Rollplaying defended, gender examined, REAL MEN ROLL PLAY! RAARRHHH! Options

[Wounded Ronin]

So, today I read something that made me remember this thread, and think some more about gender.

I was reading a Piers Anthony novel today, and came across the following paragraph about what men want from women. However, I didn't really feel that what he said applied to me. I didn't think that I felt the way he said I should. What do you think about his statement?

...a man--desires a dependent woman. Whatever he might say to the contrary. A man wanted his woman all to himself. It wasn't nice, it wasn't generous, but that was what he most truly desired--when his illusions were stripped away. A lovely, talented, and completely dependent woman.

When I say that I don't think that applies to me, that's not a simple "nuh-uh" denial. I don't think I feel that way, but on the other hand, I'm also not really sure I can articulate or know what I want in a woman. I know I'm sexually attracted to them from internet pr0n but it's hard for me to say much more. I don't think I feel comfortable with anyone being dependent on me because it seems like it would be an emotional drain and a lot of trouble to deal with that person all the time.

Do men and women generally want specific things from each other, assuming that they're heterosexual? Is stuff like that somehow genetically hardcoded?

[Whipstitch]

I think it's a gross oversimplification but it makes sense within the context of a story even if it would be inadequate in an essay; it's true insofar that people respond well to behaviors that let them maintain face. People want to feel respected and desired, and not just by their sexual partners. It's a matter of ego and survival. Gender is certainly of consequence when looking at why people do things, but I think we'd find that flattery cuts across gender lines and that people who feel unappreciated or useless become insecure regardless of the genders involved. That's one of the reasons why codependent relationships of all stripes can last so long-- when you tell someone "I won't make it without you," that's a powerful thing. Submitting to someone makes them feel powerful, and it often happens in relationships that are not overtly sexual. Sometimes I think people underestimate just how much of interaction between men can essentially be described as power plays. Openly telling a guy "You will respect me or else," went out of style long ago, but if you read between the lines that's still what happens every day. Face is a scary thing.

[Eimi]

So, today I read something that made me remember this thread, and think some more about gender.

I was reading a Piers Anthony novel today, and came across the following paragraph about what men want from women. However, I didn't really feel that what he said applied to me. I didn't think that I felt the way he said I should. What do you think about his statement?



When I say that I don't think that applies to me, that's not a simple "nuh-uh" denial. I don't think I feel that way, but on the other hand, I'm also not really sure I can articulate or know what I want in a woman. I know I'm sexually attracted to them from internet pr0n but it's hard for me to say much more. I don't think I feel comfortable with anyone being dependent on me because it seems like it would be an emotional drain and a lot of trouble to deal with that person all the time.

Do men and women generally want specific things from each other, assuming that they're heterosexual? Is stuff like that somehow genetically hardcoded?

Dude, it's PIERS ANTHONY. Writing about women. Taking that as a reliable and informed source is like reading Mein Kampf to learn how to understand the rich and noble culture of Der Juden.

[Whipstitch]

And your point is? Piers Anthony does write some stuff that reads like a sexist fantasy at times, but what does that tell us? It tells me that he makes money this way. People buy his books. And a lot of people embrace and identify with some of those characterizations without even one iota of irony even as Anthony hangs a lampshade on some of his own bullshit from time to time. Hell, in a way, the Hitler comparison is apt-- say what you want about Adolf, but he knew how to tell people that they wanted to hear.* There's a market for writing that casts women as sweet, dependable and ultimately willing to put aside their own interests for the sake of the family-- Why else is the long suffering housewife who props up her man-child husband and won't leave him no matter how pigheaded/stupid he is a sitcom staple? Even when we cast women as the smart ones a lot of the time they use that intelligence to keep their man afloat and little else-- many people have pointed out that we seem totally OK with the woman being talented as long as she uses it to our advantage. Western society has burqa jokes and miniskirts now, but that doesn't mean we're always aware of our own biases.

*What they wanted to hear, btw, was that they could be important again. If I have a bias on history, it's that I always tend to suspect that that everything comes down to pride in the end. Even people who are incredibly insecure are often that way because the overestimate how much of the world actually notices when they fuck things up. Pride, pride, pride.

[nezumi]

I think Whipstitch makes a strong point. Yes, having someone say "I need you in order to survive" certainly makes someone feel powerful and important. Even a janitor will feel like a man when confronted with that. Who wants a wife who says "I enjoy your company, but will do just as well without you".

I think there's also an evolutionary point to it. We all know the setup - the woman wants to secure the best seed and secure an ongoing source of resources for the raising of a child. The man wants to protect his chosen mate from being implanted by anyone else, and also wants to implant as many other women as possible.

Given the man's basic criteria, the most effective way to keep a chosen mate tied to you is to make her dependent on you. A dependent woman doesn't have choices, and that reinforces the odds of successfully passing on your gene-line.

Not saying it's that way for all people or all cases. Certainly not for the 'love her and leave her' relationship. But there's certainly an impetus for it, and we can see it reinforced throughout Western history.

[tete]

*Of the small group of people that get into RPG gaming, an even smaller group within that group is female. Female role players seem to be quite rare in my experience.

You should have been in the Camerilla in the 90s... way more girls than guys. Its the games not the roleplay.

I've been playing RPGs for more than half my life. It's not a notion that gaming is dorky. Gaming is dorky. I cringe every time I'm within a quarter-mile of the FLGS. I make one trip a year to remind myself why I despise it, and then I return to my electronic ivory tower where I don't actually have to be within the physical presence of other gamers. If someone was to drop me into the middle of Gencon, I'd probably have a stroke.

/nod

I made the mistake of going to a FLGS on a friday night and the stench made me decide to go buy it on Amazon rather than walk in. They aren't all that bad but geez, the guys who spend all day hanging out at the FLGS and don't work there are stinky!

[I Hate All Life]

Funny enough, with the Knights of the Dinner Table reference way earlier, I've been compared to Sarah by several people; generally, this was a compliment, as I was often the only on in the group that wasn't trashing the game or played my character as something more than a set of statistics. I tend to prefer character development, thematics and other abstracts myself; while I like crunch just fine, for me the game system is the vehicle for roleplay. Meanwhile, many roll play with only a veneer of character over the stats. While I've gamed with quite a few roleplayers and rollplayers of both genders, from what I've seen women gamers seem somewhat less likely to play RPGs like video games and to enjoy roleplaying. Of course, I play in that vein too.

[Blade]

What do you think about his statement?

Loving yes, dependant no.

Do men and women generally want specific things from each other, assuming that they're heterosexual? Is stuff like that somehow genetically hardcoded?

Assuming they're heterosexual, they both want sex and that's hardcoded.
They also want affection, which might or might not be linked to sex. There's definitely something such as love that is different from lust (according to several studies). It's also very probably hardcoded.

Other than that, I'm not sure if there's anything eles that's hardcoded.

[Megu]

I think Piers Anthony here is confusing what men as a whole want with what male /a/ and /r9k/ users want.

Seriously, though, I think there may be a grain of truth to it, but I wonder if it may have as much to do with masculine/feminine identity as with biological sex. Personally, to respond to Nezumi, I'm far more comfortable with "I want you but I don't need you" in a woman than with total dependence, but I'm pretty far away from my expected masculine social role; I spend my non-gaming time reading shoujo/josei manga and internet fanfiction of variable quality, while I eat ice cream and cuddle with my cats. I'm not under any illusion of being "masculine" in a traditional sense, so maybe it doesn't feel like it applies to me because of that? I'd like to think he's just wrong, because it's a fuckin' creepy notion. I suspect Blade's right, ultimately; aside from sexual desire and the need for affection, I don't think anything's hardcoded as an invariant sex/gender feature. I don't think it'd be a loss if all the gender role stuff just magically disappeared from our culture.

My gaming group is pretty atypical in this regard, too. We have five women out of six players and a GM, me. Out of the female players, the overworked English major who loves to cook is also the one who shows up mostly to unwind and destroy things with her gyro-stabilized MMG. She has a very "I didn't come here to think, I came here to kill!" attitude towards planning, which I think stems from how overworked she is in the rest of her life. She's currently playing a lesbian Ojibwe dwarf mercenary named Jukebox, who has kind of a "natural outlaw" relationship with the world around her, very much the loner-Rambo type described earlier in the thread. Sounds like a crappy concept, but the player's a straight woman so it's not all fanservice or anything, and she's 1/4 Ojibwe herself and from the North Woods so she knows the culture pretty well. Still, it's a very action-movie take.

The other male, on the other hand, a CompSci major, is also a budding slam poet and has a strong creative impulse (he's wasted on computers, if you ask me), and he always has a fleshed out backstory; he's competent with the mechanics and building strong characters, but his character ideas are usually concepts well before they become stats. He's currently playing an anti-magic/meta/technomancer Black Muslim gunslinger chick who's in denial about her adept abilities. It's a remarkably introspective backstory for someone who's a combat character.

And everybody else is somewhere in between, to some extent bucking and to some extent reinforcing the stereotypes. I'm pretty sure being 5/7 female is a bit different from most Shadowrun groups, but it feels like we've got a lot of different perspectives.

[Smokeskin]

Sometimes I think people underestimate just how much of interaction between men can essentially be described as power plays.

Everything that goes on between people are power plays. When it doesn't seem like it, either you've misunderstood the players' preferences, or at least one of the players is inept at the game.

[Megu]

Sometimes I think people underestimate just how much of interaction between men can essentially be described as power plays.[...] Face is a scary thing.

I think Smokescreen's got a point, Whip. It plays out a little different in male and female circles, but power dynamics is pretty universal in human relationships.

[Delta]

I think Smokescreen's got a point, Whip. It plays out a little different in male and female circles, but power dynamics is pretty universal in human relationships.

This. While women may be less confrontational or direct about their power plays, that doesn't mean they aren't there.

[Whipstitch]

Everything that goes on between people are power plays. When it doesn't seem like it, either you've misunderstood the players' preferences, or at least one of the players is inept at the game.

That was sort of my point; My intention was to point out that feminist readings of society often tend to leave out the fact that much of this stuff isn't limited to specific gender pairings.* For example, I know of many women who have complained that men who make less money than they do are often put off slightly by that fact. And while part of it probably is indeed sexism, I've noticed that generally speaking, you don't see the guys at the country club being all buddy-buddy and hanging out with the guys tend the grounds either.

*Whether that's just a matter of points of emphasis or whether it's a legitimate blind spot is another argument entirely.

[Banaticus]

I'm sure you've all seen the following -- it gets passed around every so often in viral/chain emails...

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Michelle and Gary.

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THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Michelle)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

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(second paragraph by Gary )

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,???*?? He said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

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(Michelle)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things round her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

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( Gary )

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its Lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

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(Michelle)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

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( Gary )

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels."

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(Michelle)

Asshole.

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( Gary )

Bitch.

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(Michelle)

DICK!

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( Gary )

Slut.

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(Michelle)

Get fucked.

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( Gary )

Eat shit.

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(Michelle)

FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!

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( Gary )

Go drink some tea - whore.

**********************************************

(TEACHER)

A+ - I really liked this one.

[Wandering One]

And point in case, to the above story, by the second sentence of 'Michelle's' writing, I started skipping her automatically, and started reading Gary's more because it was just funny and more interesting.

[Wounded Ronin]

I think I found the theme music for that writing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBtCixzY-7w

[KarmaInferno]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!




-k

[SleepIncarnate]

Everyone sing along!

"This is the thread that never ends, it goes on and on my friends, some people started posting not knowing what it was...."


In all seriousness, after reading through the whole thread for the first time (yes, I'm that bored at work), the question comes up about those who ARE in that blurring of sex/gender boundaries, such as transexuals, bigender, etc. They do exist as gamers, so how would you stereotype them in the whole roleplay/rollplay manner? Would you?

[Neurosis]

This was an amusing...article?

/me likes.

[Saint Sithney]

Everyone sing along!

"This is the thread that never ends, it goes on and on my friends, some people started posting not knowing what it was...."


In all seriousness, after reading through the whole thread for the first time (yes, I'm that bored at work), the question comes up about those who ARE in that blurring of sex/gender boundaries, such as transexuals, bigender, etc. They do exist as gamers, so how would you stereotype them in the whole roleplay/rollplay manner? Would you?

Some intersexed people take gender WAY seriously and will go out of their way to fit into every stereotype of their preferred gender (like tertiary sex characteristics are a thing to cling to in order to keep their identity afloat,) but I don't think the population is uniform enough for real generalization..

[nezumi]

If they are transexual, presumably that means they match the mentally held gender. If they are bigender, it would be a toss up (or perhaps they're a bit of each). However, I've only met two transgendered people on role-play forums, I've never played with either, and both struck me as far so intensely focused on the fact that they are transgendered, I don't know that I'd enjoy playing with them - with the corrollary that if the person is not so intensely focused on being transgendered, I probably would never know it, so I can't exactly count them for any statistical purposes.

[Whipstitch]

Some intersexed people take gender WAY seriously and will go out of their way to fit into every stereotype of their preferred gender (like tertiary sex characteristics are a thing to cling to in order to keep their identity afloat,) but I don't think the population is uniform enough for real generalization..

It's a real tough thing to gauge. After all, in a lot of cases those people really only talk about it as much as anyone would given the fact that privilege doesn't really insulate them from the subject like it does straights. I've never really talked much about being attracted to women before, but as a straight male it's not like I have people asking me what's up with liking boobs to begin with.

[Wounded Ronin]

It's a real tough thing to gauge. After all, in a lot of cases those people really only talk about it as much as anyone would given the fact that privilege doesn't really insulate them from the subject like it does straights. I've never really talked much about being attracted to women before, but as a straight male it's not like I have people asking me what's up with liking boobs to begin with.

Heh, it's women who are more likely to have detailed discussions about boob attractiveness.

[Snow_Fox]

This is the thread that never ends?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif) let the hueys and napalm flow! just rmemeber, Charlie don't surf!

[SleepIncarnate]

If they are transexual, presumably that means they match the mentally held gender. If they are bigender, it would be a toss up (or perhaps they're a bit of each). However, I've only met two transgendered people on role-play forums, I've never played with either, and both struck me as far so intensely focused on the fact that they are transgendered, I don't know that I'd enjoy playing with them - with the corrollary that if the person is not so intensely focused on being transgendered, I probably would never know it, so I can't exactly count them for any statistical purposes.

Ah, but as was pointed out early on, there's also the importance of gender roles, and lots of people who are along the spectrum of both gender identity and sex. Transexuals are not all Kim Petras, most are raised and live a while in the gender role of the sex they're born before transitioning somewhere in the 20-50 age range. That's a lot of time spent in the opposite gender role, even if it's the wrong gender identity. I think it's simpler really to not do these kinds of stereotypes and acknowledge that there's an entire spectrum, not just male and female players, but everything in between, and how they play and react to things also covers the entire spectrum from horrible player trying to get their fantasies fulfilled through complete newbie who sucks but can learn to the dedicated players, from rollplaying to roleplaying.

And you've probably met with more transgendered folks than you know, most just don't make a big deal about it, they want to live their lives as who they really are (called living in stealth). To quote pretty much everywhere in literature, movies, etc: "We walk among you."