Drow transgenderism/female impersonation?

[The Oni]

I'm honestly kind of wondering why this isn't a thing, because of the sheer amount of sense it makes.

What do we know about Drow?

1. One gender dominates society.
2. Drow are raised as ruthless backstabbers and they resort to crazy methods to get what they want.
3. They are elves, so:
3a. Elves, at least surface elves, are somewhat androgynous anyway.
3b. Elves have access to high-level magic up ranging from basic disguises to permanent shapeshifting.

Might read like a weird fanfiction, but in Drow society this would seriously be a practical way to get ahead in the world for a downtrodden male Drow wizard who can't get so much as a "kudos" from a low-level Cleric on account of being a dude. 1. Alter self 2. Permanency 3. ??? 4. Profit!

Makes you wonder how many of those Drow noblewomen were actually born women.

[Mando Knight]

Lolth probably turns them into spiders or eats them or something, if there's a reason for it not being "a thing." The matriarchy is quite devoted to their psychotic spider-demon-god.

[Kaun]

ehh it probably isn't an official fluff thing because it is more trouble then it is worth to publish.

If people want to add it to their own games then they can, but i can't imagine adding it to the official lore would do anything other then cause a poop storm.

[Couronne]

Possibly because being a transgender Drow (which would relate to situations where the Drow's gender identity and assigned gender don't match) wouldn't be a learned behaviour.

It looks like you are talking about cis-Drow cross-gender performance. Which may well be a thing - though given the Drow, an incredibly dangerous thing (though no doubt safer than actually being a trans-Drow).

You've suggested magical assigned gender change (i.e. the physical stuff) as a profitable avenue for male Drow. Given the psycological stresses that transgender people go through when their body does not match their gender identity, I would hazard a guess that it wouldn't be a case of 'oooh look I found a girdle of masculinity/femininity and can't ever remove it, now I'm a powerful woman, isn't this a lark!'.

[RochtheCrusher]

Well, here's the other thing:

In slaveholding and other similar societies (especially stereotypical evil ones, like the Drow) cruelty to the ruled class is expected. Having boobs would not be enough; our hypothetical wizard would have to beat her former fellows and feed them to spiders to fit in.

Otherwise, she gets viewed as soft or as an Abolitionist of some sort. Both of those sorts of people end up dead.

Honestly, transforming your horrible mistress into a dude (who nobody would believe) is a lot more promising. Pretty sure that would equate to Falling for a Drow Priestess. :-P

[Erik Vale]

Similar points to the above, + various divinations.
Oh, you change genders to get ahead, your actually a man in one of our women only clubs, we're going to have to kill you know. [I think they would be a little less wordy]

However, for less arrogant female drow, I can imagine switching genders for a few minutes as a potentially good way to sneak around.

[One Step Two]

Firstly, I don't think this is something that NPC Drow should deal with.
I don't mean to say that all NPC Drow should be cardboard cut-outs, but that this kind of, IMO, compelling story, is something players might want to explore, heck, I feel inspired to give it a spin.

That said, slavery not withstanding, it's about not standing out either. If you take a read of Drow of the Underdark, it gives you a little insight to Drow society and how they function, and the action of changing gender isn't cut and dry, so lets tell a tale or two.

First, let's presume secrecy.
Male Drow number 1, lets call him Rikesril, finds a belt of gender changing.
Let's not get into the reasons of why he wants to wear it, he does, and is now a Female Drow.
Rikesril, is still Rikesril, just a female version of themselves. Assuming they have enough ranks in disguise to make her look different, they can enter a new Drow city and avoid the stigma of being Male. However, without any associations of their prior house, or if they were an owned slave, they're going to find life as unforgiving as before. Where being a slave meant getting treated harshly for not doing their work, they are an unknown Drow female. If she tries to lie her way into Nobility, she's now subject to harsh judgements, and intense scrutiny. In any other strata of life, she will need to be on constant vigilance of her actions, because how a female drow acts in everyday life is different to a Male, because even the lowliest drow female is treated is nothing compared to the menfolk for the most part, and that lifetime of differing behaviours would be hard to shake.

Male Drow number 2, Baridl is more open, let's say they have achieved great things for their house, and is accorded grudging respect by the house matriacrchy. He asks for nothing, but the ultimate reward of being made into a female via magics. At best he'll be punished severely, and lose anything he holds dear for trying to rise above his station.

The unfortunate reality is that birth to drow is as much an important maneuver as anything. A drow baby girl is a blessing to a house, but also another rival. A male drow is a minor curse, but another serf. To many drow, a male trying to become female would be seen as an affront to Lolth.

On the otherside of the coin, a Female becoming Male would certainly allow them to go undetected for the most part, but given how most drow societies are, doing so would be a major affront to them, the very idea of lowering themselves in such a way, or any way, woud be anathama to them. (of course, now I have a wicked idea of running a Drow campaign where they attack a rival house by hiding a belt of gender changing in the matriarchs wardrobe)

[erikun]

First, just because drow seem androgynous to humans does not mean that they are androgynous to drow. A drow no doubt can pick out the distinction between a male drow and a female drow at a glance; it wouldn't just be a matter of sticking a male drow in a dress to fool everyone.

Second, as One Step Two pointed out, status is as much a function of family as of sex. A random drow female entering a city is going to have a lot of hurdles to cross before even being accepted as a citizen. Being unable to answer specific questions - where are you from, what family are you with - or lying about them puts the character in a position where they're treated as an exile from another city, as that's the most likely reason for their evasive answers.

Third, trying to deceive a large group of Drow in a case like this is probably a bad idea. If they find out the person is actually male but disguised as female, they're likely to take fatal/torturous actions. If a family was helping to hide the same facts, then the family would likely get direct attention from the Church of Lolth, who would likely have an issue with males walking around pretending to be females.

Oh, and I suppose you could excuse the stereotypical female drow clothing as a method to distinguish who is clearly female and who is not. Most probably could not pull off the crotch-hugging, boob-window outfit while actually being male.

[One Step Two]

First, just because drow seem androgynous to humans does not mean that they are androgynous to drow. A drow no doubt can pick out the distinction between a male drow and a female drow at a glance; it wouldn't just be a matter of sticking a male drow in a dress to fool everyone.

[Snip]

Oh, and I suppose you could excuse the stereotypical female drow clothing as a method to distinguish who is clearly female and who is not. Most probably could not pull off the crotch-hugging, boob-window outfit while actually being male.

Also, drow tend to display their sexuality intensionally, another purposeful tool in the constant inter-house struggle. Androdgeny might be a thing all elves might deal with (seeing as only one in ten males can grow facial hair apparently), but Drow like to make themselves stand out like true leaders.

[The Oni]

Lolth probably turns them into spiders or eats them or something, if there's a reason for it not being "a thing." The matriarchy is quite devoted to their psychotic spider-demon-god.

But gods don't have absolute power and authority to intervene in the Material Plane; there's a balance to maintain. If Lolth just went around personally smiting or dridering any mortal who violated her sacred edicts, the other gods would be all up in her business faster than you can say Divine Rank -1. I'm sure she wouldn't be happy with you, but as long as you can evade or decieve her clergy you'd be all right, I think.

It looks like you are talking about cis-Drow cross-gender performance. Which may well be a thing - though given the Drow, an incredibly dangerous thing (though no doubt safer than actually being a trans-Drow).

You've suggested magical assigned gender change (i.e. the physical stuff) as a profitable avenue for male Drow. Given the psycological stresses that transgender people go through when their body does not match their gender identity, I would hazard a guess that it wouldn't be a case of 'oooh look I found a girdle of masculinity/femininity and can't ever remove it, now I'm a powerful woman, isn't this a lark!'.

Well, and again, I'm not saying that it's a conclusion every Drow will come to; but for those who are sufficiently intelligent and thirsty for power, I would not doubt that someone would try it. Sufficiently mighty casters could surely figure out a way to conceal themselves against divinations (even assuming Drow clergy get "Detect Manliness" as a class feature.)

As for not being able to pass as female to other Drow - I'm guessing that depends on the individual drow. There is a certain proportion of male humans who can pass as female humans to the average human, so I'd assume the proportion is higher in Elven races (it might even out due to keen elven senses but there's still a subset who could pull it off). The revealing armor seems to lend credence to the theory, but in any case, the superior magical option makes that less relevant.

Honestly, transforming your horrible mistress into a dude (who nobody would believe) is a lot more promising. Pretty sure that would equate to Falling for a Drow Priestess. :-P

Better than Baleful Polymorph!

[One Step Two]

But gods don't have absolute power and authority to intervene in the Material Plane; there's a balance to maintain. If Lolth just went around personally smiting or dridering any mortal who violated her sacred edicts, the other gods would be all up in her business faster than you can say Divine Rank -1. I'm sure she wouldn't be happy with you, but as long as you can evade or decieve her clergy you'd be all right, I think.

To Quote:

How can a culture this sadistic, this prone to betrayal and infighting, this bereft of any legal or moral code, possibly last for more than a few generations without obliterating itself? The truth is, it can't. Drow society is absolutely and utterly nonviable. By all rights, it should have murdered itself into oblivion eons ago. It is only the will of the goddess Lolth that prevents this circumstance from coming about...

...The Queen of Spiders is not a subtle or patient goddess however, and if she feels that her priestesses are unable to take effective steps in [any] matter, she steps in directly.

Lolth runs a tight ship. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but such occurances cannot be casual, they need to be the deepest of dark secrets, like a drow matriarch having her child polymorphed at a young age, (turning a female into a male to keep her rule in check, or a male into female to secure an heir, for example), or the stuff of legend, and defying the odds. Which PC's tend to do

[Mando Knight]

Lolth runs a tight ship. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but such occurances cannot be casual, they need to be the deepest of dark secrets, like a drow matriarch having her child polymorphed at a young age, (turning a female into a male to keep her rule in check, or a male into female to secure an heir, for example), or the stuff of legend, and defying the odds. Which PC's tend to do

Lolth is weirdly portrayed as basically being the most consistently active deity in D&D lore... and not getting ganged up on for it.

Of course, she generally is only consistently active among her rabid pack of xenophobic followers, so her direct intervention affects the other gods' domains a bit less than, say, Pelor coming down to smite an incursion by Vecnan cultists on his temple in the middle of a major multicultural city.

[The Oni]

That makes sense.

Ok - now I'm imagining a high-level campaign where lawful (but not necessarily Good) PCs work with a Drow loyalist to out a Well-Intentioned Extremist polymorphed-to-female Drow noblewoman who plans to equalize Drow by usurping Lolth and unifying its splintered society - thus turning it into a fair but brutally efficient meritocracy.

It would still be an EVIL meritocracy, mind you, and they'd have the added benefit of actually being effective and a threat to the surface. The elves would be totally screwed.

[Mando Knight]

And then Lolth's priestesses notice the permanent transmutation effect on the woman, and dispel it. Oops.

(Also, usurp Lolth? Did the character miss the part where Lolth is a deity? With an army of demons at her beck and call?)

[One Step Two]

Like I said Mando, it's not a casual thing. An NPC who does it feels odd, because we hand-wave the how. For a PC to do it, all the failsafes you need to go through, the prep work to make sure it all goes off! The nail-biting suspense in bluff checks...
Give me a willing, and challenging DM, and I will tell one hell of a story, ideas abound!

[The Oni]

Yeah. This would be a high-level campaign, so the villain would be epic; with sufficient resources and the right artifact, it's quite possible. Gods are statted in D&D and if you can stat it, you can kill it. "They told me I could become anything I wanted, so I became a goddess!" Which really, would be the ultimate comeuppance to Lolth - getting overthrown by a formerly male Drow.

[SiuiS]

I'm honestly kind of wondering why this isn't a thing, because of the sheer amount of sense it makes.

Because what you're describing isn't transgender, it's cross dressing and disguising.

More importantly, you've got a skill (Disguise) that almost no one takes, magic which simply gives you a +10 on the disguise roll, as a different sex (-2), and have to make sure no one who will ever see you from that point onward knows you (minimum +4 to break your disguise) or you're screwed.

An actual discussion on drow and transgenderism would be kinda neat, though.

[The Oni]

I dunno, but do you make the distinction between "I would like to be a woman because my life would be better" and "I would like to be a woman because it doesn't feel right being a man" if they are believed and acted upon with the same fervor?

If only the latter is transgenderism, then Drow transgenderism would likely be treated the same way as any rabidly authoritarian and violent human society: an unfortunate aberration, dealt with quickly and without much pity.

[Ravens_cry]

If there wasn't a goddess involved, I could see crossdressing (with or without magical enhancement like a certain infamous girdle) being a way for a male to enter into positions of power while still following the letter of societal strictures, kind of like how female pharaoh Hatshepsut sometimes wore a false beard.
But this isn't transgenderism. The former is a means to an end and the latter is an end in and of itself.

[SiuiS]

I dunno, but do you make the distinction between "I would like to be a woman because my life would be better" and "I would like to be a woman because it doesn't feel right being a man" if they are believed and acted upon with the same fervor?

If only the latter is transgenderism, then Drow transgenderism would likely be treated the same way as any rabidly authoritarian and violent human society: an unfortunate aberration, dealt with quickly and without much pity.

The defining characteristic is not that being an [X] would make your life easier, but that you are [X], with a genetic anomaly that makes your life harder that you want to remove, and also to avoid the stigma of having it removed (assuming transsexual for transgender rather than assuming it's an umbrella term). In fact, based on such a language choice, I would wonder if the DM would arbitrate symptoms of dysphoria for the new priestess, seeing as her mind's bodymap would no longer correlate to the actual physical body, and the spell isn't designed for permanency; Eventual growing issues between the spirit's expectations and the body's reality causing a general, acute malaise.

The idea of drow nobles murdering their infant children and using a series of reincarnations to ensure rebirth as the appropriate sex is interesting, though, as is a secluded drow, uh, "monastery" I suppose, where young drow are taken, and raised as women, then given the ritual murder-resurrection so that by the time they leave, they are indeed, women by the common drow-cultural understanding, using the regular ol' reincarnation spell and the relatively common houserule that a high enough level druid can choose where on the reincarnation table you fall.

[Kalmageddon]

I would suspect that, at least among Forgotten Realms drow, Lolth wouldn't be ok with it, like, at all.
And if you ever get found out the consequence would be too horrible to immagine.

And it's relatively easy to find out anyway, Detect Magic, True Seeing and so on are quite commonplace in a high magic society.

[CombatOwl]

Like I said Mando, it's not a casual thing. An NPC who does it feels odd, because we hand-wave the how. For a PC to do it, all the failsafes you need to go through, the prep work to make sure it all goes off! The nail-biting suspense in bluff checks...
Give me a willing, and challenging DM, and I will tell one hell of a story, ideas abound!

If you'd rather not handwave it... a custom instantaneous Alter Self would be like fourth level, tops. Could really justify it pretty easily as third level. Instantaneous duration means detection magic wouldn't get anything. Arguably it would also get past true seeing, since that only reveals ongoing magical transmutations--but there are no explicit rules on that one. Or invent a crazy feat for it.

Kind of an extreme thing to do, but if their plan is to start trying to usurp a deity... well, that level of dedication should almost be a prerequisite.

[Segev]

It would take a certain amount of complicity, and the accomplices would need to see some major boon for aiding in it.

I could see it arising if a diplomatic contingent of one House visits another city, but somehow all the women of the delegation die off, for example. They NEED to make this meeting and now show weakness, and so the highest-ranking (or most able to pull off the charade) male is transformed, and the whole delegation pretends "she" is the matriarch of the expedition. The initial plan likely would be to return home and claim that the actual death of the females happened on the way back, but that they desperately struggled to stay alive to get the agreement back home to their Matriarch for the good of the family (and in hopes of reward, of course).

For it to become a long-term thing, they'd have to be staying in the foreign town for a longish while and establish connections of their own while trading on the power of their distant family. Alternatively, a particularly powerful-personality male might be able to bully his sisters into helping him with the farce. He would have to be VERY good at what he does, and his services would have to overcome any insult his behavior gives them. But it could be done. The same blackmail they have over him for faking being a woman he has over them for their complicity. And he loses less by the reveal: they could have murdered a boy without too much consequence (other than losing his apparently mighty services to the family); he couldn't have gotten them killed until they had complicity to reveal.

Well, he could have, but it would've been more the back-stabbing and treachery sort of ploy rather than a direct "I can get the whole city to turn on you and feed you to a Yochlol."

As far as "gender identity," it's magic in a fantasy campaign. Magic Jar and Mind Switch can both achieve it by stealing a body of the right gender. Heck, a drow male telepath of level 17 or higher (how he survived that long when Lolth apparently eats people over 7th is a good question...) could True Mind Switch with his own Matriarch if he wanted to. And there's nothing in the rules that in any way implies the unfamiliarity of the body causes problems.

[nedz]

It's a political problem as much as anything.

I could imagine a situation where a Drow house, bereft of females, might do this — for political advantage; well to avoid being wiped out most likely.

It might make for an interesting plot.

[Themrys]

I don't know how realistic Drow society is portrayed (not very, I guess) , but I think most male Drow would view their sex/gender as something valuable and important and part of their personality, even if they're continually told that they're less valuable than women.

Someone like Vaarsuvius would probably change sex as soon as the opportunity arises, if there was any advantage to be gotten from it, as to V, it's just not important.
But Drow live in a society where it is extremely important, so their gender identity is likely stronger and they're more opposed to changing their bodies.

[Tengu_temp]

Lolth is weirdly portrayed as basically being the most consistently active deity in D&D lore... and not getting ganged up on for it.

Because the Drow are very well-known to get speshul treatment from both writers and fans, and this extends to their goddess.

[Segev]

Because the Drow are very well-known to get speshul treatment from both writers and fans, and this extends to their goddess.

Well, it helps that Lolth is mostly being highly active to social-engineer her own chosen people. Her direct involvement becomes far less extant when dealing with other races. And her social engineering is demonstrably NOT making her race of choice more powerful. So the other gods don't bother ganging up on her because it's just not worth it over this.

[Slipperychicken]

I could see a Drow male disguising as a female so he can get ahead in a woman-dominated culture. That's a thing which happens every so often in real life too. People can get away with such disguises indefinitely. And it's not like there are any "Detect gender identity" spells which can't be warded against.

[Themrys]

I could see a Drow male disguising as a female so he can get ahead in a woman-dominated culture. That's a thing which happens every so often in real life too. People can get away with such disguises indefinitely. And it's not like there are any "Detect gender identity" spells which can't be warded against.

Well, it works in real life because people in real life usually wear sensible clothes.
From what I understand, this is not the case in Drow society ... which is one of the reasons why I can't bring myself to take any question regarding Drow seriously.

[Ravens_cry]

I could see a Drow male disguising as a female so he can get ahead in a woman-dominated culture. That's a thing which happens every so often in real life too. People can get away with such disguises indefinitely. And it's not like there are any "Detect gender identity" spells which can't be warded against.

That was my thought as well. Depending on how one makes the universe, it could be either a one off desperate secret by one male priestess, or a socially accepted, in a nudge, nudge, wink wink kind of way, method for males to advance in a female dominated roll.