Cults and Gender

[Lordabdul]

8 hours ago, gochie said:

My take is this: I think they (Chaosium) want Orlanthi culture to be super progressive (which is probably a fairly recent change as a by-product of our increasingly progressive environment IRL), but didn't think to change the specific cult rules on gender from the older versions of the game.

It hasn't changed that much from what I can tell. The concept of the "Orlanthi All" dates quite far back, with "one in seven or so" Orlanthi not conforming to societal norms, including gender roles (HeroWars had the Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe supplements to detail people from, respectively, the majority and minority). But yes, I agree that the rune cult requirements don't have any mention of non-binary genders so that does look like it's missing an edit pass to match with the rest.

As for the OP, I think it's not only up to your (varying) Glorantha, but (in traditional Gloranthan fashion) it can also vary and contradict itself depending on which NPC you ask. It varies a lot in the real world depending on which religious person you talk to. So maybe most of the Esrolia high priestesses in Nochet are a bunch of TERFs but the ones in Sartar or elsewhere might "bend the rules" a bit (or a lot), or maybe none of them care about gender and only look for sex, or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if a cult like Babeester Gor wasn't too demanding about their requirements, and that you could somewhat commonly find different sexes and genders in their initiates, the same way you clearly didn't find only cis-men on pirate ships in the Caribbean in the late 17th century despite ship contracts commonly prohibiting women on board. I wonder if Jeff will suddenly add a 6 months delay to the Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha book to go over all the cults again and address this

Also note that the "4 sexes and 6 genders" thing only applies to Orlanthi culture IIRC, so, again, some cults may have different traditions in practice between different parts of the continent.

Edited August 2, 2019 by lordabdul

[soltakss]

Glorantha has matriarchies. The Uz are matriarchal, as is Esrolia. 

Not sure why we have to discuss real world matriarchies or their absences, when discussing gender roles in Glorantha.

[Joerg]

14 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Glorantha has matriarchies. The Uz are matriarchal, as is Esrolia. 

Esrolia actually has an Aviarchy - reign of the grandmothers, from latin avia. It isn't quite a gerontocracy like the high soviet in the boardgame Kremlin, but Esrolians wouldn't leave decision-making to such a silly being as a nurturing mother. Real decision-making shouldn't be affected by hormones, in their view.

 

[Imryn]

16 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I'm a linguist and I also do anthropology and sociology and I cannot begin to explain the ways you are just entirely crashing the plane into the ground in this thread. I mean I could, but this board is not about disabusing people of basic facts about language, nor about classism, racism, and basic civility, which you seem free to want to pull the pin on and just throw directly into the crowd.

Do you think maybe we could not do that as I feel like this is enough of a hellworld that I don't need to come into a Glorantha discussion and see someone clearly backhanding Englishes that aren't Oxford/Ohio Broadcaster?

Because honestly it's pretty clear what you mean by that, and it's beyond ugly. It's not a dogwhistle at this point, it's a foghorn.

I think you should take a close look at yourself before accusing someone else of lacking basic civility.

I fully understand that a living language is something that changes and evolves over time, and understand that the people that maintain the dictionaries need to continually update their publications to keep abreast of these changes.

OTOH when a word is being misused out of laziness or ignorance should the definition of the word be changed?

In particular, when a word is hijacked by a group of feminist anthropologists who decide to re-define it to mean something different, should the dictionary be changed to accommodate them, thereby changing the work of every anthropologist who came before them by altering the meaning of a word they may have used? For all we know this may have been a deliberate ploy by those feminist anthropologists to co-opt their predecessors work by linguistic manipulation.

Words that are commonly used can change and evolve freely over time. Words that are specific to scholarly work should have fixed definitions in order to preserve the work of the scholars that use them. These words might very well be misused in common usage, but that should not alter their definition.

Command of the English language is not a class issue or a race issue, it is an educational issue. The accent you have when speaking the words is irrelevant, as long as you use the words correctly. It used to be that people took pride in using language correctly, in being able to express themselves with eloquence and clarity, but no more apparently. I really think the "hellworld" you exist in is entirely of your own making.

Finally, learn to recognise a joke when you see one! 

[soltakss]

Definitions are always a bugbear on these forums. Problems range from "This is how I use the term", "This is the dictionary definition of the term", "But that has changed", "This is how the term is commonly used in Glorantha" and so on. It never, ever ends well.

Words change, their meaning changes, the usage changes, language is a continually evolving thing. This can cause problems when nitpicking in arguments, especially when people are talking about the same terms but interpret the meaning differently.

 

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, Imryn said:

OTOH when a word is being misused out of laziness or ignorance should the definition of the word be changed?

Yes. If a word changes, it changes. Most linguistic change is driven by efficiency/laziness.

[Imryn]

Well, if everyone is using their own definition of what matriarchy means, and nobody is willing to take any other definition, even as a starting point for further discussion, then this thread seems to be pretty pointless.

[Imryn]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes. If a word changes, it changes. Most linguistic change is driven by efficiency/laziness.

I really thought the answer to the question I posed was self evident, but never mind. My answer to my question is to fix the ignorance through better education and to not change the definition of the word. Laziness is harder to fix, but I would not change the language to accommodate it.

[soltakss]

On 8/2/2019 at 2:11 PM, Imryn said:

Well, if everyone is using their own definition of what matriarchy means, and nobody is willing to take any other definition, even as a starting point for further discussion, then this thread seems to be pretty pointless.

Well, the Original post doesn't mention matriarchy:

On 7/28/2019 at 12:07 AM, styopa said:

I'm confused by the various approaches to gender in RQG.

On the one hand, the book clearly states that gender is rather fluid, and that Orlanthi (for example) recognize 4 sexes and 6 genders.  This doesn' timply that there are social or cultural restrictions not otherwise mentioned ie I expect that a female in a male role is REALLY treated like a male in all respects.

But then there are many cults that express gender restrictions (Ernalda, Maran Gor, Babeester Gor, Yelm, etc) - are these then in reality open to any sex, if it expresses itself truly as a different gender?  Could an unmarried, male-sexed individual that expressed them selves as female gender then freely join Maran Gor?  Doesn't the Ernaldan Priest(ess) requirement of having a healthy baby sort of disable this gender expression flexibility in a sort of binary way?  Ie it'd be like a cult requiring having an actual penis.

 

We can still discuss the original post.

On 8/2/2019 at 3:45 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

[REMOVED]

And this used to be such a nice place.

I'm not a Moderator, which everyone should be grateful for, but can we knock off the personal attacks and foul language?

Edited August 7, 2019 by Trifletraxor
Removed offensive quoted post

[Trifletraxor]

Breathe...

 

No more personal attacks please. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Trifletraxor