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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Women in Gaming

  
  

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18:57 / 21.04.06
It's an interesting point, because I think someone mentioned earlier having "different stats for men and women" as being a possible sexist element in RPGs. Would it be sexist for an RPG to reflect reality, and give comparitive "strength" stats of 4 and 3 (whatever) for men and women? Further, the usual trend would be to balance that (I won't go into a rant about the iniquities of balance in RPGs here!) by arbitrarily assigning female characters some corresponding bonus to something perceived as a social attribute. I submit that that would be sexist.

It depends on the game. Very few games actually try to reflect reality to the extent that I would feel that's actually a good faith effort to reflect reality instead of just enforcing sex roles (why would people play female fighters if you got a penalty to strength and a bonus to charisma?). There's fuckall reason for elves to have stronger males than females. And, frankly, it should be up to the player, because a female who wants to be massively strong can usually do so (barring any congenital obstacles which can affect men as easily as women), so if a player wants their female character to be massively strong they should be able to do so. A player who wants to play out that unequal embodiment can put their lowest stat in strength, if it's that kind of mechanic, or request a negative modifier in exchange for a positive one somewhere else if it's that kind of mechanic.

The differences between male and female physicality are way too complicated to be adequately reflected by any kind of game mechanic you could come up with, and with that in mind I think the effort is just insulting and should be thrown out the window. For example, I think one study suggested that women have a higher resistance to temperature-based pain, while men are more resistant to broken bones. How would you reflect that in a game? How would you reflect the fact that people on an estrogen-dominant profile generally don't gain muscle as quickly and lose it more rapidly than people on a testosterone-dominant profile, but that there are variations in hormone profile among males and females? How about the fact that women tend to have a higher density of fast-twitch muscle fibers than men (IIRC)? Any attempt to really do justice to these kinds of bodily differences results in an extremely unwieldy game. But if you're not going to do it realistically, then don't use realism as an excuse to penalize players who play female physical characters. Trying to reflect complex differences in the kinds of muscular force men and women can exert by docking female characters a point in strength is just clumsy and boneheaded.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
19:46 / 21.04.06
But if you're not going to do it realistically, then don't use realism as an excuse to penalize players who play female physical characters.

I mostly agree - if your game is anything less than Gritty Realism (OMT), you might as well ignore physical differences between the sexes - except that I'd say that if you have two characters, and one has lower stats than the other, neither of them is advantaged or penalised unless you consider high stats - or high stats - to be a 'good' thing...

"Would I lie to you, honey?"
Ooops, I said I wouldn't rant about balance. Sorry!

Although, thinking about it, I don't really agree with the 'differences would be too complicated to simulate' idea - I mean, if you're going to say "Alice the Barbarian has Strength 6" it's hardly a realistic simulation of her physique in the first place, so saying "Bob the Barbarian has Strength 8", while no doubt inaccurately representing the intricate nuances, would accurately convey that Bob, as a buffed-up man, is a wee bit stronger than Alice, as a buffed-up woman.

"Now would I say something that wasn't true?"
I think there's a lot to be said, actually, for game worlds in which no attempt is made to portray general equality between sexes, species (I won't say 'races', except perhaps to note in passing that the usual roleplay use of 'race' could be considered a bit pernicious, no?), ages, and so on. That is to say, the usual approach gives us something like "women can't fight but are really personable" or "elves can't fight but are good at magic" and everything evens out stats wise. It might be interesting, every now and then, to see something along the lines of "swamp elves are really, really crap at everything, ever" or "Charlie is a genius who can turn his hand to anything and learns really quickly, but Diana is really dim and will never learn anything at all" - because if it's the character that counts, it doesn't matter if Diana is dim, it doesn't matter if the swamp elves are doomed to extinction, and it doesn't matter if Bob is stronger than Alice...

"Believe me!"
...if you see what I mean.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:19 / 22.04.06
Although, thinking about it, I don't really agree with the 'differences would be too complicated to simulate' idea - I mean, if you're going to say "Alice the Barbarian has Strength 6" it's hardly a realistic simulation of her physique in the first place, so saying "Bob the Barbarian has Strength 8", while no doubt inaccurately representing the intricate nuances, would accurately convey that Bob, as a buffed-up man, is a wee bit stronger than Alice, as a buffed-up woman.

This would indeed reflect reality, which is very important when Bob and Alice will then journey off to steal a runefork with the power to summon an army of undead bats from a castle full of orcs which appear to have no agriculture or reason to get together in a castle.

However, it does not reflect Alice's greater tolerance to heat, nor Bob's greater resistance to broken bones - so we're back to the drawing board.
 
 
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15:21 / 22.04.06
Well then, you wish to play in a different kind of game world than I do. I also submit that you probably wish to play in a different kind of game world than many women do. Because few people, living in a world where they themselves are disadvantaged in many respects and where they constantly face assumptions of disadvantage in realms where they may have none, wish to play in a game world that does the exact same thing to characters they identify with. If you play with few women, you might benefit from engaging in a process of inquiry into this position.
 
 
invisible_al
22:32 / 23.04.06
I always love it it when someone brings out the realism argument against women warriors because of the universal smackdown that this page that documents women warriors throughout history gives. You then follow up with the roundhouse "so how realistic are your 7ft Samurai Badgers then?".

The arguments in the article are familiar to me, but then I've been lucky enough to have gamed with quite a few women and picked up an education in this along the way. This is in part because I Larp, the vast majority of women I've gamed with Larped first and then got into table-top through that. And I've seen at Larp events you do have to make an effort to make sure the game is welcoming to everyone, the games I've been in have always come down very hard on people making women uncomfortable, i.e with the sleaze.

It's partly because I know so many women gamers and heard a few of the horror stories they tell which 'why they almost stopped gaming' that I get quite angry when people pull this kind of crap near me. I'll save some of my Larp specific stuff for a later post though.

But I hope things are changing in gaming, simply due to the weight of numbers of women now getting into the hobby, but it's still an ongoing uphill battle. From what I can tell from my own experience and from following chatter on boards like rpg.net we're in the middle of a 'third wave' of women getting into gaming.

The first wave have been around since the start, dealing with all the crap outlined above. Second wave started with White Wolf's Vampire et al, WW were some of the first not to market their game as a 'geeky' hobby and they actively went out of their way not to be patronising to women in the art in their books. They even used the pronoun 'she' instead of he in their books during descriptions (they may have alternated she and he I'm not sure on this one). And once they were into the hobby they stuck around if they weren't put off by the idiots, but you certainly couldn't ignore the women at uni gaming clubs any more.

It's a damm shame when White Wolf pump out crap like Pimp: The Backhanding *shakes head*. Exalted, their biggest game, is an equal opportunity ass-kicking game. And all the World of Darkness games have usually been very good at presenting powerful women characters.

Third Wave is now, being geeky is a lot more acceptable thanks to Buffy, Xena and all the other fandom's and there's a fair ammount of bleedthrough into gaming. There's also the women who've grown up gaming because their parents were into it. There's also the larpers heading into table-top, Larp has an easier time not being quite as geeky, there's the theatrical and drama similarities and thanks to Vampire again you've got the cross over from the Goth scene. This is all IMHO btw, I know women roleplayers from all of the above categories.

You can see the evidence where Rebecca Sean Borgstrom no longer has to use her first initial when she writes games like Nobilis (although only after Nobilis blew everyone away *shakes head*). There's also Blue Rose the game of romantic fantasy, based on the books of Mercedes Lackey, Diane Duane, and Tamora Pierce. Published two years ago, it's the first game that I've heard of the specifically target women gamers. Blue Rose especially sparked off quite a lot of examination on the state of women in roleplaying and why there weren't more.

Of course this is just the ebb of this particular tide, there's still a hell of lot of the sexist crap out there. I mean just look at the cover of Dragon magazine (the D&D house magazine) it's a rare women on that cover who isn't semi naked/busty and it's rare as well to find anything other than cheesecake art in a D&D book. But the arguments are a lot louder than when I started gaming, for example

Bring me the head of Vecna a few columns on women in gaming
Thread where the 'stat modifiers for women' idea gets ripped to shreads
Argument over White Wolf's use of pronouns in Exalted

I admit these are in the civilised parts of rpg fandom, but I also see gamer shops I used to go to in Newcastle being just nicer places to visit, without the sweaty gaming stereotype behind the counter and a genuine mix of staff and customers.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
14:50 / 24.04.06

I understand the point you are making but this line:

Larp has an easier time not being quite as geeky

had me nearly spewing cake all over my desk.
 
 
invisible_al
15:40 / 24.04.06
No seriously .

It's "sit in a room and roll some dice" vs "get dressed up to the nines and pretend you're in a Anne Rice/Jane Austen/Sharpe novel". It depends how you sell it, I normally use pictures like this or this when I'm trying to sell LRP and keep the furries out of it .
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:46 / 24.04.06
Dude, sorry. I don't want this to be sidetracked, but no. Making your own Star Trek uniform is not "less geeky" than watching Star Trek, and dressing as a barbarian is no less geeky than sitting at a table pretending to be a barbarian. It may be more outdoorsy, but so is birdwatching, and that does not preclude geekiness.

Being a furry is actually less geeky than larp, quite a lot of the time, because it's for sex, and "for sex" is an intrinsically less geeky motivation than "for the joy of larping".
 
 
Sekhmet
17:29 / 24.04.06
Most of the tabletop gamers I know make fun of Larpers. Then, of course, the SCA guy whacks them over the head with a foam-wrapped stick and they shut up.

I'm glad to see this issue being addressed and slightly distressed that there aren't more actual female gamers responding. That in itself might indicate something...

As a female gamer myself, I've dealt with a variety of systems, gaming styles, players, GMs, and social environments, and my personal experience is that there is still bias in many quarters but that it's improved over the past decade or so. Now, that perceived improvement may be largely due to the fact that I and the players I interact with have grown older and more mature, and therefore some sensitivity has developed and more effort is made to make the gaming environment more welcoming and inclusive. It also does seem like I get less attention in gaming and comic stores these days. The number of female patrons and employees at such places seems to be on the rise in general.

It's worth noting, I think, that D&D's new d20 open-source rulebooks alternate between masculine and feminine pronouns, and that many of the illustrations of female characters are far less heavy-handed with the T&A than in days of yore. I can't recall having seen a chainmail bikini in any of their recent releases (barring Dragon magazine, to which I no longer subscribe). WotC seems to have made a real effort to make female PCs more playable and genuine. Assuming that female gamers favor playing female characters, that's a plus.

I've also noted that far more male gamers seem to be willing and interested in playing cross-gender characters, and doing it well. In my current D&D group there are four female PCs and only one female player. The female characters include an irascible and foulmouthed thief, a barbarian fighter, and two clerics - one a rather grim LG inquisitor, the other a skillful negotiator and healer. Nary a temptress among them.

That said, there is still no shortage of uncomfortable moments. Some people, for example, upon arriving in a new city, might insist on seeking out a brothel. Others might make jokes about a female paladin's relationship with her warhorse. Our DM never seems to throw us a major enemy who is female, for some reason... maybe I should ask him about that.

And gods know that I have spent a lot of time over the years feeling ignored, snubbed, marginalized or patronized in gaming circles due to my gender. It's the sort of thing one has to deal with in a mostly-male environment, which, realistically, tabletop gaming still is.

But inroads are being made, of that I have no doubt.
 
 
*
19:06 / 24.04.06
Can I suggest maybe LARP is a different kind of geeky that for some reason appears to be more accessible to certain Feemalez? This would be a great forum to have a "LARP more/less geeky than tabletop?" thread in, but this is not one, and that topic is of profound uninterest to me.
 
 
*
19:17 / 24.04.06
Thanks for your reply, Sekhmet. I'm glad to hear about your experiences. Maybe your DM is feeling weird about giving you a major enemy who is female for fear that by doing so he will be saying "all women are evil sorceresses with hideous undead armies," or for fear that the players or their characters will get carried away and do things in game that would reflect negatively on the players out of game (like calling the evil sorceress a c*nt, b*tch, or wh*re during the "cut scene," or something of the sort). Yeah, I think a talk with him about it would be productive.

I've just realized one difficulty that having a male player playing a female character creates. Let's say that a male player/male character does something misogynist in character in the game. A female PC or NPC could take his character aside and explain in character why it was inappropriate, hurtful, or unacceptable, depending on the relationship between the two characters, and the player may well get the message without feeling subjected to undue politcorrectgonemadfulness (since it's just a game, you're just playing the character doing what she would really do, good roleplaying, etc). But you can't do that as easily if it's a male player playing a female character.
 
 
Sekhmet
20:34 / 24.04.06
But you can't do that as easily if it's a male player playing a female character.

True. But I imagine it would be even better received if cross-gender-playing male gamers made such efforts. I'd love to see something like that.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
13:28 / 25.04.06
Well then, you wish to play in a different kind of game world than I do.
I'm not a tabletop player, or at least, haven't been for a fair while. I'm not saying that a 'realistic' game world would be preferable, either. What I'm saying is that a game world which did try to model physical - or presumably mental - differences between genders - or races! - would not necessarily be sexist or racist if those differences were founded on fact and the approximations were in line with other ones the game was making (e.g. if strength or whatever can be modelled by a number in the first place, it's reasonable that differences can be roughly modelled by different numbers). I'm also saying that a game world in which one gender / race / whatever was purely and simply disadvantaged - for whatever reason - against other genders / races / whatever has its merits. Could be interesting. Plenty of people do enjoy siding with and playing the underdog, after all and there are very many games people play which have 'uneven' sides - Norse chess (the one with the King trying to escape, that one, whatever the proper name is), Escape from Colditz, 21 are the first that spring to mind.

I think the key issue is whether the disadvantage is voluntary. I suspect that gender is too wide and too encompassing a field ("I don't *want* to play a man/woman, I'm a woman/man") for one to be able to effectively treat genders as having relative advantages/disadvantages. On the other hand, that is what many fantasy worlds do in societal terms, they present societies and cultures which are, however loosely, modelled on our own, -ist ones and which have -ist divisions of labour, say. A truly egalitarian fantasy world would need to present the whole structure of society as equal from the bottom up, and precious few do that. Which, perhaps, is the point of the thread.

Maybe we should look at the implications of gender equality in society, with an eye to describing a truly gender equal gameworld?

I always love it it when someone brings out the realism argument against women warriors.

You're surely not suggesting that's what I was doing? In simple terms, women are generally disadvantaged against men in combat wherever contest of physical strength matters. With every advance in technology the physical differences between the two sexes matters less, until a man with his finger on a button has no advantage over a woman with her finger on a button. But male advantage in no way precludes female participation! Nor is the adage "a good big guy will always beat a good little guy" true; a more true statement would be "a good big guy will often beat a good little guy".

Samurai Badgers
Alas for Ringyo Kyuso!
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
13:50 / 25.04.06
That said, there is still no shortage of uncomfortable moments. Some people, for example, upon arriving in a new city, might insist on seeking out a brothel.

That is precisely the sort of thing I mean by having fantasy gameworlds which are loosely modelled on 'real' human society, and share its failings. Our hypothetical truly egalitarian fantasy society, on the other hand, might include a brothel, for instance - but it would be staffed with both men and women. Und so weiter. Same goes for the ubiquitous serving wench (OMT), courtesans, dancing girls, and all. I suppose there's irony in that we'd cheerfully accept a fantasy world featuring the most awful class based distinctions - serfs and slaves and everything - and we cheerfully accept death and gore and Evil with a capital E, yet will not accept -isms.

I'm not saying -isms are in any way good - although as these are fantasy worlds there is presumably scope to include them without causing harm, as the late, great Rev. Coates said "I enjoy killing things on the computer, they're not real" - but there is an element of hypocrisy in us that allows us to treat a sexist comment as being more objectional than, say, disembowelling your foes (OMT).

Anyway, I think creating a truly gender neutral fantasy world from whole cloth is a splendid idea. Although I fear that by removing all contentious issues from gameworlds is to run the risk of ending up with "a great big melting pot of love where everybody's brown", as Ms. Dyer so charmingly puts it.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
14:02 / 25.04.06
Myself.
Norse chess (the one with the King trying to escape, that one, whatever the proper name is)
Tafl. Table. That's the one.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:09 / 25.04.06
Plenty of people do enjoy siding with and playing the underdog, after all and there are very many games people play which have 'uneven' sides - Norse chess (the one with the King trying to escape, that one, whatever the proper name is), Escape from Colditz, 21 are the first that spring to mind.

And tabletop gaming, surely - you have a number of players on one "team", each controlling a single piece, and a single games master controlling theoretically infinite pieces. it's asymmetric.
 
 
invisible_al
16:05 / 25.04.06
You're surely not suggesting that's what I was doing?

Nope, more speaking in the general sense that where I've seen the 'realism' argument advanced elsewhere it's been used to dis-empower and disadvantage women in games systems. There's two variations to this argument in my experience,

1) Women didn't fight wars in history, so having women warriors isn't realistic.
2) Women are naturally weaker/more attractive/whatever than men so should have lower/higher stats in certain areas.

The first one is answered in two ways, first there were women warriors secondly why do we care about realism so much?

I find that blanket disadvantages (and advantages) are restrictive, you can easily cater to that sort of thing with a selection of disadvantages that players can choose. So they can play the above average or exceptional people that become 'heroes'. If a player wants to play the 'woman who pretended to be a man and get warrior training' or whatever then why not. GM's who say 'no women don't do that' are the problem.

Creating a game world where prejudice is rife can be good for drama, but forcing things onto your players isn't. There are always exceptions that can throw prejudice in a game world into sharp relief.

And finally you are over simplifying things when you say to remove sexism from a gameworld (or at least choose to mirror today's attitudes rather than the middles ages) would be to remove all contentious issues. That is simply not the case, look at games like Ars Magica. it's set in the middle ages, but has a secret magical society where women are very powerful, something that is at odds with the rest of the world. It empowers women players while at the same time allowing things like the medieval attitudes to women to be included in the drama.

Simply put having an unequal gameworld doesn't mean women at the gaming table should be treated unequally. And they certainly shouldn't have to put up with prejudice in order to play something that should be fun.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
18:52 / 25.04.06
And finally you are over simplifying things when you say to remove sexism from a gameworld (or at least choose to mirror today's attitudes rather than the middles ages) would be to remove all contentious issues. That is simply not the case, look at games like Ars Magica. it's set in the middle ages, but has a secret magical society where women are very powerful, something that is at odds with the rest of the world. It empowers women players while at the same time allowing things like the medieval attitudes to women to be included in the drama.
Ah, yes, that's fair enough. Although I have my own reservations about games which present the players as members of an élite (especially friggin' vampires, but that's another thread.
I still think, though, that most gameworlds attempt to lift real-world structures and dump them into a nominally egalitarian fantasyland without stopping to think. The question of equal opportunity prostitution is a particularly glaring one, because the concept of woman, wife, servant or courtesan as property seems to me to be pretty much welded into the medieval social structure. Incidentally, I suppose I should say while on the subject that I've nothing against prostitution in principle, just a lot in practice. Half of which is down to society's own moralising and interfering laws. Much like drugs, come to that.

I'd worry about losing Womanly Thinking points if I was less cocksure of myself.
 
 
*
07:58 / 26.04.06
You know, I'd be a lot less upset by structures like disadvantaging female characters physically/socially if I thought the games were actually dealing thoughtfully with the realities of being a woman in a medieval setting, but they aren't. They're simply attempting to reproduce these structures in an extremely clumsy way, or else as you say, Kay, ignoring them. Actually being critical about them seems to be outside the scope of game design, and this makes me inclined to be angry about their clumsy reproductions of stereotypes (and "women are weaker than men" is a stereotype, even though it is founded on a biological reality, because it's a reduction of that biological reality, as I've pointed out). It makes me less angry to see artificial fantasy egalitarianism than artificial mockups of real life sexism, because the latter tends to perpetuate real life sexism while the former simply doesn't offer any opportunities for fighting it. Does that make sense? It's late here.
 
 
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07:59 / 26.04.06
Also:

I'd worry about losing Womanly Thinking points if I was less cocksure of myself.

Again, it may be because it's late, and I'm not thinking clearly. But could I ask you to go into a bit more detail regarding what precisely you're on about here?
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
09:42 / 26.04.06
It makes me less angry to see artificial fantasy egalitarianism than artificial mockups of real life sexism, because the latter tends to perpetuate real life sexism while the former simply doesn't offer any opportunities for fighting it. Does that make sense? It's late here.
Yes, it makes sense. (I do personally find artificial egalitarianism slightly grating, when perhaps I shouldn't. I can't even quite isolate what annoys me about it. I've tried several times to phrase it now, and it seems silly each time I write it. Something about the way female characters in stereotypically masculine 'fighty' roles are presented as 'dumb-jock man-with-tits' characters.)
I do think there's a place for a female "struggle against sexism" perspective if done well. Joanna Russ' Alyx springs to mind as a quintessentially feminist fantasy character. Perhaps more fun to read about than to play, though.

(Yours truly) I'd worry about losing Womanly Thinking points if I was less cocksure of myself.

Again, it may be because it's late, and I'm not thinking clearly. But could I ask you to go into a bit more detail regarding what precisely you're on about here?

Sorry, I was being a touch obtuse. Rephrased it would be something like "much-as-I-might-prefer-otherwise, I am a man/recipient-of-male-privilege (romp! I like that), and worry that by expressing certain sentiments, even though I'm often directly parroting women and/or feminists of one stripe or another, I appear to be advancing a masculine line of reasoning..."
 
 
Sekhmet
14:31 / 26.04.06
It makes me less angry to see artificial fantasy egalitarianism than artificial mockups of real life sexism, because the latter tends to perpetuate real life sexism while the former simply doesn't offer any opportunities for fighting it.

Thank you, id, that expresses my thoughts on the problem rather more clearly than I could manage.

It occurs to me that I descibed the above-mentioned brothel visits, etc. as "uncomfortable" rather than "horribly offensive"... That distinction is partly due to the tension in my mind between the ideas of historicality and egalitarianism, as ridiculous as either of those concepts might seem when applied to a fantasy RPG.

The main reason I don't get offended, though, is that I've known all the guys in this group for years; they're a bunch of jokers, and it's hard for me to take them very seriously even when they make sexist remarks - or racist remarks, or what-have-you - but that sort of thing is rather more common than I'm happy with. I'm not as vigilant as I ought to be about calling people on such behavior, both in and out of the game. Seems very hard to do that without merely getting treated as humorless or bitchy or oversensitive, though; I guess I just have to be prepared to be the Bitch.

Or perhaps, in-game, my character can be the Bitch.

Sorry, musing aloud. Thanks again for the thread, id; it's thought-provoking.
 
 
Isadore
19:57 / 26.04.06
If I have to struggle against sexism in a gaming group then I'm in the wrong group. Screw 'em. There's plenty of women and non-sexist men out there to game with, and it would be a lot more fun than having to deal with the sorts of assholes who'd force me into playing a male character by making female ones unplayable. (This is also why I don't MUD much; it's astonishing the different treatment one gets as a female character vs. as a male. Marriage proposals? That's when I quit.)

Just to clarify: I don't mind playing a guy on occasion. I mind very much being forced into it to avoid being penalized for being female.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
22:22 / 26.04.06
If I have to struggle against sexism in a gaming group then I'm in the wrong group.

Agreed. But it doesn't necessarily follow that a game which involves cultural sexism as a theme produces sexism within the group of players. Reaction to sexism, or any other -ism, is a valid theme for a roleplay game ("Alice writes a game about struggle against oppression"); that's distinct from inherent sexism caused by the writers being themselves sexist ("Bob writes a game about whores in chainmail bikinis"). A sexist group of players would presumably make either of them into an unpleasant experience - a non-sexist group should be able to make a good game out of the first.

I would hope, at any rate.

I appreciate that one cannot correctly compare different -isms, but the strongest thing which would stop me playing in a game in which discrimination against bisexual trannies was a feature* would be the sheer cringeworthiness of "fighting real-life battles in a fantasy world! Huzzah, ph34r my l337 powers, homophobes!" I imagine a similar sentiment can cross over different -isms, though.

*see under Trust, Lorien. Ish.
 
 
Isadore
02:59 / 27.04.06
I don't think you quite got me there. I don't care if it's the game or the players who are sexist; if it's putting women down, then I'm not playing. I have to deal with too much of that crap out there in the 'real' world to justify tackling it during what is ostensibly a social / entertainment occasion, that is, a time to have fun.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
08:08 / 27.04.06
I don't think you quite got me there. I don't care if it's the game or the players who are sexist; if it's putting women down, then I'm not playing. I have to deal with too much of that crap out there in the 'real' world to justify tackling it during what is ostensibly a social / entertainment occasion, that is, a time to have fun.

What I'm saying is that a game which deals with sexist matters need not be sexist itself. That you can have a game dealing with sexist themes but which is not "putting women down". And that some people - not yourself, as you've already said - might enjoy playing that. For the challenge, maybe. Or for the interest of playing in a 'historical' type situation. Or because any other attractive features of the game outweigh the disadvantage. A film featuring racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever characters - or something more insidious, like historical revisionism - can be eminently watchable! Something can be described, shown to us, even presented to us in a way which forces us to confront it - without necessarily being so upsetting that we can't enjoy ourselves.

All I'm trying to avoid is the simplistic viewpoint "that game has a sexist element, therefore it is itself necessarily sexist, and only sexists would want to play it".
 
 
*
08:34 / 27.04.06
You know, I already said something about this, Kay. I said:
You know, I'd be a lot less upset by structures like disadvantaging female characters physically/socially if I thought the games were actually dealing thoughtfully with the realities of being a woman in a medieval setting
That is, if I felt the games were actually dealing with sexist themes, as you say, instead of just uncritically reproducing sexist conditions, I would be happy with that. Essentially, we agree that you can have a game dealing with sexist themes but which is not "putting women down". But I don't think that's what we have in most gaming systems and worlds— I don't think they are "putting women down," but I don't think they are actually dealing with themes of sexism in society. I think they're just uncritically following or reproducing inequitable gender structures.

All I'm trying to avoid is the simplistic viewpoint "that game has a sexist element, therefore it is itself necessarily sexist, and only sexists would want to play it".

I do not believe anyone in this thread has said this. Whose arguments are you representing and then characterizing as simplistic?
 
 
*
08:51 / 27.04.06
Besides this, we have fundamentally different understandings of the word "sexism." You seem to think it's a dire charge to be leveled against people who think bad things about women, and secretly probably want to hit them or rape them. I think it's a prevailing condition of power imbalance which may manifest in a number of subtle ways, many of them only indirectly harmful. If I say that some game reflects underlying sexist structures, I'm not saying anything like that game has a sexist element, therefore it is itself necessarily sexist, and only sexists would want to play it. I'm saying something much more like "that book is influenced by capitalist ideas of competition and globalization." I think that capitalist ideas of competition and globalization can oppress people, and this is actually a pretty well established and respected argument. However, if I say "You are being capitalist" no one goes "OMG WTF How could you say that? I'm not economically conquering a small South East Asian nation! Not everyone who BUYS SOMETHING is an evil capitalist you know! You're overreacting!" It is this defensiveness which is an overreaction.

Many people only seem to see sexism in a scene of brutality against women, instead of in the much more prevalent everyday economic and social conditions which are sexism's real bread and butter. I think that's at the root of this misunderstanding, which is unfortunately so common that it makes me tired and irritated to go through it here. I can only imagine women arguing about this stuff with their male gaming buddies must feel ten times worse, as they have to live with this every day.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
09:45 / 27.04.06
"I tried to discover / a little something to make me sweeter."

You know, I already said something about this, Kay.

I know you did, I agree with you! I was responding to Celane's "I don't care if it's the game or the players who are sexist; if it's putting women down, then I'm not playing" which I read as a blanket condemnation of sexist content full stop. No criticism of Celane intended, if ze doesn't want to play in something fair enough! but I don't feel, (as I think you agree with me), that the sentiment can be extended to everyone, which I thought was implied in the original post.

(Sexism) You seem to think it's a dire charge to be leveled against people who think bad things about women, and secretly probably want to hit them or rape them. (...) Many people only seem to see sexism in a scene of brutality against women, instead of in the much more prevalent everyday economic and social conditions which are sexism's real bread and butter. I think that's at the root of this misunderstanding, which is unfortunately so common that it makes me tired and irritated to go through it here.

Oh well, it's good for a smile, I suppose. No, I'm not stuck in some kind of moronic sexism = violence vibe, thanks. That you assume I am, and need to be educated out of my ignorance, perplexes me, as it's certainly not an impression I want to create. I have for the sake of simplicity used overt examples of sexism to illustrate points, because more subtle examples require more complicated explication "Bob was unhappy because Alice said she wanted to play a character of higher rank than Bob, and that offended his masculine image in some way, which manifested itself as sullenness and resentment of Alice's participation" being, for instance, an example I got when I was asking around about people's experiences of discrimination, but which is difficult to soundbite.
That being said, use of extreme and overtly sexist tropes by an RPG designer, or GM, "Scantily clad women are sexy, my game will include chainmail bikinis" is hardly an extreme form of sexism. It is a very low level form whose manifestation is in describing a more extreme form, in describing a far more extremely sexist world. See what I mean? We have someone being slightly sexist in a nerdish way; it's not so outlandish a thing.

In a sense the game is an amplifier, a means whereby low level sexism is made more obvious, a tool for showing up OOC prejudices, even. Which is as good an argument as any that roleplayers should be scrupulous about equality and freedom from discrimination amongst themselves before they ever go near a table.
 
 
*
17:35 / 27.04.06
Which is as good an argument as any that roleplayers should be scrupulous about equality and freedom from discrimination amongst themselves before they ever go near a table.
This, I can agree with wholeheartedly. At the same time, though, a great many people participate in low-level sexism without being aware of it, and gaming makes that more visible, as it makes many other things more visible. I'd rather see these folks' actions critiqued within the gaming community for the low-level sexism they uphold (which is still worth doing something about, I assert) than see them told a priori they shouldn't game, or can't game with me or other people who are likely to challenge them about it. This kind of sexism isn't the end of the world, it's just very very annoying. And it does contribute to women gaming less, which contributes to male gamers having the opportunity to practice our sexism in peace, which makes that sexism more entrenched.
That's why I was happy to see the article I linked to— because I think it's a good, blunt, albeit not exactly elegant, articulation of how subtle male privilege and low-level sexism go unchallenged among gamers, and what kinds of mindset it is necessary to practice to fix them.
 
 
eye landed
10:13 / 04.12.07
sorry to bring up this old thread, but for some reason i read it...and wanted to say a couple things (wanted to say more than i will say, especially about those male privilege links, but by now its pretty much come down to 'sexism in games is a microcosm of sexism in society'). im going to bore everyone with a life story (of a dude who hasnt posted here in a few years and nobody really cared about even then), so skip to the second part if you dont want to be thrilled and amused by my self-obsessed first person narrative.

firstly, my early experience of gaming was mostly male. my first time was in boy scouts, where the two girls in our group tried a few times to join our game and didnt really get on (they had their own girl things which we boys were quite explicitly unwelcome to join). my major gaming phase was as a teen, when myself and three core friends would play whatever we could find and invite whomever wanted to join us (male or female, they never lasted). the only female gamer who really held her own was the mother of one of these boys, and while she was certainly a dominant personality, for the most part she didnt make the experience more pleasant.

some of these games were just awful, reflecting the sexism we acquired from being nerdy undesirable males in high school. i played a one-on-one game with one of these three that was pretty much a homoerotic fantasy where he played a neer-do-well stud and i played a series of npc women whom he either collected, offended, or rejected. its pretty embarrassing to recall, but it was a fun game. im sure we both worked out some 'issues' while playing it (and we didnt ever have to kiss or even punch each other).

im also one of those men who likes to play strong, dangerous (and beautiful) female characters, who can either kick your ass with a sword or seduce you to put you off guard and then kick your ass with a sword. maybe someone will find this idea more interesting to discuss than my attempt below, but i think one reason i like to play women is that i can better justify giving her a weakness, whether physical or mental-- i.e. make her a wuss or a ditz-- and thus really pimp her in her area of specialty. the only way i can really work with a weak male is to make him physically weak, and powerful in magic or what have you. i think ive matured since then, but my crippled males (not literally crippled) always seem like an exercise, while i can identify more with a crippled female for a long mythic game.

as we got older and found some women/girls who liked us enough to join our games, the gaming experience changed. even though these people were mostly girlfriends who didnt want to be left out, some of them turned out to be excellent gamers and added a lot to our games, and some of them game a lot more than i do at present. this phase contained the best gaming of my life. in fact there was a game (exalted) where i played a dangerous chick and my partner at the time played my characters educated but ineffectual boyfriend. one of those games where you can really see the process of psychoanalysis at work.

however, my most recent group of gaming friends includes a fair number of women who (i think) came to the hobby on their own. they (generalizing) tend to get on my nerves simply because they are on the lookout for sexism, and use it to advance their own agendas. im assuming that its just a peculiarity of the social circle, but maybe its my sexism coming out: i cant handle women who dont care if im there, only those who are there for me and for whom the gaming is secondary. women who use sexism as a weapon make me uncomfortable outside of gaming as well.

(end life story, thanks dr f.)

anyway, this brings me to the second part. after reading this thread, i want to run a game where all the characters are female. the players can be whatever gender they like (within reason) but every character sheet will say 'f'.

my purpose is not so much to challenge sexism, but to explore feminine archetypes. in a whole group of women, not everyone can be a vamp. someone is going to have to be smarter than paracelsus, and someone is going to have to give orders, and someone is going to have to run and hide from fights and then try to justify her cowardice.

so in an effort to resurrect this discussion for my own selfish ends, please tell me: what are some potential problems with this approach, as far as offending people and as far as not being any fun for anyone but me? and what are some suggestions to get the most out of it, as far as settings, npcs, and themes? and what feminist books should i read to inform my plans? i dont want the game to run like a womens studies class, but i want to make the players think about sexism every session without constantly confronting them with rapes and concubine slaves.
 
 
Katherine
10:57 / 04.12.07
I haven't come across any gender bias in all my time as a roleplayer, apart a few people who automatically say 'female gamers are rare' without bothering to look around them. If you are still playing with your original group from college/school and don't advertise or invite new members then you could have that viewpoint by default, but in reality I see a fair few, most groups I know of are split 50-50, others vary. Events like Dragonmeet tend to have roughly a even split but I will admit to not having gone to any other event so can't compare.

The one bugbear I have is the fact that WoC seem to still use gender as a way of selling, recently they produced 'Part Time Sorceress'. I seriously hope that it was meant be ironically funny but I seem to miss the jokey side of it. Pink pages with recipes of food to take around with you at your next gaming session was part of this thin tome. However this is only part of what WoC's advertising, the adverts for 4 ed aren't any better.
 
 
Katherine
11:00 / 04.12.07
my purpose is not so much to challenge sexism, but to explore feminine archetypes. in a whole group of women, not everyone can be a vamp. someone is going to have to be smarter than paracelsus, and someone is going to have to give orders, and someone is going to have to run and hide from fights and then try to justify her cowardice.

And the difference between this group and a 'male' group made up out of the handsome hero/knight, intelligent learner, leader and coward is?

Sorry but I don't see the examples you have given as feminine archetypes.
 
 
Princess
11:00 / 04.12.07
Yes, it is your sexism showing.

Sorry, I should probably expand on that.

You say your female friends are on the look out for sexism and use it to advance their agendas. That's a good thing. What response would you prefer them to take? If sexism manipulates the world against women, then why shouldn't they be allowed to manipulate back?

cant handle women who dont care if im there, only those who are there for me and for whom the gaming is secondary. women who use sexism as a weapon make me uncomfortable outside of gaming as well.

Yes, that's sexism. If you can handle men who don't care, but not women, then it is based on gender bias. Would you expect a male player to dote on you in the same way? I too would like my friends to like me more than whatever activity we are doing, but the way you specify that behaviour for only female players is a bit unpleasant.

And "using sexism as a weapon" is one of those things that tends to get said when a man is having his privillege questioned.

You, as a man, have been profiting from societies inherent sexism all your life. You have probably, though unintentionally, helped to spread sexist thoughts and done sexist actions. Because our society is geared towards that kind of thinking, very likely you didn't notice.

Women who mention sexism aren't "using" it, they are fighting it. There is no innaporopriate way to do this. If their is prejudice, then it is right for people to fight it. Your suggestion that there are situations where it is wrong to question male privilledge sounds a bit like you are complaining about "uppity women".

What you are actually complaining about is how your female friends are questioning the male bias around them, and how this is disrupting your choices. Like many men, you are painting this move towards equal rights as an invasion. It invades on what what men perceive as "their" space, even though that space has been taken from women originally. This same argument, though differently worded, comes up almost every time a repressed group take on the status quo.

Academically, I'm not so hot on feminist theory (go Queer Theory! Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick for the win), but if you want to read up on feminism then may I suggest looking at an article called "The Madwoman in the Attic" by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. It's about how the characters created for women are all either angels or demons, and we don't allow complex or realistic female characterisation. It sounds relevant to your interests.
 
 
Princess
11:10 / 04.12.07
Also, try reading some Judith Butler. She talks a lot about the performativity of gender, and why men/women/others act the way they do.

And, as you will be performatising women, it is of obvious use. Try "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution".

Personally, I also like Helen Cixous' "Laugh of the Medusa". It's not particullarly useful to this situation (well, it might be useful to your female players as they create their characters, I suppose), but it is lovely and feminist at the same time.
 
  

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