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Magenta
2013-03-08, 06:37 PM
Hello forum!

How do you roleplay your character when she is a female warrior?

I am a man, and I have roleplayed a few female warriors. Even thought it is a role that I cannot immidiatedly relate to, I am fascinated by it. And as I am bereft of first-hand insight I am left to ponder and speculate about it.

I know that history has plenty of examples of women warriors, and I know that roleplayers sometimes choose to disregard gender differences. But I cannot help to wonder over the difference between male and female warriors; specifically when it comes to physical violence and aggression.

How is the female warrior different from the male? When suffering through the ordeal that is war in the ancient world, would the genders be more alike than different?

When considering both the most violently aggressive male combatant, how rare is the female equivalent? Is the woman prone to physical aggression an oddity, or a possible product of her enviorment?

I haven't found much real-life information about it. There have been a few studies about physical aggression in women, but those I found were mostly about violence between spouses. I have heard that when it comes to sports women have shown themselves to be as violently aggressive as the men, though I am doubtful if the source was reliable.

So! What do you think? Do you have any insight to share, or anything to add to my speculations?

Yukitsu
2013-03-08, 06:42 PM
To be perfectly fair, raising a completely standard person, and comparing their mentality to a career soldier, or an experienced warrior, the civilian male will have a completely different attitude to violence and aggression and how and when to use it. I would honestly play a female warrior essentially the same as as male one. A female that wasn't a warrior compared to a male that wasn't a warrior would be potentially very different, but a part of the culture of war and violence is standardizing your perceptions on violence and aggression.

Tengu_temp
2013-03-08, 06:43 PM
The idea that a female warrior would be less physically aggressive than a male warrior, just by virtue of being female, is ridiculously sexist and insulting. My female co-players would probably beat the crap out of me if I came up with it.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-08, 06:46 PM
I have some insight. That individual differences apply to women too and such a thing as cultural variation exists. Rather than broad sweeping statements on the topic of female warriors, put some thought into the cultures of your setting, their values and their gender roles. Then think about how the setting would react to deviation from the norm, for both men and women, while keeping in mind that these reactions are also subject to individual variation. Then once you have done that, think about why you chose to make gender roles like that and what effect it would have.

Or, you know, just declare gender equality and be done with it. For anything short of a complex exploration of gender roles, that's the version that causes the least conflict and nothing is really gained by mandating arbitrary gender roles if you don't have a deeper purpose behind it.

Magenta
2013-03-08, 07:00 PM
The idea that a female warrior would be less physically aggressive than a male warrior, just by virtue of being female, is ridiculously sexist and insulting.

Firstly, we are talking about the same thing here, right? Aggression is not the same as capability in combat. When you are aggressive you are more inclined to violence, it does not mean that you are better at it.

Secondly, general concensus have long been that women are less physically aggressive than males, is it true or not? I don't know. I recall a study showing that children are as likely to be violent up to the age of 2, where girls start to develop their language and social skills at a faster rate than boys and also begin to favor verbal aggression over the physical kind. I am not sure if the connection have been proven, however.

Lastly, if I am wrong then it is due to misinformation. I would be careful not to jump the gun and call something "ridiculously sexist and insulting" when the person writing is clearly trying to be open-minded and explore the subject.

Moriwen
2013-03-08, 07:00 PM
From my experience as a female fencer, I'd say there's two types. Half the girls are exactly like the guys--same roughhousing, same aggression, same tough-it-out, suck-it-up, take-it-like-a-man attitude.

The other half enjoy the stereotypes--they have pink equipment, pink bags, pink socks, and will beat you up in a bout. They're the really scary ones.

Either one would probably be quite offended if you suggested they were in any way inferior to a male fencer, or less aggressive, or anything along those lines.

(Disclaimer: Obviously there's much more depth and nuance to people than this, you can't lump people into stereotypes by gender, yada yada yada.)

Weimann
2013-03-08, 07:04 PM
How is the female warrior different from the male? When suffering through the ordeal that is war in the ancient world, would the genders be more alike than different?

When considering both the most violently aggressive male combatant, how rare is the female equivalent? Is the woman prone to physical aggression an oddity, or a possible product of her enviorment?You talk about gender here, which is a term used to describe the social aspect of sexual identity. So, the answer is clear: a society in which females are expected to be aggressive produces aggressive females.

Consider the physical aspect of a person as their starting point, not their destination. If (which is not proven) females are inherently less aggressive compared to males, that'd still be just one aspect of how aggressive she turns out in the end. Cultural values, individual upbringing and the situation she's currently in will play into that just as much, if not more.

Unfortunately, I can't provide any examples of historical cultures. Honestly, though, if you just play her like you would a man, you won't go much wrong.

Tengu_temp
2013-03-08, 07:07 PM
Firstly, we are talking about the same thing here, right? Aggression is not the same as capability in combat. When you are aggressive you are more inclined to violence, it does not mean that you are better at it.

Yes, we're talking about the same thing. And I stand by what I said before. If a female warrior is less aggressive than a male one, then it's either due to her personality or cultural background, not because women are inherently less aggressive. And in fantasy settings and other pretendy fun games it's usually best to leave the "cultural background" part behind the door.

Synovia
2013-03-08, 07:08 PM
The idea that a female warrior would be less physically aggressive than a male warrior, just by virtue of being female, is ridiculously sexist and insulting. My female co-players would probably beat the crap out of me if I came up with it.

Men have higher testosterone levels*. Testosterone leads to aggression.

That being said, we're not talking about normal people here. We're talking the end of the distribution of people. A female warrior is going to be much closer to a male warrior than she is going to be to the average female.

A female Marine probably has a lot more in common, behaviorwise, with a male Marine, than she does with the girl who spends her time shopping.






*In human beings. In fantasy races, who knows.

Magenta
2013-03-08, 07:10 PM
Or, you know, just declare gender equality and be done with it. For anything short of a complex exploration of gender roles, that's the version that causes the least conflict and nothing is really gained by mandating arbitrary gender roles if you don't have a deeper purpose behind it.

The former sounds utterly boring, if I may speak my mind :smalltongue:

As I said, I am quite fascinated by the women as warriors. Partly because it has the potential for a good story given the possible conflict between a culture's gender roles and the choices of the individual. And I guess I am also a sucker for the inexplicably graceful elven warrior in heavy armor :smallredface:

But no... I don't have any deeper purpose than mere curiosity, but neither am I looking for any "arbitrary gender roles" either.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-08, 07:25 PM
The former sounds utterly boring, if I may speak my mind :smalltongue:

As I said, I am quite fascinated by the women as warriors. Partly because it has the potential for a good story given the possible conflict between a culture's gender roles and the choices of the individual. And I guess I am also a sucker for the inexplicably graceful elven warrior in heavy armor :smallredface:

But no... I don't have any deeper purpose than mere curiosity, but neither am I looking for any "arbitrary gender roles" either.

My point was that unless you put a lot of thought into how gender roles are, why they are that way and how people respond to that challenge, you're likely to end up with a sexist product, even if you don't intend to. Not just that, you're likely to end up with a product that's controversial in some way, even if it doesn't turn out sexist. So in the interest of not angering people and not being insensitive, the creation of clear gender roles should be approached with a lot of thought and only if you truly have anything to say about it. If you start including physical differences between sexes as an explanation, you should probably just step back and scrap what you have, since there's statistically a 0% probability of the result not turning out offensive.

And, yes, fetishizing powerful warrior women is offensive too. Just like making them special unique snowflakes or portraying it as some kind of upside down world. Really, the best thing I can say is to research a lot, be very careful and thinking deeply about what gender roles really add to your story and why you feel like including them.

Robs
2013-03-08, 07:34 PM
The idea that a female warrior would be less physically aggressive than a male warrior, just by virtue of being female, is ridiculously sexist and insulting. My female co-players would probably beat the crap out of me if I came up with it.

I find the way you word that could easily be said to insulting in itself. People are entitled to their opinions, whether it is sexist (I use this word neutrally here, not negatively) or not, and should not be abused for them.

I would also suggest that co-players, whether female or not, beating you up for any reason is a VERY BAD THING(TM) and you should probably call the police in the case such a thing happens ;p

Not that I'm saying your opinion isn't valid... but keep in mind it IS in fact, your opinion.

Now as to the direct topic at hand... I think female warriors can have whatever aggression you feel is appropriate at hand, and that your group is comfortable with. Keep in mind the many different stereotypes of male warriors, the grizzled warrior, the silent killer or perhaps the fresh faced recruit who is wetting himself before and after a fight, but brave during. These can apply to women too.

In terms of the disparity between genders, the marginal differences between men and women who otherwise have the same environment and expectations, are minimal on an individual basis, to see the difference it makes, I would expect a large swath of population of each gender having to be measured as a whole, in this way, otherwise unnoticeable differences can become more pronounced due to the scale of the observation.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-08, 07:41 PM
I find the way you word that could easily be said to insulting in itself. People are entitled to their opinions, whether it is sexist (I use this word neutrally here, not negatively) or not, and should not be abused for them.

Would that apply if they were racist instead? Or homophobic? Or thought that handicapped people were useless wastes of energy? Just where do you put the border between inoffensive and offensive?

I'm also quite curious as to how people can be sexist in a neutral way, given that the term means holds discriminatory views based on the sex of an individual.

Tengu_temp
2013-03-08, 07:44 PM
I find the way you word that could easily be said to insulting in itself. People are entitled to their opinions, whether it is sexist (I use this word neutrally here, not negatively) or not, and should not be abused for them.

What. No. That's not how being entitled to your opinion works. Some opinions are clearly wrong. Being sexist, racist or whatever-ist is wrong. Freedom of speech is no excuse for prejudice.

Robs
2013-03-08, 07:48 PM
Would that apply if they were racist instead? Or homophobic? Or thought that handicapped people were useless wastes of energy? Just where do you put the limit of what opinions people can say are offensive?

Anything can be offensive to a person (it is that persons choice); but racism and homophobia are indeed opinions people hold, as well as that handicapped people may indeed have fewer options than another person. All these are generally seen as offensive, as societal norms today dictate.

If you think someone has a grossly twisted and/or invalid opinion on the subject, do something about it, but unless they show you no respect in the voicing of their opinions, I see no reason why the other party cannot do the same, the voicing of a grossly different opinion does not constitute a lack of respect.

Tell them why they are wrong, or why they'd find more benefit in other opinions. Not tell them that they are wrong and then call them names and that they make you feel bad (or could make others feel bad), and therefore are bad people.


What. No. That's not how being entitled to your opinion works. Some opinions are clearly wrong. Being sexist, racist or whatever-ist is wrong. Freedom of speech is no excuse for prejudice.

Are there not differences on perspective to see if something is wrong or not? I seem to recall that as an old debate. I'm not saying it is not wrong. But being wrong is not an offense. And therefore does not deserve being offended upon in turn.

Worira
2013-03-08, 07:50 PM
Whether women do or do not have a difference in aggression on average isn't particularly relevant, because in general, "stabs monsters to death in the face with pointy metal things" is not, well, average.

EDIT: Oh wow dat above post. Yeah, uh, you guys can handle this.

Tengu_temp
2013-03-08, 07:53 PM
{Scrubbed}

hiryuu
2013-03-08, 07:56 PM
Men have higher testosterone levels*. Testosterone leads to aggression.

That is incorrect. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm)

Pink was once a manly color. Aggression, especially sexual aggression, was once believed to be a female-only trait (this actually ties directly into why witches were women more often than not and why doctors have a somewhat "kinky" reputation). Actually, the very idea of what was considered "manly" back in the day was elegance, refinement, a high, lilted voice, and a limp wrist.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Parik_kavalera_1710.jpg
Host of MANSWERS, 1735.

It's culturally biased thinking that leads us to think that specific colors, smells, behaviors, or clothing are more feminine or masculine than others; some cultures have completely different dress codes for men and women, and some cultures have more than two genders. Samoans have at least three. Some Mojave tribes had six. Incas had at least three. The Bugi in Indonesia have five (and recognize three sexes). In the scope of the world at large, the European gender binary is actually pretty weird.

The idea that one sex is more aggressive than another inherently is also culturally biased thinking; before you start picking up character traits and assembling them based on whether a character is male or female or man or woman or whatever, first try to figure out what that character's culture would think of those things, because your character would definitely be shaped by their own cultural biases.

That is, if you plan to make an issue of it. If you don't, then don't worry about it.

My own games tend to explore gender and cultural issues a lot, so these become important questions to me.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-08, 07:57 PM
{Scrubbed}

Robs
2013-03-08, 08:00 PM
{Scrubbed}

I think such displays have a tendency to degrade a proper discussion, and that's all I'm here for,

Peace.

meto30
2013-03-08, 08:00 PM
Well, to be fair, gender equality itself is not a universal concept. I live in Korea, and here women would find it insulting that someone would think females are equally prone to violent aggression as males (given all other factors are same).

I do believe gender equality holds true; I'd just like to point out that it still is an 'opinion' as according to the word's definition.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-08, 08:01 PM
People are entitled to their opinions, whether it is sexist (I use this word neutrally here, not negatively)
'neutrally', huh? Talk about a giant red flag.



Not that I'm saying your opinion isn't valid... but keep in mind it IS in fact, your opinion.
That opinion is a fact, actually, much like one can opine that the sky is blue. The fact of the matter is that it's making an assumption based on gender, and the assumption is ultimately rooted in sexist notions of women. It's sexist, period.



If you think someone has a grossly twisted and/or invalid opinion on the subject, do something about it, but unless they show you no respect in the voicing of their opinions, I see no reason why the other party cannot do the same, the voicing of a grossly different opinion does not constitute a lack of respect.

Voicing the opinion that I am less capable because my gender inherently makes me so is, in fact, the definition of not showing me respect.


The former sounds utterly boring, if I may speak my mind

That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence at your ability to ably pull off the conflict you find interesting.


But no... I don't have any deeper purpose than mere curiosity, but neither am I looking for any "arbitrary gender roles" either.

Well, gender roles are arbitrary. If you don't want arbitrary ones, you might as well just declare equality and be done with it.


Men have higher testosterone levels*. Testosterone leads to aggression.

That link is marginal, and indeed says nothing about individuals.

Robs
2013-03-08, 08:03 PM
So...If a group of neo-nazis very politely told you that they thought killing everybody not of non-Jewish Western European decent was the right and proper think to do, you think that you should politely stand aside or try to argue for the personal benefit of being more tolerant? After all, they're making a ideological, ethical statement, not a falsifiable statement and they were very polite about stating genocidal intentions. This is of course a hyperbolic example, but it illustrates the absurdity of your premise, as you essentially declare value judgements illegitimate, except for your absolute ban on rudeness. Nice hypocrisy by the way, making a value judgement saying that all value judgements are wrong.

I would say to that, intentions are something to go to war about. Someone who hates pink hair but serves pink haired people in their little shop regardless are nothing to worry about, as an example.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-08, 08:12 PM
I do believe gender equality holds true; I'd just like to point out that it still is an 'opinion' as according to the word's definition.

No, it's not. The medical side of thing is well within the realm of falsifiable science and based on what is currently scientific fact, differences outside the realm of reproduction and some gross physical traits, such as height, fat distribution and body hair, are minimal. This is no more a matter of opinion than gravity or the distribution of whales in the Pacific Ocean. Evidence of major psychological differences is similarly vanishingly small, while substantial evidence of similarity exists. And once again, it's not in the realm of opinion, but in the realm of scientific inquiry and what that has yielded so far is that there is no major difference. People disagreeing with that without substantial scientific evidence backing their position up are not expressing a legitimate difference in opinion, they're simply uninformed and factually wrong. Just like a person stating that the sky has tiger stripes or someone insisting that Burundi is in North America.

Similarly, beliefs about what degree of equality is desirable isn't strictly speaking a matter of opinion, but rather normative, ethical positions that people adopt. While similar to opinions, they are more strictly speaking part of the ethical framework that forms part of the backing for opinions and again, there is a logical structure allowing reasoned discussion of them and determining which positions are more valid based on different ethical premises and axioms.

So, no, it's not a matter of opinions and certainly not a matter of opinions that are created equally. An opinion founded on reasoning and coherent ethical thought will generally be more lucid than one formed without any real effort put into it. Similarly, this backing of forming logical arguments and constructing coherent frameworks for your ethics allows for reasoned discussion beyond just emphatically stating whatever you position you might have happened upon.

Robs
2013-03-08, 08:19 PM
I see that many people here have rather strong feelings on the subject.

I have a site for anyone interested:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

There are several tests, what they try and do is separate conscious opinions from unconscious ones. Aka, what you most likely really feel.

I am not sure how relevant they are to the direct discussion, but they should be useful to the spirit of it.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-08, 08:30 PM
I see that many people here have rather strong feelings on the subject.
I do in fact have strong feelings on the topic of my personhood and equality. Rather a common trait, yours just isn't being challenged.


There are several tests, what they try and do is separate conscious opinions from unconscious ones. Aka, what you most likely really feel.

Which would say nothing about inherent traits, because it can't seperate you from your cultural context.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-08, 08:33 PM
Human men, in general, are more prone to aggression. This is the reason males world-wide make up majority of criminals. The difference, however, only becomes apparent at the very end of the population bell curve - the average man and average woman are probably just as aggressive.

However, as pointed out, a female warrior is anything but average. She probably defies several general guidelines about the human condition - for example, the average woman has less upper body strenght than average man, but a trained warrior of either sex usually trumps the average man.

Once you move outside humanity, all of the above gets thrown out the window. For example, in case of Gnolls, it would be logical to assume that the females are bigger and badder, since that's how it is in hyenas, their inspiration.

Finally, invidual variance can defy a general rule. Training and upbringing can also skew a sample population's traits - just because averaged data from all of humanity suggests females are X and males are Y, doesn't mean things are necessarily so in Weirdo Culture XI.

Starbuck_II
2013-03-08, 08:46 PM
That is incorrect. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm)

Pink was once a manly color. Aggression, especially sexual aggression, was once believed to be a female-only trait (this actually ties directly into why witches were women more often than not and why doctors have a somewhat "kinky" reputation). Actually, the very idea of what was considered "manly" back in the day was elegance, refinement, a high, lilted voice, and a limp wrist.


Exactly, Estrogen is the difference. Men have less than Women so the only factor is testosterone in men. When women's estrogen drops, the effects of testosterone is shown on them (T is never affected by gender): develop masculine stuff (losing female).

Magenta
2013-03-08, 09:10 PM
This derailed quickly. I have no interest in quarreling so I will leave the thread, my aplogies to you who tried to engage in an actual dialogue.

Also, this can be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Robs
2013-03-08, 09:13 PM
So...If a group of neo-nazis very politely told you that they thought killing everybody not of non-Jewish Western European decent was the right and proper think to do, you think that you should politely stand aside or try to argue for the personal benefit of being more tolerant? After all, they're making a ideological, ethical statement, not a falsifiable statement and they were very polite about stating genocidal intentions. This is of course a hyperbolic example, but it illustrates the absurdity of your premise, as you essentially declare value judgements illegitimate, except for your absolute ban on rudeness. Nice hypocrisy by the way, making a value judgement saying that all value judgements are wrong.

Phew, okay. I've finally understood what you said here (My fault, not yours).

I am saying that within the context of an intellectual discussion, value judgements have no place, else the discussion fails from the start.
{Scrubbed}

To OP: My apologies.


This derailed quickly. I have no interest in quarreling so I will leave the thread, my aplogies to you who tried to engage in an actual dialogue.

Also, this can be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity


I am actually studying philosophy at the moment, and was introduced to that a week or two ago. It is the reason I posted.

Guizonde
2013-03-08, 09:54 PM
from personnal experience, i know two very martial people. one is a male ex-military (french special forces), while the other one is female who's grown up learning medieval martial arts.

between the two, i've had my butt handed to me on too many occasions to count. (i'm the perfect demonstration partner: i don't fight back, and i know how to fall)

the only difference i've perceived is that my male friend will usually use his upper body to throw me to the ground before locking me up, whereas my female friend will use knockdown attacks (charging, aiming for the legs...) before locking me up on the ground. i'd say it comes down to training, really.

regarding aggression, both actively hide their martial training and nature. it only came up when some idiot wanted a fight and i tried to calm them down that they both started limbering up. i asked them afterwards. it seems as if they're conditionned to inhibit violent behavior until it is the last and only course of action, preferring to walk away rather than "whoop righteous rear ends".

then again, both my friends can be considered warriors, rather than berserkers. i've got no info regarding street fighters or rumblers.

elliott20
2013-03-08, 10:43 PM
Here we go, that should wrap this whole thing up nicely (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0587.html)

I once played a female paladin who was the champion to the goddess of fertility. She was an incredibly hippy kind of woman, swinging between beating the tar out of enemies with her wooden quarter staff and then dancing naked in the full moon as a celebration for the Holiday of Renewal. (you can probably guess where that's going)

In combat, she's a professional warrior, and so her mental state was trained to be that first and nothing else. I did soften her personality a bit by tying her religious faith in with her desire for a family, but it was really a side plot in the grand scheme of things.

I never finished the campaign with her because her stats were actually very subpar. (this was actually a topic I brought up here, where she was not bad enough for a re-roll, but not good enough to be good at anything either) So in the end, after I got in over my head too many times, I had her settle down with one of the orphans she saved in an earlier adventure and basically become the child's adopted mother.

Probably the best ending she could have hoped for, all things considered.

Sergeantbrother
2013-03-09, 12:41 AM
Back to the topic at hand.

If you want to play a female warrior, don't listen to anybody else on this thread. Don't read about sociology or biological differences or influences of culture or anything like that.

Just play your woman warrior how you think she would be fun to play. If you want her to be a rage filled berserker, do it. If your her to be an evil sadistic assassin, do it. If you want her to be a peaceful protector who only uses violence to defend the innocent then do that instead. If you want to make her a highly stereotypically feminine woman who reluctantly turned to fighting for some higher purpose, then that is fine. If you want her to go out of her way to be masculine and prove herself as one of the guys, that is fine too.

It doesn't matter what the average woman is like, how different men and women are, or what real warrior women are like. You aren't playing the average woman, you are playing a fantasy warrior woman and the purpose is to have fun - so make her how ever you think is the most fun to play and then play her that way.

Cerlis
2013-03-09, 01:21 AM
Lot of flipping hate over someone who is just trying to get into the mind set of of his character. Every freaking feminists tells men "you dont know what its like", but when this guy tries to find out, WAM!

------------

In addition to one thing Frozen Feet (who continues to be a badass) said, that a very high percentage of Men who are in maxiumum security prison are actually "Super Men". These are Men born with two Y chromosomes. (there are also men who have two X chromosomes in addition to their Y).

So if two Y can easily lead to homocidal rage....one must seriously consider the impact of a 50% of that.

-----------

Probably not the best thing considering all the women in the game are beautiful and well shaped, but I thought Samurai Warriors 3 would be a good place to look.

Kai is depicted as being unhumanly strong and one of of the greatest warriors of the Hojo(in fact, the only playable character besides Hojo himself). Throughout her story mode she is seen to start out as very insecure about her abilities and about other people making fun of her for being stronger than a man.
Throughout her story mode , she is one of the only ones strong enough to ensure victory for her lord and later strong enough to protect her friends. By the end of the story mode she has accepted her "unusual skill at combat"* because it allows her to protect the people she cares about, even if she'd prefer to talk about pretty dresses with the girls.
*the way it mentions it, and considering the modern variety of women, i cant help but think that the girl in real life was a very masculine or well built (read, husky or muscular) woman, thus pushing her over the edge to try (and succeed) at weapons training, when most women in Feudal japan where expected to not get involved in that.

Ina, was the daughter of the Tokugawa's greatest warrior. She starts out very confident, but you can tell in her characterization that the main reason she tries so hard (and succeeds) is to make her father proud.

Ginchiyo Tachibana is a very fun character. She is strong and unyielding throughout her entire story mode (as opposed to growing into it like Kai). She is a true warrior and the fact that she is female is usually only commented on by other females in the game seeking to insult her, commending her for being a role model, or by the few misogonistic (maybe more than a few?) men in the game.

My favorite part with her is when Moto is using a metaphore to try to get teh Tachibana couple on his side
Moto: *Gives arrow to Mr. Tachibana to snap in two "One arrow is easily broken" *hands out 2 arrows together* "But two...."
Ginchiyo: Grabs both arrows and snaps them in half without any effort"....Can still be broken"

Leon
2013-03-09, 02:29 AM
Female or Male i tend to play my characters how i think they would act.
Sometimes this is heavily based off how i would react and other times what i can interperate from others and their actions.

My Current D&D PC is a Female Dwarf. Outside of combat she is a fairly normal easygoing person (with a slight sadistic streak). In combat she is a completely different beast (cos you know Druid...)



The wolverine has a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself.


Her Combat Form is a Wolverine so i act on that Ferocity and unwillingness to back down.

My previous PC in the last campaign was Male, completely apathetic to anyone outside of the adventuring party and solely interested in gathering as much knowledge as possible (he had started off as a Research Librarian before getting dragged into adventuring)

Mess with his friends however (or His pack as he still thought of them ~ lengthy time as a Were-wolf will do that) and he will break you.

The apathy most prominently came up when we were being hired to go rescues some fool from his doom. It became clear that there was some glamer going on and it was my PCs refusal to give a rats ass that broke it.


It broke down slightly into Rollplay but it was still in character

Dm: You want to help her
Me: No i dont
DM: Yes you do
Me: No i dont
DM: roll a will save
Me: nat 20 says i don't

Lorsa
2013-03-09, 03:14 AM
While the assumption that females are less aggressive than men would be sexist I find it is more offense and insulting to men, if anything. Being aggressive is not a desireable trait (or at least I certainly don't think so) and if your sex is being attributed a very good trait then that is a compliment.

Personally I believe aggression is more a matter of personality than hormones but I have little scientific fact that prove it. I also believe men and women are inherently rather similar and just about all difference we seem to think exist are there mostly due to upbringing and societal norms. There exist physical and physiological differences of course but if those affect personality in any observable way have yet to be proven (as far as I know).

RPGuru1331
2013-03-09, 04:51 AM
I am saying that within the context of an intellectual discussion, value judgements have no place, else the discussion fails from the start.
An argument on ethics or morality that can't make a values judgement is by definition noise.


If we are talking about someone calling you names(or wanting to kill all jews), then judge them bad and do something horrible to them. I certainly agree with that ;p

So what happens when someone makes an 'intellectual argument' about the same thing?


Also, this can be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
If the most persuasive argument I can ascribe to you is that you said nothing, the principle of charity will not help you. That ignores every other problem with it.


Being aggressive is not a desireable trait (or at least I certainly don't think so) and if your sex is being attributed a very good trait then that is a compliment.
In theory, that's true. Thing is, I often have heard silly justifications for things like the difference in pay between men and women justified as 'men are more aggressive in negotiation, so they get better deals'. It's not all good, but it's by no means all bad either.


Lot of flipping hate over someone who is just trying to get into the mind set of of his character. Every freaking feminists tells men "you dont know what its like", but when this guy tries to find out, WAM!

He seems to think he was asking entirely men this question, so even if your characterization were right, he'd be going about it entirely backwards. Also, what hate?

Spiryt
2013-03-09, 05:11 AM
Females and males of homo sapiens are definitely very different, from psychological, hormonal, neurological etc. perspectives.

But then there are 'extremes' on any scale, and both upbringing and many different factors come into play, that can produce very different results.

And then there's the fact that there are no statistical differences between sexes at all in most RPGs. So there's no reason to come up with more detailed ones when the're are no basic ones before.


Being aggressive is not a desireable trait (or at least I certainly don't think so) and if your sex is being attributed a very good trait then that is a compliment.

Being aggressive is vital to any sort of fighting and competition in general, though obviosuly it doesn't need (shouldn't in fact) always manifest itself in simple "I will $%%^@! you" form.

So while it's generally not very pleasant trait in human interactions, it's definitely desirable and necessary in other situations.

Like everything.

Lorsa
2013-03-09, 05:12 AM
In theory, that's true. Thing is, I often have heard silly justifications for things like the difference in pay between men and women justified as 'men are more aggressive in negotiation, so they get better deals'. It's not all good, but it's by no means all bad either.

Wow, I don't know what to say that except it's incredibly stupid. I can't believe someone would be serious of such a thing even less live by it. I myself would be living proof that is simply not true. Personally I despise all kinds of aggression, physical or social alike. It has no place in society so if women are indeed less aggressive I can only say "Hurray for women!" and if someone would use it as a reason to shaft an individual on pay then maybe it's time to prove them wrong and show them some physical aggression.

Endorsing aggressive behavior... what sort of world does these people want? :smallannoyed:

Cerlis
2013-03-09, 06:36 AM
He seems to think he was asking entirely men this question, so even if your characterization were right, he'd be going about it entirely backwards. Also, what hate?

I went back to the original post and read everything , and everything sounded like a man who isnt a woman asking -everyone- about every aspect of difference and SIMULARITY when it comes to nature, psychology and history of men vs women when it comes to aggression, combat, and war. In fact a lot of the questions sounded like something aimed to women as well as historians and psychologists. This definately wasn't some guy coming here saying "I'm playing a chick next game, but the ironic thing is she is a fighter. So do i just always act like i'm on my menzies."

and maybe it was the 1 or 2 comments that seemed to basically said "the notion behind this post is wrong and offensive" as well as the half-plus mage of what seemed to be various passive aggressive comments about other people being wrong, that made me think the thread might get locked before i finished my post.

its hard for me to go back and look it over and figure out exactly what i was thinking during my first post. But I stick by it considering the fact that 2 people (Rob and the OP i believe) thought it was a good idea idea to just leave this thread.

But by now my post probably isn't being helpful so i guess i'll go ahead and hit Reply and leave it at that for the moment.



------------------------------------


Endorsing aggressive behavior... what sort of world does these people want?

v



In theory, that's true. Thing is, I often have heard silly justifications for things like the difference in pay between men and women justified as 'men are more aggressive in negotiation, so they get better deals'.

In other words the "world" they "want" is one in which their coworkers help them succeed, close deals, win cases, and get money (which is the whole point of having a business)
You can fault someone for thinking that aggressive workers get more work done, and you can fault someone for thinking that men will get stuff done better than women, but you CAN'T fault a man for putting someone he thinks will do the job better at the for-front or paying them more.

My point being, i think you are getting mad at the wrong thing

thethird
2013-03-09, 06:53 AM
Whenever I try o roleplay a character I try to keep in mind that I am roleplaying one character.

By that I mean, that perhaps women are less aggressive than men, or perhaps men are just dumber, or whatever. But that is not related to what I am roleplaying, I am not roleplaying a Male Dancer I am roleplaying "Victor Vladstoff, the Magnificent Bastard" and although he is a man he doesn't think with his sexual organ and thus his gender is irrelevant to the roleplay. What I care about is his background, abilities and story. If I roleplay "Mirtel the Brave, savior of Preeg" still I am not roleplaying her as moved by her sexual organs, so again, her gender is not going to define her.

If I play a male or female character that actively uses its gender or sexual identity most often than not is using it as a tool, and then that character is okay with that, regardless of how other characters or npcs feel about it.

---

On females being less aggressive than males, personally I would say that generalization is a bad thing. I've been a Judo trainer for some years, and most of the time, females have been motivated by that stereotype, like they have to prove something, and been seriously aggressive (at least more aggressive than most males I know in the same situation). Still I wouldn't advocate that generally any one gender is more aggressive that any other.

GnomeGninjas
2013-03-09, 07:31 AM
Firstly, we are talking about the same thing here, right? Aggression is not the same as capability in combat. When you are aggressive you are more inclined to violence, it does not mean that you are better at it.

When in a fight, the larger and more aggressive person will usually win. Training and weapons make things more even but size and aggression are still important when determining who has better chances of winning the fight (the obvious exception is if the less aggressive participant is trained in Judo or similar martial art). This is why boxers often manage punch out blackbelts even though the blackbelt is better trained. Aggression is not the same as capability in combat though they are very closely related.

Worira
2013-03-09, 08:12 AM
Well, no, that's because the boxer is better-trained. "Better" isn't the same thing as "longer", and if you're training in a way that doesn't involve how to actually apply your skills to a resisting foe, it's not really going to matter how long you've been doing it when you're up against someone coming in swinging like they mean it.

Emmit Svenson
2013-03-09, 08:24 AM
There are differences in the abilities and personalities of the average man and woman. This shouldn't make any difference in how you choose to portray your character, however, because individuals vary far more than the difference between averages. The average woman might be slightly less skilled at spacial relations than the average man, for whatever cultural or biological reasons, but female topologists and basketballers have amazing spacial relation skills.

Make your character an individual. Whatever her skills and personality, it's quite possible within the range of human variation.

Ashtagon
2013-03-09, 10:08 AM
I see that many people here have rather strong feelings on the subject.

I have a site for anyone interested:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

There are several tests, what they try and do is separate conscious opinions from unconscious ones. Aka, what you most likely really feel.

I am not sure how relevant they are to the direct discussion, but they should be useful to the spirit of it.

All it proved was that I consistently get slower responses on the second half of each test. Boredom fatigue seems a more probable explanation.

nyarlathotep
2013-03-09, 01:46 PM
When in a fight, the larger and more aggressive person will usually win. Training and weapons make things more even but size and aggression are still important when determining who has better chances of winning the fight (the obvious exception is if the less aggressive participant is trained in Judo or similar martial art). This is why boxers often manage punch out blackbelts even though the blackbelt is better trained. Aggression is not the same as capability in combat though they are very closely related.

Size is only more important than training if both participants are unarmed, and aggression never really plays into it unless one participant is too passive to be willing to kill someone. The most important thing in most wars historically has been quality of equipment, followed by numbers, followed by training, with physical size coming in dead last.

Poison_Fish
2013-03-09, 02:36 PM
In other words the "world" they "want" is one in which their coworkers help them succeed, close deals, win cases, and get money (which is the whole point of having a business)
You can fault someone for thinking that aggressive workers get more work done, and you can fault someone for thinking that men will get stuff done better than women, but you CAN'T fault a man for putting someone he thinks will do the job better at the for-front or paying them more.

My point being, i think you are getting mad at the wrong thing

Actually, since you left the justification completely open there based on subjective values of the employer, you can fault an employer for having preference based on sexist notions, legally.

Which ties back to the whole cultural justifications for divisions of labor, even though the narratives they make aren't really true/objective (Such as being "better" negotiators).

Which I'll tie back to character making here. Look for a pattern in behavior you want first for your character, since you are playing but one individual in a sea of NPC's and a few PC's. Characterization at it's core should not be determined solely by gender (A mistake much media has made). While it could be cool to include how gender affects things, that's really only going to apply well if there is a well thought out gaming world that your character is going to be in that addresses it in the first place. Absent of that, it's very easy to just end up with characters built on misunderstanding and gender-only character traits (and all the implications of that). I'm sort of repeating Terra's points here from the start of the thread, but it is easier to just declare gender equality and then have non-gender based characterization. At the very least, remember that you are playing a person and that what defines them should not just be their gender, nor should that be the primary defining factor.


Size is only more important than training if both participants are unarmed, and aggression never really plays into it unless one participant is too passive to be willing to kill someone. The most important thing in most wars historically has been quality of equipment, followed by numbers, followed by training, with physical size coming in dead last

I'm not sure I'd order it that way per say (I've usually put technology as a modifier to success, rather then a descending order), but basically this. It's not aggression that was trained for the longest time in organized military groups (which have had more success rate then disorganized, obviously), it was discipline. "Aggression" in an individual was not sought after.

MukkTB
2013-03-09, 03:32 PM
Men and women are different. Without making value judgements, there are differences in brain structure and chemistry. However individual variation is going to have a significant impact. It gets so complicated and prone to value judgement that trying to delve into it is mostly just going to piss people off without producing any real useful information, at least in a tabletop game setting.

On the other hand cultural norms are not going to be offensive. In this culture women are encouraged to care about the preparation of food. Women show affection by tending wounds ect. A fantasy culture can be as backward and misogynist or as misandric as you want. The players will just write them off as a bunch of *****. Not as bad as the people who sacrifice virgins on top of the pyramids, but definitely worse than those guys who make you take your shoes off before coming inside. As long as the DM doesn't sell a really sexist culture as a beacon of good in the world then theres no bad. I would recommend against universal misogyny or misandry. If everyone everywhere in the game feels that way it becomes uncomfortably as if the DM were projecting.

If you take that from a players perspective, you should ask the DM about gender norms of the culture you selected. Then you should decide how your character accepts or rejects specific gender roles.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-09, 03:33 PM
Endorsing aggressive behavior... what sort of world does these people want? :smallannoyed:

*Shrugs* That's not the only place. It's also often excused when it's expressed in low levels of violence like brawling or bullying, particularly in young boys. The way we raise people in general is often very strange.


I went back to the original post and read everything , and everything sounded like a man who isnt a woman asking -everyone- about every aspect of difference and SIMULARITY when it comes to nature, psychology and history of men vs women when it comes to aggression, combat, and war.
It sounded more like someone asking how one roleplays these strange creatures to people who also find them unusual, and there were incidentally people with actual personal experience around.


and maybe it was the 1 or 2 comments that seemed to basically said "the notion behind this post is wrong and offensive" as well as the half-plus mage of what seemed to be various passive aggressive comments about other people being wrong, that made me think the thread might get locked before i finished my post.

So any criticism is hate, then?


In other words the "world" they "want" is one in which their coworkers help them succeed, close deals, win cases, and get money (which is the whole point of having a business)

That doesn't just apply to salespeople and lawyers. And aggressive people don't, by default, help you succeed anywhere else either, or even in those positions - lawyers, in particular, don't generally need to be aggressive except in a very small minority of lawyers - the ones who actually fight in court (and not even all of them - a prosecutor is much better off professionally if they carefully weight their cases rather than pursue the biggest plausible conviction they can get). It can be preferable to have a dealmaker than a fighter in a lot of legal situations (especially for the kinds of lawyers that are most common), because neither case is super great and you're better off settling.

Regarding sales, aggressive salespeople can push consumers away just as easily as they close deals. And you know, in everything else, sometimes you need people who will actually work with your other coworkers, rather than competing with them.


You can fault someone for thinking that aggressive workers get more work done, and you can fault someone for thinking that men will get stuff done better than women, but you CAN'T fault a man for putting someone he thinks will do the job better at the for-front or paying them more.

Yeah actually, I can, if he only thinks that someone is going to do a better job due to sexist notions of competence. It's pretty easy, actually, because that is a wrong reason to hire someone over someone else.

Same I can fault people for never actually thinking of women as something other than white mages and healer clerics, perhaps an occasional mage, but not as a tank, ever. Not nearly so big a deal, but still something of a problem.


My point being, i think you are getting mad at the wrong thing

Don't care, given what you just threw out there. Not even mad, but it doesn't change that I don't care.


Men and women are different. Without making value judgements, there are differences in brain structure and chemistry. However individual variation is going to have a significant impact
In point of fact, individual variance is a larger factor than the difference in averages. Bimodal distribution tends to do that.

JusticeZero
2013-03-09, 03:46 PM
This is why boxers often manage punch out blackbelts even though the blackbelt is better trained.
Boxing is a traditional martial art, and has a strong focus on keeping fighters in high physical condition. It isn't surprising when one martial artist who is in good physical shape defeats another martial artist who often isn't so much in fighting trim.

In theory, that's true. Thing is, I often have heard silly justifications for things like the difference in pay between men and women justified as 'men are more aggressive in negotiation, so they get better deals'. It's not all good, but it's by no means all bad either.
..if women are indeed less aggressive I can only say "Hurray for women!" and if someone would use it as a reason to shaft an individual on pay then maybe it's time to prove them wrong and show them some physical aggression. Endorsing aggressive behavior... what sort of world does these people want? :smallannoyed:

I've seen that one, and it came down to an cultural skill or lack thereof; men were socialized to negotiate for higher pay, and did so; women, having only relatively recently had the openings they have today, had not received such socialization, so they did one of three things: not negotiate (resulting in lower pay), try to copy males (which apparently came across oddly, and resulted in lower pay), or negotiate in a culturally feminine fashion, which worked with some strategies and not with others. The result was a set of "These are the strategies that seemed to work best" list of typically feminine negotiation strategies that apparently worked to get the women using them the appropriate pay.

Nonetheless, my interpretation was that it was entirely cultural and also a good pragmatic guide for ways for women to teach the working strategies to other women to do the same negotiations that men were doing successfully (having been taught to do so by longstanding cultural traditions). In practice, after all, most such inequalities are actually very complicated and layered things that in all fairness the people involved are generally trying not to reproduce (regardless of their actual ability to do so successfully).

In any case, the key here is culture. Reflect on the culture that the character comes from. They will have a lot of facets of behavior, for which they can either follow the cultural ideals or reject the cultural ideals. (or do nothing because that thing is not addressed by the cultural image.) Put together a set of these ideas that fits what you want your character to be like, and reflect briefly on how people will respond to that. Not as "People" in the abstract incorporated sense, but in terms of thinking of a few individuals that they might deal with. People worldwide have been selectively defying the stereotypes for thousands of years. Then give a bit of thought to why or how, and how to respond to the reactions. That's the same process that any character deserves, really.

Xzeno
2013-03-09, 08:24 PM
I am saying that within the context of an intellectual discussion, value judgements have no place, else the discussion fails from the start.


Moral philosophy is actually a valid field of study, so that isn't true. Something being an opinion and something being subjective do not mean it does not warrant discussion. Not all opinions are created equal. Opinions can be wrong, although moral philosophy is not really a case where they would be. However, opinions can be better or worse than one another.

Making value judgements is an important aspect of critical thinking. Saying sexism is wrong is not someone's baseless opinion, it is a well thought out philosophical point of view. Value judgements define moral philosophy. All political philosophy is a subset of moral philosophy. Many, maybe even most, opinions worth discussing are driven by one or the other.

Normative judgements aren't the bane of philosophy or intellectual discussion. They're usually its only valuable basis.

As for the topic at hand, as well as the asides that I perhaps selfishly perpetuated, really, I'd like to throw my lot in with Terraoblivion and Tengu. As others have mentioned, the female warrior's personality should not be dictated by her gender, but rather her individual personality. What differences might seem to stem from her sex are the result of social factors. While we may observe a few natural differences, they are both fewer and less extreme than people tend to realize. For the most part, society determines gender roles, but beyond that, the mind knows no sex.

The female warrior as an exploration of gender roles is fine by me. The female warrior as a reinforcement of gender roles really isn't. Based on the opening post and a few subsequent comments, it seems that the notion of the female warrior as presented in this thread is implicitly the latter, perhaps by accident.

Here's where I'd include my own anecdotes about playing (or writing, as I usually DM) female warriors, but I feel that's beyond the scope of this comment. I'll just peace out and casually mention that Terraoblivion's posts were more specific to the needs of the thread than mine and should be considered, and also that The Second Sex is a pretty good read.

Synovia
2013-03-09, 09:38 PM
That is incorrect. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm)

Pink was once a manly color. Aggression, especially sexual aggression, was once believed to be a female-only trait (this actually ties directly into why witches were women more often than not and why doctors have a somewhat "kinky" reputation). Actually, the very idea of what was considered "manly" back in the day was elegance, refinement, a high, lilted voice, and a limp wrist.

I never said any of the things you're arguing against. What I said was :

"Men have higher testosterone levels. Testosterone leads to aggression."

Which is absolutely, unequivocably true. People with higher testosterone levels are more likely to commit violent crime. People who artificially increase their testosterone levels are more likely to commit violent crime. This has been studied. It holds true in pretty much every mammal species. Its one of the reasons we neuter most male dogs/bulls/male goats/etc. This is unarguable fact.

Men, on average, have more testosterone than women. Yes, there are violent women, and yes, there are women with high testosterone levels (and those are the people we're modeling as female fighters in an RPG). But on average, men will have higher levels, and at the tails of the distribution, men will have higher levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone

Coidzor
2013-03-09, 10:27 PM
Assuming a difference in physical prowess, more vicious and more liable to engage in pragmatic fighting rather than showboating. Granted, most of the warriors I've played have been either gishes or skillmonkey fighters so part of it is with associating those fighting styles with the character roles more than the gender itself.

If they're basically the same as their male equivalents than, eh, their performance as warriors is essentially guy with boobs because they're as liable to showboat or fight dirty or show aggression as any other warrior.

I admit that I've probably been colored by hearing comments about the nasty fighting styles that female cops develop.

ArcturusV
2013-03-09, 10:38 PM
Well.... it shouldn't really be a problem how you play them as long as two things don't occur. 1) You mess with other PCs. 2) You try to state absolutes, like "Well obviously all women are...". That's honestly where I see the problems with a lot of situations like this. When someone either decides something like their hypersexual character is going to go around molesting other PCs, or when they try to defend their behavior by saying, "Well obviously I'm _____, I'm playing a ______." Long as you avoid things like that, and actually play a character who can grow and change based on actions and reactions, instead of being locked into any one mode, it shouldn't be a problem.

Fiery Diamond
2013-03-09, 11:06 PM
I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said. However, I'd just like to say kudos to Terraoblivion and RPGuru1331 especially for making all the points that I would have if they hadn't. Also for making them with less vitriol than I would have. Sexism makes me angry.

hiryuu
2013-03-10, 12:56 AM
I never said any of the things you're arguing against. What I said was :

"Men have higher testosterone levels. Testosterone leads to aggression."

Which I pointed out turns out not to be the case in more recent studies. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm)


Which is absolutely, unequivocably true. People with higher testosterone levels are more likely to commit violent crime. People who artificially increase their testosterone levels are more likely to commit violent crime. This has been studied. It holds true in pretty much every mammal species. Its one of the reasons we neuter most male dogs/bulls/male goats/etc. This is unarguable fact.

It is a perfectly arguable fact, considering that the most recent tests do not bear this out, and that increasing testosterone levels appears to actually promote teaming behavior, not aggressive behavior. In fact, as it turns out, telling people they were getting testosterone increases while they were in reality getting the placebo made them aggressive. Our belief that testosterone causes violent, aggressive behavior is most likely entirely cultural.

SowZ
2013-03-10, 02:27 AM
I've only read the first few responses and skimmed a bit, but I've seen a lot of people jumping on the OP when he asked about exploring the possibilities of different attitudes from male and female warriors. Men, typically, are more aggressive than women. In most mammalian species, the male is physically stronger and more territorial.

Now, personally, I think this would simply mean that Women would become warriors less often. But of the women who do become warriors, I imagine those are women who have more aggressive traits that lead them to a less common career choice. So they probably aren't less aggressive than their male colleagues.

BUT you shouldn't attack the guy for asking. It is a perfectly reasonable question, and worth exploring, even if we come to the conclusion that the OPs hypothesis is wrong. Shutting down the hypothesis because it doesn't sound politically correct means we won't learn. It also means we won't be as capable of coming up with as good of counter-arguments against the more conservative view, since fair engagement provides the best arguments.

I certainly think there is a very good place for PCness and try to be it myself, but it isn't an excuse to shut down exploration of ideas. While the more conservative gender roles idea may seem more close-minded, if someone isn't open to reasonably discuss the issue than they are being close-minded. The genders of brains are even wired for different things. Most scientists who study the brain will admit that men have a predisposition to learn spatial thinking faster whereas most women have a better predisposition towards multi-tasking and sharp memory.

hamishspence
2013-03-10, 02:52 AM
Most mammalian species- but not all. The size disparity between males and females in humans, is far smaller than in several other apes.

SowZ
2013-03-10, 03:45 AM
Most mammalian species- but not all. The size disparity between males and females in humans, is far smaller than in several other apes.

Sure, but human males still have about 60% more upper body strength and 30% more lower body strength than women. And we learn about animals genders primarily through observation, so it is fair to do the same on humans. Men are more likely to get in fights and go to war all across the world. As far as I know, there isn't a single credible archeological example of an 'amazon' culture where women are regarded as warriors on the same level of men.

This isn't to say women can't be warriors on the same level. Certainly, this sort of data doesn't apply to the individual at all. This isn't to say it is genetic, either. It could be cultural. But if it is cultural, it is something pretty much every human civilization has shared. Meaning it is something prominent in cultural evolution, which is just as valid a predictor of human behavior as genetics.

Pointing out differences in men and women throughout history and in modern culture shouldn't be considered wrong. We don't need to pin point if it is inherent or learned, but there have been differences. I'm not passing a judgement either way, I'm not saying it is good or bad. I am not at all trying to encourage people to fit into gender roles. I am not saying that how humans have behaved in the past means that humans should or will behave that way in the future. Things are always changing.

And for my part, no, I don't think a female warrior would have any reason to be less aggressive than a male one. But I think it is a valid question, and it isn't sexist to say that in general, women have been less violent than men.

Fenix_of_Doom
2013-03-10, 07:30 AM
snip

I would just like to state that I completly agree with this poster. That doesn't happen often.

Ashtagon
2013-03-10, 07:50 AM
Sure, but human males still have about 60% more upper body strength and 30% more lower body strength than women. And we learn about animals genders primarily through observation, so it is fair to do the same on humans. Men are more likely to get in fights and go to war all across the world. As far as I know, there isn't a single credible archeological example of an 'amazon' culture where women are regarded as warriors on the same level of men.

There's not a single credible archeological example of a culture in which magic is used routinely. Which straight-away tells me that history probably isn't the best resource to be used for examining what the expected differences would be in a fantasy culture.

As others have pointed out repeatedly, yes, average men are larger, stronger, faster, etc, than average women. Equally true, warrior women will beat civilian men without a challenge, and average men will not even approach Olympic record women in athletics.

Any woman (or man) worthy of the title "warrior" is so far removed from the average that trying to use ordinary men and women to judge what they are like is like trying to judge the flavour of an orange by eating a kiwi fruit.

About the only consistent rule that can be applied is that woman warriors are more likely to be underestimated in terms of fighting ability, and the player should probably try to formulate how they will react to that. Some women might develop a militant kind of feminist attitude, some may play up the weak appearance in order to get foes off guard, some might enjoy presenting as a girly but visibility dangerous person.

Hyena
2013-03-10, 08:55 AM
A person appears and in his first post ever makes a question about a controversial topic? Seems legit.

Themrys
2013-03-10, 09:20 AM
The idea that a female warrior would be less physically aggressive than a male warrior, just by virtue of being female, is ridiculously sexist and insulting. My female co-players would probably beat the crap out of me if I came up with it.

This.

I would certainly like to beat the crap out of men who say sexist things. And while anger cannot be measured, I am quite sure that proves I can get just as angry as any man.

Hormones are not yet fully understood by science. The same amount of testosterone may, for example, cause a lot more aggression in women than it does in men. The sudden change of hormone levels has more of an effect than the absolute amount.
Also, hormone levels only account for the probability that someone gets angry for no reason.

If someone says enough sexist crap, I can go from perfectly happy and peaceful to very, very angry in a few minutes. I doubt that my testosterone levels change in such a case; it's rather the adrenaline that goes up.

@Ashtagon: Actually, in my favourite Pen&Paper roleplaying game, women and men are equal in most countries - or at least the developers removed most of the obvious sexism. Which means that I can play a female warrior without having to worry about being underestimated.
It makes playing a lot more fun.

Ashtagon
2013-03-10, 09:41 AM
This.

I would certainly like to beat the crap out of men who say sexist things. And while anger cannot be measured, I am quite sure that proves I can get just as angry as any man.

Hormones are not yet fully understood by science. The same amount of testosterone may, for example, cause a lot more aggression in women than it does in men. The sudden change of hormone levels has more of an effect than the absolute amount.

That much testosterone in a woman is more likely to give her a rather large amount of facial and body hair and a rather manly voice before it makes them crazy aggressive.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 11:51 AM
To everyone saying "so and so is not a fully understood science, yadda yadda".

There are myriad of differences between males and females of human species that are understood perfectly well. Some of them are not mentioned much, because they are so god damn obvious there rarely is a need, while some are not mentioned because they run counter to what is politically or culturally correct.

For example, the common counter-argument to "males and females are different in X regard" is "culture Y disagrees, so it must be a cultural thing", but what the counter-argument rarely examines is whether the cultural perception ever matched to reality. There are and have been cultures that thought babies are first conveived in a man's brain, but we know in light of modern biology that this is false.

The truth is, several behaviours and traits have existed regardless of culture, and some cultures have had more accurate picture of reality than others. Many western societies get more flack for their cultural conceptions than is actually fair, because just because some other cultures differ doesn't mean those cultures were more correct, or any better in any other sense.

I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but I can't stress it enough: opinions are not equal.

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 12:17 PM
There's also the cultural formation that males tend to go to war to build up the social capital in face, etc. to make themselves more attractive for women. Hypergamy can be an issue for woman warriors as well; women marry up in most cultures, and if you're already the toughest person around and a rich adventurer, pickings can be slim.

Lorsa
2013-03-10, 12:48 PM
There are myriad of differences between males and females of human species that are understood perfectly well. Some of them are not mentioned much, because they are so god damn obvious there rarely is a need, while some are not mentioned because they run counter to what is politically or culturally correct.

Physical and physiological differences yes. Psychological differences are not understood perfectly well however and I believe those are the ones of interest to this thread?

I guess this all depends on what we mean by opinion. Personally it is my opinion that anything that can be disproven by a scientific method is not an opinion but more a belief (which can be true or false). Opinions I tend to think, are subjective in nature and thus they are all equal. You don't have an opinion that men and women are equal in everything, you might believe they are (and can then search for facts to disprove your hypothesis). You might however be of the opinion that men are prettier than women, something that could never be disproven as it's your subjective truth.

In that context, all opinions ARE equal, but then again this distinction is just my opinion anyway...



And in answer to an earlier reply to my previous post (I don't want to search for it right now) I have given it some thought and I can fault someone for giving higher pay to aggressive people even if that means greater result. I suppose this all depends on what we mean by aggressive, but it is my opinion that aggressiveness of any sort (including in social situations) is morally wrong and achieving results in such ways is not the right thing to do. How you accomplish something is as important as what you accomplish. Also, strong emphasis on aggressive behavior will I believe only lead to further aggressive behavior as reaction and thus this breeds a climate where people NEED to be aggressive in deals in order to get them done. There are ways to achieve results in negotiations without being aggressive of such nature that if it became the norm it is my belief the world would be a nicer place to live in.

The bully tactic only works because we let it, and it just breeds more and more bullies and tons of hurt individuals follows in its wake.

I think aggressive behavior has mostly to do with people not learning restraint. In westen culture, boys are encourage to be aggressive, or at the very least not discouraged at an early age so it is no surprise they turn out to have low restraint threshold.

SowZ
2013-03-10, 02:09 PM
There's not a single credible archeological example of a culture in which magic is used routinely. Which straight-away tells me that history probably isn't the best resource to be used for examining what the expected differences would be in a fantasy culture.

As others have pointed out repeatedly, yes, average men are larger, stronger, faster, etc, than average women. Equally true, warrior women will beat civilian men without a challenge, and average men will not even approach Olympic record women in athletics.

Any woman (or man) worthy of the title "warrior" is so far removed from the average that trying to use ordinary men and women to judge what they are like is like trying to judge the flavour of an orange by eating a kiwi fruit.

About the only consistent rule that can be applied is that woman warriors are more likely to be underestimated in terms of fighting ability, and the player should probably try to formulate how they will react to that. Some women might develop a militant kind of feminist attitude, some may play up the weak appearance in order to get foes off guard, some might enjoy presenting as a girly but visibility dangerous person.

The magic argument is used often, but doesn't really work. It is a redirection from the actual discussion. "Would a woman warrior be less aggressive than a male one?" That's the question. "Well, it doesn't matter, because D&D has magic so real psychology doesn't apply." isn't really an answer. In writing, you can make BIG lies, (say dragons exist and gravity doesn't work on tuesdays,) but not small ones. Some people defend plot holes in fantasy novels and say, "That isn't really a plot hole because it isn't as tough a sell as people casting fireballs." But that isn't a real defense of the plot hole.

Anyway, hey, I agree with you, mostly. I am not trying to argue that a female warrior would be less aggressive. I am just trying to argue that it is a fair question to ask. If we don't allow those types of questions, we stop learning. Shoot, if it wasn't for those kinds of questions, we'd still believe that men are smarter than women because it used to be that suggesting women were as intelligent as men wouldn't be politically correct.

But if you took ten random men and ten random women and threw them into a Hunger Games type scenario, I think the men would most likely fit a little better into the aggressive demands of such a scenario than the women. Whether it is because men are more wired for conflict, (men are built for it more physically, why not mentally?) or because society demands masculinity and aggression, (I'd be perfectly willing to accept it is cultural, too, if the evidence suggested it,) odds are men would fall into the attacker role more easily.

This isn't to say the women wouldn't defend themselves or push themselves to attack out of a will to survive, though they would be at a physical disadvantage. And it isn't to say a couple of the women wouldn't be really tough ladies that happen to be as aggressive or even moreso than most of the men. They totally could be.

The point is that while warrior women might be just as aggressive as the warrior men, that might be because the warrior woman is an outlier. The average, non-warrior man is probably going to be more aggressive than the average, non-warrior woman.


I would just like to state that I completlt agree with this poster. That doesn't happen often.

You rarely agree with everything in a debate in general? Or you rarely agree with me? :P

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 03:12 PM
The magic argument is used often, but doesn't really work. It is a redirection from the actual discussion. "Would a woman warrior be less aggressive than a male one?" That's the question. "Well, it doesn't matter, because D&D has magic so real psychology doesn't apply." isn't really an answer. In writing, you can make BIG lies, (say dragons exist and gravity doesn't work on tuesdays,) but not small ones. Some people defend plot holes in fantasy novels and say, "That isn't really a plot hole because it isn't as tough a sell as people casting fireballs." But that isn't a real defense of the plot hole.

However, it is part of the larger point of D&D, and most fantasy really, being hugely unrealistic anyway. In general the political system is some kind of feudalism, except with absolutist kings who lack a bureaucratic system to support them and peasants are just kinda there and seem mostly self-governed. How such a system would work I don't have the slightest clue of, because it really makes no sense and seems like a mash-up of at least three separate legal systems. Compounding things further, trade seems to be a vague force that happens in cities and occasionally reach villages when needed, with little thought given to economic support for it or why various products are bought and sold. Similarly, a group of adventurers dumping the annual income of hundred of thousands of commoners on the market never seems to cause inflation, economic destabilization or political turmoil.

These are huge problems for any kind of desire for realism in settings, yet few people demanding realism seem to care about them and instead make enforcing slight differences in averages between genders the hill where they make their stand. Why not focus on the much larger, better documented structural issues instead? Except of course for unrealized sexism. Especially since they tend to also exaggerate the differences to cartoonish degrees and write people like Elizabeth I, Zenobia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenobia) or La Maupin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Maupin) out of history, along with female artisans and merchants.


But if you took ten random men and ten random women and threw them into a Hunger Games type scenario, I think the men would most likely fit a little better into the aggressive demands of such a scenario than the women. Whether it is because men are more wired for conflict, (men are built for it more physically, why not mentally?) or because society demands masculinity and aggression, (I'd be perfectly willing to accept it is cultural, too, if the evidence suggested it,) odds are men would fall into the attacker role more easily.

How exactly does being very aggressive help you in that scenario? Ruthlessness, discipline, fortitude and intelligence seem far more useful in a scenario of brutal survival and killing or being killed and last I checked those were never considered gendered. And that's besides the point that increased male aggression in humans has somewhat iffy documentation to begin with.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 03:30 PM
I've yet to meet the person who could explain why subjectivity means equality. The whole concept reeks of logical fallacy.

No matter what two opinions you are comparing, you can always analyze logicality of the subjective framework that lead to the opinion, as well as what consequences following that opinion has. Hence, you have always at least two criteria to rank opinions by. Only in the most trivial of issues will the difference be so minor as to be irrelevant, and irrelevance is not the same as equality.

Also, separating "opinion" from "belief" is mere semantic trick. In practice, the only two things preventing treating opinions as hypotheses are time and resources.

The separating point between "belief"/"opinion" and fact is that beliefs/opinions can be value judgements, while facts are not. Invoking subjectivity of the former usually adds nothing to a discussion.

As for clear-cut differences between male and female psychology, one only needs to look at pregnancy and the associated hilarity. Males never experience, for example, postpartum depression in the same sense as females, due to the simple fact that men can't give birth. That is not very relevant to the discussion though. I'd just like people to remember that just because psychology is not as hard science as mechanics, doesn't mean it's witchcraft.

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 03:38 PM
How exactly does being very aggressive help you in that scenario? Ruthlessness, discipline, fortitude and intelligence seem far more useful in a scenario of brutal survival and killing or being killed and last I checked those were never considered gendered. And that's besides the point that increased male aggression in humans has somewhat iffy documentation to begin with.

Ruthlessness fortitude etc. are generally connected with aggression at least under most definitions - of aggression being drive to compete, confront, establishing dominance over others etc.

This however can indeed quickly get clogged by arguing differences between aggression and "combat" "conflict" etc. in general.

In such case, I don't think that's really debatable that human males were always more inclined for 'brutal survival' or being 'killed last', obviously, women usually survived by being taken alive during all kinds of raids or whatever.

Female warriors were always and universally exceptions and fascinating legends throughout whole recorded history.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 03:44 PM
As for clear-cut differences between male and female psychology, one only needs to look at pregnancy and the associated hilarity. Males never experience, for example, postpartum depression in the same sense as females
Some Trans men do. Very top of my head.



due to the simple fact that men can't give birth.
Some trans men can.


I'd just like people to remember that just because psychology is not as hard science as mechanics, doesn't mean it's witchcraft.
No, but the stuff that tends to talk about BIOTRUTH GENDER DIFFERENCES tends to be the witchcraft, not the science (also, mechanics isn't a science, it's at best applied physics. What you mean is physics)


Ruthlessness fortitude etc. are generally connected with aggression at least under most definitions - of aggression being drive to compete, confront, establishing dominance over others etc.

Um, no. Ruthlessness and fortitude are usually their own thing, and proper ruthlessness requires too much control to really be considered 'aggressive'. You are seriously reaching.


Female warriors were always and universally exceptions and fascinating legends throughout whole recorded history.

Pre-feudal Japan, norse Scandinavia, a number of african tribes, and possibly gaulic Germans, off the very top of my head. Women frequently fight in modern day africa and in modern armies (in modern armies, they fight at the front and don't get recognition for it), and they protected the supply trains in some of the fiercest fighting in the medieval era (also siege defenders, hospitalliers and templars...). Commonplace, frankly, just unrecognized.

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 03:51 PM
Some Trans men do. Very top of my head.



Some trans men can.


Trans men giving birth requires so many medical interventions and operations that it cannot be in any way used as an example of natural differences between men and women.



Um, no. Ruthlessness and fortitude are usually their own thing, and proper ruthlessness requires too much control to really be considered 'aggressive'. You are seriously reaching, and it's sad.

There's nothing about being 'aggressive' that's contradictory with self-control. Pretty much any higher level full contact sport requires high dose of aggression connected with a lot of focus and self control.

And if anything is sad it's the fact that you jump to provocations and insult with very first answer.... :smallconfused: :smallfrown:


Pre-feudal Japan, norse Scandinavia, a number of african tribes, and possibly gaulic Germans, off the very top of my head

And, as mentioned, it's always exception, with Japanese martial arts variation specifically for women and children, Boudica raising huge uprising because she was raped and generally dishonored, and her husband, the chief was dead, and so on.


(also siege defenders, hospitalliers and templars...)

Very few women in knights orders were different under different vows, so it's again hard to call this good example.

SowZ
2013-03-10, 03:52 PM
Some Trans men do. Very top of my head.



Some trans men can.


No, but the stuff that tends to talk about BIOTRUTH GENDER DIFFERENCES tends to be the witchcraft, not the science (also, mechanics isn't a science, it's at best applied physics. What you mean is physics)


Um, no. Ruthlessness and fortitude are usually their own thing, and proper ruthlessness requires too much control to really be considered 'aggressive'. You are seriously reaching, and it's sad.

There are brain differences between the genders. Yes, there are outliers. There are men whose brains develop more like the standard female brain and vice-versa. That doesn't counter the argument.

Example: The area in the brain dedicated to spatial reasoning is typically more developed then men. But in women, the hemispheres are more connected giving greater multi-tasking and sharper memories. This corroborates with most studies, where men and women with similar levels of education in mathematics display their knowledge. Men perform better than women at geometry whereas women perform better at Algebra.

It isn't perfect, but it isn't witchcraft. People have no problems accepting the gender differences and predispositions in animals. Humans are animals, but why are we immune to the same predispositions that other animals have? Are we magic?

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 04:01 PM
There are brain differences between the genders
Bimodal distribution doesn't mean what you think it does. The differences between two individuals is almost always greater than the differences between the averages.


Example: The area in the brain dedicated to spatial reasoning is typically more developed then men.
Not in women of the landowning caste of vaguely matriarchal tribes - inverted there. That implies a stronger cultural component than you're attributing here, to say the very least. BIOTRUTH generally is witchcraft.




People have no problems accepting the gender differences and predispositions in animals.
Animals have socialization too, and it can affect things greatly (It's a near-guarantee that wolves don't work how you think they do, for instance, when in the wild and socialized by wild wolves).



There's nothing about being 'aggressive' that's contradictory with self-control.
The word strongly connotes a lack of self control, so... yeah, there is.


And, as mentioned, it's always exception, with Japanese martial arts variation specifically for women and children,
Camp followers were hte norm, and their guarding the train was an accepted part of tactics and strategy. It never surprised anyone when the women took out crossbows and handaxes and whatnot. Prefeudal Japan saw it as far less an exception (You're thinking of postfeudal). In Scandinavia, women were the ones protecting against raids. Again, you're ascribing an exceptional status that doesn't exist to suit your narrative.

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 04:01 PM
In general, there were obviously 218981 women in history that would kick my (and way more 'hard-ass' men than me) butt with a sock, but to claim that women in their huge majority and quite as combatative like majority of men is denial, with no offense.

Women tend to use violence and dominance in different ways, in case anybody claims that I bash males/females in general, or something. :smalltongue:



The word strongly connotes a lack of self control, so... yeah, there is.

Well, how?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aggression

Aggression is about confrontation, forcing what you want from other beings etc.

It's etymology is apparently about 'attacking first'.

Simply nothing about being uncontrolled.



It never surprised anyone when the women took out crossbows and handaxes and whatnot. Prefeudal Japan saw it as far less an exception (You're thinking of postfeudal). In Scandinavia, women were the ones protecting against raids. Again, you're ascribing an exceptional status that doesn't exist to suit your narrative.

I'm not sure why we're arguing - I never ever claimed that women never fought, with swords, plate armors, in agressive or defensive ways, or whatever.

Simply that it was never the 'norm' - in the sense that majority of fighting was always done by men.

Hussite camp/wagons women happened to valiantly fight with guns and crossbows quite few times. But they obviously weren't considered actual fighting force, especially in melee.

Your examples alone are mostly connected by being about state of emergency.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 04:04 PM
Transmen giving birth is a very weak counter-argument, as they were born physically female. No human who has been born physically male has ever given birth. The whole scenario is still realm of science fiction.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 04:05 PM
In general, there were obviously 218981 women in history that would kick my (and way more 'hard-ass' men than me) butt with a sock, but to claim that women in their huge majority and quite as combatative like majority of men is denial, with no offense.

To claim that it is because of BIOTRUTH is denial. I didn't say it happened just as much, either.


Well, how?

While you're looking words up in the dictionary, you may want to look up 'connotation'. Dictionaries don't generally cover them.

Caesar
2013-03-10, 04:06 PM
That is incorrect. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm)

Color me shocked that Nature allowed that title or that specific conclusion. The researchers admittedly show only that artificially increased testosterone resulted in fairer social outcomes when the net-sum result of that decision gave a better outcome for the test subject.

So..

If anything, they can claim that artificially enhanced testosterone is correlated with better personal choices as relates to the net outcome of a shared, risk-reward system. Maybe its because it boosts cognitive abilities in conjunction with selfishness. Maybe not. In truth they have no idea as they did not test the reasons, only the outcomes. For all they know, its not even the testosterone that caused the outcome.

At any rate, it doesnt seem to have much of anything to do with aggression or aggressive situations, like if they had tested the fight-or-flight response. Why not starve test subjects for three days and then place them in random pairs in a room with a banana? It also doesnt explain the overwhelming correlation in the natural population of non-artificially enhanced subjects, between testosterone levels and violent aggression.

But then again, these days the big publishers are all about politics and much less about actual scientific ethics.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 04:13 PM
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aggression

So the discussion finally reached this point, people using dictionary entries to argue their point. Dictionaries have their uses, they help look up foreign words, remind you of obscure terms you've forgotten about and aid spelling of words with odd grammar, but precise, exhaustive definitions isn't one of them. What dictionaries gain in brevity, they lose in detail. For this specific example, try comparing your tiny dictionary entry with what wikipedia has to say (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression). I'm sure you can see a difference.

Also, I'd like to point all you biotruthers to the section on gender variation in aggression (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggression#Gender). It paints a rather more complex picture than you'd like us to think, including mentioning cultural variations in how aggression and gender interact.

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 04:14 PM
To claim that it is because of BIOTRUTH is denial. I didn't say it happened just as much, either.

Well, I'm not sure I understand "biotruth" in urbandictionary, but I don't see how it applies here TBH...

Anyway, going by UD, definition, then yes, it's all because of biology, women are less suited for fighting.

It obviously doesn't mean second part, that they shouldn't fight if they want to and should 'stay at home', or some other offensive crap.

I in fact enjoy watching WMMA/judo/whatever for example, but there's seriously no doubt that male martials artist of roughly the same level destroys female one in most cases.

We can claim otherwise, but it's simply denial - like claiming that we can kick better than horses, for example.



. For this specific example, try comparing your tiny dictionary entry with what wikipedia has to say. I'm sure you can see a difference.

Well, it doesn't seem to have anything about self control/loss of control/etc either....


Also, I'd like to point all you biotruthers to the section on gender variation in aggression. It paints a rather more complex picture than you'd like us to think, including mentioning cultural variations in how aggression and gender interact

Well, today I've learned that I'm 'biotruther' apparently. We learn constantly, I guess. :smalltongue:

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 04:21 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 04:29 PM
Because you're treating it as an exceptional thing that it isn't always. It's more exceptional NOW, and in our fiction, than it was in actual history. When you're turning out more sexist than history, you really need to examine what you're doing.

History is not 'sexist', that's silly.

For it to be sexist, it would mean that there was some 'non-sexist' history anywhere else...

History happened, because people of both sexes were acting how biology, psychology, and whatever else made them.

It was often (actually usually) cruel, brutal and pretty pointless, but that how we're made. We can perhaps try to make it more 'fair', but to claim that women weren't warriors etc. because of some 'sexist' crap is silly.






HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
What skills are actually involved in maintaining unit discipline, marching in formation, and the like? The things that ACTUALLY matter int he real world, not isolated duels between modern unarmed combatants?

The skills that caused crushing majority of successful soldiers, generals, commanders and whatever else throughout the history, modern day etc. to be male.

Even today, where physical strength, speed, aggression etc. so actual evolutionary combat characteristics are not so important, because nature didn't 'predict' planes and bombs.

That's without mentioning that keeping formations and marching are not fighting per se, no matter how to spin it.


You can laugh, insult me, play intellectually superior all you like, but you cannot change facts.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 04:43 PM
Terra, any serious "biotruther" probably knows all of that and more. Simplification happens because it is pretty hard to convey all related information in the context of casual conversation - they are not necessarily made mala fide (with ill intent). Remember the principle of charity.

Anyways, nurture overcoming nature is nothing new. This doesn't mean natural tendencies don't exist, and it doesn't mean those tendencies can't be linked to physiological traits.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 04:47 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Lorsa
2013-03-10, 04:52 PM
As the topic of gender differences and sexism seem to pop up in a number of topics I am curious if there isn't a thread fully devoted to it hidden somewhere because if there isn't, it seems we should create one considering it's a topic well deserving of long discussion.

Discussing opinions and their equality is also a topic of itself but yes, I suppose they are not equal, you are right about that.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 04:57 PM
As the topic of gender differences and sexism seem to pop up in a number of topics I am curious if there isn't a thread fully devoted to it hidden somewhere because if there isn't, it seems we should create one considering it's a topic well deserving of long discussion.

Discussing opinions and their equality is also a topic of itself but yes, I suppose they are not equal, you are right about that.

The problem is that it would segregate discussion of sexism from specific instances of it happening, rendering it mostly a pointless exercise in academic sophistry. It would also most likely be a battle ground for the same people clubbing each other over the head with the same points over and over and nobody who didn't already have a strong opinion would ever see it. It sounds good in principle, until you realize that it is just sequestering the issue and maintaining status quo.

Ashtagon
2013-03-10, 04:58 PM
Ruthlessness fortitude etc. are generally connected with aggression at least under most definitions - of aggression being drive to compete, confront, establishing dominance over others etc.


Ruthlessness, maybe. Fortitude, definitely not. In deprivation situations, women will typically survive longer than men. Something to do with having larger reserves of body fat.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 05:02 PM
What skills are actually involved in maintaining unit discipline, marching in formation, and the like? The things that ACTUALLY matter int he real world, not isolated duels between modern unarmed combatants?
I reckon one of the biggest factors making males preferable is that they can usually carry more. Combat gear weighs, even today.

In fact modern gear is heavier than many historical equipment sets.

On another hand, I've read studies that suggest females tend to make better unit leaders due to better social skills.

Spiryt
2013-03-10, 05:03 PM
History was considerably less nasty than we like to pretend today. People living to 70 was completely normal for most of it, though not for prehistory, hygiene did exist in most places and soldiers randomly killing you was relatively unlikely unless you lived in a war zone. That is not to say that everything was totally awesome and everyone was fine all the time, nor that living standards haven't increased, but people tend to treat history before whatever time they're nostalgic for as being unrelentingly miserable to a cartoonish degree. It's one of the more frustrating things historians encounter when trying to transmit their findings.


I definitely agree, I infact tend to oppose view that modern 'first world' is necesarilly paragon in most cases... But that OT.

Anyway, world is still rather brutal place in general, you live under rules (from bilogical to economical) you have minimal influence on, you breed or not, and you die. Complete OT as well.




Can you decide your position on the matter? Or do you think that organization and discipline mattering is a new thing? Because if you do, I'd encourage you to look up Roman military drills or Chinese training manuals from the Warring States period. Organization, discipline, intelligence and persistence enough to keep up with dull, repetitive training are all far more important characteristics of a soldier than just being a bit stronger or a bit faster and aggression, beyond what is needed to be willing to kill at all, is a liability as it makes you more easily provoked and less disciplined.

Really, given the limited knowledge you have displayed so far, treating you as intellectually inferior when it comes to this topic seems appropriate. Showing the limited understanding of how terminology works that is needed to think that dictionary definitions are detailed enough to use in a debate about complex issues shows a lot, to be honest. As does your obsession with rather secondary issues as being at the heart of what a soldier is.

Well, it is in fact you who push words I didn't say into my mouth...

It's all well known to me, and the facts stay the same :

all the drilling, discipline, military culture, rituals, drilling to kill, de-individualizing, brotherhood, decimations, uniforms, rapes and thousand of other thing, were always very predominately MALE cultural things.

Hypothesis of all history long sexist conspiracy is unnecessary - it's simpler to assume that male are naturally more inclined to all those things.

Degrading my opinions while it's you who show actual obsession with 'sexism' 'biotruthers' and other weird stuff is not very nice.



Showing the limited understanding of how terminology works that is needed to think that dictionary definitions are detailed enough to use in a debate about complex issues shows a lot, to be honest.

There's nothing about aggression that inherently suggest lack of self control and logical reasoning. Perfectly clever acts of aggression were always common.

Claiming that I have limited understating of terminology because I pointed it out is, again, obsessive.

aggression, beyond what is needed to be willing to kill at all, is a liability as it makes you more easily provoked and less disciplined.

Romans, were BTW, very aggressive culture, so it's not the best example either.




Ruthlessness, maybe. Fortitude, definitely not. In deprivation situations, women will typically survive longer than men. Something to do with having larger reserves of body fat.


I meant fortitude as more of actual ability to resist punishment, due to generally stronger bones, more muscle mass etc.

As far as general ability to resist long period stress, pain etc. I also heard that women generally tend to do much better, indeed.

Women immunological systems probably also tend to do better in general in such situations, although I can't recall if this effect is visible after early childhood ends?

Lorsa
2013-03-10, 05:07 PM
The problem is that it would segregate discussion of sexism from specific instances of it happening, rendering it mostly a pointless exercise in academic sophistry. It would also most likely be a battle ground for the same people clubbing each other over the head with the same points over and over and nobody who didn't already have a strong opinion would ever see it. It sounds good in principle, until you realize that it is just sequestering the issue and maintaining status quo.

One doesn't have to exclude the other. I think a generic discussion about the issues raised by the OP, that is important things to consider when portraying charaters of different sexes be it as a GM or player would be beneficial. We are all ruled by prejudice to some degree and breaking through it and get to the truth, both what part of gender-roles are mostly true (due to culture) and what isn't would be nice. The only way your opinions can change is to be subjected to arguments and reasoning from others.

It doesn't necessarily need to be limited to sexism either, prejudice according to nationality, social status or the like are also good to 'break through' so that your character portrayals will be the more true.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 05:30 PM
Terra, I find it ironic you conflate "biotruth" with EvPsych, because I share many complaints and doubts towards EvPsych displayed in that blog. The thing is, observed differences don't go away, and neither to demonstrated biological underpinnings. Failure of EvPsych as a field doesn't debunk all of which you call "biotruthing".

Fenix_of_Doom
2013-03-10, 05:34 PM
In westen culture, boys are encourage to be aggressive, or at the very least not discouraged at an early age so it is no surprise they turn out to have low restraint threshold.
I'm not sure what westren means to you, but I can assure you this statement is about as false as you can get. No school systems that I know of would work if children were not taught restrain.




You rarely agree with everything in a debate in general? Or you rarely agree with me? :P
It is rare that in a debate a person takes a stance that matches 100% to your(or mine) stance. Since I don't know you, I can't tell you if it happens often between the two of us, but you seem sensible, it's certainly possible we completly degree on more issues.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 05:39 PM
Terra, I find it ironic you conflate "biotruth" with EvPsych, because I share many complaints and doubts towards EvPsych displayed in that blog. The thing is, observed differences don't go away, and neither to demonstrated biological underpinnings. Failure of EvPsych as a field doesn't debunk all of which you call "biotruthing".

So, care to enlighten me on the differences? Not like anybody contests that men are taller on average or have a somewhat higher average and max strength. So, tell me, how does claiming that there are biologically founded differences in psychology between genders that explain current conditions differ from evopsych? Because that rather is what evopsych's entire thing is.

Also, finding a difference does not explain why it is there and psychology is notoriously slippery.

Xeratos
2013-03-10, 05:51 PM
Why, hello, things you hate about drow thread. It's good to see you again. And it only took, what.. a week? maybe two, before you cropped back up, and with almost all the same people arguing the same points as last time.

There isn't a single thing I can think of to say that won't have two hyped up blood thirsty feminists attempting to tear me apart, as I've seen them demonstrate repeatedly when they attack almost every single person who dares to post on threads like these. My only hope is that a moderator comes along soon and shuts it down just like the aforementioned things you hate about drow thread, though at least this thread somewhat decently lends itself to the debate.

To those two hyper-aggressive feminists, I say this: I'm sorry that you don't like the hands your lives dealt you. I don't necessarily agree with the things you have to say, but it's your right to state your beliefs on the subject you obviously feel very strongly about. In the interest of being honest, I'll admit that there's quite a bit of it that goes over my head and I lack the interest to do the research to understand it, so I won't be arguing with you.

Best of luck in your holy crusade to... I don't know... make men feel bad about being men. I'm sure that's not what you're really trying to do, but that's about all I'm ever left with after reading anything you post, ever.

Poison_Fish
2013-03-10, 05:56 PM
Why, hello, things you hate about drow thread. It's good to see you again. And it only took, what.. a week? maybe two, before you cropped back up, and with almost all the same people arguing the same points as last time.

There isn't a single thing I can think of to say that won't have two hyped up blood thirsty feminists attempting to tear me apart, as I've seen them demonstrate repeatedly when they attack almost every single person who dares to post on threads like these. My only hope is that a moderator comes along soon and shuts it down just like the aforementioned things you hate about drow thread, though at least this thread somewhat decently lends itself to the debate.

To those two hyper-aggressive feminists, I say this: I'm sorry that you don't like the hands your lives dealt you. I don't necessarily agree with the things you have to say, but it's your right to state your beliefs on the subject you obviously feel very strongly about. In the interest of being honest, I'll admit that there's quite a bit of it that goes over my head and I lack the interest to do the research to understand it, so I won't be arguing with you.

Best of luck in your holy crusade to... I don't know... make men feel bad about being men. I'm sure that's not what you're really trying to do, but that's about all I'm ever left with after reading anything you post, ever.

You know, it'd be a whole lot easier to just not post anything rather then blowing your load of hot air on how you are not going to post because you lack any willpower. Well, willpower to be anything beyond passive aggressive and willfully ignorant.

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 05:57 PM
how does claiming that there are biologically founded differences in psychology between genders that explain current conditions differ from evopsych? Because that rather is what evopsych's entire thing is..
The main issue with most Evpsych is that it often operates from a cartoon-caveman history. We don't actually know a lot about Paleolithic life to make assumptions out of it. There is for instance a lot of ideas about "Man the mighty hunter" made by people who have never gone hunting in their life, with lots of fanciful ideas baked in. For example, it's actually more likely that women did most of the hunting, using nets, according to some of the more recent archaeology.

Poison_Fish
2013-03-10, 06:00 PM
The main issue with most Evpsych is that it often operates from a cartoon-caveman history. We don't actually know a lot about Paleolithic life to make assumptions out of it. There is for instance a lot of ideas about "Man the mighty hunter" made by people who have never gone hunting in their life, with lots of fanciful ideas baked in. For example, it's actually more likely that women did most of the hunting, using nets, according to some of the more recent archaeology.

That is but one of the axis of problems. It has problems in hypothesis testing in the first place, along with problems in verification and a complete misunderstanding of how to test for adaption.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 06:01 PM
The main issue with most Evpsych is that it often operates from a cartoon-caveman history. We don't actually know a lot about Paleolithic life to make assumptions out of it. There is for instance a lot of ideas about "Man the mighty hunter" made by people who have never gone hunting in their life, with lots of fanciful ideas baked in. For example, it's actually more likely that women did most of the hunting, using nets, according to some of the more recent archaeology.

That is rather different from the core of evopsych, however, and from what PZ Myers was talking about, so that is rather irrelevant here. Just like esoteric discussions of which stage of imperialism we were at and whether workers or farmers had the greatest revolutionary potential were fairly irrelevant to a discussion of the teleological foundations of 70s marxism.

Yukitsu
2013-03-10, 06:01 PM
all the drilling, discipline, military culture, rituals, drilling to kill, de-individualizing, brotherhood, decimations, uniforms, rapes and thousand of other thing, were always very predominately MALE cultural things.

Hypothesis of all history long sexist conspiracy is unnecessary - it's simpler to assume that male are naturally more inclined to all those things.

You can actually find the genesis of that phenomenon in archeological records, which indicates that the difference is far less pronounced in largely nomadic societies which could not afford to separate tasks between sedentary and mobile occupations. The only reason women have had jobs which didn't involve running around away from home is that they have children to care for which men couldn't really do. In cases where women were either not obligated to take care of children, or for whatever reason refused to do so, or were forced to remain mobile rather than taking sedentary tasks were treated in the same manner as men (and have been found armed in the same manner as men in large numbers).

For example, the Scandinavians from tribes which were forced to move rather than farm in the spring and autumn, raid in the summer were noted by their enemies as having armed women in their ranks which were killed along with the men. Scythians were found with women soldiers, likely for the same reason, that they were semi-nomadic and were forced to move on a regular basis.

The basis isn't entirely biological. Biology simply created a condition where on the whole, it's strategically better for men to fight than women. The reason men were assigned those tasks is that they were free to move about when they wanted to or where they needed to. If a society where women either had the freedom to chose not to settle down and have children, or where they were forced into a mobile lifestyle, they demonstrate that they also have those traits that are considered stereotypically male. The main reason women typically don't is that as history progressed past the stone age, more and more societies were either entirely settled, or partly settled, or had such small populations that they could not afford to send women into dangerous tasks.

Fenix_of_Doom
2013-03-10, 06:02 PM
It's all well known to me, and the facts stay the same :

all the drilling, discipline, military culture, rituals, drilling to kill, de-individualizing, brotherhood, decimations, uniforms, rapes and thousand of other thing, were always very predominately MALE cultural things.


A much more interesting question is: how did these things become male cultural things? I'm going to talk mostly about militaries here, as that interests me the most. I can imagine it starting out with fighting being more of a male thing, and when it evolved in to structured armies, it had culturally grown into this no girls allowed club, even though practically speaking that's a stupid idea.

I'd be really interested to test what would happen if you'd pitch two equally trained forces at each other in roman legionary style combat. Does anybody here know 100 men and 100 woman who are willing to die for SCIENCE?

Yukitsu
2013-03-10, 06:12 PM
A much more interesting question is: how did these things become male cultural things? I'm going to talk mostly about militaries here, as that interests me the most. I can imagine it starting out with fighting being more of a male thing, and when it evolved in to structured armies, it had culuturally grown into this no girls allowed club, even though practically speaking that's a stupid idea.

From a purely long term survival point of view, if you can just send nothing but men to fight, you're going to be better off fighting using only men. If you lose half of your male population you can recover in a generation. This is much less true if half of the women die.

Culturally, men were hunters then fighters because they couldn't breast feed. In situations where women don't have to, or have to do so while traveling and acquiring resources, there is less of a distinction.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 06:38 PM
So, care to enlighten me on the differences? Not like anybody contests that men are taller on average or have a somewhat higher average and max strength. So, tell me, how does claiming that there are biologically founded differences in psychology between genders that explain current conditions differ from evopsych? Because that rather is what evopsych's entire thing is.

Also, finding a difference does not explain why it is there and psychology is notoriously slippery.

Like I said, the obvious differences are not talked about, because they are, well, obvious.

Which is why were back to pregnancy again. :smalltongue:

No physical male has ever suffered postpartum depression or heightened risk of suicide due to abortion, because no physical human male can bear children. The process of having kids is very different when you look at it from different sides of the sex divide. There are a load of psychological complications that are entirely sex-specific, or have very different triggers in sexes due to obvious differences in reproductive biology.

Less obvious, men have greater variance in IQ and social behaviour. Ergo there are more exceptionally dumb & antisocial as well as more exceptionally intelligent males, than there are females of those categories. This is why men make up 80% of prison populations world-wide. Last theory I read on the matter attributed this (partly) to how androgens affect fetal development. The wikipedia article you posted listed many related differences in social development.

As for how this differs from EvoPsych? EvoPsych is mainly interested in interpreting these differences in light of speculated evolutionary history of humanity. "Normal" biology and psychology mostly focus on genetic, hormonal and environmental stimuli that lead to these phenomena, with less concern on why these things historically came to being. As with all fields examining the same things, overlap is inevitable. But if you're going to downplay study other branches have made on gender because contemporary EvPsych's
failings, you are treading on very thin ice.

Besides, I already acknowledged psychology has its problems. Doesn't make me any less upset when people act as if it's achieved nothing.

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 06:39 PM
A much more interesting question is: how did these things become male cultural things?
Well, that often ties into the structure of society.

Say you're a peasant boy on a farm. in the culture you're in, you don't own much and you don't have any real upward mobility as a farmer.. but your uncle just came back from the orcish front line with several medals on his jacket, and a few battlefield promotions. Accordingly, there are a few of the upper class ladies who are waaay out of your league flirting with him. Most of the soldiers are coming home, so the odds are actually pretty good - so signing up looks pretty attractive.

Now imagine that you're a peasant GIRL. You don't own much of anything, and you don't have much upward mobility as a farmer. Now take a look at the military. That boy down the road just signed up to go pillage and plunder for awhile. If you sign up, you're going to have to.. what? Share a tent with strange guys who are combat trained and might have less than pure intentions? Their commander is that MAN over there and you're pretty sure HE wouldn't know the meaning of "harassment" if you beat him unconscious with a dictionary. Run *toward* the fight? You could just wait a couple years and then wiggle and smile at the soldiers when they come home, and if one of them takes interest, you will immediately be kicked up to their social status because in your culture, when you marry you both become the same social class, and it's the higher of the two.

That's obviously not the only way it could work, but it's a pretty common arrangement. If you try to reverse it, you have to figure out how to deal with hypergamy. What can the farmer boy offer to that Amazon over there? The farmer GIRL has the domestic thing and the "babies" thing to fall back on, but the Amazon can just go out carousing to take care of the kids bit if she is so inclined.

Usually women try to marry up, so the top end women and the bottom end men end up alone. That's a big incentive for the men on the bottom to try to find some upward mobility. When they do that by going to war, the military becomes more and more of a sausage club and if nobody is pushing for equality. That's the sort've thing that happens when some bachelor man who used to be a farmer boy who doesn't "get" women because he's never really had to fought his way to becoming a General and then turned that into kingship. It's been a conscious effort in recent years to put women into the military, and they need to be in combat to get promoted. If you can only move up in a few ways, those ways will become important.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 06:53 PM
Like I said, the obvious differences are not talked about, because they are, well, obvious.

They are, however, not very interesting on their own either. Pregnancy doesn't matter when you're not pregnant or engaging in behavior that might make you pregnant. Height similarly mostly comes into play in a few sports, a few forms of martial arts and when getting things from high places, as well as reducing your life expectancy. Nobody is really contesting that because it's both obvious and pretty unimportant overall.


Less obvious, men have greater variance in IQ and social behaviour. Ergo there are more exceptionally dumb & antisocial as well as more exceptionally intelligent males, than there are females of those categories. This is why men make up 80% of prison populations world-wide. Last theory I read on the matter attributed this (partly) to how androgens affect fetal development. The wikipedia article you posted listed many related differences in social development.

Or it could be cultural, you know. You know like how rich people tend to score higher on IQ tests than poor people and people raised by highly educated people do better, even when not blood related. Also, IQ tests are famously known for not measuring intelligence but rather measuring "whatever IQ tests measure" as I have actually seen it explained in actual academic writing touching on them. Both seem pretty damning for there being any kind of biological backing for differences between genders. Similarly, girls are raised to be more meek, passive, accepting and less independent, so it's pretty unsurprising that they'd end up that way. We have solid indication of that having a strong social component, but quite little for it being inherent and biological.


As for how this differs from EvoPsych? EvoPsych is mainly interested in interpreting these differences in light of speculated evolutionary history of humanity. "Normal" biology and psychology mostly focus on genetic, hormonal and environmental stimuli that lead to these phenomena, with less concern on why these things historically came to being. As with all fields examining the same things, overlap is inevitable. But if you're going to downplay study other branches have made on gender because contemporary EvPsych's
failings, you are treading on very thin ice.

You mean a few wishy-washy studies that don't really say much beyond the obvious or showcasing variation without being able to find any biological links? That's the thing, just because a difference between genders is measured doesn't mean that it's inherent or biological. Not just that, evopsych is quite a bit more diverse than just trying to slot everything into place somewhere in the stone age and at heart what it's doing is insist that evolution wanted the modern US. Also, I really don't care what label people claim for themselves, if they engage in evopsych, then that's what they're doing regardless of how they prefer to label it themselves.

Sergeantbrother
2013-03-10, 07:15 PM
From the looks of this thread, I have stumbled from the Roleplaying Games sub forum to Roleplaying Games +
:smallannoyed:

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 07:35 PM
"Culture" is not a valid explanation for a cross-cultural phenomenom of this magnitude. The thing that 80% of prison inmates share is being male, not culture. Wealth or upbringing are not sufficient either, because then you have to ask where are all the poor, lower class females. Answer: they are not there because females have lesser tendency for antisocial behaviour.

IQ as measure of intellect is contested, but its usefulness is less so. Certain IQ ranges have a statistically relevant correlation with certain kinds of behaviour. Seriously, I don't know what is the source of your and RPG_Guru's IQ hate, but I'm more willing to listen to MENSA than you two.

Also, I find it very bizarre to argue pregnancy is "not interesting on its" own when sex and having offspring are pretty fundamental aspects of life. You just demonstrated why I don't find most anti-"biotruthists" very convincing. Downplaying major and obvious factors because they're not "interesting" seems antithetical to the principle of charity. Thank you and good night.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 07:49 PM
IQ as measure of intellect is contested, but its usefulness is less so. Certain IQ ranges have a statistically relevant correlation with certain kinds of behaviour. Seriously, I don't know what is the source of your and RPG_Guru's IQ hate, but I'm more willing to listen to MENSA than you two.

Because people with a vested interest in something being treated as very, very important are trustworthy in explaining why it's important? I need to keep that in mind the next time someone tries to sell me something. Incidentally, I find the obsession with IQ baffling, it's essentially a completely ignored aspect of life in Denmark and from what I can tell most of Europe. It's one of those quirky American things like swearing around kids being strictly banned and showing naked breasts being a sin.

As for pregnancy being interesting, it is when it comes to reproduction. Most of life isn't about reproduction in any direct way. Trying to make it big and important for anything from warfare to political campaigning to what brand of soap to use is something biotruthers love doing without really establishing why it's so central. The closest I've ever seen is vulgar pseudo-Darwinism of the kind that even Darwin and his contemporaries working in the field of evolution hated, but which politicians of the late 19th and early 20th century loved. It's not like modern biologists like it any better, if anything they like it less.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-10, 07:53 PM
La Maupin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Maupin)

...

Truly an inspiration to bards everywhere.

*throws smoke bomb*

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 08:10 PM
Terra, I've made the same observation regarding IQ and everyday life. There are two outliers: science magazines and the military. Finnish military personality test part 1 is merely an IQ test with another name, scored from 0 to 9. They don't let people with scores below 4 into officer training. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

Oh well, at least this time you got my joke. :smalltongue:

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 08:16 PM
"Culture" is not a valid explanation for a cross-cultural phenomenom of this magnitude. The thing that 80% of prison inmates share is being male, not culture..
There are a lot more support systems available for poor women, and when women end up in the system, they are more likely to be channeled toward those.

The US, in spite of crime on the decrease, has shifted a lot of its support for the poor into the prison system, and criminalized poverty in a number of ways; in doing so, it has become a nation with a very low crime rate and a mindbogglingly high proportion of its population in jail.

There are a lot of very poor men who are ending up in jail essentially because that's the best way they have to get three square meals a day and because it's illegal for them to live in the only home they can afford. They can't marry because they are effectively unemployable and can't bring anything to the table - there is a lot less work to do, and the work that exists is high skill;

In essence, they're like a bunch of fighters in an economy that has become almost entirely driven by magic item creation. Probably half-orcs, too, some group that when they try to get a "decent job" gets snubbed. And on top of that, they live in the half-orc ghetto, so when they are asked "And where do you live? Oh.. you live.. THERE. *shudder*"

This is a population that in many historical times would be heavily driven to sign on with the army to gain fortune and glory so that they could gain worth. They have dreams of people being able to look past the boar teeth because they are a Man Of Distinction who earned honors and glory in the Battle of Black Ridge.

On the other hand, it's become all the rage to hire on half-orc maids, and there are a number of charities that have been put in place to help poor unmarried women of all races.. so the women there aren't quite as desperate. They might have to hide the father of the kids though, because the charities might not help with her rent if she's got a man in the house, even if he has no job other than the occasional stint with the thieves guild.

These are all system things that sometimes don't jump out at you. Follow the money and the status and they can be puzzled out to an extent. Look at your society and then look at what ways people at various levels have to get ahead. If a given group has one option that is more crucial for them than for other groups, that group will soon come to dominate that option, and it will likely become tweaked for their benefit at the exclusion of others. (The army no longer uses lanterns or fires at night in the camp! It's better for stealth and we all have Darkvision anyways!)

Sergeantbrother
2013-03-10, 08:18 PM
IQ is an excellent measure of intelligence. It correlates strongly with every trait we generally associate with intelligence - including but not limited to academic performance, financial success, brain size, learning ability, longer lifespans, various test scores, etc. It also correlates negatively with things like criminality, poverty, etc.

The only reason people reject IQ is because they have ideological objections, despite the mountains of evidence to reinforce the effectiveness of IQ.

Also, claiming that there is a vast compiracy of scientists who fake data to prop up IQ is about as weak as any argument can get.

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 08:23 PM
IQ.. correlates strongly with every trait we generally associate with intelligence - including but not limited to academic performance, financial success, brain size, learning ability, longer lifespans, various test scores, etc. It also correlates negatively with things like criminality, poverty, etc..
However, correlation is not causation. IQ tests are pretty good at telling whether someone is financially and academically successful, and people who are financially and academically successful tend to live longer. But that doesn't necessarily translate into anything, because we didn't really NEED to have a test to see whose parents could buy expensive food and tuition to Harvard.

Terraoblivion
2013-03-10, 08:24 PM
IQ is an excellent measure of intelligence. It correlates strongly with every trait we generally associate with intelligence - including but not limited to academic performance, financial success, brain size, learning ability, longer lifespans, various test scores, etc. It also correlates negatively with things like criminality, poverty, etc.

So essentially it correlates to being adapted to being a white, middle class person. Good to know.

Incidentally, there's exactly one thing brain size correlates to. It's not IQ, nor is it academic performance. It's height. Taller people have larger brains, yet they're no smarter than shorter people. Rather suggests that brain size isn't a meaningful variable. Also noteworthy, neanderthals had substantially larger brains than homo sapiens sapiens, yet displayed notably less organizational and religious sophistication, as well as notably less advanced tools.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 08:43 PM
{{scrubbed}}

frozum
2013-03-10, 09:03 PM
I was going to post something relevant to this thread regarding female warriors, but I see it's gone so far off the rails that another RR company is charging rent for the tracks this train is currently on...

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 09:09 PM
So essentially it correlates to being adapted to being a white, middle class person. Good to know.

The ethnic group with highest measured average IQ is sino-asian, ie. Japanese and Chinese, not caucasians. Based on British and German testing, not USA. The strongest singular correlate with IQ is not ethnicity, but the latitude you live at. The way you phrased your objection, Terra, strongly suggest you have ideological hang-ups regarding IQ.

Also, Guru did not get the joke. Sad but expected.

RPGuru1331
2013-03-10, 09:18 PM
The ethnic group with highest measured average IQ is sino-asian, ie. Japanese and Chinese, not caucasians
The only thing I find offhand that says this is The Bell Curve, which is to accurate studies what Lamark's theses were to biology. And it's predicated to the Japanese and urban chinese, so...


Also, Guru did not get the joke. Sad but expected.

The eternal defense of the unfunny and serious.

Sergeantbrother
2013-03-10, 09:24 PM
For the value of 'intelligence' that means 'what USians consider important to their culture'.

Do you believe that apes are more intelligent than dogs or that humans are more intelligent than apes? If you reject the very concept of intelligence, then there isn't much point in talking about IQ with you.

Sergeantbrother
2013-03-10, 09:29 PM
So essentially it correlates to being adapted to being a white, middle class person. Good to know.

Incidentally, there's exactly one thing brain size correlates to. It's not IQ, nor is it academic performance. It's height. Taller people have larger brains, yet they're no smarter than shorter people. Rather suggests that brain size isn't a meaningful variable. Also noteworthy, neanderthals had substantially larger brains than homo sapiens sapiens, yet displayed notably less organizational and religious sophistication, as well as notably less advanced tools.

If you honestly believe that there is no correlation between brain size and intelligence, then you are completely divorced from reality and biological science to such a shocking degree that any further discussion on the point is entirely impossible.

Yukitsu
2013-03-10, 09:37 PM
For the value of 'intelligence' that means 'what USians consider important to their culture'.

Most modern intelligence tests are a good metric for measuring members of other societies, and as they are knowledge independent, an official IQ test since about 1980 will work at predicting problem solving and success within that culture. So that accusation is frankly offensive and wrong.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 09:40 PM
Guru, like last time, it's a matter of taste. Like in the case of insults, of which there are two kinds: direct and indirect. You clearly prefer the former.

Toastkart
2013-03-10, 09:53 PM
If you honestly believe that there is no correlation between brain size and intelligence, then you are completely divorced from reality and biological science to such a shocking degree that any further discussion on the point is entirely impossible.

In humans this is basically the case. If there is an effect size, it's so small it is insignificant. In non-human animals it varies by species. I may be incorrect here, but I thought that the ratio of brain mass to body mass was more important than overall size.

As for IQ tests, there is a large body of evidence that shows that they are not indicative of anything beyond testing for IQ and are poor indicators of anything beyond academic performance. Here (http://www.preservearticles.com/201104195551/limitations-of-iq-tests.html) are (http://www.unc.edu/~rooney/iq.htm) some (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/94572.article) sources (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/opinion/14brooks.html?_r=0).

There are also more types of intelligence than what we ordinarily refer to when we use the term IQ.

-edit-


Most modern intelligence tests are a good metric for measuring members of other societies, and as they are knowledge independent, an official IQ test since about 1980 will work at predicting problem solving and success within that culture. So that accusation is frankly offensive and wrong.

And yet ethnic minorities regularly perform less well because of biases built into the tests.

Yukitsu
2013-03-10, 09:59 PM
In humans this is basically the case. If there is an effect size, it's so small it is insignificant. In non-human animals it varies by species. I may be incorrect here, but I thought that the ratio of brain mass to body mass was more important than overall size.

As for IQ tests, there is a large body of evidence that shows that they are not indicative of anything beyond testing for IQ and are poor indicators of anything beyond academic performance. Here (http://www.preservearticles.com/201104195551/limitations-of-iq-tests.html) are (http://www.unc.edu/~rooney/iq.htm) some (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/94572.article) sources (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/opinion/14brooks.html?_r=0).

There are also more types of intelligence than what we ordinarily refer to when we use the term IQ.

Articles 1, 3 and 4 are by journalistic sources, not researchers, and would get tossed out of any rudimentary university course as a reference. especially as their conclusions are not evident if you follow and can read the cited journals, where actually presented. The only one accredited to anyone with a doctorate in psychology, the .edu link, directly contradicts your claim, in that they specifically state IQ is a predictor of general, not academic success.


And yet ethnic minorities regularly perform less well because of biases built into the tests.

Give me a single APA recognized journal article post 1990 and I'll consider the possibility of the claim, and look at the metadata. The only time I've seen anyone make that claim, the furthest they could get are magazine or news articles demonstrating news media and even scientific magazine editor's complete inability to actually read scientific journals.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-10, 10:05 PM
I see that claim brought up a lot. I find it increasingly unconvincing, because there are other factors that explain those disparities just as well. Also, explain to me what possible bias can exist in a wordless black-and-white pattern recognition test.

Robs
2013-03-10, 10:06 PM
An argument on ethics or morality that can't make a values judgement is by definition noise.

Firstly, there is and never was an ethical or moral argument anywhere here until some individuals seemed to decide to treat the very existence of this thread as a personal violation of their characters. In some posts you can see directed at me people deciding I said things other than what I said, (I've basically said nothing, besides 'be nice', in addition to my contribution to the OP).

Several people seem to think that "women are inferior" or that "women are not equal to men" has been said, and then treat unrelated things as support for those imagined arguments. When it hasn't even been implied. I think even some of the most sexist people out there would disagree with those statements.

Think of the differences in classes in a game (starcraft for instance). Balance is obviously easy when you make all the classes/races/whatever the same, or extremely similar. But it is downright boring. But it is most fun and rewarding when things are as different as they can get, while still being equal. Personally, I see the difference between male and female to be the ultimate example of this. It's soooo hard to figure out though, that we continually make mistake after mistake. But it is the ultimate example after all.

If the debate ever stops, the world would be a bleak place ;p very imo



So what happens when someone makes an 'intellectual argument' about the same thing?

Then it is constructive, and a threat to nobody(I call you names because I don't like you, Why don't you like me? etcetc It leads somewhere!). Besides, with a proper intellectual argument and an open minded audience (I get the impression that most people who are prone to an argument that contains facts and nothing else are open minded) it may be possible to influence them into changing their own outlook.



If the most persuasive argument I can ascribe to you is that you said nothing, the principle of charity will not help you. That ignores every other problem with it.

Part of what I said in my first paragraph answers the first part of this. I find the second part of this to be unhelpful.



In theory, that's true. Thing is, I often have heard silly justifications for things like the difference in pay between men and women justified as 'men are more aggressive in negotiation, so they get better deals'. It's not all good, but it's by no means all bad either.

Who knows, we only know that it keeps happening despite all modern ideas, until forced by law in many cases. Even in the perception that women make exactly the same top-level managers to men, logic dictates you should replace them all with women. Why? because they don't cost as much (the 77c per dollar thing).

But it seems some people in the absence of proper explanation, just make up their own reasons.


All it proved was that I consistently get slower responses on the second half of each test. Boredom fatigue seems a more probable explanation.

Personally, I find the explanation that most people do indeed show grouping tendencies which can be expressed as racism, et al to be more probable.

We discriminate against EVERYTHING in everyone around us. And some things are more obvious than others, and therefore more likely to be discriminated/distinguished/discerned/noticed.

And obviously a healthy individual favours those things that reflect themselves. (Actually this one statement might just answer a great deal of the -ism discussion).


I would ask rhetoric be kept to a minimum in any replies.

JusticeZero
2013-03-10, 11:00 PM
Can we please drop the IQ testing topic unless it is being applied to DnD characters, particularly female characters with a high BAB progression? It's getting nonproductive.

SowZ
2013-03-10, 11:38 PM
I never claimed "biotruth." Claiming that I made such a statement shows that you weren't reading my posts, so I don't know why anyone who responded to me that way expects me to read theirs. I also claimed that it doesn't apply when comparing individuals, but is useful when comparing large populations. But whatever. I sense a reflex trigger to sexism that, while partially understandable, is a stumbling block in productive discussion.

Whether or not it is cultural is largely irrelevant to my argument, though. Because social evolution is just as valid a predictor of human behavior as genetics. Human society predisposes men towards certain skill sets, and women towards others. I think it is very likely there is a biological component to this, too. But I can only observe the results. I've not seen enough evidence either way to establish the cause.

Regardless if human men are more often warriors because of nature or nurture, human men are more often aggressive. They are more likely to respond to a situation with violence. Shoot, it might just be learned, (independent of social pressure,) because applying physical force works more often for men so they rely on it more. (I highly doubt it, though, since boys tend to use violence more often then girls even at a young age, before the boy has more strength. This could be cultural, in that parents punish girls for resorting to violence more swiftly than boys.)

But here's the thing. What human culture does is part of humanity. Human social ethics are biological, they aren't just abstractions. They are real, observable phenomenon just like the migration patterns of a bird or fish. And they are part of humanity, just as much as our DNA.

So, it is not an inaccurate statement to say that men are typically more violent than women. Whatever reason you can provide to explain it may very well be valid, it doesn't change the truth of the matter.

JusticeZero
2013-03-11, 12:39 AM
Watch how often you see a girl hit her boyfriend and tell me again how women are not aggressive. It's more that womens' aggression isn't taken seriously, which is a completely different problem.
It would also be a reason why female fighter types might not be taken seriously or can be seen so easily as being able to bluff their way into places because they're 'harmless' compared to the musclebound brute she usually fights next to. The women I deal with are generally savvy enough to encourage people to underestimate them if it will give them an advantage on a case by case basis, even if they prefer to be given respect as a whole. Alas, while it might be tactically clever to play the fool right before utterly destroying your opponent, too many times of playing the fool might leave those who come after you saddled with the reputation of the fool.

Ashtagon
2013-03-11, 12:54 AM
I see that claim brought up a lot. I find it increasingly unconvincing, because there are other factors that explain those disparities just as well. Also, explain to me what possible bias can exist in a wordless black-and-white pattern recognition test.

IQ tests not and have never been exclusively wordless pattern recognition tests.

The Fury
2013-03-11, 01:42 AM
I think with any characterization it's important to ask, "What got this character to this point?" Generally speaking societies tend to expect different things from females and males, this likely follows with most roleplaying game settings too. Maybe in a typical fantasy setting boys spend their childhood wanting to be knights while girls want to be princesses, then again sometimes girls are tomboys too.
Now, a tomboyish girl that grows up to be a fighter sort of makes sense. I'd imagine that she'd feel reasonably fulfilled with her current career but maybe she still thinks about people from her childhood that insisted that she'd never be as strong as a boy. Perhaps she'd act aggressive because she still feels that she has something to prove?
That is not to say that a stereotypically feminine person might not grow up to be warrior though. Assuming that this is a fantasy setting maybe some girl started training as a fighter because she was conscripted into a town militia or because she wanted revenge for her murdered family or something. She'd grow up to be a fighter too, and maybe she'd be aggressive due to pent-up anger. On the other hand, maybe she'd be less aggressive because of a more nurturing personality.
I guess that's a really long-winded way of saying that a case can be made for female warriors being exceptionally aggressive or not, rather like their male counterparts.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 03:56 AM
IQ tests not and have never been exclusively wordless pattern recognition tests.

Not what I'm claiming. You are both missing the point and failing to answer my question. Contemporary IQ tests have increasingly become like the test I'm talking of because IQ researches have recognized and tried to eliminate biases in their tests. There are tests with more portions, but no contemporary test I know of lacks pattern recognition. Yet, scoring in this single portion is a strong indicator of how a person will do in any other part of the test.

So explain to me what possible bias can a black-and-white pattern recognition test have.

Fenix_of_Doom
2013-03-11, 03:59 AM
I was going to post something relevant to this thread regarding female warriors, but I see it's gone so far off the rails that another RR company is charging rent for the tracks this train is currently on...

Just post it, we can use it to derail this thread back on topic, or we can just hold our discussion right through theirs.


I think with any characterization it's important to ask, "What got this character to this point?"
Sound character building advise if you ask me.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 04:19 AM
*snip*

A good explanation. I don't buy it, because it fails to adequately take into account or explain prevalence of antisocial behaviour in men, and its comparative rarity in women. The kind of men we're talking about could've enrolled into military, and some likely did, but either would or did get kicked out for misdemeanor. In medieval times, they would've been more likely to become bands of raiders and outlaws. The difference between raiders and proper military is slight, but it is there.

As you can read from the wikipedia article Terra posted, differences in social behaviour between male and female humans start from age of two. By focusing on the admittedly true claim that poverty fuels antisocial behaviour, you are ignoring the equally true claim that antisocial behaviour fuels poverty. Differences between sexes are not just effects, they are causes too. One could say there's a feedback loop between them.

Ashtagon
2013-03-11, 04:31 AM
As you can read from the wikipedia article Terra posted, differences in social behaviour between male and female humans start from age of two.

So, after two years of treated treated differently due to their birth sex, boys and girls display differences in how they act? Will wonders never cease!

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 04:58 AM
And when they are not treated differently? Show me the bulk of data suggesting these differences do not manifest when babies are treated equally. Seriously, researchers have tried to control for this for a while now. The study to conclusively disprove the phenomenom has not happened.

If anything, existence of transsexuals support my view on things more than yours. There are people who despite immense social pressure and their physical bodies still feel they have more in common with another sex. What is your explanation?

Lorsa
2013-03-11, 04:58 AM
So, it is not an inaccurate statement to say that men are typically more violent than women. Whatever reason you can provide to explain it may very well be valid, it doesn't change the truth of the matter.

Except when you try to apply it to a woman in a fantasy (D&D) setting, where today's culture has no impact. Then you need to find out what would still exist if culture was taken away. Besides, when portraying any character, even in today's real world, you need to strip away the cultural aspects and focus on the individual otherwise you end up with stereotypes. And stereotypes fail to properly depict reality as you miss out on a lot of people.

Lorsa
2013-03-11, 05:21 AM
And when they are not treated differently? Show me the bulk of data suggesting these differences do not manifest when babies are treated equally. Seriously, researchers have tried to control for this for a while now. The study to conclusively disprove the phenomenom has not happened.

If anything, existence of transsexuals support my view on things more than yours. There are people who despite immense social pressure and their physical bodies still feel they have more in common with another sex. What is your explanation?

I'm not sure there IS a setting where babies are treated equally. The only way to achieve such a thing is to have them raised by robots and I'm not sure that would be beneficial for the children in any way (with current day robotic technology).

Transsexuals don't feel they have more in common with another sex, they feel they ARE another sex and have been born in the wrong body. Might sound like a semantic difference but it's fairly important. I personally am so far removed from the male gender norm that a 1960's psychological gender test says that I'm a woman. Yes, the gender roles have shifted a bit since that time but it's the test I was shown. Yet I don't feel I am a woman, and the transsexual I know have plenty of character traits that we would refer to as male even though he feels like he should be a she. Okay, maybe I don't really know what I am saying except that transsexualism is very tricky and using it in a debate can easily get shifty.

Oh wait, I know what I was trying to point out. That transsexuals are just that, transsexual. You can be gender-identified as a man and still feel as though you should be in a female body and you can be like me, more like the female gender but still feel as you belong to the male sex. And I suppose that is why breaking the gender-roles and characterizations is improtant, becuase it simply doesn't give us a picture of anything but society's cultural norms, and these norms in turn have a strong tendacy to marginalize and discriminate against individuals. Understanding society and culture is very important, but I feel that discrimination is wrong and you should use your cultural knowledge to change society for the better, not as a excuse to keep or stick to current norms (not saying that's what you do in any way, but some people do).

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 05:59 AM
Semantics are irrelevant. I'm waiting for an explanation that reconciles transsexualism with the thought that developmental differences are caused by nurture as opposed to nature. Your anectdote, while interesting, doesn't have much to offer in that regard. The theory I subscribe to, based on observed biological differences during fetal development, explains it while still allowing for perceived variation in gender behaviour. I'm not dwelling on that theory, because I know it is partially obsolete. But the kicker is, almost everything I know of transsexualism suggest it is inborn - that these people literally have brains of one sex and body of another. But if that's the case, then it necessarily means there are legitimate differences between brains of typical males and females, leading to legitimate differences in psychology and self-image. How does this fit with the idea that developmental differences are primarily caused by parental pressure?

Toastkart
2013-03-11, 06:46 AM
Articles 1, 3 and 4 are by journalistic sources, not researchers, and would get tossed out of any rudimentary university course as a reference. especially as their conclusions are not evident if you follow and can read the cited journals, where actually presented.

First, this isn't a university course and I am not writing a research paper. I provided some sources that, with one exception, had sources of their own. My fault for that one, but unless you've followed their sources and read them (something I haven't been able to do as I can't find full text online yet, I'll check my research databases later) you're making a pretty empty and transparent dismissal.



The only one accredited to anyone with a doctorate in psychology, the .edu link, directly contradicts your claim, in that they specifically state IQ is a predictor of general, not academic success.

Actually, what it says is that IQ correlates with success on a wide range of human endeavors more than any other variable, but that it is still a poor predictor of occupational success and nonacademic intellectual activity.



Give me a single APA recognized journal article post 1990 and I'll consider the possibility of the claim, and look at the metadata. The only time I've seen anyone make that claim, the furthest they could get are magazine or news articles demonstrating news media and even scientific magazine editor's complete inability to actually read scientific journals.

spoilered for length.

The role of IQ in special education placement decisions: Primary and determinative or peripheral and inconsequential?
MacMillan, Donald LView Profile; Forness, Steven R. Remedial and Special Education19. 4 (Jul/Aug 1998): 239.

Intelligence: Foundations and Issues in Assessment
Gottfredson, LindaView Profile; Saklofske, Donald HView Profile. Canadian Psychology50. 3 (Aug 2009): 183-195.

Right answer to the wrong question: A reply to Jung and Haier
Sternberg, Robert J. Behavioral and Brain Sciences30. 2 (Apr 2007): 170.

I haven't read all of these in-depth, but I have skimmed them. The first two recognize it as an issue, but don't go into any reasons why it might be the case. The third is a general critique of intelligence tests, in particular, it is a reply to a neuroimaging study.


Not what I'm claiming. You are both missing the point and failing to answer my question. Contemporary IQ tests have increasingly become like the test I'm talking of because IQ researches have recognized and tried to eliminate biases in their tests. There are tests with more portions, but no contemporary test I know of lacks pattern recognition. Yet, scoring in this single portion is a strong indicator of how a person will do in any other part of the test.

So explain to me what possible bias can a black-and-white pattern recognition test have.

This is basically inaccurate. Out of the most commonly used tests, the Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler, the Kaufman, and the Woodcock-Johnson, only the Raven's Progressive Matrices is a completely nonverbal test. The others incorporate a range of verbal and non-verbal subtests.

Further, pattern recognition may correlate higher with g than any other measure, but that doesn't make it the end all be all of an IQ test or of intelligence itself.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 07:22 AM
Again, not what I claimed. I didn't say "all tests are non-verbal", I said "no test lacks pattern recognition". You are not saying anything I did not acknowledge in my previous post. ("There are tests with more portions.") And you seem to agree with me that pattern recognition measures general intellect better than other portions. This suggests we don't disagree in any meaningful manner, you are simply missing the point:

Explain to me what possible bias can a black-and-white pattern recognition test have.

If you can't or are unwilling to answer the actual question, you fall into the same group as Terra and Guru: I'm more willing to believe MENSA than you.

Toastkart
2013-03-11, 09:26 AM
Again, not what I claimed. I didn't say "all tests are non-verbal", I said "no test lacks pattern recognition". You are not saying anything I did not acknowledge in my previous post. ("There are tests with more portions.") And you seem to agree with me that pattern recognition measures general intellect better than other portions. This suggests we don't disagree in any meaningful manner, you are simply missing the point:

You claimed that contemporary tests were becoming more and more about pattern recognition, which is inaccurate. Pattern recognition has been a large part of intelligence tests since the beginning. Contemporary tests are actually diversifying so that they can test more than what pattern recognition tests for. I didn't make that clear enough and I apologize for that.

Further, pattern recognition is a particular type of cognitive task. I said it correlates well with g, which is not the same as intelligence or IQ. G is the general factor that explains the correlation between different types of cognitive tasks. That makes it a statistical construct, although there is some evidence that it exists beyond that. That's neither here nor there, though.


Explain to me what possible bias can a black-and-white pattern recognition test have.

If you can't or are unwilling to answer the actual question, you fall into the same group as Terra and Guru: I'm more willing to believe MENSA than you.

I can't answer you at this time, as I am not well-read on the subject and I don't have time for further research at the moment. What I can say at the moment is that in the actual practice of administering these tests, ethnic minorities disproportionately score lower. There may not be any bias in pattern recognition tests, but pattern recognition may be only a small part of some of the subtests, and many IQ tests have 15 or 20 subtests.

The Fury
2013-03-11, 09:27 AM
Except when you try to apply it to a woman in a fantasy (D&D) setting, where today's culture has no impact. Then you need to find out what would still exist if culture was taken away. Besides, when portraying any character, even in today's real world, you need to strip away the cultural aspects and focus on the individual otherwise you end up with stereotypes. And stereotypes fail to properly depict reality as you miss out on a lot of people.

I don't entirely disagree, but removing culture entirely wouldn't give a complete picture either. While a fantasy setting likely wouldn't have the same culture we're familiar with, it would have a culture of some kind and that culture would shape any character's personality to some degree. As for stereotypes, you're right in saying that they're not an accurate picture of reality but people will sometimes assign stereotypes to themselves. That said, if you do use stereotypes in characterization use them carefully and consciously.

JusticeZero
2013-03-11, 10:02 AM
Sigh. You are aware that IQ testing is the poster child example of bad and poorly applied "science" used wrongly to make the world a worse place? It's like phrenology, if phrenology were to be used to promote bigotry. You also are aware that anyone relevant to the thread can just look at their character sheet, and also that those people have five other relevant stats.

Also, "antisocial behaviors" differ culturally. This includes the types of antisocial behaviors that women in said culture tend to get themselves into, as well as the types of antisocial behaviors that men in those cultures tend to prefer. While you see criminals everywhere, the crimes dont stay the same. Also, the response TO those crimes can vary drastically within the culture. White upper middle class financiers can access and steal large sums of money and not get punished very much. A minority, especially a male minority who fits a certain scary archetype, who steals a much smaller sum gets the hammer of justice brought down on their head. People have lots of asymmetrical ideas about crime and punishment that get applied unevenly which reinforce the biases that exist.

Some cities think that pickpockets are kind've romantic, and generally give them a slap on the wrist. Others are much more strict about it. This can even be the same city, varying by neighborhood or a change in the tenor of what the bards are reporting to people on the street. Nonetheless, a dashing and handsome gentleman in a silken jacket straight off the cover of a Harlequin romance that was caught dipping a coin purse is going to have a much different punishment levied on him than the poor, dirty half-orc pickpocket behind him.

What happens to the flashy bard isn't going to wreck his social standing, because his standing is pretty high; what happens to the half-orc is going to slam him down into "his place" in the gutter.. and probably make it so the guy is going to have to go back out to dip purses again once he gets let go, because he's not going to have any other good options to pay for his food. The half-orc pickpocket is remembered as reinforcing the stereotype of the evil criminal scum from the ghetto; the flashy bardic pickpocket is remembered wistfully as being a rogue, then largely forgotten about the next time he is seen prancing about.

Much in the same way, women aren't usually seen as being antisocial or evil. When they are, people are shocked, shocked I say, but then forget the incident and defer back to the innocent and pure stereotype built up in their mind. They get punished differently and blamed for different things, the same as every other group. The consequences are different. The way the original incident was thought of is framed differently. Wife punches husband for saying something, 'funny haha lol'. Husband punches wife for saying something 'omg violent abuse it just goes to show how much more aggressive men are'.

This applies even when the two are actually pretty much equally threatening. I've seen people laugh at stories of women punching their boyfriends when said woman was close to 6'0" and a Dan ranked Karate practitioner, where the story even commented that the guy had to go to the hospital to get the injury looked at. I can't see anyone responding to a story about a man with a lot of boxing experience laying his girlfriend out flat with a right cross being responded to mirthfully.

The frequencies of antisocial behavior are resultingly hard to measure exactly, because a lot of things that don't fit the stereotype don't get reported correctly... but a lot of the attempts to puzzle it out come up with results a lot closer to 50/50.

So really it is not hard at all to imagine women being fighters and paladins and whatnot all the freaking time.. and even after they walk out of the tavern to go hunt down yet another ogre band, everyone is still assuming that the big guy she was with is the tank of the group. (Actually, that guy was the SORCERER. They even TOLD them that, but it apparently slipped everyone's mind.)

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 10:32 AM
No, I'm not aware of that, since I can't think of single instance where IQ and theory of general intelligence were used for wide-scale social reformation. It is a statistical tool mostly used by scientist researcing human behaviour. IQ "making the world a worse place" is a claim that doesn't seem to hold much water. It is mostly based on the fear it can or could be used to discriminate or rank in superiority people based on academic capability and upbringing, but such arguments miss the elephant in the room that almost all schools already numerically rank their students. Most complaints I see made against IQ as metric of capability could as well be directed towards scored school exams. The problem is that even when inaccurate, IQ is still useful as a statistical tool.

Also, elongated D&D metaphors aside, look up Antisocial disorder on Wikipedia. Then read the article on Aggression again.

Synovia
2013-03-11, 10:46 AM
Personally, I find the explanation that most people do indeed show grouping tendencies which can be expressed as racism, et al to be more probable.

We discriminate against EVERYTHING in everyone around us. And some things are more obvious than others, and therefore more likely to be discriminated/distinguished/discerned/noticed.

This is very true.

There was a study done a while back with (I want to say) kindergartners, where they had two groups of randomly chosen kids. One group was given Red shirts, the other Blue shirts. They weren't given any instruction on how to behave/etc, just that they were to wear that color each day.

After a couple weeks, they individually interviewed the children. Each group identified the children in the other colored T-Shirt as being less trustworthy, mean, lazy, less worthy, etc.

We have a fundamental tendency to form groups, and to discriminate against those outside the group. Its something that is fundamentally human, and can't be fixed. Its a byproduct of the way our brains form patterns, and its something that probably helped us survive, back 100K years ago.

The key isn't to get rid of Otherism (and that's all racism is). The key is to realize when you're doing it. Just as important though, is to realize that sometimes you do have a legitimate reason to dislike a specific Other, and the fact that the person is an Other doesn't make it Otherism. Its okay to hate Jenny Blue-Shirt if she spiked the ball off your face in dodgeball, even if you're wearing a red-shirt.

warty goblin
2013-03-11, 10:53 AM
This is very true.

There was a study done a while back with (I want to say) kindergartners, where they had two groups of randomly chosen kids. One group was given Red shirts, the other Blue shirts. They weren't given any instruction on how to behave/etc, just that they were to wear that color each day.

After a couple weeks, they individually interviewed the children. Each group identified the children in the other colored T-Shirt as being less trustworthy, mean, lazy, less worthy, etc.

We have a fundamental tendency to form groups, and to discriminate against those outside the group. Its something that is fundamentally human, and can't be fixed. Its a byproduct of the way our brains form patterns, and its something that probably helped us survive, back 100K years ago.

The key isn't to get rid of Otherism (and that's all racism is). The key is to realize when you're doing it. Just as important though, is to realize that sometimes you do have a legitimate reason to dislike a specific Other, and the fact that the person is an Other doesn't make it Otherism. Its okay to hate Jenny Blue-Shirt if she spiked the ball off your face in dodgeball, even if you're wearing a red-shirt.
You can see this sort of behavior in sheep. We had Shetlands for many years, which have a variety of fleece colors, ranging through brown, grey, black and white, or a mixture of any of the above. Usually they are born white, black or a mottle of the two, with other colors appearing with age and bleaching.

The lambs segregated themselves by color. As soon as there were more than just a couple of lambs around in the spring, the white lambs grouped with other white lambs, and the black lambs flocked with other black lambs.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 10:56 AM
On a second thought, JusticeZero, simply do an archive binge on psychological disorders. Many are not uniformly distributed among sexes. Since some have been linked to genetic or chemical triggers, and all triggers are not shared between sexes, there are clearly some biological components to psyche.

Mando Knight
2013-03-11, 10:58 AM
Most complaints I see made against IQ as metric of capability could as well be directed towards scored school exams. The problem is that even when inaccurate, IQ is still useful as a statistical tool.

"All models are inaccurate. Some are useful."

...Now if only I remembered where I got that line...

Synovia
2013-03-11, 11:00 AM
On a second thought, JusticeZero, simply do an archive binge on psychological disorders. Many are not uniformly distributed among sexes. Since some have been linked to genetic or chemical triggers, and all triggers are not shared between sexes, there are clearly some biological components to psyche.

Agree.

The idea that men and women are the same is simply absurd. We know that many hormones affect behavior. We know men and women have different hormone levels, so we know behavior (and the things the drive behaviors) will be different.


Different doesn't mean inferior.

hamishspence
2013-03-11, 11:00 AM
"All models are inaccurate. Some are useful."

...Now if only I remembered where I got that line...

Wikiquote says George E. P. Box:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box

JusticeZero
2013-03-11, 11:05 AM
Off-topic response:
No, I'm not aware of that, since I can't think of single instance where IQ and theory of general intelligence were used for wide-scale social reformation.Yeah, that's because a bunch of scientists looked at The Bell Curve and said "What a bunch of racist gobbledygook" and took time out of their schedule to stomp it out before it got too far.
It is a statistical tool mostly used by scientist researcing human behaviour.
Also, elongated D&D metaphors aside, look up Antisocial disorder on Wikipedia. Then read the article on Aggression again.One, scientists use a whole lot of statistical tools, often times trying to use the flaws or quirks in the tool to get at some completely different piece of information. So that doesn't actually say anything. Psychologists in particular love to use a wide variety of tests for relatively cryptic reasons which oftentimes have nothing to do with the test itself.
Two, at a certain, actually very low, level of education - one is no longer allowed to use Wikipedia because it is not reliable and has certain very bizarre rules about how it can use information that bake a lot of inaccuracies into anything it says - even assuming that nobody is playing WikiPVP with that article at the time.
Three, i'm not even sure what you are trying to get at by asking me to read those Wikipedia articles. I've only dealt with a couple of people who seemed to fit the description of the "Antisocial disorder" you listed, and all of them were female.
This doesn't have anything to do with the actual topic, however. What is on topic is the ways that culture can not only encourage or deny women who might be 'on the fence' on a career path from picking up a sword and taking levels in a combat class, but the ways that culture can make people forget the implications of those four women that they just saw walk through the middle of town cleaning their greataxes and rapiers just in time to comment about how they never see any women fighters. All of which are known effects. With the end effect being that they really shouldn't be as exotic or earthshakingly controversial as people think they are.

Just make a character and give their backstory some thought reflective to their standings, but don't think that you have to be bound by those cultural beliefs, and don't think that it's even going to be all that memorable if you violate them, since people are going to try to sort everyone by stereotype and forget all the individual encounters anyways. Whether or not you need chest support in your armor is NOT going to be as huge and earthshaking of a character decision as people think.

Frozen_Feet
2013-03-11, 11:52 AM
Ah, the old "Wikipedia is unreliable!" card. I know that very well. I refer to it because a) all my primary sources are in Finnish and at the library, so it's a tad bit hard for me to get them to you, b) Wikipedia has links for further investigation and c) I want to make sure you are actually on the ball of what I'm talking about, since Terra referred to Wikipedia before me and much of my commentary build on that. Or am I not allowed to use the same weapons as my enemies? :smalltongue:

Also, you might have noticed a distinct lack of commentary on your D&D metaphors. It's because I already made the same conclusion pages ago in much briefer form. For me, this line of discussion has been about explaining my stance on the real life phenomenom of male antisocials, fictional societies or warrior women are irrelevant to it. I still think you should read those articles to get a more even platform of discussion, unless you happen to already be well-educated in mental disorders.

JusticeZero
2013-03-11, 12:26 PM
One, I'm not Terra.
Two, I am talking in DnD world 'metaphors' because I am on an RPG forum, responding to a thread about the character backstory concerns associated with female warrior types, and thus am trying to stay near the actual topic to be discussed.
Three, there has long been a problem as regards psych 'disorders' where there is not actually a good definition of 'disorder' that does not capture a lot of people who are acting the same as they were - completely normal - before they hopped on the plane from their home culture.

Gwazi Magnum
2013-03-11, 12:45 PM
I personally believe gender differences for things such as interests, aggression levels, hobbies, social norms etc are a huge result of cultural influences and what we told people they should be cause of the gender they are.

So in a world like D&D, if you made it so people weren't treated differently by their gender then I wouldn't play a woman warrior any different from a man.

If in a D&D world where there was difference, I personally wouldn't want to paint her over with whatever female norm/stereotype that world has so I would still play her the same way, but address and roleplay the fact she is not the norm, is aware of is and dispite the pressure to be different she stays true to herself.

In other words, I don't let a characters gender influence or decide who they are or how they should act.

Yukitsu
2013-03-11, 12:58 PM
First, this isn't a university course and I am not writing a research paper. I provided some sources that, with one exception, had sources of their own. My fault for that one, but unless you've followed their sources and read them (something I haven't been able to do as I can't find full text online yet, I'll check my research databases later) you're making a pretty empty and transparent dismissal.

I followed their sources, both contained IQ tests that I would acknowledge are fundamentally flawed, or had studies which did not support the magazine writers conclusion.


Actually, what it says is that IQ correlates with success on a wide range of human endeavors more than any other variable, but that it is still a poor predictor of occupational success and nonacademic intellectual activity.

That's because it's a single predictor for a task which likely requires multiple skills, only a few of which are likely related to intelligence. If it were supposed to purely measure success, we'd call it a success quotient. Intelligence is ultimately supposed to test what is currently viewed as intelligence, which is taking the information at hand (not remembered) to come to a correct and expedient conclusion. It shouldn't be a surprise that that skill is one of the higher indicators of success, but only a few tasks require that skill independent of any others.


The role of IQ in special education placement decisions: Primary and determinative or peripheral and inconsequential?
MacMillan, Donald LView Profile; Forness, Steven R. Remedial and Special Education19. 4 (Jul/Aug 1998): 239.

Intelligence: Foundations and Issues in Assessment
Gottfredson, LindaView Profile; Saklofske, Donald HView Profile. Canadian Psychology50. 3 (Aug 2009): 183-195.

Right answer to the wrong question: A reply to Jung and Haier
Sternberg, Robert J. Behavioral and Brain Sciences30. 2 (Apr 2007): 170.

I haven't read all of these in-depth, but I have skimmed them. The first two recognize it as an issue, but don't go into any reasons why it might be the case. The third is a general critique of intelligence tests, in particular, it is a reply to a neuroimaging study.

I'll be interested to look into these. I haven't read much of the literature since 2008, so the newer two hadn't come to my attention. The former however, was a systematic problem with the education system, the numbers weren't about a problem with the IQ test as an indicator of intelligence. And of course as you mention, their skepticism isn't grounded in their findings. I will be honest however, the vast bulk of literature that is corrected for socio economic status don't have much deviation, if any after correcting for language barriers reducing the efficacy of the instructions.

Kalmageddon
2013-03-11, 01:41 PM
{Scrubbed}

Terraoblivion
2013-03-11, 01:58 PM
{Scrubbed}

You know, this rather sounds like an opinion to me.

Worira
2013-03-11, 02:08 PM
Yes, but not one on the subject of the thread.

Roland St. Jude
2013-03-11, 02:53 PM
Sheriff: Locked for Review.