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[Dirst]

I would honestly like to see two additions that are related to gender and/or sex:

1. Caste-related graphics, so you can display male/female dwarves differently.
2. Male/Female specific clothing. Shirts? Male & Female. Dress? Female. Codpiece? Male. This could be as easy as adding the specific tag to the item. Just add male, female or both tags.

I dont care for gender roles, as they add no gameplay value. As many know, I heavily focus on the game mechanics, less on the storytelling.

Clothing by sex tag would be good, but caste-level clothing would be better, since the change would have more potential for modding. To make that work with custom castes etc, you need separate sets of tags on the clothing items and the castes, which match custom tokens (like the reaction products do). Ideally, there would be new tags on the ENTITY level, that go along with the allowed clothing tags, to specify category(s) for each piece of clothes, then, at the caste level, you have tags to allow or disallow each category of clothing.

I think just adding castes to the entity file would be easier.  That way two different civs using the same creature can have completely different ideas on how to dress.  A more flexible system would be putting the clothing (and permitted jobs and personality traits and so on) in the roles or stereotypes.

So long as the roles are processed in a deterministic way, there's no reason why a person needs to be pigeonholed into ONE socially-constructed role.  A Dwarf might simultaneously fit into "parent" and "laborer" roles without conflict, but another Dwarf who partially matches "artisan" and partially matches "hunter/gatherer" would put out a weird vibe to members of her civ.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Ignoring your earlier posts and choosing to take you seriously.

Here is the thing... It really differed not only from society to society but even within those societies themselves. What you described wasn't the norm, it is "Pop History" correct... but not factual.

I am not against Gender Roles in dwarf fortress especially since the game can just create entirely unique ones that do not have to match real life ones. Yet it should be something handled by the generator and not in some attempt to replicate popular forms of history.

Very well, then. Tell me what was correct. Give me the real story. I have already given examples of steppe armies being up to a third female at times due to everyone being trained to fight and mediaeval European wives taking over their husbands' businesses when they died. In many native American tribes, like the Navajo, women played prominent roles in government and property was inherited matrilineally. That does not change the fact that overall, in the most general case, armies were mostly men and carers were mostly women.

[MDFification]

Ignoring your earlier posts and choosing to take you seriously.

Here is the thing... It really differed not only from society to society but even within those societies themselves. What you described wasn't the norm, it is "Pop History" correct... but not factual.

I am not against Gender Roles in dwarf fortress especially since the game can just create entirely unique ones that do not have to match real life ones. Yet it should be something handled by the generator and not in some attempt to replicate popular forms of history.

Very well, then. Tell me what was correct. Give me the real story. I have already given examples of steppe armies being up to a third female at times due to everyone being trained to fight and mediaeval European wives taking over their husbands' businesses when they died. In many native American tribes, like the Navajo, women played prominent roles in government and property was inherited matrilineally. That does not change the fact that overall, in the most general case, armies were mostly men and carers were mostly women.

We're dealing with a world where sexual dimorphism doesn't seem to be a thing for intelligent creatures other than when facial hair is concerned. Out of all societies likely to be made playable, only 1 is remotely human in terms of lifestyle.
I fail to see the rationale behind limiting possible gender roles to those that predominantly existed in history.

[smeeprocket]

even gender specific clothing would drive me nuts. Ignoring the frustration of added gender roles, I'd have to make entirely different outfits for half my dwarves.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

even gender specific clothing would drive me nuts. Ignoring the frustration of added gender roles, I'd have to make entirely different outfits for half my dwarves.

Well, it could end up that fortresses just ignore stuff like that...
But I still hope it isn't added anyways.

[Dyret]

As long as robes and shoes remain unisex I don't even care. Streaker outfits all around!

[smeeprocket]

As long as robes and shoes remain unisex I don't even care. Streaker outfits all around!

dresses were foreign to one of my fortresses, what happens if robes and togas are foreign? Then you have to make outfits for two different castes. That's two separate articles of clothing for the guys. >.< (or women if it is random)

[than402]

well, at least having the option would be nice. even if it's not active at default (like beards at dwarven women, they exist in the raws but the player decides if he wants them or not)

[Urist Tilaturist]

We're dealing with a world where sexual dimorphism doesn't seem to be a thing for intelligent creatures other than when facial hair is concerned. Out of all societies likely to be made playable, only 1 is remotely human in terms of lifestyle.
I fail to see the rationale behind limiting possible gender roles to those that predominantly existed in history.

I already said that I am against gender specific clothes and roles for dwarves, and possibly for goblins and elves too. However, humans have sexual dimorphism, whether you like it or not, so either their names should be changed to "humanoids", "alleged humans" or something similar or they should have dimorphism like we know they do. This dimorphism therefore leads to gender roles of some extent. Gender roles vary among dimorphic species. If hyenas were a sentient DF race then females would dominate everything because female hyenas are bigger and stronger than the males. If elephants were a sentient DF race then groups would be female dominated with males cast out. But in humans, males are stronger and dominate, especially in DF's primitive and violent societies.

[Reelya]

so either their names should be changed to "humanoids", "alleged humans" or something similar or they should have dimorphism like we know they do

This is called a false dilemma. Creating an either/or ultimatum which is just silly. There are examples of real societies where male and female wear the same clothes, and also examples where all tasks are assigned in a gender-neutral way. So you'd say Communist China in the Mao era (the Mao suit was gender neutral) or the Israeli Kibbutzim (all tasks assigned without regards to gender) are only "alleged" humans too?

A races of generic "humanoids" would obviously be worse than just calling them humans: goblins, elves, dwarves, giants etc are all humanoids. It would be even more hard for people comprehend than regular humans who lack gender roles.

And "alleged" humans would be even sillier. Who is alleging that they're humans? It makes no sense in-universe that other races only "allege" that they're humans. If they "allege" that this specific race are humans, where are the real ones? If they're the only race they know of who are called humans, they would just say "human" and that's what a human is, in that world. By that token, since elves aren't fully Tolkienesque they should also be "alleged elves".

[smeeprocket]

fun side fact, gender dimorphism is a sign of harems in a species' past.

[Graknorke]

even gender specific clothing would drive me nuts. Ignoring the frustration of added gender roles, I'd have to make entirely different outfits for half my dwarves.

Micromanagement is indeed not fun. I guess it could be worked around by making dwarves at the moment not care and have the importance of preference (not even specifically clothing) matter more with the different embark options Toady has talked about.

So your frontier outpost nobody is going to care what clothes they get, as long as they get some. But if you're making a religious site then the inhabitants might want clothes befitting whatever god it's for, or the dwarves in your new noble's keep might want all their possessions to be made of their favourite material and clothes exactly suited for their social status and so on, the needy gits.

[Parhelion]

Wow, I had not realized that 'gender roles' inside of a randomized game atmosphere was such a contested topic.  I saw this thread yesterday, and had to fight the urge then to respond with "Chill out."

Some of you have clearly over-thought this idea, and are actually taking offense at it.  To be honest, based on some of the responses that I read on the first page, I'm surprised that nobody is arguing we should get rid of the generated gods because that forces religion onto you (the player).

It doesn't matter if sexual dimorphism exists: what matters is how a particular culture comes to be, and how it is repeatedly re-enforced with each following generation.  We're talking about a universe where there's actual angels and demons, immortality, and walking corpses, and people too stupid to realize that their king is a vampire.  Or a minotaur.

One of my recent dwarf civilizations actually worshiped a male god whose sphere was fertility, pregnancy, birth, torture, and death (and I think also misery, or some other intensely negative word -- anyway, I blame him for the necromancy tower I had).  It would not have been a stretch of the imagination for worshipers of this god to be complete chauvinistic asshats.  The reverse would have been true for an earlier gen'd world where I had a pantheon of females lording over traditionally 'masculine' ideas.

Anyway.  Point is, IF such a feature were implemented in a way that felt realistic, predictable, and consistent within a given world, I would not mind having it.  It might even be fun to one day have this be a part of deeper cross-civilization interactions:  perhaps a 'Male-Centric Civ' will refuse to honor a treaty with 'Neutral Civ' because it doesn't like that they don't care about gender roles, or a female-dominated bandit group may react aggressively towards male adventurers (as opposed to female ones).  Just ideas.

And if it's not implemented?  Oh well.

------

Re: Graknorke and specific clothing

I definitely think that an established fortress would care about what they're wearing.  If you've got golden statues everywhere, you shouldn't be walking around in rags, right?  I don't think micromanagement would be a big deal -- if there are no dresses for a gender that prefers dresses, then they'll just wear the next best thing, be that skirts or pants or loin clothes, and voice a complaint about it.  Learning to manage this stuff is kinda up there with learning to manage how much food you have.

[Meph]

I'll just tune out all that background chatter and stick with game suggestions.


The gender-specific clothing, male and female, would be purely optional. There would be no micromanagement involved, because there are enough unisex clothing articles in the game. As far as I can tell there are no male-only items and only a few female-only items, the dress, the long skirt and shirt skirt. And even those could be a scottish-inspired kilt for males.

It mostly boils down to males no longer wearing dresses and the option of giving modders more options to play around with.

[Urist Tilaturist]

so either their names should be changed to "humanoids", "alleged humans" or something similar or they should have dimorphism like we know they do

This is called a false dilemma. Creating an either/or ultimatum which is just silly. There are examples of real societies where male and female wear the same clothes, and also examples where all tasks are assigned in a gender-neutral way. So you'd say Communist China in the Mao era (the Mao suit was gender neutral) or the Israeli Kibbutzim (all tasks assigned without regards to gender) are only "alleged" humans too?

A races of generic "humanoids" would obviously be worse than just calling them humans: goblins, elves, dwarves, giants etc are all humanoids. It would be even more hard for people comprehend than regular humans who lack gender roles.

And "alleged" humans would be even sillier. Who is alleging that they're humans? It makes no sense in-universe that other races only "allege" that they're humans. If they "allege" that this specific race are humans, where are the real ones? If they're the only race they know of who are called humans, they would just say "human" and that's what a human is, in that world. By that token, since elves aren't fully Tolkienesque they should also be "alleged elves".

You may have misunderstood me a little. I did not mean that humans should always have gender specific clothes, or that those should match ours - many men around the world wore kilts or tunics. What they do have is physical, biological dimorphism, and a discrepancy in strength. While modern societies like those you mentioned and others are moving away from sexism, in the primitive, grisly hellholes of DF, higher average male strength would lead to more patriarchal societies as a general rule. DF's humans are neither enlightened, progressive nor modern. As smeeprocket suggested, dimorphism may come from the harem societies of the apes that humans evolved from. A lack of dimorphism would mean different genes from humans as we know them - therefore, a different species of human like creatures.