Quote from: The Traveller;469681And we come to the heart of the matter! These are the worlds of the imagination.  We're the walkers in dreams, the guardians of the temple, and I mean that in a very real sense. This isn't a vehicle to push your ist, whether communist, feminist, racist, humanist, whatever; keep your damn grubby real world off. This is the gateway to infinity, and all are welcome, but don't think you can bend it backwards to win hearts and minds for your cause, it doesn't work like that. I speak with passion because I genuinely believe there has never been anything quite like this, and trust me, I've looked.

A fine point to focus on, isn't it?

Quote from: Talking_Muffin;469673*Please, no sidequests into why DW is bad for not having women SM.

There's the career path for the Sisters of Battle in DH: Inquisitors Handbook. They're pretty comparable to the Space Marines of DeathWatch....

Continue on.

Quote from: KrakaJak;469696There's the career path for the Sisters of Battle in DH: Inquisitors Handbook. They're pretty comparable to the Space Marines of DeathWatch....

Continue on.

I agree. The SoB are bad-ass, especially given their holy miracles.

I've long argued that a chick flick is a movie where the male characters are all idiots.

Quote from: Talking_Muffin;469671I just want to game and talk about games and learn about games and not worry about if person X feels treated poorly because of gender, race, sexual preference, hair color, shoe size, income, allergies, etc. We're GAMERS! We play in the most awesome pretend worlds around and that's what I want to focus on.

Talking_Muffin speaks truth.

Quote from: daniel_ream;469690Most paranormal romance objectifies the male characters physically and sexually to a degree that makes the RPG corpus look utopian by comparison.

Romance fiction is orders of magnitude a bigger business than RPGs, and is bigger than most other genres of fiction.  Nobody seems to be terribly concerned about correcting the romance fiction industry's portrayal and/or acceptance of men, either as authors or as characters.

Experiences differ, I guess.  From what I've seen, paranormal romance and especially the branch that is the Twilight series has been a huge concern among feminists.  I've seen plenty of talk about how the genre sets up poor role models for both girls and boys.  To David Johansen's comment, the same goes for mainstream romantic comedies, long mocked as setting up idiotic stalkers as a romantic ideal for men.

Does political correctness really get you pussy?

I just haven't seen it. I gotta chock it up to people online worrying about the weirdest stuff.

Maybe if RPGs were more sexist, gamers would get laid more. Apparently that formula works fine for rappers and rockers.

BTW, I run Pirate RPGs, specifically Crimson Cutlass, where there are no female player characters...unless the rare woman hiding as a man...and I have never had a problem with female players who are usually first to yell "Let's go wenching!" and more often show up to the table in costume.

Quote from: jhkim;469704Experiences differ, I guess.  From what I've seen, paranormal romance and especially the branch that is the Twilight series has been a huge concern among feminists.  I've seen plenty of talk about how the genre sets up poor role models for both girls and boys.  To David Johansen's comment, the same goes for mainstream romantic comedies, long mocked as setting up idiotic stalkers as a romantic ideal for men.

Currently, it's fashionable to call the woman-in-need-of-rescue-by-dangerous-emotionally-unavailable-men type as Bellas. It is a real discussion, or at least was, some months back.

Quote from: Grymbok;469243When I go to metal gigs, the audience is generally pretty white. But somehow metal forums manage to get by without threads about "How can we make more black people like AC/DC?"

To be fair, I've met black people that like AC/DC, but would never go to a concert, because they know they'd be out of place. Just saying.

Quote from: Koltar;469472Heck a few of the women gamers that stop by the store now say they find Tyrian Lanister as played by Peter Dinklage to be an attractive or sexy character.

That's because Peter Dinklage is a charismatic and sexy beast.
He's also a rarity on the show; a sympathetic character.

Are RPG's sexist?
Probably a little bit. Most are written by men, for men.
Any games based on history are going to be at least a little sexist, cause let's face it, history runs the gamut of "sexist" to "female chattel", when dealing with women.

Cheesecake artwork does not help.
Most (all?) modern games have removed any mechanical differences, based upon gender.

It's not nearly as bad as I remember in 2nd Edition D&D, but I imagine women could complain still, if they wanted to.

QuoteAlso, RPG artwork is on average extremely sexist.

One man's chain mail bikini clad sex goddess is another man's highly empowered female.

Well, having read blogs by women on the subject of sexism and gaming (typically computer) - So for second-hand, it comes down to "There's always someone." That can be something as simple as people treating the female player "better", which is apparently irritating when said female player wants to play the game, rather than engage in courting behavior.

Several of those I read stated that they often did not state their gender, so as to avoid running into this behavior.

Granted, the blogs I read were mostly on computer gaming. And granted, gender would be relatively difficult to hide around the gaming table. However, reading them provides a source of actual female perspective, which, being male, I naturally lack.

So - If you want to know what it's like for "the other side" - Go and read what they say. The words are out there.

And I'm not talking feminazis.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;469747So - If you want to know what it's like for "the other side" - Go and read what they say. The words are out there.

And I'm not talking feminazis.

This is a good point, actually. In a way this is like those discussions we have from time to time about "Is the RPG Industry dying?", where generally speaking 75% of the responses will actually be responses to the question "Is the RPG Hobby dying?", and therefore don't actually address the topic at hand.

In part because a lot of this got started because someone was writing a "feminist" RPG, a lot of this discussion has been about "are RPG products sexist?", rather than "is the RPG hobby sexist?".

In answer to the second question, I can't really answer it beyond "it would appear that some women have had bad experiences". Well over 90% of the RPG sessions I've played in over the 25 years I've been active in the hobby have been all male groups (and yes, in every case where there was a woman in the group, she was the partner of one of the guys in the group), so sexism has never really been an issue in my experience.

In answer to the first question, as touched on in the metal, knitting and bodice rippers discussion earlier, my personal answer is that yes, the RPG products are generally a bit sexist, but not (in my opinion) troublingly so. They reflect the make up of the hobby they support.

Ultimately I think the solution is for more women to make games and art. Not 'feminist games' - men aren't making 'masculinist games' after all. Just games. The best way to get your PoV expressed is to express it. Gaming is predominantly male in the same way that other male-dominated hobbies are, it's not an intentional or excluding action it's just that being mostly men it's naturally going to express a more male oriented PoV.

Malice is being ascribed where there is none.

Quote from: Stuart;469642This is the only forum where there's been anything close to reasonable discussion of this topic.

I just read this blog post after Fred Hicks shared it on Google+.

Fucking Crazy Train indeed...

Oh man, that is going to be some deep irony if all the people on RPG.net who were rushing to publicly pat themselves for supporting a feminist game in the face of misogynist opposition were, in fact, supporting a game written by a rapist.

Quote from: misterguignol;469764Oh man, that is going to be some deep irony if all the people on RPG.net who were rushing to publicly pat themselves for supporting a feminist game in the face of misogynist opposition were, in fact, supporting a game written by a rapist.

It was already twisting my melon that it was a feminist game written by a MtF trans person, something that would give a not-insignificant number of feminists conniption fits.