My group and I are starting to play through the "Rise of the Runelords" adventure path, and so far it seems "Burnt Offerings" adventure by James Jacobs, the first adventure, is giving me an endless amount of material for exploring misogyny in role-playing games. When I got back into roleplaying after a hiatus, I was excited by the art in Pathfinder Core Rulebook, since not only was it better executed than in D&D 3.5e Player's Handbook, but also featured more women in more roles, and whose clothing and armor sometimes did not reveal the midriff, naked legs, or cleavage. The rules also did a decent job of alternating pronouns. It was a shock, therefore, when I was met with so much sexism in "Burnt Offerings."
NOTE: Beyond lie spoilers; read at your own peril.
The first stinking mess is encountered in the adventure background. It turns out that the previous religious leader of Sandpoint, Father Tobyn, wanted his adopted daughter to "remain pure so that she could join one of the prestigious Windsong Abbey convents" (Jacobs 9). Later, when Nualia discovers she is impregnated by her boyfriend, Dalek, and informs him of the fact, he calls her "a slut and a harlot" (Jacobs 9), and runs off. Her father, upon finding out about this, "forbade her to leave the church, lectured her nightly, and made her pray to Desna for forgiveness" (Jacobs 9). Between the medieval focus on female virginity, slut-shaming of Nualia by the very person she had sex with, and her having to ask divine forgiveness for that[1], misogynist messages proliferate. As a bonus, looking at the adventure as a whole, the basic message is that all kinds of bad things happen precisely because a couple of teenagers have sex.
The real kicker, however, is in the supplement about Thassilonian empire included in the book. In the "Rulers of Thassilon" section we learn about Sorshen, Runelord of Lust:
She always wore red and white garments of the richest and most enticing design and carried a slim, lewdly-shaped staff made entirely of mithral. ... With song, glance, and touch, she seduced and betrayed all of the other runelords over the years. ... In her private life, stories agree that Runelord Sorshen was a whore, rutting with anything that took her fancy. Accusations of rape, perversion, and violent outbursts might have been exaggerated by her enemies, but if so she was remarkably consistent in her outrages. The one person’s privacy she took seriously was her own; the servants who worked in her private palace were all blinded and most were mute, communicating through fawning touches. (Jacobs 77)
Firstly, it seems odd that while the other Runelords are all actors of their "sins"[2], Sorshen alone is rather passive, preferring to become the object of lust not its subject. She wears "enticing" garments -- whose colors, incidentally, often represent virginity (white) and carnal sin (red) -- in order to seduce others, thus relinquishing the power to them. Moreover, her staff of office is strongly hinted to be in the shape of a penis, thus perpetuating the myth of female penis envy as well as sending the message that despite being a female Runelord, Sorshen must still have a penis to rule.
Things get even worse when a few lines down the author reveals his own bias when describing Sorshen's private life (which, incidentally, is not described for any other runelord). Jacobs' use of whore here echoes Dalek's slut-shaming of Nualia, but is even stronger, carrying all the negative connotations of prostitution in the United States. The next word further underlines the negative: by using the verb rutting to describe her sexual relations, Jacobs is equating them with animal copulation and their yearly rut (which OED defines as "periodic sexual excitement in ... animals"). While all the runelords are quite despicable, Sorshen more than any others[3] bears the brunt of the author's Christian bias.
There are other, more subtle, reminders of how far we still are, as a society, from egalitarianism, but I hope the above paints a vivid enough picture without my going into further details. I have two women in my group, one of whom is a teenager, and I know I would be extremely uncomfortable running this adventure without some major modifications to some key events and bits of information. Has anyone noticed such overt sexism in the rest of the adventure path?
- It makes very little sense why Desna, a Chaotic-Good goddess of freedom, would find having sex and/or being pregnant as sinful in some way. Along with Sandpoint religious leader being called a "pastor" and the temple called a "church", I feel like Jacobs comes from a strong Christian background and is completely ignorant of polytheist practices.
- More Christian ideology, since -- surprise, surprise -- the seven "sins of the soul" (Jacobs 74) match up perfectly with the Christian seven deadly sins.
- Aside, perhaps, of Zutha, the Lord of Gluttony, who is inexplicably both "undead" and "morbidly obese" (Jacobs 78, emphasis mine).
Um, this is the most absurd misrepresentation of a writers work I have seen for a while.
ReplyDeleteThe people who mistreat Nualia are doing *a bad thing* and they, among with others, end up ruining her life and ruining her because of their own blinkered prejudice and determination to foist stereotypes upon a young woman.
This isn't promoting misogyny, it is a deliberate example of its terrible consequences.
As for Sorshen, the Runelords all represent the classic 7 sins and the most passive is easily Sloth. The accumulated lore on Sorshen is that she is one of the most powerful humans who ever lived and she dominated a vast nation for hundreds of years. Passive? Perhaps if you selectively quote... as for the whore stuff: James Jacobs is referring to the stories which were passed down about her. It's like Ivan the Terrible.
I imagine that there is a good chance that the women in your group will have the judgement and experience to make their own decisions. But, you patronise them all you want: the irony.
Oh, and bonus points!
1. This was the first Pathfinder publication. The world was still poorly defined at this stage and so James Jacobs drew upon recognisable cultural touchstones to make it easy for his reader to access his work.
Drawing upon the dominant culture of the countries most customers live in is not 'ignorance', nor is it evidence of religious commitment. Perhaps you should ask JJ about this? He answers questions from all-comers.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=521?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here#26019
2. The seven sins are an interesting cultural trope to exploit, nothing more. I am an atheist but can list the seven deadly sins. I once asked a group of atheist teenagers to list the seven deadly sins during a school project and they got them all in about a minute. This is not pushing Christian ideology, it is exploiting it.
3. Sigh... your final two words pretty much sum up this entire blog post.
You could just as easily selectively quote from the adventure to claim he is a radical progressive if you wanted to: openly gay characters, obvious misogynists in the game all die a grisly death, most powerful characters are all female (the mayor has the most state power, Nuali leads the villains, the female elf ranger and the female human bard have the most powerful NPC game builds, etc.)
I'm with Geraint on this one, you've selectively quoted, and missed the point on a lot of the text. It'd be like claiming Joss Whedon is anti-gay because he allowed a gay character to die.
ReplyDeleteBad things happened to Nualia, and the misogyny she was subjected to caused her to lash out at the town. She's a strong female character who felt no recourse other than to turn to another strong female deity (Lamashtu), when she felt the representatives of Desna betrayed her. Father Tobyn foisted all sorts of terrible things on Nualia, and that messed with her head and caused her to seek vengeance.
Read more carefully, and I recommend you actually talk to the author about this issue, Paizo publishing and James Jacobs work hard to make sure women are represented fairly. They don't sugarcoat the world and that makes the adventures more nuanced.
In my game, our characters refused to kill Nualia, we arrested her instead and hope to redeem her. She had a raw deal, and did some bad things because of it. She'll have to take responsibility for the damage done to the town, but I think she's capable of redemption.
As for Sorshen. Read Shattered Star #2 "Curse of Lady's Light", there's plenty more Sorshen goodness there. Sorshen was a powerful woman, who enjoyed controlling people. Her concern was lust, and making people lust after her made them dumb. She also surrounded herself with beautiful objects of her own desire she could slake herself on.
Read it again, and this time try to read it without the prejudice, you'll see many interesting female characters, and a town coming out of a period of masculine power dealing with the consequences of misogyny run rampant.
Regards,
John