Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings

[Talakeal]

(This was in response to Never Satisfied):
I'm still somewhat on sure of what exactly you are asking. Are you confused about the distinction between gender (a neurological phenomenon present in most humans) and gender roles? In the world of Never Satisfied, other characters know that Lucy (the main character) is nonbinary because they told other people they are nonbinary, presumably since they are most comfortable being thought of that way. Their typical outfit and hairstyle looks like what current U.S. culture would say was a feminine appearance, although in the NSATverse it wouldn't be considered a "feminine attire" because they don't have gender roles.

Yes, I am very confused about the concept of neurological gender, to the point where I am skeptical about its existence and curious about what it would even mean on a conceptual level.

As a gender non-conforming person, I have trouble wrapping my head around why someone would choose to be NB, although I can understand it in broad strokes, simply wanting to opt out of the whole convoluted gender role system. But in a world without such a system, its harder to understand.

Likewise, claiming to be neither a man or a woman when you are physically one or the other in a world where that is merely a physical descriptor is extremely odd, like claiming to be a blonde when your hair is black. Now, I could see it is the person actually suffered from dysphoria, but then that raises the question (in my world, probably not in the web comic) about why they haven't used alchemy to either cure the mental condition directly or transition into an androgynous form.

Okay, I'm with Segev on this one: do people in your world walk around naked? How do you typically know if someone else has a penis otherwise?

Knowing if someone can grow a beard is easier, since you might be able to see a stubble unless their hair follicles are close to the same color as their skin. Does that mean that in your setting, people with PCOS would be considered men (at least by people who haven't seen them naked)? Or does PCOS simply not exist in your world?

Bear in mind that, in the real world, PCOS affects about 10% of people with ovaries, so they are more common than trans women. So, if you really want all sorts of players to be able to "see themselves" in the settings, eliminating PCOS might be a bad idea. And, there are plenty of other reasons AFAB people grow beards. It's moderately common among post-menopausal women due to decreased estrogen. Would they be considered men in your setting? Or does menopause not exist either (which, again, see my previous comment)?

Whether someone walks around naked depends on where they are and what they are doing. Typically no, but unless they are super rich or super poor they are going to be bathing in a communal bath house. Not that you wouldn't see your friends, coworkers, and family members changing on occasion, and obviously your doctor and your tailor know what's beneath your clothes, and few garments completely conceal the genitals at all times.

PCOS and similar disorders certainly exist, although they are likely rarer do to extensive gene editing done in the setting's history, and are fully curable with modern alchemy. Note however, that I am not saying that gender isn't a spectrum, or that intersex people don't exist, or that anyone is 100% masculine or feminine, either in my setting or in real life.

[KaussH]

Put another way, one man and 10 women can produce about 10 offspring in about a year. One woman and 10 men can produce about 1 offspring in about one year.

(There are, of course, other considerations in just how viable raising those offspring will be, but from the pure von Neuman biomechanical perspective....)

Yet again, that's pure real world limitations to a fantastic setting. This is really "guy at the gym" for world building.

Make some men able to give birth, allow clerics to make multi births a thing, reverse fertility and make it so one woman can impregnate a bunch of men, ect.

The point I am getting at, if you have a world where you can fly unassisted, have dragons, teleport, raise the dead, ect, then you can apply this to the world building to, at the social level. If you have an issue, you can also just make the solution.

But much like guy at the gym, people seem to view social and sexual issues as "has to have reflections in real world limits" but are ok with spellcasters that can break all the rules.

[Segev]

Yet again, that's pure real world limitations to a fantastic setting. This is really "guy at the gym" for world building.

Make some men able to give birth, allow clerics to make multi births a thing, reverse fertility and make it so one woman can impregnate a bunch of men, ect.

The point I am getting at, if you have a world where you can fly unassisted, have dragons, teleport, raise the dead, ect, then you can apply this to the world building to, at the social level. If you have an issue, you can also just make the solution.

But much like guy at the gym, people seem to view social and sexual issues as "has to have reflections in real world limits" but are ok with spellcasters that can break all the rules.

The point being raised against your position is one of whether the beings you describe are still human.

I'm all for coming up with alien reproductive structures and looking at the societies that come about as part of this. And there's a long way you can go to create alien-ish cultures while retaining functional human traits (see: A Brother's Price, wherein the male/female ratio is skewed heavily such that men are rare and are married off to entire generations of sisters in a family). But when you start making it so that "male" and "female" don't mean the same thing they do in the real world, biologically and reproductively, you're verging into transhuman or nonhuman territory.

[KaussH]

The point being raised against your position is one of whether the beings you describe are still human.

I'm all for coming up with alien reproductive structures and looking at the societies that come about as part of this. And there's a long way you can go to create alien-ish cultures while retaining functional human traits (see: A Brother's Price, wherein the male/female ratio is skewed heavily such that men are rare and are married off to entire generations of sisters in a family). But when you start making it so that "male" and "female" don't mean the same thing they do in the real world, biologically and reproductively, you're verging into transhuman or nonhuman territory.

Well see... male and female do not mean the same thing to different groups in the real world so... makes it kinda open game.
And there have been a number of story's were we have mono gender fantasy cultures that seem to still work (Amazons come to mind. Ethan of athos by Bujold all male on a planet, ect)
So while I may be dancing in transhuman territory a little, it may not be as much as you think.

I mean in the "real world" I know a woman who impregnated her wife the "old fashioned way" everyone involved has documents with f on them and all that:)

[Segev]

Well see... male and female do not mean the same thing to different groups in the real world so... makes it kinda open game.
And there have been a number of story's were we have mono gender fantasy cultures that seem to still work (Amazons come to mind. Ethan of athos by Bujold all male on a planet, ect)
So while I may be dancing in transhuman territory a little, it may not be as much as you think.

I mean in the "real world" I know a woman who impregnated her wife the "old fashioned way" everyone involved has documents with f on them and all that:)

I very deliberately specified biology and reproduction. The terms have specific meanings in that context. "The one who carries the child to term" and "the one who donates the sperm," if needs be, can be substituted for "female" and "male."

"Amazons" as a fantasy culture usually fall into one of a few categories. Themescyra, of DC-verse, handles it by making them immortal and grow their population by being entirely exiles rescued by Hera or Athena or the like from "man's world." It is most definitely not a "human" culture anymore, even if the people who make it up are ex-humans. The most prominent stories about it are, in fact, about how alien it is and how nevertheless the one member of it who was created from divine clay sculpting is exploring the human concepts of "Man's World," with no small amount of attention given, in a number of the stories, to her learning about "Man's world's" romance.

I don't know enough about this all-male planet you bring up to comment. I have suspicions, but they're just that and thus not something to base a discussion on. An "all-male planet" that uses sci-fi cloning or the like would definitely be transhumanist, and if instead it uses some weird biology that is definitely not human, we're back to "alien by more than just cultural norms." Both can be fine, but they're not quite the same thing that has been discussed prior to bringing them into this. And saying "you're just ignoring magic and its possibilities!" is not a strong argument in their favor because you could say the same thing about any fantasy culture. If the story isn't about a culture utterly different from any human society by magic, then bringing in magic to utterly change it from the requirements that shape human societies it is not helping the story.

[KaussH]

I very deliberately specified biology and reproduction. The terms have specific meanings in that context. "The one who carries the child to term" and "the one who donates the sperm," if needs be, can be substituted for "female" and "male."

"Amazons" as a fantasy culture usually fall into one of a few categories. Themescyra, of DC-verse, handles it by making them immortal and grow their population by being entirely exiles rescued by Hera or Athena or the like from "man's world." It is most definitely not a "human" culture anymore, even if the people who make it up are ex-humans. The most prominent stories about it are, in fact, about how alien it is and how nevertheless the one member of it who was created from divine clay sculpting is exploring the human concepts of "Man's World," with no small amount of attention given, in a number of the stories, to her learning about "Man's world's" romance.

I don't know enough about this all-male planet you bring up to comment. I have suspicions, but they're just that and thus not something to base a discussion on. An "all-male planet" that uses sci-fi cloning or the like would definitely be transhumanist, and if instead it uses some weird biology that is definitely not human, we're back to "alien by more than just cultural norms." Both can be fine, but they're not quite the same thing that has been discussed prior to bringing them into this. And saying "you're just ignoring magic and its possibilities!" is not a strong argument in their favor because you could say the same thing about any fantasy culture. If the story isn't about a culture utterly different from any human society by magic, then bringing in magic to utterly change it from the requirements that shape human societies it is not helping the story.

It seems like you and I may have widely different definitions on what is human, and how much of a change can be presented and still be human. By your definition it would seem that humans who have magic powers should not be counted as humans as well, so priests and magi and warlocks and the like are ex humans as well, having surpassed our basic biological limitations.

[Segev]

It seems like you and I may have widely different definitions on what is human, and how much of a change can be presented and still be human. By your definition it would seem that humans who have magic powers should not be counted as humans as well, so priests and magi and warlocks and the like are ex humans as well, having surpassed our basic biological limitations.

No, humans who have technology and knowledge are still human.

Humans who have altered away their fundamental drives, or changed their biology such that those drives are no longer mappable to human needs, no longer qualify (though they may be post-human or transhuman). A society based on clones-only or all-vat-grown-children is going to be so fundamentally different that it won't really be recognizable. At best, it's on the verge of becoming not-human, societally.

But where you specified you were going from the get-go was well beyond that point, to the point where you simply fiat away a major part of the human experience. It's perfectly fine for a fantasy civilization, don't get me wrong; it does not, however, explore any of the concepts of human gender roles, because it fundamentally rejects their possibility. (I suppose it could be written as an examination of how they evolve anyway, but that'll come off fairly strongly as an author tract, I fear. Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't get the impression that was the direction you were going, anyway.)

[Saint-Just]

I believe there's a passage in the Illiad... or maybe The Odyssy? That describes the ocean as "wine-colored" because at the time Ancient Greek as a language didn't have words that referred directly to colors and the intent was that the ocean had the same shade and hue(rather than pigmentation) as wine.

A lot of colors in a lot of different languages describe shade and hue rather than pigmentation, especially if you go into colors more specific than "white for light, black for night, red for blood". It's just that Ancient Greek color system is very different from modern English or French or Russian, so it's not easy to understand.

This is a short post by an actual scholar of Ancient Greek dealing specifically with a "wine-dark sea", this is a link to all three posts on colours in general.

[Cluedrew]

As a gender con-conforming person, I have trouble wrapping my head around why someone would choose to be NB, although I can understand it in broad strokes, simply wanting to opt out of the whole convoluted gender role system. But in a world without such a system, its harder to understand.

Here are two things I can see from the outside:

If you are a... binary person (I'm not sure if that is how you are supposed to say it but not non-binary person sounds silly so I cancelled the negatives) your view has a bias in you don't have that push away from the binary genders in the first place. How many non-binary people have you talked about this?

Your setting has gender biases in it*, rather it will the moment it enters play with people who can't erase their gender biases completely. Speaking of hard to understand I have trouble understand how non-binary works in this setting, I don't understand how the setting works. There are still some differences right? Do people not notice those? Plus even if I could obtain a theoretical understanding of it on a practical level I don't think I could run a game and make NPCs up on the fly without some biases seeping in. I don't think I'm particularly steeped in biases (I'm not sure how to measure) but they aren't gone. Point is; have you thought about that at all?

* Also if the concept of gender was completely gone why would anyone use the sex change potions except for pregnancy. Or on the other end of the scale: fashion. On the other hand maybe this is evidence that some of these … categories can exist without the framework we currently use to describe them. Except its all fiction and isn't evidence for anything but it does create a precedent you may want to consider for reasons of- I was going to say internal consistency but I'm not sure that is quite right either. Just food for thought I guess.

[Talakeal]

Your setting has gender biases in it*, rather it will the moment it enters play with people who can't erase their gender biases completely. Speaking of hard to understand I have trouble understand how non-binary works in this setting, I don't understand how the setting works. There are still some differences right? Do people not notice those? Plus even if I could obtain a theoretical understanding of it on a practical level I don't think I could run a game and make NPCs up on the fly without some biases seeping in. I don't think I'm particularly steeped in biases (I'm not sure how to measure) but they aren't gone. Point is; have you thought about that at all?

* Also if the concept of gender was completely gone why would anyone use the sex change potions except for pregnancy. Or on the other end of the scale: fashion. On the other hand maybe this is evidence that some of these … categories can exist without the framework we currently use to describe them. Except its all fiction and isn't evidence for anything but it does create a precedent you may want to consider for reasons of- I was going to say internal consistency but I'm not sure that is quite right either. Just food for thought I guess.

To clarify, my setting has obviously has gender, and it has some idea of gender stereotypes, although they are very mild compared to real life. What it lacks is a theory of gender as a social construct separate from physical sex.

A good analogy might be hair color. It exists, but is primarily mentioned only as a physical descriptor. There are some stereotypes about it (blondes are dumb, redheads a quirky, etc.), but nobody really takes them that seriously. Some people choose to change their hair color, but it is almost entirely for cosmetic reasons.


I honestly don't think players bringing biases to the table is a big deal, very few TTRPGs actually model any sort of sexism or gender divide, and I don't think I have ever seen someone have an issue accepting it.

[Cluedrew]

What it lacks is a theory of gender as a social construct separate from physical sex.

Oh, well that's simple. Non-binary people will still continue to exist they just will not have the language we use today to describe themselves. The whole reason we (people in this world) have language to describe it is because it is a thing that happens and that thing will not stop happening if there is no language to describe it.

[The Glyphstone]

I am not sure about though, I have done some reading, and mostly what I find is just behavior that we would call homosexual, trans, intersex, or asexual.

I suppose euronomral is a fair way to put it, although as someone who grey up in San Francisco in the late 80s and mostly consumed media that were Asian retellings of European folklore, I am not sure how far I would say that goes.

That's sorta my point though - what we would call them, being Euronormal ourselves in our approach to such things. But I was also making a second point that didn't appear to have been communicated completely, in that those cultural attitudes are spread out across many points in history, in contrast to your statement that it was only in the mid-19th century that beliefs about sex and gender started to diverge. That is only true when you are viewing things from inside a Euronormal cultural point of view.

To use one example, you could attempt to argue that the Faʻafafine of the Samoan culture are just 'masculine transwomen', though that would still be forcing something Polynesians consider a genuine third gender/non-binary identity into a comfortable Western thought-box. But either way, faʻafafine have been a part of their culture for hundreds if not thousands of years, long enough to be rooted in their ancient mythology and far enough back that every other Polynesian cultural group has their own social equivalent.

So if your setting maps to European history in that it, too, did not diverge this way until its equivalent of the 19th century, that is fine. But it's not the only option you have with historical fact behind it.

[neceros]

I don't even bring it up unless a player wants to talk about it. I don't think most people display their sexuality, because it's private.

[Frankbit]

The main objective of roleplaying games is to have fun and one of the dungeon master‘s many roles (and probably the most important one) is to make sure every one at the table has fun. This means that we need to take things like gender and sexuality into account. It’s easy to dismiss as a non-trivial thing, but the fact is, if we pay this no heed, we´ll probably end up playing by ourselves.

[RegalKain]

To clarify, my setting has obviously has gender, and it has some idea of gender stereotypes, although they are very mild compared to real life. What it lacks is a theory of gender as a social construct separate from physical sex.

A good analogy might be hair color. It exists, but is primarily mentioned only as a physical descriptor. There are some stereotypes about it (blondes are dumb, redheads a quirky, etc.), but nobody really takes them that seriously. Some people choose to change their hair color, but it is almost entirely for cosmetic reasons.


I honestly don't think players bringing biases to the table is a big deal, very few TTRPGs actually model any sort of sexism or gender divide, and I don't think I have ever seen someone have an issue accepting it.

So I mentioned this previously but, most TTRPGs don't have mechanical draw backs to gender, even if in the real world, there are very, very different "statistic" differences between gender (Especially when viewed through the lens of average strength) some TTRPGs also don't actually describe the genders as different in any way, they just give an overly broad physical description, for instance. "Half-orcs stand between 6 and 7 feet tall, and usually weigh between 180 and 250 pounds." Because we apply our own biases to everything, some people might think female orcs are closer to 6 feet, and male orcs are closer to 7 feet (Because IRL the average male, is taller then the average female across every ethnicity.) but the game doesn't touch on this because it's non-important.

So, I guess what I'm getting at, is if it has no mechanical change, why are you putting such a strong emphasis on it in particular? Very few people read drow lore/hierarchy and think (Well how does that work, women run everything?) They just say "Okie dokie, fantasy says this is right, so this is right." Why is it that you seem to be going out of your way to make it more than that?

I've read through the thread and I'm just not understanding, if the majority of this will never come up, why are you putting so much time and effort into it? That's not to say people can't RP it, or RP heavy tables don't exist, it's just that in my experience DMing, and writing, the more you try to flesh something out,t he less freedom you give players and the DM. You can have overall, a really simply setup, that works fine for what you're after, the more you try to flesh it out, and answer every question, the more RP freedom, and creative freedom you actively take from players and DMs who utilize your world, it may also come across as a bit preachy and even "tokenism" at that point. ( "Wow look at my TTRPG system it doesn't care about gender, and let's you be trans!" ) that may attract some people, but I personally think a lot of TTRPG players will just look at the other dozen+ systems that already let you do those things, and already doesn't care about gender. (In fact, caring about gender is almost entirely left up to the players and the DM) So, what exactly are you after with the setting and the insistence on this I guess I'm asking.

Edit: Upon reading this, I realize it may come across as confrontational, that's not the intent of the post, I'm just genuinely curious what the purpose of dialing it in so, so hard is.

[Yora]

That post does not seem to respond to the post you quoted.

I learned yesterday, that apparently middle stone age skeletons from men and women show the same signs of injury associated with hunting large animals. Didn't know that. Implying that gender roles developed alongside agriculture, when division of labor became a relevant thing.

[Batcathat]

I learned yesterday, that apparently middle stone age skeletons from men and women show the same signs of injury associated with hunting large animals. Didn't know that. Implying that gender roles developed alongside agriculture, when division of labor became a relevant thing.

That's interesting, considering how established the whole "men hunt, women gather" idea is, but it wouldn't exactly be the first time something like that turned out incorrect. Considering female predators often hunt (at least in some cases more than the male animals), I suppose it makes sense that early human hunters would've been the same way.

[Max_Killjoy]

There are surviving hunter-gatherer or semi-hunter-gatherer societies with stronger divisions of labor along gender lines, plus ages of assumptions about gender roles, so I think it has been simply assumed that there was a strong division all the way back.

But it doesn't surprise me that people living on the daily edge in the original hunter-gatherer groups way back couldn't afford to tell a good hunter "sorry, wrong stuff under loincloth" or "half of group stay away from hunt, numbers not important when running down and cornering big animals".

(And no, I don't buy the notion that hunter-gatherers had it better or easier than anyone since... it's eyeroll-worthy.)

[Yora]

Modern tribal societies with mesolithic cultures (even "uncontacted ones") don't exist in complete isolation. Even the most remote ones at least have contact with neighboring tribes, which in turn might have contact with settled communities, and would have done so for thousands of years. There's also a belief (though I don't know if it's a proven theory) that many extremely remote people chose to migrate deeper into the mountains and forest specifically to get away from states and governments as a rejection of that way of life.

While isolated tribes can give us some clues about mesolithic societies, they are very much not perfectly preserved relics from 50,000 years ago. (In the same way that 50 million year old crocodiles or 400 million year old sharks would only have been very similar to modern animals, but didn't remain unaffected by transformations of the ecosystems they exist in.)

[Cluedrew]

I would not say it is safe to assume every hunter-gatherer or semi-hunter-gatherer society was the same as well. I'm not sure how widely humans had spread by the end of the mesolithic period but considering you had to walk through the forest to get anywhere back then, you could be pretty "close" and still never come into contact with another group.

[Liquor Box]

I learned yesterday, that apparently middle stone age skeletons from men and women show the same signs of injury associated with hunting large animals. Didn't know that. Implying that gender roles developed alongside agriculture, when division of labor became a relevant thing.

I think that inference you make is a very long bow to draw.

Putting aside the aside the issue of how you determine what skeletal injuries are associated with hunting, as oppose to potentially being attacked by an animal while gathering, I don't think you can make that generalisation even if the premise is true.

There's good reason to think that hunter gatherer societies were even more diverse than today's society, because different geographic areas were not connected so there was no (or less) convergence. As such it is very probable that practices, including gender roles, differed greatly between groups. So while there may be some tribes where women did hunt, that wouldn't dispel the idea that it was usually men who hunted.

I should acknowledge that I am not overly familiar with the evidence for the popular belief that men usually hunted and women usually gathered. I just don't think that some female skeletons with signs of animal related injuries is a good reason to doubt it.

Do you have a link to the study of skeletons? I'd be interested to see how widespread it was, or whether it showed the sorts of injuries to men and women in the same proportion.

[Cluedrew]

I can think of several ways you could tell them apart:

• Frequency: If the gatherers are getting attacked by animals as often as the hunters... why have gatherers, just have the hunters gather some stuff while they are out.
• Location: A wound from an ambush or while attempting to flee is probably different then while you were facing it off with a spear. Also, subpoint Scale, if you are attacked and eaten that probably looks very different then a quick malling to escape.
• Cross-Reference: Combine with other information you can get from the skeleton and burial site. If they were buried with their lucky spearhead they were probably a hunter.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can think of several ways you could tell them apart:

• Frequency: If the gatherers are getting attacked by animals as often as the hunters... why have gatherers, just have the hunters gather some stuff while they are out.
• Location: A wound from an ambush or while attempting to flee is probably different then while you were facing it off with a spear. Also, subpoint Scale, if you are attacked and eaten that probably looks very different then a quick malling to escape.
• Cross-Reference: Combine with other information you can get from the skeleton and burial site. If they were buried with their lucky spearhead they were probably a hunter.

It's amazing how far some out there, both professional archaeologists and amateur commenters, will go to dismiss evidence of women involved in warfare, hunting, or leadership roles.

For a long time, any grave with weapons was immediately assumed to be a male grave, because "weapons = war and hunting = male".

After someone bothered to use bone and DNA examination to show that some of these graves held the remains of women, not men, all of a sudden, grave goods related to warfare or hunting became "possibly ceremonial or symbolic", almost overnight on the time scale of changes to academic fields and their accompanying pop-science.

I'm sure, when it comes to bone evidence showing women engaged in hunting, there will be all sorts of re-interpretations of what the bone evidence "really" means such that it doesn't require acknowledging that at least some women in some groups were heavily engaged in hunting activity.

[Yora]

Hunters having the same chance of animal attacks as everyone else seems very much unlikely.

Most animals really don't want to fight if they can avoid it. They rarely attack immediately, and mostly will be quite happy if they can chase potential enemies away.
Trying to get close to dangerous animals and trying to get away from them should lead to very different frequency of injuries caused by animals.

There's good reason to think that hunter gatherer societies were even more diverse than today's society, because different geographic areas were not connected so there was no (or less) convergence. As such it is very probable that practices, including gender roles, differed greatly between groups. So while there may be some tribes where women did hunt, that wouldn't dispel the idea that it was usually men who hunted.

It did came up in something about mesolithic central Europe, so it might not really have been meant as a blanket statement.

[Berenger]

@Cluedrew: I imagine that hunting wild beasts with slings and spears isn't an activity that lends itself particularly well to multitasking.

@Max_Killjoy: I really appreciate your point about moving goalposts, but at the same time you make it sound like an entire academic field was involved in some kind of misogynistic cover-up operation and there were no reasonable arguments for caution in interpreting those grave goods. I think that takes just criticism too far.

[Calthropstu]

I think that inference you make is a very long bow to draw.

Putting aside the aside the issue of how you determine what skeletal injuries are associated with hunting, as oppose to potentially being attacked by an animal while gathering, I don't think you can make that generalisation even if the premise is true.

There's good reason to think that hunter gatherer societies were even more diverse than today's society, because different geographic areas were not connected so there was no (or less) convergence. As such it is very probable that practices, including gender roles, differed greatly between groups. So while there may be some tribes where women did hunt, that wouldn't dispel the idea that it was usually men who hunted.

I should acknowledge that I am not overly familiar with the evidence for the popular belief that men usually hunted and women usually gathered. I just don't think that some female skeletons with signs of animal related injuries is a good reason to doubt it.

Do you have a link to the study of skeletons? I'd be interested to see how widespread it was, or whether it showed the sorts of injuries to men and women in the same proportion.

Logically, it is a really really dumb idea to put women in harms way. Even at the most basic level, I'd like to think that people would understand this. Just as male deer will allow themselves to starve to death in lean times, females are simply more important for special survival.

Hunting is both dangerous and time consuming. So I can't imagine many tribes were dumb enough to put women on the front like that.

[Batcathat]

Logically, it is a really really dumb idea to put women in harms way. Even at the most basic level, I'd like to think that people would understand this. Just as male deer will allow themselves to starve to death in lean times, females are simply more important for special survival.

Hunting is both dangerous and time consuming. So I can't imagine many tribes were dumb enough to put women on the front like that.

There are quite a few animal species where the females hunt, though. While it's an open question whether or not animals can be "dumb", the ones with behavior counter to species survival tend to not be around in the long run.

[Max_Killjoy]

There are quite a few animal species where the females hunt, though. While it's an open question whether or not animals can be "dumb", the ones with behavior counter to species survival tend to not be around in the long run.

I can't think of a single vertebrate predatory species in which the females don't hunt. Most species aren't social enough for that role divide to even be a hypothetical possibility.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Max_Killjoy: I really appreciate your point about moving goalposts, but at the same time you make it sound like an entire academic field was involved in some kind of misogynistic cover-up operation and there were no reasonable arguments for caution in interpreting those grave goods. I think that takes just criticism too far.

Sorry, it wasn't intended to broad-brush the entire field, just some rather loud voices in it, and the resulting science-media coverage.

[Satinavian]

Hunting is both dangerous and time consuming. So I can't imagine many tribes were dumb enough to put women on the front like that.

Considering that one of the hunting methods believed to have been used would be drive hunting, higher numbers would have been quite welcome.