All too often, people focus on how gender discrimination is unfair to those who are excluded or minimized, but it’s also a loss to the group and its goals as a whole.
I don’t see how this story has anything to do with gender discrimination, unless it’s trying to reinforce some stereotype of “Women can come up with peaceful solutions to problems, but men always resort to violence immediately.”
It’s not just a stereotype, it’s the (exaggerated) truth. For example, in polls about whether citizens approve of whatever war is happening that decade, men are generally more in favor of the war than women.
EDIT: Changed “not a stereotype” to “not just a stereotype”.
I don’t think “it’s the exaggerated truth” is necessarily an excuse to perpetuate stereotypes.
For example, suppose the writer was a white person who played games with a black dungeon master, who had himself previously played mostly with other black people. One game, the writer tries to solve a problem through negotiation when the DM had planned things so that you were supposed to shoot the bad guys. The writer phrases this not as “The DM had failed to plan for this contingency” but instead as “This is why it’s hard to be a white person trying to hang out around black people; they just try to solve every problem by shooting at it and don’t accept that we white people might think differently than that.”
When someone notices this is perpetuating a stereotype, I don’t think it would remove the problem to say “No, seriously, black people are involved in a disproportionate number of shootings”, even if this were true. The point isn’t that every group is demographically exactly the same, it’s that we are trying to avoid creating a climate where we immediately and unreflectingly associate certain groups with the worst characteristics they contingently hold in our current society.
I admit that I am holding this post to a higher standard than I would hold other posts, because it is itself a post about social justice. This might sound like I’m being deliberately annoying and trying to say “gotcha!”, but it’s not just that.
It’s more of a sense of fair play and reciprocity, that the would-be social justice crusader understands that watching your speech to avoid stereotypes is kind of difficult and contrary to usual habits of thought, maybe not the hardest thing in the world, but also not so drop-dead simple that you can immediately assume any failure is due to evil intentions. And so they make a good-faith effort to show that they’re going to try to be respectful to your group, even if your group doesn’t desperately need the respect. It just makes you feel like they’re working with you instead just being someone who yells at you. Like there’s a dialogue going on where both sides follow rules when talking to one another, instead of “Shut up and listen why I tell you why you’re offensive and how you’re going to stop.”
I totally admit that as a male I’m not too worried that the stereotype of men as thoughtlessly violent is going to have huge effects on my life, and I’m not seriously offended. But it’s like...more like how workers get upset when company executives give themselves huge bonuses, then cut worker pay because the company is under financial pressure. And then say that if the workers worry about the pay cuts they’re “not team players”. The executives might be right when they say financial pressures necessitate pay cuts for workers. They might even be right that giving themselves large bonuses makes a negligible impact on the company’s bottom line. It just seems like a potentially disrespectful gesture.
I assume that just like the DM in the story, those polls also don’t allow people to choose a “let’s plow their fields” option. Although in some situations it could actually be a very good choice.
The socialization of children into gender roles of conciliation and confrontation begins very early, as can be seen in a study by Clearfield and Nelson. Accordingly, it is not surprising (and jibes with our common sense) to note that men and women tend to respond to challenges in different ways. I think it’s probably too broad to say that men “always” resort to violence “immediately,” which seems like a deliberately weak phrasing. Rather, I’d say that men and women find different solutions, because of their different perspectives.
“The point, though, is that the narrowness of focus in the adventure precluded exploration of a large set of options.”
If playing D&D with a bunch of girls consistently leads to solutions being proposed that do not fit the traditional D&D mold, that can teach us something about how well that mold fits a bunch of girls. More generally, the author is a pretty smart woman who thought this was a good example—you’d do well to take a second look.
I don’t see how this story has anything to do with gender discrimination, unless it’s trying to reinforce some stereotype of “Women can come up with peaceful solutions to problems, but men always resort to violence immediately.”
It’s not just a stereotype, it’s the (exaggerated) truth. For example, in polls about whether citizens approve of whatever war is happening that decade, men are generally more in favor of the war than women.
EDIT: Changed “not a stereotype” to “not just a stereotype”.
I don’t think “it’s the exaggerated truth” is necessarily an excuse to perpetuate stereotypes.
For example, suppose the writer was a white person who played games with a black dungeon master, who had himself previously played mostly with other black people. One game, the writer tries to solve a problem through negotiation when the DM had planned things so that you were supposed to shoot the bad guys. The writer phrases this not as “The DM had failed to plan for this contingency” but instead as “This is why it’s hard to be a white person trying to hang out around black people; they just try to solve every problem by shooting at it and don’t accept that we white people might think differently than that.”
When someone notices this is perpetuating a stereotype, I don’t think it would remove the problem to say “No, seriously, black people are involved in a disproportionate number of shootings”, even if this were true. The point isn’t that every group is demographically exactly the same, it’s that we are trying to avoid creating a climate where we immediately and unreflectingly associate certain groups with the worst characteristics they contingently hold in our current society.
I admit that I am holding this post to a higher standard than I would hold other posts, because it is itself a post about social justice. This might sound like I’m being deliberately annoying and trying to say “gotcha!”, but it’s not just that.
It’s more of a sense of fair play and reciprocity, that the would-be social justice crusader understands that watching your speech to avoid stereotypes is kind of difficult and contrary to usual habits of thought, maybe not the hardest thing in the world, but also not so drop-dead simple that you can immediately assume any failure is due to evil intentions. And so they make a good-faith effort to show that they’re going to try to be respectful to your group, even if your group doesn’t desperately need the respect. It just makes you feel like they’re working with you instead just being someone who yells at you. Like there’s a dialogue going on where both sides follow rules when talking to one another, instead of “Shut up and listen why I tell you why you’re offensive and how you’re going to stop.”
I totally admit that as a male I’m not too worried that the stereotype of men as thoughtlessly violent is going to have huge effects on my life, and I’m not seriously offended. But it’s like...more like how workers get upset when company executives give themselves huge bonuses, then cut worker pay because the company is under financial pressure. And then say that if the workers worry about the pay cuts they’re “not team players”. The executives might be right when they say financial pressures necessitate pay cuts for workers. They might even be right that giving themselves large bonuses makes a negligible impact on the company’s bottom line. It just seems like a potentially disrespectful gesture.
I assume that just like the DM in the story, those polls also don’t allow people to choose a “let’s plow their fields” option. Although in some situations it could actually be a very good choice.
The socialization of children into gender roles of conciliation and confrontation begins very early, as can be seen in a study by Clearfield and Nelson. Accordingly, it is not surprising (and jibes with our common sense) to note that men and women tend to respond to challenges in different ways. I think it’s probably too broad to say that men “always” resort to violence “immediately,” which seems like a deliberately weak phrasing. Rather, I’d say that men and women find different solutions, because of their different perspectives.
Yes, I agree that contingently there is statistically more aggression in men. I don’t think that’s the point; see my response to Miley.
From AlexanderD’s comment:
“The point, though, is that the narrowness of focus in the adventure precluded exploration of a large set of options.”
If playing D&D with a bunch of girls consistently leads to solutions being proposed that do not fit the traditional D&D mold, that can teach us something about how well that mold fits a bunch of girls. More generally, the author is a pretty smart woman who thought this was a good example—you’d do well to take a second look.