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[Neonivek]

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.

Well when it comes to brains... and Humans...

Males tend to have a lot of varience in intelligence thus there are a lot of smart and stupid males

Females tend to have consistant intelligence thus while there are less highly intelligent females, it also means there are less stupid ones as well.

Thus brains do NOT require any gender modification...

[MiamiBryce]

I would think genderization of dwarven names would be done with what words would be chose as a first name.  For example Totmon(Flower) or Thetdel(Hare) would be names given to female dwarves.  Male dwarves given names like Famthut(Horse) or Stul(Maw).

We should also take into consideration that this mythoi seems to be the one where female dwarves have beards.  So, obvious some (per haps all) lines we humans would discern for differences between genders (and their roles) do not exist for dwarves.

One the subject of identifying a dwarf's gender, when you (V)iew a dwarf, its gender is listed for you.  Also, when you view thoughts and preferences (you do that right?) you can't miss the fact that "her/she" is used rather than "him/he".

Off-topic, but still on the subject of names.  I find the names given dwarves to be too long and unrememberable.  I don't like having to write down the name of a dwarf from a message then paging through my unsorted(1) unit list to find it.  I've changed my nicknames to completely replace displayed names and now number my dwarves starting at 0001.

(1)  Yes, I know its sorted but the order its in is useless 90% of the time.

[Mikademus]

I'm sorry to be condescending, but all you who attribute human norms to DF dwarves are boring. Also you are incredibly lacking of imagination.

So, who says dwarves are bi-gendered? Who says they are monogendered? Who says they are sexually dimorphic? Well, the RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR DOES!

It would be trivial to have these factors be randomly generated. Dwarves, or any race, could have any number of genders. Each gender could diverge have systemically from the other genders, and these differences could be along arbitrary attributes.

Thus foobarale dwarves are generally faster and more crafty than the more lumbering but intrinsically funny and administrative barbazale dwarves. Both these genders are greatly attracted to dwarves of barfoole gender, who have an particular affinity for cooking and tend to be great with weapons, but also be moody and depress easily. They form mate-relationships in three or four, and barfoole dwarves spawn offspring when simultaneously impregnated by one (or more) foobarle and barbazales.

[illiterate]

Question: Do dwarven babies require milk from their mothers?

Don't ask this. 

It will only lead to some sort of exploit involving training up a legendary milker. 

[Pilsu]

Question: Do dwarven babies require milk from their mothers?

Yes, it's called dwarven milk

They tell humans it comes from maggots to keep them from snooping into their dark secret


Where did you think all those milkers came from? Oh and cow's can't be milked either so humans have their own secrets. Wonder what human cheese tastes like..

[Aquillion]

I'm sorry to be condescending, but all you who attribute human norms to DF dwarves are boring. Also you are incredibly lacking of imagination.

So, who says dwarves are bi-gendered? Who says they are monogendered? Who says they are sexually dimorphic? Well, the RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR DOES!

It would be trivial to have these factors be randomly generated. Dwarves, or any race, could have any number of genders. Each gender could diverge have systemically from the other genders, and these differences could be along arbitrary attributes.

Thus foobarale dwarves are generally faster and more crafty than the more lumbering but intrinsically funny and administrative barbazale dwarves. Both these genders are greatly attracted to dwarves of barfoole gender, who have an particular affinity for cooking and tend to be great with weapons, but also be moody and depress easily. They form mate-relationships in three or four, and barfoole dwarves spawn offspring when simultaneously impregnated by one (or more) foobarle and barbazales.

Honestly (while I certainly don't think dwarves need human gender dimorphism -- some versions give female dwarves beards, and having dwarf genders have essentially the same strength isn't really a problem compared to that), randomness to that extent can be a bad thing.

Particularly in an ascii game like Dwarf Fortress, it's very important that players be able to visualize things from relatively sparse cues.  This doesn't mean that they have to exactly reflect reality, but going for completely strange genders and so forth that have no relation to anything in human experience is, in my opinion, not a good idea (except for really weird creatures like elder horrors and demons, which are supposed to be strange and impossible to visualize.)

I recall that Armok 1 had really freaky random creature generation for everything and, basically, I don't think it added to the game.  Having a world players can relate to is important...  there's room for really freaky creatures on the fringes (or in a mod or whatever), but something called a 'dwarf' should match at least some fantasy archtypes, and having more than two genders doesn't really fit into that.

...also, there are humans in the game.  Should we represent gender dimorphism for humans?  I don't think it's terribly important, but I don't think it would be a horrible disaster, either.  (One possibility:  Represent gender dimorphism accurately for 'typical' humans, but declare that all adventurers are by definition 'exceptional', so it doesn't apply to them -- in other words, adventurers aren't a random sample; any female adventurer is going to be freakishly strong, which is not uncommon for female adventurers in fantasy or legend.)

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Agree to the post above....
We need to be able to change this in the raws.

[Tormy]

Agree to the post above....
We need to be able to change this in the raws.

Yes I was thinking about this also.
Perhaps Toady can code this one in. Males/females should be separated in the RAWs for all kind of creatures. Also some variants should be added. [Maximum strength/constitution/agility etc.]

[Refar]

I think it is common knowledge that dwarves of different sexes can not be told apart.
They might even be anatomically identical (don't ask how they would reproduce...)

For the other races there are differences, but sinse these are not featured as much as the dwarves are...
Do we really care about elven genders ?!

Once milking got implemented there might be some points of interest...

Urist cancels milking.
Urist was struck down by a Bull.

[Rhenaya]

Sex matters.

In some cases a lot.

I'm trying to get all the ways that DF does not currently respect this into one place.  So far I've got

Gender Species differences : There's a big fancy word for this, but guys have beards, lions have manes, the femal mosquito is the one that sucks your blood, ants have queens, and a host of other cases where the male is physically different from the female

Gender Naming Conventions : Linguistically, there is no 'male names' or 'female names'.  This would be extremely helpful in terms of not assigning girls to the military, etc.

Gender Dress Conventions : Would be nice if me dwarves stopped wearing the Jenny clothes, eh?

Gender Behaviour and Ethics Conventions : Boys play with tin soldiers, girls play with dollies.  (It's ok for guys to be half naked and kill animals but society frowns on chicks doing the same.)

That's all I've got now.  Anything else?

i really think it would be ok that boys dont use dresses and stuff, but gender behaviour and ethics are not really something in the df world. i mean everyone can get a soldier, why should females behave otherwise just because some players hate the babyshielded motherdwarf? ^^

the only thing i want is t oget different tilesets in graphicmode for females (but its somewhere in bloat 3xx i already suggested this myself)

[Neonivek]

Guys wear dresses: Kilt, Robe, Trenchcoat, Toga, Skirt

You need to brush up on your Sociology

You need to seperate what is our current society, or that which has been built up for the last hundred years in select areas, and start thinking more global

I can entirely picture Dwarf Males wearing Dresses

At most the game needs to randomate dresscodes on a civilisation to civilisation basis... If it has one

[Mikademus]

Honestly (while I certainly don't think dwarves need human gender dimorphism -- some versions give female dwarves beards, and having dwarf genders have essentially the same strength isn't really a problem compared to that), randomness to that extent can be a bad thing.
[/quote]

Female dwarves with beards, what's the problem with that? You're saying that some recognition factors are beneficial for immersion, but then, what exactly IS a dwarf? A DF dwarf? There is an entire thread on that.

Basically, a dwarf sexual dimorphism based on human stereotypes is boring. Ok, a totally outlandish and extreme mandatory randomisation might be over the top, but (a) we don't know or agree on what DF dwarves really are, and (b) it doesn't have to be a binary choise.

What about dwarf sub-races or heriditary traits? The dwarves of our particular continent, region or source mouintain home might be different from the mainstay template. Thus, an embark option might be "dwarf type", where we could chose from

* Standard dwarf (Not sexually dimorphic)
* Human-template dwarf (str male>female; dex female>male)
* Random binary gender dimorphism
(* Random gender model)

[Granite26]

Dwarven women care for their babies and can't control their fertility.  Behavioural differences around this are only logical.

Sorry to fail the 'being PC' check, but I'd rather be realistic.

If you want your dwarves not to act like that, maybe you should suggest that they get build from stone, or split like amoeba's or get born fully capable or teleport in from the homeworld.

Anyway, I'm adding gestation periods and a few other things to the OP.  Back to the original question:  Any other real life sexual (di)morphisms I'm missing?

[Neonivek]

* Human-template dwarf (str male>female; dex female>male)

Actually in terms of dexterity that is just steriotype but not how things work... Men tend to have the records and advantage in all speed and hand-eye related sports as well.

As for Sexual Dimorphism in terms of Stats the game entirely doesn't need it at all... Base stats are rather low when you think of it and can more then fit poor to ok attributes which you would get. After that there is no reason why the genders should be stunted in any area of growth... The game doesn't benefit from human females mysteriously being slower and weaker then males.

If you want altering stats between men and women, for some reason, then the next best bet is to simply allow men and women to have different jobs and thus through the natural gaining of skills have them obtain different abilities. Though this makes no sense for Dwarves or Elves. Humans it depends. Mind you that any job limitations should be lax and non-existant in some areas (like Nobility)

Once again though... it stops at the obvious main races...

The Animal People are an entirely different story as would any new race that is added that may rely on extreme differences between the sexes

[Granite26]

some versions give female dwarves beards, and having dwarf genders have essentially the same strength isn't really a problem compared to that), randomness to that extent can be a bad thing.

So give female dwarves the [beard] tag, s'no big deal...  Nobody has said that the differences have to/should be the same as humans.