It's not discrimination, it's historical
So there's this thread on roleplayers where a woman is asking for advice about dealing with sexism in the Dungeons and Dragons game she plays. Along with some interesting discussion and good advice about talking to the gamemaster, I noticed variants of a couple of the Great Excuses for Sexism in Gaming:

1. It happens to men too
   
2. It's appropriate for the setting
   

Maybe later, if I think my brain is up to the bleeding, I'll go dig up one of the many RPGnet threads about gender issues in a game and find Great Excuses 3 through n. Right now, I'm thinking about #2, where objecting to sexism in any vaguely historical setting is unreasonable because "that's the way it really was." I say vaguely because the connection to history can be very loose. For example, in the above-mentioned discussion, the setting of the game was "inspired by the Roman Empire although with some significant differences," and the poster mentioned that soon the group would be heading into the Underdark--which, unless the Underdark has changed a lot in later editions of D&D, is straight-up fantasy. (She also mentioned that the change would be nice because of the "strong powerful women" in the Underdark, but for this post I've decided to avoid the yawning conversational abyss posed by the evil black matriarchy of elves she's talking about.) So, basically, if your fantasy setting sat on a shelf next to a 7th-grade history textbook at some point in its life, it's historical enough that traditional gender roles "should" be in place.


I can think of at least a couple of ways to respond to this idea to explain why it's a bad excuse. The first would be to ask the guys who aren't getting it how they'd feel about playing in a setting where the default governments were matriarchal, where nations ruled by men were depicted as exotic or evil (I'm skirting that abyss, demmit), where male NPCs most commonly showed up in storylines where they were being kidnapped or raped, where male characters could never aspire to any real political power and at best would be well-regarded for rising above their gender... I could go on, but in my experience this tactic doesn't work, because people will line up like birds on a wire to chorus "no, I wouldn't mind that!" secure in the knowledge that it doesn't matter if they mind it, because it'll never happen.

A second way to respond is growing on me, though--an awareness of how lazy this approach to gamemastering is. The laziness comes in two parts: how people think about the setting and how they think about the plot.

The first part applies in any setting where the reign of history isn't complete; that is, where there are some kind of fantasy or alternate history elements to the piece. Here, I find that people can seemingly effortlessly imagine house-sized dragons that can fly, the beautiful and horrific vistas of alternate worlds, all manner of powerful sorceries, and monsters from the mind flayer to the ethereal filcher--indeed, many gamers justifiably pride themselves on their skills of imagination. Somehow, however, these prodigious powers of the mind stop short of picturing women as the equals of men. It just wouldn't be "realistic," you see, and so it won't work for the game. In light of the above examples, "lazy" is about the most charitable (if maybe not the most accurate) label I can think of for this line of thought.

Well, okay, let's say you're playing a game where traditional gender roles are an indispensable component of the setting, and your players are all cool with this. Surely the girls have no grounds for complaint now, right? Well, there's still the matter of the many choices you make about plot. (Or characterization of your NPCs, if you're playing in a game where GM authority is shared to the extent that talking about a premeditated "plot" isn't helpful.) Two of the movies we've watched recently include All About Eve and The Little Foxes. Besides both being great movies, they're the freshest cinema examples in my mind illustrating how fiction about male-dominated times doesn't require its female characters to be footnotes or victims. In the thread that sparked this ranting, someone already noted that I, Claudius shows the absurdity of regarding all Roman women as wimps.

Bringing it back to fantasy fiction, I'm currently in the middle of reading Katharine Kerr's Deverry books. There are some, er, oddities in the plot (paraphrasing Chris, "so the gods care more about the romantic fuckups of these three people than the countless innocents dying in the perpetual wars?"). Nonetheless, I still like the series, in part because the range of the female characters extends at least somewhat beyond "victim" and "man in a dress." Even women who aren't great warriors or wizards are entwined with events that are important to the setting, like when one of the great lords casts his wife off for being barren--and she promptly conceives a child with her consolation-prize second husband, setting off political turmoil as the succession of her first husband's demesne goes up for grabs. Moving to another example, George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series features a number of interesting female characters in a reasonable range of roles. (I hear that the fourth book backslid in this regard, but the metric ton of verbiage contained in the first three suffices to get him on my list.)

What's my point? My point is that even if your Kreskin-like powers of visualization don't extend to imagining gender equity in your fantasy societies, you're still being a goddamned lazy git if the only plotlines you can think of for your female NPCs (or PCs) revolve around pregnancy or rape. Watch some Bette Davis movies. Read some Katharine Kerr, Jacqueline Carey, Octavia Butler, or Ursula K. LeGuin. Crazy thought, talk to your players. If, after all that, you can't imagine how women could be equally interesting characters in your history-inspired role-playing games, then at least take pride in your label of sexist, because you've gone the distance for it.