jhkimrpg: On Gender Disparity in RPGs

jhkimrpg (

jhkimrpg) wrote,
@ 2008-04-15 15:57:00

Entry tags:

feminism

On Gender Disparity in RPGs
There has been some recent controversy over gender and gaming, bringing up the spectre of evolutionary psychology again that I last talked about in 2006 commentary on an article by Chris Crawford.

Edit: I wrote more on my issues with evolutionary psychology in general in a post on my personal LJ.

Sirriamnis of Geek Girls Rule noted about a recent panel discussion on gender in a post on "Gamestorm 2008", saying,

Then we attended a panel called "Why does gaming mostly appeal to guys?" The title of which we took exception to. Fortunately all of the panelists felt this way as well. However, if I have to hear one more guy talk about how girls play with Barbies until they're ready for something more, I am going to kick him in the shins. We kind of took over, explaining that girls had been more or less excluded from gaming for years. Nearly every woman there had a story about not being able to game when she first wanted to because she had been told that girls didn't game or couldn't game.

robin_d_laws' posted on the same panel "Gamestorm Day 4", where he described the panel as:

The noon "Why does gaming appeal mostly to guys?" seminar began with a thorough rejection of the premise and moved on to a justifiably optimistic take on the hobby's slow yet inexorable march toward gender parity. This was one of those panels where if anything there were too many good points being made by too many interesting people. My take on the gender and gaming issue is, in a nutshell, that we're seeing a massive cultural shift where the geeks are inheriting the earth, and that the population of gaming-ready girls and women is growing as nerdly activities become ever more mainstream. Overall response from the audience provided perhaps the most hopeful take on the subject than I've seen at any con -- including Finland, where they've pretty much achieved gender parity. This allowed the group to move on to the thornier topic of ethnic and class divisions in America, and what gaming could to do bring in the groups in those categories it currently has little truck with.

Jonathan Tweet (co-author of Ars Magica and D&D 3rd Edition) then posted a response on his blog at WotC entitled "gender and gaming", saying,

Roleplaying, as currently construed, appeals disproportionately to guys because it's mostly about the things that men evolved to enjoy: hunting and warfare. It's about a group assembling to undertake (imaginary) risks for glory and dominance. It's the same reason that team sports, such as basketball, are more male, whereas women compete to be judged beautiful and worthy (ice skating, gymnastics). TCGs are even more male-oriented than RPGs as they're about direct conflict with little to no story or personality. When I was in Finland 5 years ago, the TCG players were typified as guys without girlfriends. LARPing has more female appeal because it's more about personalities, relationships, clothing, and make-up. Finally, the quality of gamer men is a factor. A Finnish gamer I met said she got into gaming as a way to meet good-looking guys. The US gaming scene has less to offer along those lines.

This was responded to in two Astrid's Parlor threads, first "Jonathan Tweet on Gender and Gaming" (now locked) and later "Gender Blog Discussion".

First of all, I'd like to explain why I am annoyed by this and what difference I think it makes. The evolutionary explanation is that the D&D gender disparity is "natural" for how RPGs are constructed. If that is accepted among the set of people that care about the gender disparity in RPGs, it has a couple effects.

1) In practical terms, it encourages focusing on ways to construe role-playing completely differently -- i.e. RPGs about completely different subjects, or very different storytelling-focused systems like Everway -- as opposed to addressing issues like having a woman with a straining bodice on the cover. I feel that presenting . For example, Werewolf: The Apocalypse is very much explicitly about taking risks and adventure for glory -- explicitly so. However, my experience is that it has been popular with women.

2) Presenting the difference as essential suggests that to make games appealing to women, they must be less appealing to men. I don't believe this is true. It is interesting that Tweet cites Finland as achieving gender parity, because it seems to me that in Finland -- not only is there more gender parity, but gaming in general is relatively more popular than in the U.S. I suspect that bringing more women into the hobby could make the hobby more popular with men.

3) It suggests that women tend to not be interested in competitive games such as trading card games, requiring more "story and personality". While I don't have any hard numbers on this, my experience is that more abstract boardgames and card games have more female participation than tabletop role-playing games and wargames.

I also take issue with the evolutionary logic used, similar to my issues with Chris Crawford's article. I think they're a bit of a side-track from the gaming issues, though, so I'm not going to detail them here. (cf. my evolutionary psychology post on my personal LJ.)

(Post a new comment)

bruceb
2008-04-16 01:04 am UTC (link)

Among other things, the emphasis on evolutionary justifications takes the whole thing into a realm that publishers, authors, artists, layout people, and the like can't do anything about. That's dumb.

Geoff Grabowski has told this story in public, I know: At one of the cons before Exalted's schedule debut, he was chatting with varioud industry folks and someone in WotC's production department insisted that you just couldn't put anything but a heroic white guy or at most a statuesque unrealistically posed and clad white woman as the central figure on a cover, because gamers would never buy it. Exalted 1st edition features a black woman front and center because Geoff felt confident this was nonsense and pushed WW production to make it happen. It did, and the game obviously has a substantial female fanbase, just as Werewolf does.

To me, "evolution nyuk nyuk" is basically a "get out of my responsibilities free" card in cases like this. There's so much we can do on a practical to make games more appealing - and, just as crucially, less off-putting, not always the same thing - to wider audiences that I don't think any of us is in the slightest position to talk about deeper hidden truths. Maybe after 20 years of serious effort at weeding out unnecessary alienating clap-trap, but not now.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	revena 2008-04-16 01:23 am UTC (link)
	Word. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tundra_no_caps 2008-04-16 09:33 pm UTC (link)
	In house, Cameron, and a doctor in the first episode of the fourth season, often have their reasoning, which goes as this: "It's like this, because if it isn't, we can't help this person." The fact that if something is true means you can't lead to change, does not, in and of itself, means that this something is untrue. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bruceb
2008-04-16 10:53 pm UTC (link)

The summer I was 15 - this is a true story that I almost never tell - I started getting weirdly weak and tired, and suffering more and more strange pains. Our family doctor, who was excellent, ran through his repertoire and then some without result, and referred me to a Beverly Hills neurologist. He had me in and did his office appraisal and ordered some tests, and told my parents, "I knew as soon as he came in that it was psychological. I didn't even need to look at some of the results."

Four years later, after a tremendous amount more of suffering on my part, and grieving for it on the part of my family, a different neurologist identified some clear-cut signs of impairment and ordered the MRI that let him point at some slcerosis on the top of my brain responsible for them. That in turn led to identifying an auto-immune problem responsible for making those. He said, "It's impossible to say for sure, of course, but these look well enough developed that I think a careful examination of your movement problems at the time could have suggested what they did to me now, and there are things that would have helped slow their development and ease the pain then."

And that's why it's important not to be too fucking confident that the problem is one of those that makes us helpless.

	kynn 2008-04-17 04:48 pm UTC (link)
	There should be some sort of latinate name for the fallacy committed when people cite any television show as the basis of an argument. I'm just sayin'. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	spaceanddeath 2008-04-17 03:12 am UTC (link)
	grumblegrumbleGrabowskigrumblegrumble Good story. Reminds me that even folks I consider sexist assholes can occasionally do something right. Too bad he didn't continue to maintain such a positive track record with his choice of cover art. From kick ass Harmonious Jade to objectified camel toe in just three short years. Alas. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	badgerbag 2008-04-16 01:53 am UTC (link)
	Not to mention women's basketball is huge... and has been since the very beginning of that sport. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	sirriamnis 2008-04-16 04:05 am UTC (link)
	I'd like to see Mr. Tweet go up against a woman rugby player, and then we'll see how his evolutionary theories play out. Sigh. Every hobby has at least one. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kynn 2008-04-17 04:50 pm UTC (link)
	Tweet's rants on his website indicate that as he's gotten older, he's changed his thinking on things and has apparently become a lot more conservative. He must be the universe's karmic balance for me -- I started out fairly moderate-to-conservative. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kynn 2008-04-17 04:54 pm UTC (link)
	Girls haven't evolved the sleepover gene. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	alephnul 2008-04-19 07:58 am UTC (link)
	But the origins of role playing were in predominantly male groups, and role playing is something that has been spread predominantly by direct contact of role players teaching others to role play through role playing with them, so sex segregation becomes exclusion. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sirriamnis 2008-04-17 04:10 am UTC (link)
	Ugh, I made the mistake of going and reading the comments on the various threads. Chlorine. The gene pool needs more chlorine. (Reply to this)

	Re: What makes tabletop different? jhkimrpg 2008-04-24 06:48 am UTC (link)
	Any links on the WoW demographics? I recall from Nick Yee's 2005 study that in his sample, only 16% were female. That's comparable to D&D. Of course, other computer games do have much higher percentages of women. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	am I welcome to join? wanton_heat_jet 2008-05-03 03:26 pm UTC (link)
	Would I be welcome to join this conversation if I promise to be nice? Or do you think that's just asking for trouble? -Jonathan Tweet (Reply to this)

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