Re: [HOE] Women's roles in RPG's

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

 >    Sadly enough, for those of you in the 'it's all in good fun' category,
 >it's more fun when the women actually have character, instead of being
 >silicon cut-outs.

Silicon cut outs. . .

You know.  Indians (oh, excuse me, Native Americans Brutally Oppressed by 
the White Man, er person, no. . . Man.  ) have often suffered from two 
types of prejudice.  The first is the obvious one - discrimination against 
them.  The second type is some bizarre "holy noble savage" pedestal that 
some folks put them on.  I guess it's better than having your head beat in 
with a rifle, but it's still an insulting form of discrimination that 
treats these people as other than people.

I don't bring this up for the indian side of things, but for what the 
"noble savagers" folks did.  When you point out the flaws in their society, 
these twits come back with "their culture has been corrupted by the white 
man and they have fallen from grace because of the white man."

And when you point out that various tribes have all had various other 
practices like war, rape, slavery, torture, etc.  they either sidestepped 
by saying that those were "other tribes" or end up calling you a racist for 
trying so hard to shatter their bubble.

So.
Despite the fact that two of the main good guy groups in HoE are currently 
headed up by women.  Despite the fact that one of them was the primary 
voice for the player's section on several books. . . we have the cries of 
sexism.

Wait - I don't remember cheesecake in the syker book.  Well. . . maybe 
because we are culturally taught that bald isn't beautiful that we didn't 
realize that the syker standing on the hilltop is really a babe shot.

Oh wait, my mistake, the whole syker book is politically incorrect because 
it is offensive to those folks who have lost their hair to 
chemotherapy.  Doomsayers. . . lets just not go there.

And let's just blithely ignore the number of archetypes that exist that are 
depicted as women in HoE.  Savage, kid, postman, syker, doomsayer, cyborg, 
templar. . . and that's without my books being here.  Oh. . .wait. . . 
since this doesn't conform to one version of how females (oh, excuse me, 
the secretly superior sex, er gender,  who have been Brutally Oppressed by 
the White Man) are supposed to be depicted. . . then it must just be some 
ploy to disguise PEGs secretly misogamist views.  (Hey - gamist. . . gamer. 
. . just a coincidence? I think not!)

Now  -  on a less silly note.  I was at a Science Fiction book convention 
and one of the author panels was about the difficulty of writing 
cross-gender characters.  It's damn tough to make a believable woman 
character when you are a male author.

 >PC is just Plain Courtesy
 >                                    Damon

The easily offended deserve to be.



-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com
Deadlands fan site - http://www.darious.com/deadlands/index.html

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Logan (Law and Order):
To buy a plaid tie