Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

The answer of whether you should or shouldn't is dependent entirely on the comfort level of your players. You did the right thing by putting the final decision on her as to whether she wanted to run with this or come up with something else.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Well, I always considered the Olmecas to be our equivalent to the ancient civilizations (Egypt, Babylon, etc), Teotihuacan and the Mayans to be our equivalent of the Roman Empire, and from Tula to the Triple Alliance as our version of the Middle Ages.

But anyway...

Today I was talking to my editor when she pointed out something about my new book that left me thinking. See, in this book the protagonist is a soldier during a fantasy version of WWI who, at some point in the story, ends up being wounded by an artillery shell. The result is that he loses an arm (he ends up having more wounds, but the biggest one is the loss of his arm).

As it turns out, my editor asked me if I'd chosen that approach because the protagonist was male, and that if I had written a female character the traumatic event would have been rape instead.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I believe I chose that because I never liked how those other casualties from the World Wars are seemingly ignored (you know, the ones who didn't die), but I recognize that there might be some (unintended) gender bias on my decision.

And that is what got me thinking how, just as it's rare(r) to find male characters as victims of rape, it is an odd sight to see a female character who is an amputee. Of course, I could be wrong and my sample pool of fiction might be too limited, but if that is not the case I wonder why these two things seem to be limited to one gender or another.

Emi from Katawa Shoujo is a female character who is an amputee, but that might not count since most of the characters in that game have some sort of physical disability or abnormality.

edited 10th Jun '15 4:18:09 PM by Rainbow

There were some in Star Wars with the tendency for lightsabre wielders to lose An Arm and a Leg. Kreia and Tenel Ka come to mind. Both of which refused to get a prosthesis.

Gaige from Borderlands 2 has an Artificial Limb as well.

It's rarer for women because of Beauty Is Never Tarnished. They have to absolutely stay attractive for the male viewers after all.

Fury Road has the indomitable Imperator Furiosa. Good luck egging her truck, kids...

Any female MEC solider in XCOM.

Renegade female Shepard should count for the facial scars.

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Any razor girl in shadowrun.

Depending on the place, France, for example, followed salic law, which only allowed men to inherit land.

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

Well, Eclipse Phase, Warhammer 40K, Transhuman space and many other table top pen and paper games allow the creation of amputee characters.

Also All of Deus Ex games.

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Shadowrun has videogames though, with a party member razorgirl.

I think her name was Glory?

Homestuck has a lot of characters who lose an arm, leg, eye or multiples of each. It's, uh, a running gag (maybe not gag, but it does happen some times) Most of them end up getting robotic replacements, though.

I can't remember any male victims of rape in fiction off the top of my head, though.

Books, movies, and other media to my knowledge that features male rape in various forms:

Super, The Kite Runner, Deliverance, Escape From Alcatraz, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, American History X, Nip/Tuck, Primal Instinct, A Song of Ice and Fire Series, Red Dragon,The Bad Place, Different Seasons, The Green Angel Tower, Shrubcore, Wild Blood, Bait, The Clouds Still Hang, Shattering Glass, The Book of Revelation by Thompson, Shiguri, In Hell, Outlander, and plenty of other lesser known titles.

Characters that have been raped:

James Bond, Batman, Nightwing, in fact, every Robin even Red Robin either has been or was almost raped,Apollo, Swamp Thing, Constantine, Sharman, Green Arrow, Lawton was killed and raped as a kid, Cosmic Boy, Invisable Man, Rayner, and probably more.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit deals with male rape including having Detective Stabler thinking female on male can't happen and male on male rape not being treated as seriously as it should until either D. Finch, Fin Tutuola or Wuang remember everyone that it should be.

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From the manga/anime side, both the main characters of Berserk and Hellsing have Rape As Back Story.

edited 10th Jun '15 8:56:46 PM by Paradisesnake

This is actually something I've noticed: in fantasy works where there's a more-or-less modern attitude toward gender equality, it's often justified by the fact that some sort of special ability (Functional Magic, Psychic Powers, Bond Creatures, etc) that doesn't distinguish between men and women, the implication being that those handful of people are so fantastically useful and/or powerful, that anyone suggesting that women are meant to play a subordinate role just has to point at the local fireball-throwing, mind-reading, dragon-riding lady as proof that that's really dumb.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Odly I never see that played with in the way that it likley would play out....

With those fireball weilding mages being considered a cut above every one else leading to descimination agianst normals. >.<

The Harry Potter franchise sort of does that, though I'm not sure if it counts if the normals don't know they're being seen as inferior. The Dungeons and Dragons movie (which is both awful and hilarious, imo) plays it straight.

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.

Dragon Age.

The Tevinter Imperium is a society built entirely on the premise that people capable of wielding magic are inherently better than those who can't. Non-magical peoples were made slaves to the magisters. The Imperium once stretched across the land, but a muggle revolution ultimately overthrew the shackles of their mage oppressors.

Now the opposite is true in most places outside the Imperium; mages are second-class citizens, kept locked away so that something like that can never happen again.

... *looks around*

Getting back on topic, while the world of Thedas established in Dragon Age seems pretty fair towards genders - to the point that the only in-universe criticism of a Queen ruling Ferelden alone when her husband is killed in war is that she's not of royal blood - the series also has the Qunari who go the exact opposite direction and have strict gender roles for both men and women.

Men MUST be this, women MUST be that. Men serve THESE roles in society, women serve THOSE roles, and never the two shall meet. Soldiers are men ALWAYS. Politicians are women ALWAYS. Etc. etc. Even more confusing, they couple this with a very accepting yet still rigidly strict approach to transgender individuals; basically, if a boy wants to grow up to be a politician, that's fine because he was clearly meant to be a woman. But then he must learn to conform to a woman's social role.

edited 11th Jun '15 7:57:12 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Maybe it is also a way to avoid making complicated game mechanics by Bioware, since you can make female Wardens, having a universe that had defined gender roles could hamper the game play and create a shitstrom for the developers.

Even though it would be interesting having an RPG game where the world reacts to your player's gender as much as it does to race. Like how almost every human NPC in Skyrim will make fun of you or be hostile if you choose an Altmer characcter and equip it with elven or glass gear

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Both Fallout2 and Fallout New Vegas do a decent job of that. Not everyone does, of course, but there are several places in both games^note the Bishop family in New Reno, and Caesar's Legion, are the ones I remember most where NPC reactions are quite different depending on whether you're playing male or female.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

I kinda think that might be interesting myself.

I dont exactly get how the whole qunari thing is that.... confusing to some people.

The roles are non negotiable, although you can argue about what you ARE.

You can argue "I am not a hammer but a sword" and if they accept that you are now treated like a sword.

They view people as tools, and all tools have a role.

edited 11th Jun '15 8:18:46 AM by Imca

I can't imagine defined gender roles would hamper a player any more than playing an elf^HEY The slave race., a mage^HEY The other slave race. or a dwarf^LISTEN The xenophobic outsider race. already does.

Somebody's going to hassle you if you are anything but a mundane human. And, if you are a mundane human, you're going to get hassled by the people who aren't based on the assumption that you're an oppressive f*cker like the rest of your kind. It wouldn't change much if you were hassled by gender too, so I can't see the gender parity as anything but a deliberate choice.

Thedas is a world where Crystal Dragon Jesus is a woman. As a consequence, it would make little sense for her followers to discriminate against women. In fact, outside the Qunari, the biggest place where gender inequality is visible is in the Chantry, the major religion in Thedas, where priests above a certain level may only be women.

edited 11th Jun '15 8:25:14 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

"If you're a sword and not a hammer then make a clean cut on those ropes to prove it!".

I couldn't get much from the Legion anyway, my default action towards them was shoot first and loot later, but after meeting Boonie it was clear being a woman in their hands sucked.

It would be hard to implement sexism in Dragon Age due to reasons and the already existing discrimination towards other races and abilities.

It other games could do it like Rust doesn't let you choose which race you are.

edited 11th Jun '15 8:27:32 AM by AngelusNox

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Pretty much that sums up how I think the Qunari treat the whole issue.