Feminism is a role playing issue...

[annwfyn]

I don't know if this will make any sense, but this has all been forming in my brain for a little while, and I'm trying to make it coherant without being offensive.

I think I shall start with how I perceive the general view of female gamers to be at the present time. In general, the loose stereotype that I encounter most often is that female gamers roughly fall into two categories.

a) The Girlfriend

This is the female who isn't actually that interested in role playing. She doesn't bother designing her own character sheet, because that involves numbers and she doesn't want to number crunch in her spare time. She won't send in her own downtimes, or really shape much of her own character development, because that's the kind of thing her boyfriend will organise for her, and if she is lacking a boyfriend, but is still coming to games to socialise, another male will sort it out. If she gets into combat she will look frustrated, snap "well, I don't know" if asked what her traits are, and look around impatiently for someone else to come and run the character sheet for her.

The best way of identifying a Girlfriend type that I have found is to role play with her. If you spend your vampire larp thinking "OK...I've made a move against the Toreador Primogen. What will her boyfriend's PC do now", without actually having any interest or concern about the player of the somewhat sock puppet like PC in question, it's definitely a Girlfriend Character. If you ask the player "so, how come you wanted to play a Healer" and she points towards her boyfriend with a shrug and says "I don't know," your odds are also looking good. The more questions about her character she can't answer, the higher the odds are that she would rather be sitting at home and watching Sex In The City.

b) The Princess

The Princess is, it must be said, far far more understandable in my mind than the Girlfriend. Easy to mistake for a Girlfriend at first - the Princess, after all, rarely designs her own character sheets either, and normally has a harem of young men who are eagar to throw her combat challenges - the Princess is actually there for the rp, as opposed to the drinks at the bar afterwards. It's just that the rp she's there for is of a, shall we say, specific type.

When I started larping (vampire larp, I regret to say), there were some vary solid stereotypes abuot what yer average female rp'er was there for. And I've got to admit, I leapt joyeously into every one. In those days, the normal assumption made about a girl at a vampire larp was that she wanted to wear pretty dresses, do some romantic role play, maybe cry on cue and get the Good RP XP, and would go for the angst, as long as the angst didn't require them to get too confrontational, get into combat, or know the rules. Not having a clue what was on your character sheet("because I just role play it, darling. I don't use these nasty trait things") was a sign of being a good emotional role player. And that was, primarily, what girls were good for. A little plot chasing was OK, but girls weren't expected to do too much of that, and politicking was normally done with some fluttering eyelashes and a good dollop of OOC flirting.

No one was ever scared if a girl told you that her character was angry and wanted to kill you.

And, as far as I can tell, that's where the Princess stereotype still dwells.

The Princess has various subvarieties - role playing princess types often grow up to be Queen Bees, for example, but most girl gamer stereotypes come under those two categories.

Now, these stereotypes are more than a little disempowering. They get particularly annoying if you are a female gamer who, in any way, attempts to step out of that world.

Now, I first stepped away from Role Playing Princess (although not too far away), when I met the very suave and charming chopsuey who killed my poncy Princess Brujah, and then made me play a bratty Gangrel who not only had Grip of the Damned (no fluffy blood sharing scenes for you, madame!) but made me firmly blood bonded to a fairly emotionless Ventrue (his PC) who used her as a killing machine. Bridget, my precious, darling bratling went on to achieve more than I've ever achieved with any other PC. Within a Cam Vampire larp setting, the girl did well for a scrotty little 11th gen with no MC. Heck, she ended up as an archon. But you know what? It wasn't easy to get there.

And one thing I did discover when I stopped playing the 'love me - look at my legs - love me' game, and started trying to role play like a person instead of a girl is that those sterotypes are a bitch and a half. And those stereotypes really bite.

And that's when I began to get irritated by the girls who didn't play the game fairly. I dislike it, because those girls have created the stereotypes that make it harder to play a Chalice, or a Bridget, or an April Meredith, because no one takes you seriously at first. It's those girls who are buying into the situation where people say "well, of course you never lost your Gangrel. Girls don't lose PCs. Having a four and a half year old PC is less impressive if you're a girl. A guy would have had his character taken down years beforehand", and it is those girls who are actively perpetrating the stereotypes.

Role playing is a male dominated hobby, and the girls who do play are still very much assumed to want to fit within a certain role. And I know it's just a game world, and as such isn't the biggest issue ever (although I spend a lot of time in that game world, and am prone to getting annoyed), but it is something that is there.

I know I am also not blameless in this. I've got Princess tendancies, and I ought to practice what I preach a bit more. I also know that there is a very big difference between being a bit of a useless wet blanket or spoilt princess character (which should be a valid concept, if agonisingly dull in my experience), and being a useless wet blanket or spoilt princess player. Role playing an outdated and really quite disempowering stereotype is one thing. Acting like that in real life, and as such encouraging men to treat every girl like she is probably going to need those tricksy numbers on her character sheet explained, because she doesn't want to worry her pretty little head about that, is something entirely different.

And in a world in which it's still surprisingly hard to convince anyone that sometimes girls do want to actually saddle up, mount up, and go kick ass, it is something that feels like it is a feminist issue.

Opinions? Debate? Discussion?

Comments

[flamma-lupus.livejournal.com]

I can't say that I disagree with much of what you've said, although I'm glad to say Zeitgeist seems to lack these horrors.

There are, on the other hand, advantages to being female.
A few years back, I was having a tyrade about how it was easier to "get stuff" as a female RP'er than a male one. We're speaking in a Cam invironment here so bear this in mind. I got called on my assumption, and so a challenge was made.
I, and a girl, sat down, and worked out a specific set of things to find out from PC's on the IRC chatrooms. They weren't anything massive, it was stuff such as their sires name, what status they held, etc etc. And we each had one piece of information to give out in "trade". (it was actually a useless lie we made up IC, but thats besides the point.)

Within 1 night, with us both spending roughly the same amount of time online, she'd got three times the amount of answers I had, she'd managed to sell the information to nearly half again as many people as I had, and got offered FAR better trades than me.

We then looked down the list, every single PC she'd got the info from, was male. My list was mostly male, but I had a couple of female pc's in there too.

At the end of the day, lets be honest, yes the stereotypes can affect peoples images of all female rp'ers (those who don't bother to get to know the people and just apply stereotypes across the board) BUT, on the other hand, being female DOES tend to be to your advantage in a larger setting, especially when women are the minority, because ultimately a large proportion of male gamers are single, letches, tarts whatever, and will always help you out IC in the hope of "ooc favours".

Sad, shaming, but true.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Erm, yes and no.

On one hand, girls may well get more Stuff (tm), but on the other hand, they also don't get taken seriously. Furthermore, it is really really irritating when anything you have earned is also assumed to be because you're a girl.

I remember the first National I played Bridget as an archon at. Someone I had never met before said "wow. I can see why the Office of the Justicar hired you. It was to make sure no one misbehaved coz they are all too busy staring at your legs, right?"

It's pretty damn sucky to have four years and the character I was proudest of for never playing those girlie games reduced to 'dollybird' in one casual comment that wasn't even particularly intended to be offensive.

Having one's achievements dismissed and undermined by this 'cleavage gets approvals' belief can be bloody depressing, and something I personally would way rather have kicked out of gaming.

Tangential

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to be The Princess...

...and then I got to be, and was embarrassed and ashamed that I was getting preferential treatment from the ST, not because I had earned it, but because he was trying to get inside my knickers.

I like creating characters, and I like playing through my own combat.

On the other hand, I do love the angst...

Re: Tangential

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think loving angsty rp is a bad thing at all! It can be absolutely fantastic as an experience, and I know a lot of guys who like it too.

My objection is with people (both guys and girls) who buy into the stereotype that the angst is all that girls want.

You, by the way, are definitely not a princess. *nods approvingly*

[becky-spence.livejournal.com]

The times I was princess, the characters got deservedly dead. Surprised in general they weren't made dead quicker, but there you go.

The time I played bolshy, loud and insanely aggressive, it didn't get killed for over 2 years, and not because no-one tried, but through a weird combination of several fights going my way creating an illusion of strength, an equally bolshy pack, and after a while, because of acting like I'd been around for so long the newer people in the game believed it and didn't want to mess.

I never really found it hard to convince that I wanted to saddle up, it was just simply that in general I bloody hated combat so I rarely played that type. Not through not knowing the rules, but through hating how it dragged everything out (I always managed to get embroiled in the several hours long combats, not the quick ones) while everyone did their actions. Rock Paper Scissors is, frankly, kind of dull after a while.

[twisted-times.livejournal.com]

That's what role-playing is about - playing the role out of your little cotton socks.

I remember hearing about Wendy playing Stella Kyle squaring up on her own to three Brujah and saying "I'm Prince now, what are you going to do about it?" Now that's role-playing!


I know how dull combat can get, or "hand-wanking" as one fellow ST put it on one occasion. :) As an ST, I was always brutally efficient at running combat scenes as I knew they caused more boredom and arguments than anything else did. At one of the Regionals, I ran a five vs two full-on major Celerity-fuelled combat scene... which was over and done with inside of 7 minutes, maximum. I loved the 5.0 rules as they covered every eventuality and left no room for rules arguments - another major time-waster at games - whatsoever. :)

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think you left out "Tedious Pagan", the third option that I've run across a few too many times - the wiccan girl (often also a Girlfriend), who wants to play this game where your character gets to have all the sexy magic powers that real life has so cruelly denied them.

Major traits: complete lack of interest in anything other than the "occult" side of the game, and a strange unwillingness to accept that the occult tradition of the game may in fact differ from whatever brand of hippy filth she's just read. Character is astonishingly likely to resemble exactly what they themselves would be like if they had fangs and the ability to make things explode by staring hard.

That said, they may in fact get quite involved with the stats side of the game, as they learn nifty new powers for their character, and then consistently fail to apply them in a manner that is in any way sensible, logical, in character, or in keeping with the setting, prefering instead to cause maximum disruption to everyone else just so everyone can see them using their kewl new power.

On the bright side, like anyone who runs around with their powers out, their character to tend to wind up stamped on quite quickly.

(This one does, in fairness, have it's male equivalent, the Crowley Wannabe, but they're usually rather too busy being spooky and mysterious in a corner to get in anyone else's way.)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Good point.

And this ties into a subset of the Princess type, which is the Snowflake Queen, who basically want to angst, and ponce, and wear cool costumes, but want to do it while having Ultimate Cosmic Power. Which, of course, they will be much more responsible with than all those nasty power gamers, because they will look prettier while having it be good emotional role players and use them to bring a little more magic to the game.

(you know, at some point we're going to start discussing my own subset of Princess behaviour and I'm going to have to either 'fess up to all my role playing sins or start building my own little temple to hypocrisy. I also may need to write an entire new entry in which to bitch about male role players as well, instead of leaping into outright internalised misogyny)

[iain-a-wilson.livejournal.com]

>Tedious Pagan

*howls with laughter*

Well done. You've just made me laugh out loud at work :)

[adze.livejournal.com]

I came across a lot of Girlfriends when I used to rubbersword. See, at one point, I started playing a healer - a heavily armoured, sword wielding, shield bearing healer - and I ended up playing in the Healer's Guild.

The Guild was actually one of the best groups of people I rubbersworded with - in the LT rules you can't be a powergaming healer, you can just get people better, faster. I really miss some of them, actually, but I'm digressing.

Anyway, in rubberswording, there seems to be a great number of guys who drag their girlfriends along, "encouraging" them to play healers, mainly so the guys can drag their girlies along with them and look big and manly, while having someone around to heal them when they fall over. And so, loads of girlfriends were dragged along, with promises of heroism, and alcohol, probably not in that order.

Of course, what happens is that the bloke goes off with his mates, or gets plot-bombed, or whatever, and his girlfriend is left on her own, at something of a loose end. Because she was playing a healer, some kindly soul points her in the direction of the Healer's Guild...

We used to see a lot of these come in over the course of an event, and would do our best to get them involved in whatever was going on.

Sometimes, they'd even come back, too.

I felt sorry for a lot of them, really. They obviously didn't want to be there, but they had come because of their boyfriends. Sometimes, it would work out, but most often, they wouldn't enjoy it.

It's really bad when they don't know the first thing about fighting in that kind of environment, as their boyfriends had promised to look after them, but then, that's what the Guild Defenders were there for, I suppose.

I think, overall, I've been lucky since I started pub-larping, in that I've not often come across the girlfriends like you describe, and I've managed to avoid most of the princess types. They always used to be pretty obvious - after all, the harem kind of gives it away. But then, I've known a few.

Worse than these, though, are the ones whose character's suddenly develop attachments to their boyfriend's new character, or even their new boyfriend's character...

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

No such thing as an entirely IC relationship, I suspect.

[imagesandwords.livejournal.com]

Shit, I think I'm a princess! :P

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

You think I haven't noticed the tiara :p

Nah...you can't be a princess. You're a gooby power gamer. You used to know the thaumaturgy rules.

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

Back in the early 90s, I was in the Sealed Knot (before an injury put paid to my brief career in 17th century battle re-enactment).

There, you had a very similar situation to many LARPs, with power-gamers, girlfriends, princesses and a small number of women who were so odd as to want to fully participate on equal terms.

The manly men tended to go into the pike block, where they could pile into melee combat and spend an hour or two of every battle in an armed equivalent of a rugby scrum, often quite oblivious to anything else around them.

Pike block officers did not have the highest of reputations for paying attention to what was going on around them - something which is rather crucial if you're following a script to re-enact an historical battle. They were far more interested in a good fight (often against specific opponents, whom they'd go out of their way to bump into) than anything else, and sometimes viewed sticking to the overall plan as entirely optional so long as they had a good time themselves.

Most regiments had the musket block staffed largely by the wives and girlfriends, who didn't really want to fight, were content to dress up in nice uniforms, and tried to stay out of anything muddy or violent.

You also had an unusually high number of women among the small number of cavalry the Sealed Knot could field - that offered the best chance to be on display in nice garb while feeling superior to everyone else... and also staying out of any remotely serious fighting (for safety reasons, horsemen couldn't be seriously attacked save in a pre-arranged scene).

There were a few exceptions: for example, the King's Guard regiment fielded a very competent and serious mostly-male musket block, while the Edinburgh regiment fielded a mostly-male and quite bonkers musket block. We had a "nasty" reputation among some other regiments, because we enjoyed fighting and didn't view membership in the musket block as a chance to just pose in historical garb while - if you were really enthusiastic and got the licence - playing with a little black powder to produce some sound effects and smoke every now and then.

Most unusually, we actually had some women eager to pitch in, and a female officer willing to encourage it. Stunning, that willingness to do something that looks like fighting, for people staging battle re-enactments. :P

Otherwise, the most competent women I ran into on the battlefield were a couple of female artillerists, and the female members of the medical corps (the members of Saint John's Ambulance in black-and-white period garb were eye-catching)....

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I always wanted to do cavalry re-enactment, which may be a princess thing, but I always thought was just because I am essentially a horsey female.

I also always wanted to find out if there was anywhere in the country one could still do proper jousting. *looks wistful*

Never got around to either, tho.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Well, I mean, everything is a feminist issue, but of course it's particularly apparent in such an explicitly male-dominated hobby as ours. It's particularly visible in "beer and mud" LRP because neither Princess nor Girlfriend are especially keen to get into a ruck, for whatever reason.

Now, I'm not saying LRP combat isn't intimidating or whatever, particularly when you're new, but presumably you knew it was gonna happen. Gnah!

I tend to ignore/avoid Princesses and Girlfriends where I could (although I've been caught a couple times, and provided at least one Girlfriend), which is probably as bad a behaviour as the "helping out/taking over" approach, because it's still a response to the stereotype rather than the person. But, as you say, if people act the stereotype, then...

*sigh*

I sometimes wonder if part of the reason that people were so horrified at us in Changeling was not that we killed someone, but that we killed a female! Granted, a female who knew the rules and was fairly familiar with playing hardball, but maybe those residual stereotypes kicked in. Hmm.

[venator-roars.livejournal.com]

(sometimes wonder if part of the reason that people were so horrified at us in Changeling was not that we killed someone, but that we killed a female! Granted, a female who knew the rules and was fairly familiar with playing hardball, but maybe those residual stereotypes kicked in. Hmm.)
*Laughs at that thought* Well maybe some people did but I don't think the real heavy hitters were thinking that way OOC though I know what you mean.

[fionnghuala.livejournal.com]

I remember the first ever Birmingham vampire game I saw you at. You had brought your girlfriend, and were gleefully bombarding her with all the most complicated rules possible. I felt sorry for her and tried to save her by being as condescending as possible.

Those were the dayz!

[vulgarcriminal.livejournal.com]

a Chalice, or a Bridget, or an April Meredith

Ahhh! Thanks :)

I can be a Princess but am too aggressive to let it stay that way. What's a Queen Bee?

[surinen.livejournal.com]

A Queen Bee is an older and more confident Princess, who often is now in a stable relationship or if not no longer needs the constant reassurance from a harem of still being the prettiest, so isn't quite as much of a flirt, but still views herself as being Alpha Female of the game, often maintaining a harem over which she can give caring motherly advice, or act like a best friend/sister with. And heaven help the silly little girl in a corset who tries to woo that harem of 'best friends' away from her with flirtation and sexual wiles...

Vague and unfocussed thoughts...

[omentide.livejournal.com]

How about female STs? I think there's a few of us on here. How do we work to empower our players (of any gender?), because that's what we should be doing.

Not so sure how I avoid the pressure (and it is pressure) to do 'Me, ME, ME!!!' type plot for my female players and the expense of other people.

I think I escape a lot of the issues by being old and scary in real life.

I also think that 'some of the above' is the reason I like playing male characters. Which is hard. It's hard to get taken seriously. And, I guess, is profoundly unfeminist in a totally different way.

Re: Vague and unfocussed thoughts...

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I often wish I had the guts to play a male character. For some reason I am profoundly uncomfortable with the idea tho. I think I blame it on stupid school bullying, which left me very scared that I was unfeminine/masculine and unattractive for it. For years I even had problems with androgyny, although I've managed to do that since.

On an ST front, it is a tricky issue, and one that I have encountered. I know that for me I mostly seem to dig my heels in, mutter darkly in corners about feeling pressured, and then try and distract those who are seeking the plots/attention with personal plot/new shiney stuff which I think will be cool, but won't do bad stuff to the rest of the game, and will actually draw others in.

On another note, one issue I have encountered with ST'ing is the habit of a certain nasty feedback loop where a guy will repeatedly act as liaison between a female player and the ST. I used to think this was one of the very annoying signs of a Girlfriend or somewhat wet Princess, but of late I've come across situations where it's actually sometimes been unsolicited help, with the girl not even being entirely aware that the bloke has been nagging the ST for approvals/special stuff/more support, and in other cases it is mostly a case of a shy player being badly misrepresented by the bloke, which really isn't fair.

I've now got a policy of always directly chatting with the player, and also got to thinking about the way external male perceptions of femininity also ties into this issue. At the end of the day, if you're shy or lacking confidence, and a relatively pretty girl, you can also get sucked into being a Princess or a Girlfriend, just because there are so many men around who facilitate this process. And maybe, as a female ST, it should be my job to facilitate movement the other way.

So, yeah. In response to your first question, I guess direct communication with female players at all times is the one thing that has come up lately which I think is really important, instead of working through boyfriends and the like.

If you've got anything else that has worked for you that you would like to throw at me, actually, I'd really appreciate it. You've now got me thinking...

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

It wasn't really. I think that blood bonds entered it, but it was mainly Joseph treating Jo like a person; and being one of the first to do it.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Too dumb not to, you see ;-) He kinda thought the Camarilla meant what it said :-D

[hortorum.livejournal.com]

An interesting read (I came across your LJ while poking through my interests page).

You're bang on the money with the Girlfriend & Princess stereo/archetype I think. Although to be fair, my RP experience has been in gaming groups with at least 50% women in them. A fair few of the women were attached to other people in the group but that was usually co-incidence/shared interest rather than their being there as satellites to their partner.

Princesses have always got on my wick, both as player and as GM and I must confess to having put no small amount of energy into thwarting their attempts to wrap more tractable folk around their little fingers.

Looking at my present party, three female and two male. The party 'tank' is the Muster Guild bodyguard (f), the party medic is female but doesn't fall into the 'girlie healer' archetype by virtue of being a Xanthippe in kevlar body armour and carrying an SMG for close-in defence.

The only character not to take at least one level in "I am eyecandy" is female, everyone else is at least 'handsome'

But yeah... you make some damned good points that gel well with stuff I've seen over the years :)