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[Nesoo]

Several Sci Fi works include 3 or more sexes all required...

Mass Effect has

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

a single gender species

with a rather peculiar form of reproduction.

[1138]

I could fully support gender roles becoming a moddable feature dependant on race.

I do not support Dwarf Fortress becoming just one more game that alienates female fans by being stupidly chauvinistic (girls only play with dollies, females receive an automatic stat hit, etc).

[Veroule]

As I am just one silly males of the pitiful human species, you can take this statement with as many grains of salt as is needed it to make palatable for you.

An average of females and males of our species tends to result in finding females to be superior in nearly every way to males.  Males tend to have a greater maximum strength; but using a formula of weight*time held, females take the lead.  Pain threashold, which relates to toughness, also tend to go to the women.  Agility, is generally a matter of flexibility, and yet again the things that pratice this are shunned by men and embraced by women.

Face it boys, you are out classed by women.  The best thing we can do for our dwarves is put nonmarried women into our military.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Eargh! But men are superior in thinking. In logic, In WAR!!!! Blood! And, of course, technology created by men! We create. We RULE. Ravens follow where men gathers, since there will definitely be casualties. Screw peace! We are heading into a time of wars, so male must be on top! We must survive.

[/chauvinist]

Still, it is good to be able to define this in the raw.

P.S.: Isn't men is superior in DREAMING? That's explain why we always day-dreaming, and consequently lost.
P.S.S.: And it seemed that men is far more happy when winning, compared to women. Hmm.

[Pilsu]

An average of females and males of our species tends to result in finding females to be superior in nearly every way to males.  Males tend to have a greater maximum strength; but using a formula of weight*time held, females take the lead.  Pain threashold, which relates to toughness, also tend to go to the women.  Agility, is generally a matter of flexibility, and yet again the things that pratice this are shunned by men and embraced by women.

Face it boys, you are out classed by women.  The best thing we can do for our dwarves is put nonmarried women into our military.

Don't believe everything the feminists spew out of their mouths, every last one of those points is laughable non-logic. The question of pain threshold is laughable, we aren't even equipped to know whether lobsters feel pain so good luck getting REAL data instead of worthless anecdotal shit and non-logic like being equipped for child birth magically giving you a higher pain threshold. Nature doesn't work that way. And agility is SPEED, not gymnastics prowess. Only reason anyone would mention flexibility is a pathetic attempt to support their agenda


Anyhow, Dwarf Fortress doesn't have need for sexism, these are dwarves who live in holes in the ground breathing toxic fumes and mining rock with amazing speed. Hell, I've yet to see a dwarven king, it's always a queen. Eventually we'll have a choice of starting race and then I'm all for differentiating the species although 'go back in the kitchen' humans and matriarchal elves are pretty generic


It would be nice to see -man races turned into real civs instead of random critters. Finding a giant antman colony with a megabeast queen would be fun

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Or snailmen community.
How the hell they move? 

[Romantic Warrior]

Gender specific names are cool by me but I like the fact that dwarven women aren't much different from the men. It always annoys me when I start up an RPG and the females are weaker but tougher or some other silly stereotype. If we're going to do that, we may as well not allow women to fight or have "male" jobs. Gender differences are a testy enough subject in the real world without having to inject that into a world that doesn't need it.

Males tend to have a greater maximum strength; but using a formula of weight*time held, females take the lead.

If men and women were the same size, they would have an advantage. But we aren't.

Pain threashold, which relates to toughness, also tend to go to the women.

In which studies? All the research I've seen suggests pain threshold is gender neutral or that men have a higher threshold.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705004113.htm
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51160
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9780941&dopt=Citation

The only research I can remember off the top of my head suggesting that women had a higher pain threshold was based on the dose of morphine given to patients after surgery. The men received more of it and for longer times. The pitfalls of indirect measurements like that should be obvious. The men could have been given higher doses because they had more body mass. My brothers, father, grandfather, and myself all weigh in the range of 200 pounds. My mother, grandmother, aunts and female cousins tend to be in the 100-120 pound range. Obviously, I would require a greater dose of morphine than my mother would. The amount administered to males could also be influenced by the stereotype, self-reinforcing it. The men are thought to be less able to endure pain, so they are medicated more... which someone discovers, thus "validating" the idea.

Agility, is generally a matter of flexibility, and yet again the things that pratice this are shunned by men and embraced by women.

The best dictionary definition of "agile" I know of is "quick and well-coordinated in movement." Flexibility is not listed as a synonym for agility. Where would quick and well-coordinated movement be needed? Sports. While my home town has a great girl's softball team, most of the sports players are male. This seems to be pretty true in most places. Also, you've strayed into the realm of gender roles, not differences.

[Dwaref]

Females should never be as strong/agile as males.

This is what i think:

Males +5% strength gain
Females +5% agility gain

My thought is that males are more bulky, and women as a consequence are more agile.
This makes for a real difference without gimping either sex either way.

It would hardly impose gender roles. First off, agility and strength are both of equal value. Be you a fast warrior or a strong one. A fast hauler or a strong one.
One could argue that the roles are already in place, since nobody wants their female warriors to run off into battle with their infants. Any outdoor profession is less likely in fact. Woodcutting, plant gathering, hunting, weaving. All those are already classed to be male tasks.

Also requesting different dwarf names.

We could handle the children-thing by allowing infants to follow another dwarf. We could have a profession that herds children. Some sort of daycare thing, just a dwarf who sits in the meeting area with the whole fortress' children. Kind of a surrogate mother. Just move kids around like with the pets screen.
The mother could spend time with the child and reset the bond whenever she's not performing any 'dangerous' task. Like when she's sleeping. t.t a bit too close for comfort there.

[Footkerchief]

I support the gendering of names and clothing (would give something for the "Loves to defy convention" personality to do), but I would argue against stat-nerfing and the implementation of gender roles. Basically because it would get really annoying and, since they're dwarfs, it's got no basis in reality.
As for the Gender Species Difference thing; most aesthetic distinctions need to wait for whatever bloat or core handles that; now all Toady could do is make them different creatures, which brings it's own problems.

Nthed.  This is the only reasonable approach ITT

[Appelgren]

An average of females and males of our species tends to result in finding females to be superior in nearly every way to males.  Males tend to have a greater maximum strength; but using a formula of weight*time held, females take the lead.  Pain threashold, which relates to toughness, also tend to go to the women.  Agility, is generally a matter of flexibility, and yet again the things that pratice this are shunned by men and embraced by women.

Face it boys, you are out classed by women.  The best thing we can do for our dwarves is put nonmarried women into our military.

Don't believe everything the feminists spew out of their mouths, every last one of those points is laughable non-logic...

I didn't want to get in this debate but feminists rarely claim women are superior. I mostly hear that from men with a quite firm belief in the importance of gender differences. Anyway. I think gender roles is a really interesting theme for a game to explore. Implementing it in a "girls play with dolls, boys play with soldiers" way is dull and damn near insulting. Doing something like "Urist was worried about her son playing with dolls lately" or having female adventurers face prejudice from the world around them could be interesting. Though you should probably be able to turn it off. I quite like the egalitarian dwarven society so maybe that would fit better when human settlements become playable.

[Tormy]

Stats? Females should never be as strong/agile as males.

I think this is a bit too strong of a statement; sure, male humans tend to be stronger than female humans, but there's no reason to be sure this is the case for dwarves or elves or randomly generated race #342, or even that a strong (for a female) human is weaker than a weak (for a male) human.

I'm not saying there isn't room for stat differentiation between sexes.  But it's not as black and white as you make it seem.

Yeah, I was thinking about the same stuff, after I replied...

[DJ]

The most realistic thing to do would be to give males an edge when it comes to physical skills and give females an edge when it comes to social skills. However, these are dwarves, not humans, so I support gender equality. I would like to see gender-specific names, though.

[Jude]

Maybe for elves and humans. For dwarves I like the idea that there is no gender differentiation.

[Silverionmox]

If I recall correctly, human males have on average or potentially 20% more upper body muscle strength than females. Historically this has translated in overwhelmingly male armies and higher wages for males for physical work - which was almost everything before cheap energy was available. The female advantage is less measurable, but social skills (memory for faces and names, less prone to conflict,..) are a good catch-all, as mentioned.
The other difference between the physical genders is XX vs XY chromosomes. XX is less likely to let mutations manifest themselves, because there are two copies of the same DNA. So there simply are more and more extreme abnormalities in males... for better and worse - more geniuses, and more morons.

For dwarves, I think the minimal gender difference approach works well, and is appropriately dwarfish.

Question: Do dwarven babies require milk from their mothers?

[Dwaref]

Maybe for elves and humans. For dwarves I like the idea that there is no gender differentiation.

I feel myself that elves if anything do not need gender differentialisation. Them being androgyneous hippies and all.
Now remember that dwarves slave under a harsh and unforgiving god and similar conditions, much like worshipers of abrahamic religions. Tolkien even based his dwarves on jews and judaism which represent the archetype of the unforgiving god thing, which most of the organized stigmatization of females have sprung from(adam and eve anyone?).
Tolkien avoided opening the female dwarf can of worms since he felt that they'd become a subject of much controversy. His dwarven females were presumed to be kept locked-up inside the fortresses, which in itself kind of tells us enough. This whole thing about 'Female dwarves having beards' is a jab at salvaging this whole bit of dwarfdom, which tolkien certainly never made mention of.

Then again, Toady's chosen this interpretation, and thus i think we should go with it! Complete equality ftw! However it's easy to start to think in terms of gender, when they DO have gender, are called different things depending on gender, and one gender can have children.
Thus:

Reproduction

Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both female and male reproductive organs.

Once a slug has located a mate, they encircle each other and sperm is exchanged through their protruded genitalia. A few days later around 30 eggs are laid into a hole in the ground, or under the cover of objects such as fallen logs.

A commonly seen practice among many slugs is apophallation. The penis of these species is curled like a cork-screw and often becomes entangled in their mate's genitalia in the process of exchanging sperm. When all else fails, apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves by one or both of the slugs chewing off the other's penis. Once its penis has been removed, a slug is still able to mate subsequently, but using only the female parts of its reproductive system.

I think this'd be interesting. Well except that chewing part, that's just gross.
I think it'd be a small thing to implement code-wise.