From:	Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject:	Re: Gender in gaming
Date:	Sat, 19 Aug 1995 12:17:13 +0200

>Why
>show women as being more vulnerable, or less clothed, than men in
>situations where it tactically makes no sense?

I remember reading letters and things on fantasy game art (in White Wolf
Magazine I think it was), where the main reason why women are portrayed as
wearing little clothing is because the art directors think that's the way it
should be, in order to sell more books.

>Sometimes they do it under pressure from the male majority in
>a group

IMHO people who create a character because of what other people want or
think are people who tend to go along with others anyway. As an example, I
was introducing two people to SR a few days ago (these were two male
players, BTW), and when I asked "What race do you want to play?" one said
something that boiled down to "An elf of course" (they were both **&*-ers),
which lead me to respond "*sigh* Yet another one... Why no ork or troll or
whatever?" This prompted the other player to _immediately_ take a troll --
we (I and a third player) suspected later, when we were talking about it,
that he'd taken an elf as well had I not said anything about my feelings
toward people who take elves "_because_they're_so_fucking_cool_..."
To bring this back round to gender in roleplaying (it had to happen sometime
:), I think pretty much the same would be the case with many people who make
stereotyped female (or male) characters -- the attitude of the rest of the
group influences them so much that they don't dare to come out for their own
opinion about the matter.

>This has been a thought tangent. It relates vaguely to the artwork in FASA
>products, but not very much.

Well, we of course have Elmore's depiction of Sally Tsung on the front of
the main rulebook... Though Larry Elmore is one of the artists who responded
on the subject of the "women in fantasy artwork" debate I mentioned earlier,
explaining his reasons for and ideas behind the artwork.

--
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