That's a misattibution. The paragraph was actually by David Cake.
>That was the bit that really struck me. It's acquired
>gender bias in the last few years, as a new and very
>annoying idea. But back when I started playing:
>Orlanth accepted anyone who could breath air, half the
>PCs I knew were female, as were the sample NPCs (and
>no, they weren't all healers), and the ONE
>male-dominated culture (the Sundomers) was
>a) there to be laughed at for their extreme gender
>bias
>b) considerably LESS biased than Britain at the time.
>Vega got into the army. I'd have been rejected simply
>for being female.
>
>That was half the reason for picking Glorantha as a
>universe to play in - because most of the cultures
>WEREN'T based on the assumptions of thousands of years
>of male-domination, they were comparatively sane!
>
>Now, things are changing. How anyone can imagine they
>can make major changes to societies and cults and
>still claim to be in the same universe is beyond me,
>when they know perfectly well they're contradicting
>known facts to do so, but there's been a slide over
>the last few years as people try to project their WASP
>insecurities onto a universe that didn't need them.
>And then they try to claim it was always like that...
>have they stolen John's memory, too?
I'd agree there has been a change in emphasis since the '70s but I don't think the societies have changed much. RQII was a product of the middle class student market of the time. So women did the same things as men but in chainmail bikinis. However it was still a male centric game in that it concentrated on male activities. Women were interesting provided they took on male roles.
Since then the emphasis has moved on to how these societies actually function and how a woman's role can be equally interesting and heroic for both men and women.
I'll agree there have been times when some posters have interpreted Gloranthan societies on the basis of their cultural assumptions. However not doing that isn't easy even when you've been exposed to and recognised the differences between different cultures. What male and female roles are and the relative status of different occupations tend to be some of the biggest differences.
The problem of sanity is that it is culturally relative. What is normal in one society is a sign of insanity in others so a '70s feminist would be regarded as just as mad as a '50s housewife in any pre-industrial society. Just as an American who insisted on his right to carry a loaded revolver about the streets of London would be considered nuts.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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