Gender and Sexuality Representation in OOTS

[Raineh Daze]

I also do not care much. I also have no idea why so many do.
Yes, it can be an expression of racism/sexism if group X is underrepresented/presented in a bad light, but it does not have to mean that.
I even find current mainstream media silly which aim to "just cater for every group equally". If a story does not require a strong woman/orc, I really do not see the point in writing it in "just to have it".

Because the only reason to not have equal representation is heteronormativity and cultural inertia.

There's an inherent sexism (and racism, and homophobia) in requiring anything that isn't 'straight white male' to have a reason to exist in the story.

You can have equal representation without 'making a point' about it. I generally think that'd be better. Treating things as normal and not something special that has to be specifically plotted out is admirable.

[oppyu]

I also do not care much. I also have no idea why so many do.
Yes, it can be an expression of racism/sexism if group X is underrepresented/presented in a bad light, but it does not have to mean that.
I even find current mainstream media silly which aim to "just cater for every group equally". If a story does not require a strong woman/orc, I really do not see the point in writing it in "just to have it".

I also find it a bit strange as we're reading a work here from an author who has shown in his work that he does not have strong, "strong politically incorrect" prejudices against this or that group, so I think the entire issue should "just rest".

Not every story has to make a point about X being equal, where X is every possible race, gender, orientation, philosophy and every possible combination of them. It simply gets silly and overclouds the actual telling of the story.

If it is addressed I think a story should pick one or two and elevate them to "I have a point" and the others can slide. And OotS *did* pick something: Can you kill based on race (or more exactly, based on alignment listed in the MM) and the clear answer is "No". It also picked another thing (and I like it this has no RL parallel at all): Can you discriminate based on Character Class or Class Features? And the answer is also No. (Roy, Tarquin etc)
Why does Rich also have to address gayness or gender and whatnot of all sorts? Not every fantasy story that is told has the requirement to also address the "Big Issues of Life", like equalty of gender, race, whatnot. It actually looks silly if some work attempts that (just watch any show (in the OotS-verse, of course) that comes out these days with the "usual mix of ethnicities, ranging from Human over Elf, to Half orc, Assimar (mix of Donkey and Celestial), Tiefling and an equal mix of strong females and males everywhere").
It'd be different if the story here in question would explicitly show women/halflings as weak, catering to RL stereotypes and being totally useless*, but as that is really not happening, I'd, personally and in no way asking anyone not-to-do-it!, say this entire discussion belongs beyond the sideline of "we could discuss political correctness (and I think this is what it is in the very end), but let's rather enjoy the story (which does not discriminate racially/sexually)".

PS: With me saying "I find it silly in general for any story", I do not mean that it's silly in general or consider anyone who said anything here to be silly.

* Please do not call me out on "But the Flumphs are shown as totally useless!". No, they have romance and feelings as well!

It's not addressing the 'big issues of life' of women and LGBTQ characters not being represented equally compared to their straight male, it's simple inclusion. For example, if the story were exactly the same way it is now, except that Roy and Belkar were women, would the story suddenly turn into a big political statement about gender-balanced parties led by an African-American woman? Or would it be the exact same story it is now, with the caveat of also not contributing to the pervasive trend where women and LGBTQ characters are being hugely underrepresented in just about every piece of media put forward?

It's not that every piece of media has to cater to people who want to see representation from women and LGBTQ characters, it's that just about every piece of media caters to people who like seeing straight men.

[Heliomance]

Sounds abhorrent. Too many things wrong with such a world. ._.

Because in that scenario, there's clearly no point to the continued existence of humanity. In fact.

I'm not seeing it myself. Speaking as trans, I can only see easier diagnosis and treatment as a good thing.

[WoLong]

Because the only reason to not have equal representation is heteronormativity and cultural inertia.

As a rule, characters in your story are a reflection of yourself, to some degree. The Giant is a heterosexual white male. There's nothing prejudice about having an increased representation of heterosexual white males, given that context.

[Leirus]

The thing is, nobody is asking the author to "deal" with it in any special way, or to treat queer issues. It is just including a group of people ever present in the real world who until the last decade was banned from fiction. It was the same when black superheroes started poping up in comics

It always baffles me when people would say things like "A comic book is not the place to deal with gay issues". It is not dealing with gay issues. It is just showing that gays are a part of any society. Then you can have the character behaving as the normal person he or she is, without making any kind of further point.

[Raineh Daze]

I'm not seeing it myself. Speaking as trans, I can only see easier diagnosis and treatment as a good thing.

Sent you a PM about it.

As a rule, characters in your story are a reflection of yourself, to some degree. The Giant is a heterosexual white male. There's nothing prejudice about having an increased representation of heterosexual white males, given that context.

What.

[WoLong]

What.

I am an introvert. Most of the characters in my stories are introverted. Does that make me prejudice against extroverts?

[oppyu]

I am an introvert. Most of the characters in my stories are introverted. Does that make me prejudice against extroverts?

Nobody is saying that the Giant is prejudiced against women or LGBTQ characters. What we're saying is that his work isn't particularly inclusive of women or LGBTQ characters, and that's disappointing, because inclusivity is good for people who don't get to have their gender or sexuality reaffirmed every time they turn on a television or open a book.

[WoLong]

Nobody is saying that the Giant is prejudiced against women or LGBTQ characters. What we're saying is that his work isn't particularly inclusive of women or LGBTQ characters, and that's disappointing, because inclusivity is good for people who don't get to have their gender or sexuality reaffirmed every time they turn on a television or open a book.

Neither was I suggesting that they were. I am only saying that it is not necessary to include an accurate representation of every group, when you don't belong to those groups and can't accurately represent them.

[Raineh Daze]

Neither was I suggesting that they were. I am only saying that it is not necessary to include an accurate representation of every group, when you don't belong to those groups and can't accurately represent them.

The similarities between groups are a lot closer than their differences. People are hardly defined by sexuality or gender.

[Astrella]

I'm not seeing it myself. Speaking as trans, I can only see easier diagnosis and treatment as a good thing.

Well, it's sorta pointless to speculate seeing as there's basically no biological explanation for transsexuality right now anyway. (A bit of variation in brain structure isn't really close to proving anything.)

And I'm hesitant around things that restrict bodily autonomy anyway.

The easier diagnosis and treatment is mostly achieved by reducing societal stigma and making sure everyone has access to help, which is something we can work on right now already.

[Kish]

I have to wonder why people who, by their own word, "don't care about representation" care enough to argue with people who do care.

[oppyu]

Neither was I suggesting that they were. I am only saying that it is not necessary to include an accurate representation of every group, when you don't belong to those groups and can't accurately represent them.

Ok, let's do a thought experiment. First, we'll take Hinjo, and then establish that he likes to have sex with other men.

Boom, we've just accurately represented a homosexual character. Yay us!

Of course it's not necessary to include an accurate representation of every group. But if you're part of those groups, it's nice to see someone actually try .

[Astrella]

Neither was I suggesting that they were. I am only saying that it is not necessary to include an accurate representation of every group, when you don't belong to those groups and can't accurately represent them.

Well, that's sorta the iffy point isn't it? Like, when you are part of a minority you don't really have the luxury to ignore characters that don't fall into that. Like, when you are queer, heterocis stories and characters are still everywhere, so you can't avoid both reading stories like that and understanding motivations and all that, because you are surrounded by them.

Avoiding to write / engage / read about characters that fall outside your own sphere is only going to keep people unable to relate with others. You can only learn to write more diversely by actually doing it and getting feedback and getting things wrong and improving, that's a general aspect of writing as it is.

(And more minority representation actually has positive societal benefits as well.)

[Raineh Daze]

I have to wonder why people who, by their own word, "don't care about representation" care enough to argue with people who do care.

I'm not complaining. At least it gives us relevant discussion.

[WoLong]

The similarities between groups are a lot closer than their differences. People are hardly defined by sexuality or gender.

Well, being an asexual, I don't know about sexuality. However, there are clear and obvious differences between each gender. It is usually much harder for a writer to write for a member of the opposite gender than for their own, and they should feel free not to worry about having close to the same number of each gender in their stories.

[MReav]

Not getting in whatever conversation is previously going on, I am merely adding my 2 cents to the original post.

I think Yikyik and Girard can be classified as sufficiently hetero/bisexual as to be willing to father children directly, given the technology level's lack of artificial insemination. Don't know how much they are, but I doubt they'd be a 6 on the Kinsey scale. Unless we can prove Yokyok was adopted.

[WoLong]

Avoiding to write / engage / read about characters that fall outside your own sphere is only going to keep people unable to relate with others. You can only learn to write more diversely by actually doing it and getting feedback and getting things wrong and improving, that's a general aspect of writing as it is.

As I said, I care about representation, just not frequency of representation. It is good if an author represents all kinds of members of different groups. But an author should not feel the need to make sure that every group is represented to the correct frequency.

[Raineh Daze]

Well, being an asexual, I don't know about sexuality. However, there are clear and obvious differences between each gender. It is usually much harder for a writer to write for a member of the opposite gender than for their own. A writer should feel free not to worry about having close to the same number of each gender in their stories.

Similarities are still greater than the differences.

Also, I've seen loads of books written by women which still fall into the same problem where there's mostly straight white men. :/

[WoLong]

Similarities are still greater than the differences.

Also, I've seen loads of books written by women which still fall into the same problem where there's mostly straight white men. :/

As I said, I'm not quite sure why there's a focus on frequency. An intelligent black person in a story that doesn't fit any sterotypes helps racial equality. A story with a bunch of black people that perfectly play into racist sterotypes hurts racial equality.

[Astrella]

As I said, I care about representation, just not frequency of representation. It is good if an author represents all kinds of members of different groups. But an author should not feel the need to make sure that every group is represented to the correct frequency.

Not in every work, no. And trying to live up to quotas isn't the best idea. However, frequency does matter for earlier stated reasons through the thread and the thing is that you can often achieve more diversity without much effort or negative effects. Changing random guy 23 talking about his girlfriend to talk about his boyfriend instead for example isn't hard and only has positive effects. (Assuming sexuality isn't really relevant in the setting.)

The annoying thing with regards to say queer characters is that if you don't do that than characters are never just going to be queer. A book with a queer main character is pretty much always going to be centered around that cause of that (which is not bad in itself, because that literature should be there as well) but you never get it the other way.

Like, queer people are expected to be able to identify with straight cis characters all the time but the reverse is never true and pretty much always labelled niche media. Like, I don't think ignoring society that someone who's straight has any more difficulty identifying with a queer character than the reverse.

Similarities are still greater than the differences.

Also, I've seen loads of books written by women which still fall into the same problem where there's mostly straight white men. :/

It is the most common perspective out there in media, which is probably why.

[The Giant]

So a fantasy comic is exactly the place where you can have a gay character just for the hell of it... V could be a gay male in a gay marriage with two adopted kids, and not one iota of the comic would have to be changed.

You do realize that there's no narrative reason for V's children to be adopted except to raise the possibility that it's a gay or lesbian marriage, right? I mean, if I wanted to eliminate that as one of the potential options, I would simply have to have made their children biologically theirs. Which would have taken no explanation at all. And which I did not do.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

[Carry2]

What evidence do you have that they weren't? If something is applied widely on a societal basis, I am perfectly within my rights to assume that a woman raised in such a society would have been affected by something that affects women...

Spoiler

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For starters, it's essentially claiming that all young girls consistently suffer from the effects of growth hormone deficiency, which has a constellation of symptoms that would be very easy to spot.

The International Olympic Committee has specifically had to restrict the entry of hyperandrogenic women, precisely because their athletic performance tends to be well above the female norm, due to their levels of male sex hormones. Conversely, transsexual men and women are allowed to compete in their respective categories, because their altered hormone regimens induce performance within the norm for their target sex.

A single case proves nothing, or else scientists wouldn't go to enormous lengths to study statistics and gather large groups of volunteers before performing experimentation.

You are claiming that cultural differences in gender perception result in differences in childhood exercise that systematically reduce the performance of ALL women. Therefore, yes, I'm afraid that a single counter-example deflates this argument.

Besides, the attitude that cultural gender roles will systematically limit achievement in ALL cases is as dehumanizing as the idea that biological sex will do so. It dismisses variations in life experience and personal choice just as the latter dismisses variation in natural talent. Even with cultural differences between gender- which I believe are virtually irrelevant to something like bodybuilding, unless severe malnutrition was a factor- there are going to be a certain number of women where optimal environmental variations coincide with optimal genetic variations to allow for maximum theoretical performance. These are the women you would see at the top of their game, and they still can't match the top men.

Your reaction, in essence, is to call them lazy or their parents negligent, and that is uncalled for.

Because the only reason to not have equal representation is heteronormativity and cultural inertia.

To get back to the question of media representations: We were discussing whether fantasy literature with a relatively high and consistent degree of 'gritty realism' might be justified in reproducing certain forms of gender inequality, purely on the ground of mimicking the biological facts of sex differences in our world, and not just on grounds of subconscious patriarchy and wish-fulfillment. Which in turn requires ascertaining and acknowledging what those biological differences are.

This is also relevant to the question of whether the experience of women as role-models in fantasy can actually be instructive to women in the real world, or whether their value will be purely symbolic or escapist in nature. (That doesn't make the latter approach automatically bad, but it also doesn't make depictions of inequality automatically ungood. Because depiction =/= advocacy.)

So, yes, I take issue with the idea that 'the only reason to not have equal representation is heteronormativity and cultural inertia.' It is certainly an explanation- maybe even the most likely- but also not the sole possible reason.

The point here is that D&D switched from a system in which physical sex affected gameplay to one in which it didn't, and despite all the howling from "realists" and "biological determinists" the game didn't change. D&D humans didn't suddenly become nonhuman. The game just became a little more welcoming to women.

To return to this point, vis-a-vis gender modifiers in D&D: I think the idea of respective STR and CHA modifiers is not totally devoid of substance, and at least a few groups appear to be okay with that. I would say, however, that the nature of D&D as a game would tend to introduce complications here, insofar as combat situations (where STR is relevant) tend to be more common, more reliably balanced, and resolved in greater detail, than social conflicts (where CHA is relevant.) Charisma tends to get more 'play' in later editions, of course, but IIRC there was no corresponding bonus for women in early D&D, and fewer opportunities to use it.

Robust and interesting mechanics for handling IC social conflicts in RPGs have really only matured in the last decade or so, along with systems with high degrees of social and physical versimilitude. So, theoretically speaking, I could see room for this kind of sex differentiation being either harmless, or an actively engaging aspect of chargen, in something similar to Twilight or Burning Wheel.

There are no explicit stat differences between genders in Hero Wars, but there are many religious professions which are restricted to one gender or another (the cult of Vinga vs. the worship of Lhankor, for example.) I should mention the worship of Vinga is explicitly concerned with tackling women's issues, such as justice for rape and protection of children, and there's even a deity on the exact opposite side of the equation. And it works.

One other instance I might mention was Ron Edward's Sorceror and Sword supplement, which featured a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting revolving around symbiotic relationships with giant social insects. One feature of the setting, IIRC, was that certain forms of 'magic' were either gender-restricted or required active co-operation between the genders in order to function. (There's also an interesting section on the typical concerns of 'male' and 'female' centric stories, but there's too much detail to go into here.)

[MReav]

You do realize that there's no narrative reason for V's children to be adopted except to raise the possibility that it's a gay or lesbian marriage, right? I mean, if I wanted to eliminate that as one of the potential options, I would simply have to have made their children biologically theirs. Which would have taken no explanation at all. And which I did not do.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Speaking of which, we should probably include Inkyrius in the original post, seeing as how s/he was the former mate of V.

[Raineh Daze]

Speaking of which, we should probably include Inkyrius in the original post, seeing as how s/he was the former mate of V.

... wait, so they're not there already? Huh.

[Thrax]

You do realize that there's no narrative reason for V's children to be adopted except to raise the possibility that it's a gay or lesbian marriage, right? I mean, if I wanted to eliminate that as one of the potential options, I would simply have to have made their children biologically theirs. Which would have taken no explanation at all. And which I did not do.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

That's what I've always seen V and Kyrie as - two gay males. I mean, there are two apparent genders of elves in OotS: "obviously female" and "ambiguous" (there isn't one full-blooded elf who's unambiguously male). That leads me to think the ambiguous ones are male, and both V and Inkyrius belong to that category.

[Carry2]

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Now all we have to do is identify Inkyrius' gender...

[MReav]

... wait, so they're not there already? Huh.

I was surprised too. The OP included in a later post that Inky wasn't a love interest due to the lack of characterization, but s/he is still a figure in V's life.

[pearl jam]

I was surprised too. The OP included in a later post that Inky wasn't a love interest due to the lack of characterization, but s/he is still a figure in V's life.

I may be mistaken, but this was suggested previously and I believe the response was that Ikyrius has been intentionally left off because the relationship is, at this time at least, severed.

[Raineh Daze]

We've got people with just as few appearances on, so... I guess it makes sense to include them regardless of current relationship status?