[UA] UA unintenionally sexist?

[Peter Hindman]

   I hate to even get into this, but.  Facts are good.

   I'm looking at the discussion of the Freak, p. 21, UA main rules.  The
Freak is an 'it'.  This would seem to qualify as the 'main' reference, as
it's the only reference to the Freak given in the index of the main rules,
and no supplement has gone into a great amount of detail.  I can find two
other references.  One is in _Statosphere_ , p. 36; no pronoun is used.  
The other is in _Lawyers, Guns and Money_, p. 93; the Freak is called
'He/She/It' once, then referred to as 'it' thereafter. There may be
published references that do use male pronouns; I don't claim to have done
an exhaustive search.  I do seem to remember people referring to the Freak
using male pronouns *on the list*; while this would appear to represent
something, it doesn't seem fair to me to level that something against the
game as published.

   Furthermore, on the balance of male vs. female characters:
   In the main rulebook:
   Protagonists in the game fiction sections:  1 male, 1 female.
   Antagonist in the game fiction section:  1 male.
   'Major Individuals':  6* male, 2* female, 1 Freak.
   'Supporting Cast/Major Groups':  8* male, 6* female.
   'Supporting Cast/Minor Groups':  4 male, 3 female.
   'Supporting Cast/Dukes':  3 male, 3 female.
   'Supporting Cast/Sample Player Characters':  3 male, 1 female.

   *:  'Sometimes, the Comte is a woman.' -- _Statosphere_.

   Note that all the 'Major Individuals' except the Freak are discussed
again in 'Supporting Cast', so there's some overlap.  Accounting for that,
there are 20* male NPCs, 14* female NPCs, and one Freak.

   Someone suggested that the balance was skewed more toward men in the
later supplements, so I'll look at _Lawyers, Guns and Money_:
   'Personnel:'  12 male, 10 female.
   'Dossiers:'  4 male, 5 female, 1 Freak.
   I'll skip trying to count the balance in the scenarios, because not
every NPC is statted, but it appears to be about 50-50, bringing in
_Lawyers, Guns and Money_ at just about even.

   Now look at _Postmodern Magick_.  This seems to be the most skewed:
   'Supporting Cast':  19 male, 5 female, and the Rahyab.

   One could point out that part of the imbalance in _Postmodern Magick_
comes from the imbalance of the source material to which the Team
Salvation cabal is a reference, but it's not clear to me what that
observation would be relevant to.


   Here's a fun new topic:  is UA 'racist'?  Discuss.


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