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ON THE MEANING OF THEME
ON SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN MARRIAGE
ON THIS PAGE:
ON THE MATTER OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT
ON POLITICAL SCIENCE
ON INHERITANCE
ON THE AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY
ON THE PERILS OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
| ON THEME | ON CHARACTERS | ON CONSENT |
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Part One : General Observations On Theme-based Gender Discrimination
Part Two : Separate But Equal, Anyone?
Part Three : On the Distaff Role in Sorcerous Matters
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THEME-BASED GENDER DISCRIMINATION
Today we shall discuss the thorny issue of IC gender discrimination. Some of the people who look over a mush and consider creating a character are frankly looking for opportunities to make their characters much more powerful than the norm in some respect. Depending on the general theme and their personal tastes, they may be looking for power, or clout, or whatever you want to call it, in any of the following areas (examples are provided in parentheses) :
Political power (Monarch, President)
Sheer martial skill (Master swordsmen, karate champions)
Magical / Psychic power (Wizards, Telepaths)
Superpowers (Superheroes from the comic books)
Military authority (Admirals and Generals)
Economic power (the Gnomes of Zurich?)
Ecclesiastical power (Pope)
Presumably your mush has openings for some people who will be at the top level of IC society by reason of aristocratic rank, military rank, incredible wealth, etc. But now comes the kicker : what if your theme only permits members of one gender to qualify for some of these "Powerful" positions? Are there "traditional" roles for each gender to play in the workplace in your mush's society? There are at least three possible sources your mush society could have, each of them involving different problems as you make these decisions.
1) Theme is closely based on a historical setting (such as the Medieval Crusades, or 19th Century New Orleans).
2) Theme is closely based on a fictional setting created by someone else for another medium (such as Star Wars, or Middle-Earth, or a series of comic books).
3) Theme is set in a totally original setting where you can, with a clear conscience, arrange matters to suit yourself as regards Equal Opportunity Employment or any other issue that might trouble people.
NOTE: For purposes of discussion I shall assume that if your mush's theme tends to give one gender more opportunities for advancement in certain areas than the other, then the favored gender is male and the one being discriminated against is the female. This assumption seems well supported by the bulk of RL history, but if you are considering doing it the other way around - a matriarchy with men stuck at the bottom of the heap - then just read "female" for "male" and "male" for "female" in this discussion and you'll do fine. We now returned to our regularly scheduled exposition.
To dispense with the last possibility first, in a totally original theme you are totally free to do whatever you want. If you want your setting to have certain rigidly defined gender roles (only men in the military, for instance) at least you aren't likely to have people arguing with you on the grounds that you are too attached to, or too contemptuous of, the original source material created by someone else.
If 1 or 2 is the case, but the 'facts' of the relevant setting permit, in effect, any member of either gender to theoretically enter nearly any profession in existence in the local economy, you can let well enough alone.
If 1 or 2 is the case, but there is a strong gender bias in several of the more "interesting" (read "powerful") professions, you need to make some hard calls on basic policy.
Start asking yourself, "How far can I diverge from the source material without having my prospective players [people who are also interested in this particular historical or fictional setting] throw up their hands in disgust and walk out?" Because of course the corollary to that question is, "If I leave this society exactly the way it was in the original source material, will numerous people wanting to play female characters give up in disgust at the limited career options available on my mush (as opposed to all the careers available to a woman in the USA in this day and age in RL) and settle down on some other mush instead?"
You have at least three choices : 1) Follow the rules of the source material rigorously. 2) Soften the original rules. 3) Throw the rules out the window.
NOTE : You might also want to take a look at the "Separate But Equal" discussion which comes up a little later in this document. Since it can be applied both to borrowed themes and to those of your own devising, I gave it its own subsection.
1) Follow the source material rigorously. If, for example, your mush is set in Medieval England, where it was generally considered that only men could inherit a throne or the rule of any lesser fief, be knighted, become priests in the dominant religion (Roman Catholicism, which was VERY dominant in those days - to the extent of owning approximately one-third of the cultivated land, as well as maintaining a near-monopoly on literacy), or even serve in the military, and probably monopolized several other professions as well, you can declare that woman in your mush are equally limited, while trying to cheer your players up a bit by pointing out that strong-minded women (Eleanor of Aquitaine springs to mind) had ways of exerting considerably more political influence than a literal interpretation of the local laws might have suggested to the casual observer.
2) Soften the original rules. Proclaim that at least a few of the reasonably prestigious/interesting professions are available on an Equal Opportunity Basis, at least in theory, no matter what the original material said. These might include any or all of the following: Physician, Carpenter, Clergy, and "Civil Service" professions such as Treasurer, Steward, or Librarian in a noble household.
3) Throw away the old rules entirely and proclaim that Equal Opportunity applies everywhere. This makes more sense in a futuristic culture (technology is as good as, or better than, the stuff we enjoy in this late-twentieth-century era) than it would in a medieval, feudalistic culture. To use the military as an obvious example: given that medieval swordplay (as I understand it) was heavily based on the "Let's just bash our big heavy swords against each other's swords and shields until one guy's arms get so tired he can't defend himself effectively" school of thought, the average woman (being smaller than the average man) would be likely to have less strength and stamina in this sort of thing, and thus even a half-witted nobleman would probably be in the habit of rejecting ANY woman who applied for employment with his army. Also, the further this third option is from the original theme, the higher the risk that you will alienate a good-sized portion of your target audience, who want to RP in something just like the books (or whatever) that they remember so well.
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL, ANYONE?
Whether your mush's theme comes from a historical, fictional, or totally original society, if one gender tends to dominate many of the "best" jobs you may want to consider setting up an organization which is of noticeable importance in the IC world but only accepts members of the sex which tends to get the worst of it in other fields of life.
Sometimes it is possible to assuage the feelings of those who want to play female characters by setting up a system (or adapting one from the original source material, if any) where the men reserve quite a few opportunities for themselves (military service, for instance) but there is at least one powerful organization which is exclusively female from top to bottom. One SF theme that attacked this problem was The Dune Universe of Frank Herbert, although I admit it's highly unlikely that when the first volume was published in the Sixties he was thinking, "Well, THIS ought to make female mushers happy!"
In Herbert's creation, we are in the far future but the current social setup has strong overtones of good old-fashioned feudalism. The Emperor is theoretically the CEO of the Universe. Answering to him are the Great Houses, each of which apparently rules at least one well-populated planet and has several members of the lesser nobility (the Houses Minor) under its thumb. These Great Houses (or Houses Major) are collectively known as the Landsraad, forming a sort of Parliament which the Emperor has to get along with if he wants to accomplish anything.. As the series began, and disregarding the obscure single-planet culture called the Fremen for the moment, every Emperor, Head of a Great House, or Heir Apparent to either of the above, living or dead, was male as far as we were ever told. Ditto all military personnel, members of the Spacing Guild (they had a near-monopoly on interstellar travel), Mentats (human computers - brilliant strategists), etc. The current Emperor had five daughters and no sons, and it was quite clear in the first book that nobody ever seriously considered the idea that any of the Princesses might rule after he died; rather, the main question seemed to be, "Who will the Emperor permit his eldest daughter to marry, thus making that man his probable successor?"
However, there were two interesting female characters who were part of the Imperial Culture in the first book. Not coincidentally, both of them had been intensively trained by the all-female organization known as the Bene Gesserit (and the Emperor's eldest daughter only appears onstage in the final scene of the book, but guess what? She had received some Bene Gesserit training as well).
What made the Bene Gesserit so special? Well, aside from the fact that they appeared to be one of only two organizations that had any expertise in genetics, the women who became Sisters of the Bene Gesserit were trained in a variety of special disciplines which nobody outside the organization fully understood. These included an incredible ability to read other people's body language and vocal cues in order to deduce their feelings on the issues under discussion, and particularly to spot tensions that revealed the subject was lying through his teeth (called Truthsaying, and reputedly infallible, although only a handful of Bene Gesserit had the talent to do it with total accuracy), as well as advanced martial arts techniques, a very high degree of conscious control over the functions of their own internal organs (including choosing what gender of child they wanted to bear - don't ask me how), and the use of a certain drug which had been known to activate certain psychic functions which the B.G. were constantly breeding for.
On at least one Dune-themed Mush, I know that these "powers" have been so highly sought after that the Wizards have found themselves posting announcements that say, "No, you CAN'T pick up these abilities as a male character running through CharGen and claim that you just happen to be a special case who received advanced training from the Bene Gesserit despite your being of the wrong sex." I always thought there was something funny about this. The male characters had far more options than the females did in terms of political and military prowess, but the special "powers" of the only female-dominated Faction were what they kept longing for. Some people are never satisfied . . .
ON THE DISTAFF ROLE IN SORCEROUS MATTERS
Things like access to military rank, ecclesiastical rank, etc., are generally determined by social matters - that is to say, a woman could have the potential to become the greatest military genius since Napoleon (in his earlier campaigns, anyway - he went downhill later) and never get the chance to prove it if society said it didn't need her as a soldier, she being a mere woman and all that.
But what about the very rare abilities (if your mush has any) that only turn up one time in a million and make it painfully obvious to any observer that the bearer of such a talent is NOT an ordinary man or woman? I am referring of course to Magic in the Fantasy mushes, or conceivably to Psychic powers in a more "scientific" theme.
Let's start with full-fledged magic-users. For my purposes, I am drawing a distinction between those with single magic talents and those who are full-fledged magic-users. In THE HOBBIT, a man named Beorn had a talent for turning himself into a big black bear (and back to human again), but Gandalf the Grey was the magic-user who could do a variety of things with his power, and was apparently immortal to boot. See the difference?
For starters, we might ask ourselves if the ability to become a full-fledged magic-user is something genetic. Possible combinations are :
1) Potential magic-users are born with equal frequency in both genders, but one gender is encouraged to develop their abilities in this regard and the other gender is forbidden to do so, or even killed when they are discovered. (Example : the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan).
2) Potential magic-users are born with equal frequency in both genders, and if discovered, are encouraged to develop their potential no matter what their gender is (the AURIAN series by Maggie Furey appears to fit the bill here).
3) Potential magic-users are born always, or nearly always, in one gender and the other has to get by without (in Stephen R. Donaldson's MORDANT'S NEED duology, the magic-users were called Master Imagers. There were 27 of them as the story began and every last one of them, and all their apprentices, were male. Apparently the talent was never (or very rarely) encountered in women in the local gene pool. Same reasoning applies to the all-male Wizards of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series).
4) Becoming a magic-user has nothing to do, or at least very little to do, with your gender OR any other aspect of your genetic heritage. As a prime example of this, consider Dave Duncan's double quartet of books set in the supercontinent known as Pandemia. They are A MAN OF HIS WORD and the sequel series A HANDFUL OF MEN. To give a minor spoiler, magic power comes by possession of certain polysyllabic magic words. One word makes you a genius at a particular talent; two make you an adept capable of quickly learning just about any skill any normal person could ever learn to do, three make you a mage (capable of temporary changes, illusions, and other lightweight stuff), and four make you a sorcerer (the sky's the limit). Some people may have a greater innate talent for magical manipulation than the average, but basically the words will work for anyone who gets hold of them.
Another example is Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar novels, where (near as I can tell when I've only read 3 of them) sorcerous prowess is just something you acquire by long hard study. In theory, any ordinary person can learn the basic principles and how to put them to good use if he just tries hard enough and long enough, just as any human being in this day and age can read the textbooks and learn about engineering or computer programming or how to diagnose and treat the sick. Again, some sorcerers may prove to have more "natural talent" than others, but as a general rule it's one's acquired knowledge, not random genetic factors, that mark the difference between a great sorcerer and a bumbling amateur.
Each of these 4 bases for magical power opens up different possibilities for RP. Remember, IC discrimination is not just something to cry about OOCly, it can also serve to provide a basis for IC activity using the problems of discrimination as the heart and soul of the TinyPlot!
Option 1 : If men dominate the magic field, but equal numbers of boys and girls are born each generation with the power, just what do the male sorcerers do with the girls who have the ability? Possibilities include:
1) Take them away from their parents and kill them.
2) Ship them off to some obscure corner of the map (a remote island, perhaps) and leave them there. Over time an all-female society would develop . . .
3) Enslave them. Teach them that they are inherently inferior and it is their duty to serve the great and all-knowing male wizards. Then teach them how to use their magic, once they seem properly brainwashed.
4) Find a way (drugs, magic spell, etc.) to destroy the magic-using capabilities of the females with the talent without actually killing them (in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series, this is what the female magic-users do to the males, in an interesting reversal of traditional roles).
Option 2 : If male and female magic-users are born with equal frequency, and the official approach is to train every magic-user you can find to be the best that he or she can be, then there's really no problem.
EXCEPT if one of the genders (again, we'll assume the female) is discriminated against in most other fields. Imagine the situation : you're a middle-aged male Duke, you tend to treat women like dirt, and suddenly you are face to face with a female Sorceress whom your King has appointed to work with you as a social EQUAL! Terrifying, yes? But a good opportunity for some RP as the Duke is forced to fight against fifty years of acquired habits . . .
Option 3 : If one gender seems to get all, or nearly all, of the magic talent, how does the other gender feel about it? If the gender with all the talent is otherwise discriminated against, you have a fairly nice balance of power. If men tend to dominate ALL political, military, economic, AND magical power on top of the rest of it, your female RPERS are likely to feel a bit put upon.
Option 4 : If magic can be learned by any reasonably bright human being who works at it long enough, there are three possibilities :
1) One gender monopolizes the field and permits NO interlopers from the other gender.
2) One gender dominates the field, but the occasional member of the opposite sex can make it if she's prepared to tolerate all the strange looks and discrimination.
3) Share and share alike. Boys and girls can all study magic to their heart's content. If one gender still tends to provide more students than the other, it's just luck of the draw or something, and not the result of a nasty quota system such as, "Okay, we'll admit 20 male and 5 female students this year!"
As you can see, most of the above have different opportunities for someone who wants his/her character to A) Use magic, and B) Have a built-in Cause of Frequent IC Conflict With Other People's Ideas. So think it through carefully before you choose your approach to the question.
Here we veer over into a subject where I have very little practical experience, and I think I know the reason why : most roleplay (at least, on consent-based mushes) seems to shy away from this issue, except in the case of capital punishment.
Let's suppose that a strict reading of the theme (historical or fictional - if it's an original theme, you can create your own rules) would require a man who stole anything small enough to qualify as a misdemeanor, such as a loaf of bread or a wallet, to spend time behind bars for his transgression. How much time? Oh, let's say a minimum of 30 days (one calendar month) if it was a really small theft and a first offense, to boot.
Suppose, to pull another number out of thin air, that your mush has a time ratio of 4 IC Days = 1 RL Day. In that case, the culprit, upon his conviction, ought to spend 7.5 RL days (or call it a week exactly - be generous and let him ignore the last 12 hours of the 4:1 conversion) locked up in a cell with very little social life, unless the local hoosegow is already pretty crowded with other malefactors who come and go on a regular basis.
Now, you can either try to code something special into your jail that leaves his character truly locked up in there until a Wizard (or an authorized Jailor) lets him out, or you can use the honor system.
Supposing you use the mandatory locked-door system, how much fun is he going to have for the next week? Unless some very dedicated friends are willing to come spend hours at a time with him during "visiting hours," no fun at all. He may not even bother to connect.
It's always a bad idea to put a roleplayer in a situation where he doesn't think there's any POINT in his connecting for a week or two. He might go off and find some other mush where he doesn't have such constraints on his IC movement, and never come back at all.
Supposing you use the honor system, how long do you think he will actually stay in that cell if somebody invites him to attend a party or something on, say, the fourth day of his confinement? He just might be conscientious enough to stay put, but he also might shrug and go, salving his conscience by telling himself, "If anybody ever asks, clearly this party actually occurred ICly either right before or right after I spent time in the clink, and besides, it's only a game!" If you permit this sort of thing to become common, your penal system loses all meaning.
[NOTE : In this description, I am assuming that our friend the Prisoner has no alternate character on your mush, convenient for daily play. If this is true, it could be for one of these reasons:
A) You don't permit more than one character at a time, or you permit a small number (such as two) and his other is ALSO currently tied up in something that doesn't make free and easy RP with anybody handy very practical at the time.
B) He only wants one character. He feels he only has enough time to worry about one character on a regular basis, and he isn't really interested in creating an alt to use for just a couple of days and then abandoning the alt again in favor of his regular character.]
Having considered the problems of a jail sentence of 30 IC days, what do we do for something that might be expected to carry a sentence of at least 1 IC year (or 2, or 5, or 10)? Consider assault and battery, kidnapping, bank robbery, attempted murder, et cetera. Expecting a Roleplayer to keep his character sitting quietly in a prison cell for 3 RL months or longer is NOT going to work out. It would be simpler to just kill the character and start over from scratch, but that wouldn't really be an astute policy either.
Here are some alternatives to consider in writing your penal code (and remember that every penal code must contain both IC and OOC elements).
2) Working off your debt to society.
3) Corporal punishment instead of lengthy prison sentences.
CONVICTED CRIMINALS ARE IMPRISONED, BUT NOBODY CAN BE CAPTURED AND IMPRISONED FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME WITHOUT HIS OOC CONSENT
In practice, this is probably going to end up meaning, "Practically nobody is ever imprisoned at all."
WORKING OFF YOUR DEBT TO SOCIETY
PART ONE : THE CIVILIAN CUSTODY OPTION
In my native United States of America one variation of this option used to be part of our penal system - at least in some places - a long time ago. A businessman who needed some extra workers paid a certain sum per head to the local government, and got the use of 5, 10, 20, or whatever he needed of available convicts from the nearest prison. He was supposed to meet certain minimum standards in housing and feeding them, but he didn't actually have to pay them regular wages. There was apparently a great deal of abuse of this in the name of cutting expenses, however, and I believe the approach was abandoned a long time ago (but I'm no expert in criminal law and it may still happen occasionally in some shape or form).
Another variation, sometimes found in fiction and probably based on historical fact in some time and place, is to auction off the convicted felon (at least, if his crimes weren't as serious as rape or murder) to the highest bidder, the proceeds to go to the government and the convict to labor for his new master/owner/employer for a specified amount of time, probably based on how much money was paid for him. The auctions might make interesting RP sessions.
PART TWO : THE MILITARY OPTION
I know a man who was a teenager in the 1960s (remember the Vietnam War? It was headline news in those days). He had an acquaintance in high school who suddenly started telling people that he was going to enlist in the United States Marines Corps. He was just full of patriotic ideals and how the Marines teach you to be a real man and all that. Eventually my informant overheard something that strongly indicated that the real explanation for his acquaintance's decision to enlist was the fact that when facing trial for some criminal offense or other, the judge had said, "Son, you've been a bad boy. Now, you can do a little time behind bars, or you can sign up with the Marines and use that energy to serve your country. Pick one."
On a similar note, we might recall that while the French Foreign Legion does not actually send recruiters into the French jails (or any other nation's jails), it's commonly known that when a man signs up with them, they EXPECT him to give a false name in filling out the paperwork (one story I heard indicates that the recruiting sergeant actually issues a brand new name to each recruit, and he's stuck with it whether he likes it or not), and there's the understanding that as long as he keeps his nose clean in the Legion and follows orders, they won't throw him to the wolves no matter what sort of arrest warrants may have previously been issued for him somewhere in the world under his old name. After he completes 5 years with the Legion he can take an honorable discharge and become a naturalized French citizen under the name he is now using, regardless of whether or not he may have held such citizenship previously under some other handle. It is believed that a fair number of wanted felons (French or otherwise) have taken this option over the years. You might say it's a way for a desperate man to make a brand new start in life with the full support of the Establishment - if he's willing to risk his neck in battle for La Belle France whenever his commanding officer gives the order. I might note (although language isn't usually a major problem in roleplayed situations) that they don't even insist you know how to speak French when you enlist - they figure you'll just have to pick it up as fast as possible in basic training.
So : perhaps your mush's culture (or one of them, if you have more than one society represented ICly) could use some such arrangement, where characters who are captured and convicted of a wide range of crimes are offered the option of going into the military? Lots of opportunities for travel, one would think . . . and for IC violence, if the Roleplayer has already established that his character has strong tendencies in that direction.
As a T-Shirt I once saw so eloquently put it, "Join the army. Travel to distant, exotic places. Meet strange, interesting people. And kill them." Not really a fair commentary on the role of the typical soldier in the army of a nonaggressive nation, but it probably sums up the appeal of a hitch in the IC military for a bloodthirsty roleplayer.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
Corporal punishment has nothing to do with the military rank of "Corporal." It refers to punishment inflicted directly upon the convicted criminal's body. Floggings, brandings, maybe cutting off a thief's hand in traditional Moslem nations . . . that sort of thing. On the plus side (from a Roleplayer's perspective, at least) it's over and done with fairly quickly and then the victim can try to go back to whatever he was doing before they caught him. Unlike RL punishments of this nature, there's no pain involved except whatever the victim imagines there to be.
