying females vs. occupied males.
- How does the traditional male-dominant culture deal with the dominating females?
- How do the dominant females deal with a culture that can't accept them, if they don't want to go on beating up everyone they meet?

2) Occupying females vs. occupied females
- How to react when as a "used-to-it" submissive female you are offered influential jobs? How to react to dominating females?
- What should a dominant female think of her physically, socially and "intellectually" (the women are rarely educated) weak counter-parts?
Do they despise them? Pity them?

3) Intercultural sexual/romantic relationships
Fact of the world: many (not all) males of the occupying culture find the females of the occupied culture to be physically more attractive. (Except for the females, the cultures/races are physically exactly the same.) How does everyone react? How to deal when you notice that by being physically superior you are socially less interesting? (Violence and use of power in general is an option here, much more so than in the real world.) How to deal, when you have grown to understand that a good relationship is based on equality, but the woman you love actually wants the "unequality" (or to be more exact, wants clear gender-defined roles)? Is the role you are being offered acceptable just because it's "the better one"?

And so on and so forth. You can propably notice that for example the last issues are something which are very much happening today. On one hand we have this "gender-defined roles are bad, if you follow them you are a slave to tradition and supporting female oppression" -thing going, but on the other hand a lot of people (both men and women) like the traditional roles.

"The modern liberal gender-definitions defined as superior against the more common and accepted traditional stereotypes." I could do stuff with that analogical setting.

Personally, it was also interesting to note that when creating a fantasy world I addressed many similar issues (problems in the modern western culture) without ever really meaning to. It all just came out of "hey that might be cool/fun/interesting". Says stuff about me I guess.

Doctor Xero:

Men most often become frustrated with gender roles because they restrict (for example) their opportunities in family care and domestic issues.

Itse wrote: Since the campaign was about epic fantasy action-adventure, gender issues didn't really come up that much, except for the fact that some players and myself kept hitting themselves in the head with things like "a soldier/robber/guard/merchant/general/smith is not necessarily male".
After three years I still have to roll for the genders of improvised NPC:s, because if I didn't, they'd mostly be male. (As an interesting detail: if a characters gender is not stated/implied, everybody presumes it's a male, regardless of their own gender. If it's a female, it's assumed to be mentioned. Try it if you don't believe it. Maybe with a female GM this would be different, but I doubt it.)

Personally, I found this to be the most illuminating experience of my life, concerning my own gender-related presumptions. It was especially interesting because this was not supposed to be a game about gender issues. There's not even really any sex or romance in the game.

Your campaign sounds wonderful; I suspect I would have enjoyed playing in it!

Itse wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: Men most often become frustrated with gender roles because they restrict (for example) their opportunities in family care and domestic issues.

Personally, I don't agree. Most people don't mind if some things are defined as "not for them", since that also means less responsibility (as a woman, you don't need to know about computer hardware), and you can just not tell if you are doing them.

Doctor Xero wrote:
Here are a few bits of scholarly research to whet your whistle. If you want more, yes, I'll look for my notes on this topic, but via e-mail then.

Straus, Gelles & Steinmetz...

I'm familiar with the man you cite -- and the falseness of his article.

His work gains its power from appealing to those who've already made up their minds and are looking for support, a perfect example of the impervious nature of ingrained social roles.

To explain to you in the detail necessary the accumulated body of evidence which disproves him would take far too much space in this topic. If you want such, contact me privately.

Doctor Xero

Um, hello? Just a reminder to keep this to RPGs.

Itse wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: Men most often become frustrated with gender roles because they restrict (for example) their opportunities in family care and domestic issues.

Personally, I don't agree. Most people don't mind if some things are defined as "not for them", since that also means less responsibility (as a woman, you don't need to know about computer hardware), and you can just not tell if you are doing them.

Doctor Xero wrote:
If the woman picks up the child and helps her find her mommy or takes her to the police, she will be called a hero. If the man picks up the child and helps her find her mommy or takes her to the police, there is a very good chance he will be accused of child-kidnapping -- or of kidnapping with intent to sexually molest!

Study after study has shown that the primary cause of the "deadbeat dad" syndrome is not laziness or indifference to one's children but a frustrated reaction against a system in which the male parent is forced to send checks to support children to whom he is denied visitation rights (or the visitation rights are severely brief).

james_west wrote: I can say that women think like aliens with confidence because one of the valuable services my (female) techs provide is to tell me how to interact with my wife. I do what they tell me, although it never makes any sense to me, and they're always right.

Hey Doc, don't bother. We're talking RPG's here. Besides, I'm bored of debating with believers.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
I wonder how much our hormones prevent us from playing across the chasm of sex appropriately. I wonder if women are more or less able to play convining men. And what is it that males "get wrong" when playing females that is implausible to women? Why don't I observe females playing male characters "unrealistically?" And why am I less sensitive to males depicting female behavior incorrectly?

contracycle wrote: And if our dad here is going to short his own flesh and blood and excuse it by railing about how all oppressed he is, then "deadbeat" is the right title for him to carry.

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

Cheers,
Krista

Doctor Xero wrote:
You mistake tragedy for intentionality.

The courts have already told him that these are NOT his flesh and blood, they are hers and hers alone, and the more common reasoning given for demanding money from him is not that they are also his children but the argument that he owes his ex-wife money as part of a social contract.

Yet no one objects to "deadbeat moms" -- and you might be surprised by how high a number of them there are.

Sexism is not justified just because the victim is male; it is always wrong. We must end sexism against women, and this will not occur until we end sexism against ~everyone~ male and female.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

james_west wrote: I can say that women think like aliens with confidence because one of the valuable services my (female) techs provide is to tell me how to interact with my wife. I do what they tell me, although it never makes any sense to me, and they're always right.

[snip]

I have a very close friend who is transgendered. She is almost certainly genetically male (having fathered two children), but in the time that I've known her, she has gone from acting as a male at work and a female out of work, to "coming out" at work through all the legal and HR hoops, on through hormone therapy and then gender reassignment surgery, and is now married to a man. I've had lots of interesting conversations with her about how the whole process seemed from the inside and what the role of hormones is.

[snip]

I wonder how much our hormones prevent us from playing across the chasm of sex appropriately. I wonder if women are more or less able to play convining men. And what is it that males "get wrong" when playing females that is implausible to women? Why don't I observe females playing male characters "unrealistically?" And why am I less sensitive to males depicting female behavior incorrectly?

AnyaTheBlue wrote: But I think it's entirely possible, and just as interesting, to construct games based on our awareness of the differences between men and women in our society without worrying about whether those differences are biologically or sociologically determined.

AnyaTheBlue wrote: Even if we assign them incorrect causes

AnyaTheBlue wrote: I think the reason that women play male characters "more successfully" than men play female characters largely has to do with the kind of gender role shifting that has happened in the past, oh, 50 years. Women's roles have expanded from, largely, homemakers, to include homemaking, careers, sports, and many other historically 'male' activities and roles. And for better or worse, there is far more androcentrism around in western civilization than there is gynocentrism -- certainly more women than men have experienced institutionalized discrimination. Heck, the men frequently don't seem to be able to see that it even exists a lot of the time.

Doctor Xero wrote:
The one problem I have with this, and thus why I become frustrated with the ingrained filters so many people have about men and women, is that assumed causes controls assumed responsibilities in this country : the common assumption is that if gender differences are biological they are immutable but if gender differences are cultural they can be altered.

(The same biological=immutable cultural=alterable dichotomy lies at the root of one of the religious controversies over homosexuality -- the reasoning goes that, if homosexuality is biological, it is immutable and therefore The Church must learn to accept it, but if homosexuality is cultural, it can be altered and therefore The Church must do whatever is necessary to change it to their desired goal of universal heterosexuality.)

So long as people declare that there are traits or behaviors which are innate to men or to women, there will be prejudicial restrictions against women and men, restrictions righteously justified as "natural" and with any challenges or disobedience dismissed as "perverse" and "unnatural".

For RPGs : through game system, the game designer sets the default for what is considered "perverse" in his or her initial game world.

Actually, I have personally experienced institutionalized discrimination and oppressive gynocentrism -- I have also studied it. It occurs primarily in the areas of child care (a woman who picks up a crying child is motherly, but a man who picks up a crying child is a potential pedophile -- automatically); domestic activities (many women who complain about cooking all the time mock men who cook well as effeminate); and emotional freedom (I still recall one supervisor who ostracized me because he spotted me crying once and he could never forgive my transgression of male emotional taboos). It also occurs when one is the lone male in the Women's Studies Program.

I have known a number of men who have successfully played female player-characters with enough practice.

Dindias and Wood and Ares have all done numerous studies on how people reinterpret their initial impressions to conform to gender role prejudices once they discover a variation off conventional gender roles has occurred.

For RPGs : this means that efforts towards recognition of gender roles or racial bigotry or homophobia or anti-Semitism will still be ignored by those players who are determined to ignore them. We do what we can, but we must accept that we can not keep a particular gaming group from using a house rule that all Jewish characters take a penalty to wisdom scores, for example, or that all female characters take a penalty to strength scores, or that all male characters have a 10% likelihood to beat their wives, or whatever bias appeals to that particular group.