[UA] UA unintenionally sexist? (LONG!)

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Liam Routt wrote:

>
> > That's not an unsupportable claim.  This has always been a male-dominated hobby.
>
> But male-dominated does not equate to sexist, at least not necessarily.

No, it doesn't.  But a male-dominated hobby certainly _risks_ being sexist, if only
accidently, because we lack a strong gender balance to measure ourselves against.  So
it behooves us to examine our hobby with a critical eye.

(Just as an aside - does _anyone_ else use the word 'behoove' any more?  I think I'm
the only person I know who uses it in casual conversation.)

> The question is whether having a few less femal NPCs makes a game sexist?
> I don't think that is any more definsible than suggesting that simply
> having more female NPCs guarantees it is *not* sexist.

Agreed.

> And give that there are some way powerful women NPCs, or
> recently implied ones (the NG, in particular), I think its pretty hard to
> claim that UA is not fair, on balance, in this regard.

Well, the NG, like most other Clergy members, has superceded earthy gender concerns.

And look at the main rulebook.  There are two powerful female NPCs, characters that
command others - Daphne Lee and Angela Forsythe.  Weighed against that is Alex Abel,
St. Germaine (First and Last _Man_), Randy whatisname from TOSG, the Freak (gender
unknown, but male pronouns are used)... I'd have more examples, but I lent out the book
this week.  Men _do_ have a stronger and more powerful presence in the main rulebook
than women.

> > Weak claim.  Some archetypes _do_ have gender restrictions; that's a weaker
> > foundation than if _no_ character types had gender restrictions.
>
> Can men be Amazons? Does that mean that any game which has Amazons in it
> must be sexist against men?

_Must_ be, no.  _Can_ be, yes.
Just to clarify - I _don't_ feel that UA is sexist.  But so far, I'm not convinced that
the arguments about it not being sexist would be convincing to an outside observer.

> And I'd be willing to argue that a "realistic" system for violence does
> more to *discourage* it than to encourage it. Combat cannot possibly be
> seen as the best conflict resolution method in a game where a single stray
> shot can remove your character. That alone should (and in my experience
> has) lower the idiotic violence ratio a fair bit.

But it makes action less fun; it removes the 'lighter' potential of a major RPG theme.
Many female gamers enjoy action, but they're forced to confront violence in UA.

> Which plays into the
> traditionally more feminine aspects of roleplaying, including negotiation
> and lateral thinking.

Agreed.

> And claiming that UA has a focus on combat, by the way, is ludicrous,
> given the relative size of the chapter that covers it, and the rather lose
> way that it defines various weapons (pointy, big, etc - this is no
> exhaustive catalogue). Its simply not a game *about* violence.

Again, I agree.  Well, apart from the 'furious action' claim in the game's tagline,
which is presumably one of the marketing points.

> Heck, to my mind teh rather cavalier attitude to blood-sucking, and the
> sort of super-human damage and combat mechanisms in Vampire are much more
> "male" in their effect on that game than anything in UA. Is the mysterious
> JH a Vampire player?

Joanna Hart.  And from previous conversations, I believe she used to play Vampire a
fair bit, but doesn't anymore.
And it's really a question of 'grittiness'.  The WW combat system is cinematic, and it
abstracts damage; it makes it much less personally confronting.  Violence in UA is
ugly.

> This despite the fact that it actually grants the female user all the
> power (rather than making some lame claim about how woman can be seen to
> have control over men because of the power of the sex they offer) - this
> game actually provides a way that the "power of sex" can be quantiatively
> amassed by women who want to use it.

Many women enjoy porn; many work in the porn industry.  In the real world, some women
claim porn is a tool of female empowerment.  That still doesn't stop the arguments
happening, and it doesn't many more women feeling that porn is sexist and degrading to
women.

This _isn't_ a cut and dried issue; it's one of the big topics of feminist philosophy
and discussion.  We aren't going to produce the 'right' answer on this list.

> > I don't personally agree with that - but I certainly think it's a debatable topic
> > with no 'right' answer.
>
> One can argue that irrational arguements can be discounted, and thus it is
> possible that there can be a right answer here, if the "it is mentioned
> therefor the text is sexist" claim is irrational. I sure think it is an
> irrational claim.

Only if you assume that rationality is the only valid basis for discussion or debate.
I think that reason is one of the best tools human beings have for making decisions and
communicating, but it's not the only tool, and it's not the best tool in all
situations.

My opinion only.

> > My reading of Jo's argument (and I could be wrong) is this.  The main book of UA
> > puts forward various masculine interests and pursuits - porn, money, gadgets,
> > booze - as sources of power.
>
> Its funny, my attention immediately went to Cliomancy when I first read
> it, and the others seemed to be pretty much required to cover the range of
> standard contemporary magic (as defined in the "literature").

Joanna acknowledged Cliomancy as being a counterpoint to the overtly male themes
elsewhere in the book.  When she read UA, it didn't seem like enough to dissuade her on
her personal impressions.  That's her call; it's her own reactions and feelings that
she's discussing, after all.

> And yet those who
> want to see UA as sexist will pretty much want to claim that men are the
> ones interested in *things*.

Jo doesn't _want_ to see UA as sexist; you're ascribing an agenda that (as far as I can
tell) she doesn't subscribe to.  Instead, she _developed_ an impression that UA was
sexist, after an initial reading of the book.

> There are seven schools in teh main book. You have identified four as
> "masculine" (and I'd seriously argue with money as a peculiarly male
> fascination).

Jo's point, actually, not mine.

> That's not much of an *emphasis*.

It's a majority, even if not an overwhelming one.

> Especially given the
> *discussion* of the nature of magic and the principles upon which magical
> disciplines are created, which would seem to be a more important place to
> find out the leanings of the game.

I agree.
As I've said several times, I think Joanna is focusing on surface elements and not
noticing the deeper themes of the game.

> I cannot imagine such a person reading UA in any way and feeling that
> there was something there for them.

I wouldn't have thought such persons - face it, such men - could have ficated on
pruient elements in CHANGELING either, but I was wrong.

> ts too hard (conceptually) for that style of
> play.

No RPG is too 'hard' to play stupidly.  I've seen enough gamers in action to be fairly
sure of that.

--
Patrick O'Duffy, Brisbane, Australia

Sumo is the most perfect of sports.  It has elegance, ceremony, danger,
art, speed, and, most important, two fat bastards smacking the shit out
of each other.

 - Spider Jerusalem, TRANSMETROPOLITAN #26



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