From: rca@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: <None>
Date: 8 Apr 92 01:34:32 -0400
Organization: Carnegie Mellon Computer Club

     	
	A random thought concerning the Sex and FRP subject:  Our group
plays A-Rotating-GM-Not-Quite-2nd-Edition-AD&D-Thing, and we have a few
female players, some permanant, some who sort of come and go as their
schedules permit.  While no prejudice is ever levelled as far as the
gender of players goes, we are nevertheless playing in a fantasy world
that in many cultures and many nations (not all mind you) actively
discriminates against women.  It's just something that I decided when I
laid out the world we are using, that some cultures would of course not be
as egalitarian as our own.  (As if ours was so egalitarian as it is...)

One of my favorite characters in our game is a woman named Valyr, who is a
multiple-personality-disorder-sufferer, and her most commonly witnessed
personality is an overbearing, almost machoistic warrior who believes
(wrongly) that she is a Valkerie, hand-maiden of Odin etc.  This personality,
we decided, would come out most often because it is the one that the
character uses to project an almost male persona in a world that would not
take her other more feminine personalities as seriously. 

The male-centric attitudes of some areas were not of course added to
be dicriminatory against female players.  They probably come from some
vague notions I have about feudal Europe that have unconsciously
seeped into my design.  Nevertheless, there they are.  I tried to balance
things out with a gynarchical society or two, where men are just grunting
laborers and the women have the power, but I have so few real-world role
models to follow (any suggestions, by the way?).  As such, any player
who plays a female character must occasionally contend with prejudices,
and sometimes laws which discriminate against them.  (Of course the same
sometimes applies to dwarves travelling through elvan lands, and so forth,
but the current discussion is not about race, so I'm ignoring those  
examples right now.)

So why am I mentioning this?  Mostly because I just learned how to use
the POST command, but also partly because it points to a tricky area as
far as role-playing goes.  Gender prejudice within a game can be easily
misinterpretted as gender prejudice toward players.  I've had minor
complaints, but when I explain what I'm up to, that the discrimination is
an obstacle placed in the game just like rust monsters for fighters or
running water for vampires, and that I'd put the same prejudices up
against a male player playing a female character, then people are
mostly satisfied.  Most of the female players, particularily the one with
the looney valkerie, enjoy confronting sexism in a game setting.  They
have to deal with it in the real world, and sometimes they find it
refreshing (I think) to be able to deal with it much more directly, 
sometimes with axe and sword, sometimes with political power, or other
such weapons not available in everyday life.  Valyr knows, for example,
that if anyone subjects her to lewd advances, or if someone refuses to 
allow her entrance into the local mercanaries guild because of her
gender, she can pummel them into the dirt with her bare fists.  Were
that it were so, that the player who runs Valyr commanded so much respect...

Anyway, just a thought...

						-RCA->


Kay:  By the way, were you really serious about the screwdriver with
the flowery decor?  I can't imagine such a silly thing.