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[smeeprocket]

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.

I think the point is, that's a fun little addition if you are a male, since you live that kind of life and that's the bees knees for you, but those of us on the receiving end of the boot heel in real life don't want to have to play that stuff too.

DF is different because the dwarves aren't bigoted. Adding bigotries and oppression doesn't seem particularly fun to me. Their generally neutral stance on most things is more enjoyable.

We could also add societies that hate homosexuality and different skin colors, but that wouldn't be any fun either, because those things are very real.

I'm regularly reminded that, as a woman in this society, I am considered less of a person, and my life is ultimately more dangerous than the average male. I constantly have to be on my guard for a variety of reasons, and even that probably won't save me. An there's a whole lot of males out there that want to trivialize that or make it worse. Why would I want to go and play something for fun where I have to see the same thing happening??

[smeeprocket]

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.

males are not stronger than females in DF, so that argument doesn't hold water.

Also, we aren't really moving away from sexism in the real world, it's actually gotten worse in the past 10 years.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

Question, why should gender dimorphism be added if dwarves are never going to use it?
Also, Humans in fantasy aren't always normal humans unless you say magicians or Jedi are normal humans. Fantasy humans can be whatever you want them to be, and they are still human.

If you really want it, I'm pretty sure it's easy to mod it in... Just change the skill values for castes?

[Dyret]

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)

Yeah, there's that. Hopefully the economy will allow dwarves to do do things like commissioning their own clothes when it goes back in. The current system is kind of awful, even without gendered/caste-specific clothing.

[smeeprocket]

at one point, I was just cycling through clothing endlessly. I had a lot of dwarves, and it seemed like as soon as I crafted an article of clothing it would get snapped up.

[Urist Tilaturist]

A few points here:

A woman's life is not more dangerous than a man's in the UK, where I live. While women are more likely to be raped or domestically abused, men are more likely to commit suicide, be murdered or die in a traffic accident. Both sexes have certain horrible events which are more likely to befall them. The same is true in the US, too - a recent Department of Justice report showed that 3 quarters of US murder victims were male. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf The ratio of male to female suicides in the US is about 3:1.

Sexism has not been getting worse over the last 10 years. More girls are in school than ever before, and even in some parts of Afghanistan girls' education has started in earnest. Even some poor countries like Malawi have had their first female leaders. Fertility is lower, fewer women are dying in childbirth, and the age of first marriage and reproduction has risen. The only places where things have got much worse for women are where there are new wars, like Syria and Iraq - but things are worse for everybody in war, especially if they were already bad before.

Thirdly, I am not the source of your oppression. I did not do nasty things to you when you were growing up, I did not fail to prosecute rapists properly, and I have never committed rape, domestic violence or any violent offence against a woman, or a man for that matter. I do not consider Saudi Arabia a paradise, and have donated about £100 or so to help children, mostly girls, in poorer places to attend school. Sexism is still a terrible issue, you were a victim of it, but I am not the source of it and should not be scapegoated as such. Nor should this game, even if humans start behaving like they actually do, because it is a game.

I have said over and over again that dwarves would not discriminate, only humans, because humans are considerably more horrible than dwarves. Dimorphism should apply across all known species which have it, and only those species, so female hyenas are bigger and stronger, and male humans are bigger and stronger, with predictable results. Bonobos just make love, not war.

[smeeprocket]

fuck it. not worth a warning.

[pisskop]

No. Not the purpose of this thread.  This is a 'general discussions' debate, not a 'DF suggestions' side-conversation.


But, for the record, I am fine with randomized and largely irrelevant sex assignments.  Its about as equal as you'll ever come to sex equality.
  I dont feel the need for complex gender systems for the same reasons I didnt feel the need for sexual orientation in dwarves.  No purpose, mechanically.

Maybe we could institute actual functional gender differences or di-morphism and then it could enhance the game to have several subsets of dwarves?

[Meph]

Its easy enough to change physical attributes, mental attributes and preferences for each caste. But I'm fairly certain that some people might yell about inqeuality, if males are suddenly stronger than females, or whichever other changes might be made.

Modders can do this only with raws even now, its very simple.

[smeeprocket]

We should make women stronger and make them the ruling class. You know, for something different.

Nobody likes it when it's their gender being oppressed, though, even in video games.

[Dyret]

Aren't Elves pretty much matriarchal already?

Edit: Their monarchs and generals are always female, the druid and acolyte positions can be held by either.

[smeeprocket]

Maybe, but those are elves. I don't -think- so though. I don't think any of the three main races is a matriarchy or a patriarchy.

There's this problem with gender roles where if you do it like it is in real life people say that that is because it is the way it should be, it is appropriate for the timeline, even if it's fantasy. But if you reverse the roles, you are just pushing an agenda.

[Graknorke]

People see what they're used to as normal. Does that surprise you?

[pisskop]

The elves seem to favor 3 leaders, the princess, queen, and druid.  The only slot open to males is the druid, and Ive seen it occupied by females before.

Goblins, humans, and dwarves don't seem to care either way, though.  Or at least don't care enough for me to discount observation bias.

[Urist Tilaturist]

We should make women stronger and make them the ruling class. You know, for something different.

Nobody likes it when it's their gender being oppressed, though, even in video games.

If matriarchal elves are the current system then I am very happy to accept it. Because they are elves, elves can do whatever they like on account of not having real examples that we can study, and I do not get angry at all at seeing males of fictional species in an inferior position, or real species if that reflects how things are.

Having queen goblins with male drones as their slave-soldiers would also be something I would be ready to accept.

But having human females stronger would be like having male hyenas stronger - just plain wrong, and we know it from a sample of 7 billion.

Getting back on topic, I am actually in favour of transgender and intersex dwarves, I just think that humans with no physical dimorphism should not be described as humans since they obviously have different sex chromosomes at least.