Writing about gender, power, and privilege

Wyrmspawn · 2013-01-24T08:26:37.000Z

The Fleet allows the reader to imagine the world without setting any rules. Surely the benefits are obvious.

“Choice of Broadsides is designed to let the player feel like the protagonist of a Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin novel". This feel was ruined by the awkward looking choice of flipped pronouns throughout the game. This is the main problem with flipped pronouns. They are slightly crude at times and don’t fit into the story. Nit just in Choice of Broadsides, in Affairs of the court, there is a scene where Augustina somehow “lifts you up effortlessly with her strong arms”. Awkward, I’d say.

In The Fleet, there was no such problem. If you weren’t reading too closely, everything was natural and neutral. CoGs that offer gender choices are neutral, but (mostly) not so natural. Some daring writers are writing according to historical facts, but then, the gender of the story is not quite so neutral anymore. The Fleet is perfectly neutral and natural in this way.

I’m not clamouring that all choice of gender games have romances, just that this could have been done in other games where there aren’t any romances. Or even if there are romances, this same gender neutrality can be used, as long as nothing is too… well-described… anyway, this is why I support the nonexistence of pronouns. It gives you room to imagine everything exactly the way you like it. I hope none of you will be offended or bored by this rant. Thank you if you have stuck to reading through all of it. :-j

Drazen · 2013-01-24T09:01:25.000Z

It is immensely curious, the sort of language used by those who adopt an egalitarian position on gender. Any difference is assumed to be “artificial” or “irrelevant”; any observational recognition of those differences is “misogynistic” and “sexist”; any societal recognition of those differences is “patriarchal” (practically never matriarchal, for some reason). There’s a difference between having equal opportunities and having identical natures - and these are not the words used by people who want a level playing field, but by those who want to level the players, as 'twere. Giving the player the opportunity to shape their character as they wish should not involve making those traits inconsequential; and gender is of immense consequence.

Consider how such a levelling mind-set when adopted by an author would alter the nature of their work: You’d lose out a lot of the nuances and details, the preferences and restrictions, - all the things which help make something believable. Were you make it so that there is one, genderless course for a player to get what they want, you eradicate the possibility of so many great characters: A Hawksian woman exists only by contrast, a femme fatale only through femininity, and likewise a protective matriarch can only be had in a world where femininity is present (albeit in a very different way). The same can be said of men: from the masculinity of honour you get the chivalrous knight or principled gentleman, or on the flipside of that masculinity the rake and the bounder appear, which is not to mention the contrast of the dandy. It is precisely because of an environment with gender that such personas can exist. Deny the difference, and you deny players the option to realistically mould their characters into any of the aforementioned styles.

In games such as The Fleet, a lack of gender doesn’t matter, purely because it’s not a character-based game but a decision-based one. But I should say any game where social interaction is a factor which doesn’t account for the role of gender has done itself an injustice by neglecting a trove full of possibilities. Personally, I should like to see those troves plundered for all they’re worth.

That said, gender should always be a factor, but never an impassable obstruction. So let’s say some unruly warrior needs to be tackled: a very masculine character could perhaps clash with this hypothetical chappy on fairly even terms, but were a woman to try and do the same, it strikes me as a lot of hand-waving on the author’s part to allow her to succeed. Poison is the most common weapon of choice for a woman with good reason, after all. Do not deny a man/woman the chance to succeed in a feminine/masculine environment respectively, but ensure they have to take the difference between their gender and the sphere in question into consideration. At the very least they’ll be more engaged with the environment, and more empathetic to the needs of the character.

Put simply, genders are neither equal nor unequal. We have no objective standard with which to measure them by and say “This is better” or “They are equivalent”. All we have are the natures of individuals and those of the people around them; it is by this latter standard, - that of character and environment, - that any game should be structured. To deny that gender affects either is to be at best unduly narrow in that regard, or at worse to be bluntly restrictive.

Havenstone · 2013-01-24T13:44:46.000Z

@Wyrmspawn, don’t worry or apologise – if nowhere else, on this thread you’re warmly encouraged to write posts that are long enough to get your point across!

Maybe you can help me understand how Broadsides’ Aubrey/Hornblower vibe is “ruined” by an initial choice of sexes. Seems to me that readers who want a straight-up Aubrey/Hornblower story can simply choose “male” and all the pronouns will fall perfectly into place – not a single one will seem odd.

I thought it was clearly signposted in the text that if instead you chose “female,” you’d be choosing to play the rest of the game in an Opposite-Land where those historical British ideas about what is masculine and feminine are simply, sharply reversed.

If for some reason you find that alternate world annoying rather than amusing and/or thought-provoking, there’s no requirement to play with that set of pronouns. Which is why I’m still struggling to understand how the existence of that Opposite-Land path would upset someone. They’ve got a normal Hornblower story if they click “male, of course” at the beginning – they won’t have any “flipped pronouns throughout the game.” How has it been ruined?

AotC is trying to do something different – it puts you in a traditionally “feminine” role (trying to attract a more powerful mate with your beauty/wiles/virtue) no matter what sex you choose. And unlike Broadsides, AotC devotes some time to sketching out the alternate universe within which that degree of gender equality would actually make sense. It’s more ambitious, and so fails a bit more often.

I agree that the differential of strength implied by Agustin/a “lifting you effortlessly” in AotC is a mistake – whether or not it was intentional, which I suspect it may have been. It distracts unnecessarily from the other, more interesting ways that the story subverts gender expectations.

And thanks for explaining your thoughts on The Fleet. Personally, pronouns don’t limit my ability to “imagine the world without setting any rules,” because I don’t believe that any specific rules inescapably follow from our biology. When I read a story set in a different universe, I’m open to the idea that gender roles and rules might be significantly different from ours. What I would find pretty unnatural, though, would be anyone trying to write a romance without using pronouns. YMMV…

Redgrave · 2013-01-24T15:20:28.000Z

@Havenstone

I wasn’t specifically suggesting a romance, but something gender-specific or slight changes based on gender. Personally I don’t like making choices such as hair colour- I find I can just imagine that myself, and a choice just distracts me from the game. When there is a gender choice, I like it to have some impact on gameplay, not just change a few he’s to she’s. I do think it (gender) should be important to a game. What you thought I was saying was indeed correct; in fact, I have to commend you for being able to understand me- a lot of people don’t get me and have to ask me for clarification!

In short, I think gender should be important in a game, not just a variable that changes he to she, etc. but I can see your pont of view.

Drazen · 2013-01-24T15:23:57.000Z

Mhm, @Havenstone, the male route in AotC, I find, did more than just place someone in a feminine role, it also placed them in an inferior one. I should have liked both the option to attempt for ones character to regain some masculinity, - or to choose to avoid femininity, - and also to try and alter the balance within the relationship to stop ones character from being subservient.

Despite considering AotC one of this sites top games, it did fall down in the relative clumsiness it afforded to the gender-flip. By assuming the situation so easily transferable, it led to (for me, at least) male players getting a nagging feeling of being something akin to a limp-handshake.

Havenstone · 2013-01-24T15:25:57.000Z

@P_Tigras, for a few months I was kidding myself that I’d find time to pick up that conversation properly, but eventually I admitted that I’d just have to find an appropriate way to publicly concede those two points. I’m on a work trip in Hargeisa at the moment, which gives me a bit more time to write.

@Drazen, I agree that there’s a difference between equal opportunity and identical nature, and that the sexes are manifestly not identical in nature. But actual men and women display such a diverse range of strengths, weaknesses, desires, and fears that virtually all statements about men’s and women’s “natures” contain major inaccuracies. Such broad-brush judgments have nonetheless been widely used to justify one sex having much greater power and opportunity than the other. (That would be men in all the civilizations represented on this forum… which is the reason you were struggling to identify for complaints about “matriarchy” being thin on the ground).

When your post leaves the realm of polemic generalization and starts offering “observational [examples] of those differences,” I find it hard to link any of them back to our non-identical natures – as if protection and nurturing weren’t in the male nature, or honour and Hawksian toughness in the female. Surely the “nuances and details” you mention are all contingent? They vary from culture to culture, and even more from individual to individual (as do most other things in human personality). And yet they’re easily mistaken for natural truth and turned into arguments ad naturam; men and women who don’t fit those roles can be scorned, shamed, or worse.

That’s why I’d suggest that in real life, the best approach to “natural” gender differences is a combination of mild agnosticism (toward the reality) and robust skepticism (toward any given claim). A more credulous approach risks significant injustice on both the social and the individual level.

When it comes to fiction, there are great stories that can be written by having characters interact with the gender norms of specific Earth cultures. But fans of speculative fiction can appreciate the greatness of stories that invert those expectations, too. Why not posit a civilization in which women were the gender with a strong honour culture, or men expected to be mysterious, seductive, and perilous in femme fatale style? Wouldn’t that be quite a powerful means of getting people to “engage with the environment,” as opposed to just assuming that every game setting is a generic fantasyland?

And yes, why not write some egalitarian worlds in which gender differences primarily involve pronouns? I agree with you that at the end of the day, great stories focus on “the natures of individuals and those of the people around them.” Gender stereotypes can obscure those natures as well as bring them out. Writers who aspire to write individuals as opposed to just gender tropes may find such a setting a salutary challenge.

(Btw, is “equal opportunity” really consistent with your worldview? I’d have thought it a suspiciously modern and non-aristocratic ideal).

Edit: good point on subservience in AotC – I’d also have enjoyed a chance to alter the balance in the relationship.

Drazen · 2013-01-24T16:18:56.000Z

Oh I agree @Havenstone, there are individuals with distinct personalities, who cannot be judged by any one ideal without error, - that’s not in question, - but I nevertheless think those ideals themselves have value, here. You can question whether an ideal is justified, whether it’s coherent, and whether it’s useful, even to the point of rejecting them totally, but you absolutely cannot question the impact they have on the world.

Y’see, I think you misunderstood where I was coming from; that was not a political post dealing with real world affairs; it wasn’t a post arguing for gender ideals, merely one highlighting that they do, indeed, exist, - and that many personas exist in relation to them.

So I’m not saying that writers ought to see the choice ‘Man’ and think “Brave, strong, and honourable” or anything along those lines, and determine their character accordingly; I’m saying that writer should see the choice ‘Man’ and think “Right, the society around them would say they should be brave, strong, and honourable; how would the character like to react?”. It’s not about pushing a character into a gender archetype arbitrarily, it’s about making their environment more reactive to their choices.

In a game with a mid-20th century American view of gender ideals, you could give female characters the choice to defy the ideal somewhat as a woman of “Hawksian toughness”, which would affect the image of their character, both to the player and to other characters in the game. Similarly if you decided to invent your own state of gender ideals and had a world where the given ideal for a man was, as you said, “to be mysterious, seductive, and perilous in femme fatale style” then that would also give the player the chance to shape their character in relation to that backdrop.

Egalitarian environments, however, are more difficult for the author to properly explore this character-shaping element. It is doable, however: you could have a state which tried to enforce gender equality, and give characters the chance to react against this by instead defending a certain view of gender ideals. The risk would always be for the author to say “Right, egalitarianism!” and dismiss gender as wholly artificial and inconsequential.

Two side notes:
Firstly, I would be very critical of any statement that ran “Men have more power in society”, which is a dubious oversimplification of a complex environment, so I find the notion of patriarchy as silly as that of matriarchy.
Secondly, aristocracy pertains to a state of mind, not birth. I support nobility for its role in protecting this, but not to the point of denying individuals from other groups the chance to likewise ascend to power.

TDilz · 2013-01-24T16:36:58.000Z

I actually never even noticed the Augustina thing in CoI; the player character is 16 and she’s a grown-ass woman. And then also a mage, if that wasn’t enough. edit: to clarify, I’m talking about the play scene

Literally the entire point of the game, chapter 2 especially, is that the player is in an inferior position of power and needs to use guile to get what they want. “Reclaiming their masculinity” doesn’t make sense in that context, it’d be a different game entirely.

Stat penalties for women was one those archaic legacy elements from the proto-DnDs that got removed early on for good reason; player characters in that system are inherently exceptional, not average, and regardless of THAT nothing that happens to the players is anything a real person could do/survive.

Drazen · 2013-01-24T16:42:19.000Z

Yes it would be a somewhat different game, @TDilz, - a better one, or at least one that’s more inclusive. And just because you start off in an inferior position shouldn’t prevent you from re-negotiating. This is a separate issue to the masculinity of the character, however.

Havenstone · 2013-01-24T16:47:10.000Z

@TDilz, not sure what Drazen had in mind, but I’d enjoy a story where the player’s use of guile, seduction etc. actually changed the power dynamic of the relationship – where the initial imbalance (which as you say is essential to the game) changed as the dominant partner slipped into the power of the subordinate.

I wouldn’t describe that as “reclaiming masculinity,” of course – don’t see any need to describe it using gender-specific language. And maybe we’ll see something of the sort in Ch 3.

Drazen · 2013-01-24T16:53:37.000Z

Well, @Havenstone, there is a choice where you can get Augustin(a) to discuss political matters with your character. That could be extended to have the player character becoming the dominant partner by becoming the primary influence on Augustin(a)'s views. That would be one way of gaining authority through persuasion. There are, of course, other routes for other personalities.

And yeah, the dominant/subordinate issue is separate to the one of gender.

TDilz · 2013-01-24T17:26:04.000Z

I think you actually are seeing that in chapter 2, though perhaps it’s not progressing far enough/fast enough for you. The PCs is trying to simultaneously influence the Royal and keep them reliant, while also keeping their own irons hot with regards to their own position. Depending on what choices they take the PC can get comments from the Royal on how increasingly dependent they are on them.

With regards to inclusiveness, ehhh I can see what you’re saying, but again, I think it is already there, but still in process.

Presumably, holding on to your status for so many years, (and potentially having contributed to a life mage child), would shift the power balance considerably. Especially given the introduction of gunpowder at the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of coup is a possibility. But who knows what path the author will take

Drazen · 2013-01-24T17:29:44.000Z

@TDilz The foundations are there? Certainly. It is in progress? I’m not so sure. The potential is present, let’s hope it is realised.

TDilz · 2013-01-24T17:44:38.000Z

@Drazen, yeah, we’ll find out one day. Still, the author might not go that way because that’s not the story they wanted to tell, which is fine.

P_Tigras · 2013-01-25T13:54:09.000Z

I’m in total agreement with the idea that there should be a way to attempt to shift the power balance in your marital relationship in AotC. History is filled with examples of royal consorts who managed to exert considerable control over their spouses despite being in an officially subordinate position. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Augustin(a) will be receptive to it, but the option to make the attempt should be there.

P_Tigras · 2013-01-25T16:44:53.000Z

@TDilz You misunderstand the original D&D system. Ability scores were based on real world metrics. For example a strength score of 12 was considered equivalent to being able to military press 120lbs and an intelligence of 12 was roughly equivalent to a 120 IQ. Not everyone might like those metrics, but they at least had some ties to reality. Unlike in the less realistic later versions of D&D, in the original D&D there was a definite line between normal human ability levels and superhuman ability levels, and normal human abilities were most definitely patterned off of real world human capabilities.

Only normal human strength levels had a gender limitation. Everyone could advance to superhuman levels equally. Thus the maximum strength a female character with normal strength could start with was never much of a limitation, not unless you wanted a female character with no magical items who was just starting out in the game to be a match for Conan the Barbarian in brute force. Very, very few male warriors had strength scores above the maximum a female warrior could start with. And there was nothing stopping a female character from donning the strength buffing magical items that would take her strength score to superhuman levels just as male characters could. There was also nothing stopping her from acquiring an artifact or magical manual that would permanently raise her strength to superhuman levels just as male characters could.

A girdle of frost giant strength would give a woman the exact same strength as a man who wore it. Ability scores like strength in the later 3rd and 4th edition D&D versions for both men and women on the other hand are totally disconnected from reality and are little more than a game balancing mechanism. So it makes little sense to have gender limitations in the newer 3rd and 4th editions of the game.

Havenstone · 2013-02-03T18:01:28.000Z

@Drazen, in belated response to your post: thanks for setting me straight on your intent. Your earlier opening comment on the “immensely curious” language used by us gender egalitarians was what sidetracked me into “real world affairs” – I’d dare to suggest that our high level of suspicion and (at times knee-jerk) skepticism regarding gender ideals has its roots in the real world. But as you say, that was a tangent.

Every culture I’m aware of has gendered divisions of labor and gendered social expectations, though the specifics vary tremendously. So any historical fiction or game which treats genders as simply interchangeable will by that token be less realistic. And I agree with your main point, which is that it will be passing up on a rich lode of character-shaping material.

I note again, however, that that material will often be hard for authors to handle well. It’s easy to simply reproduce the dreadful historical gender stereotypes – “men/women in this era could do this, and couldn’t do that, so there you go” – rather than genuinely pulling off something more like (as you suggest), “society in this era told men/women to do this; how would you like to react?” It’s also hard to deal well with the way that the (implied or overt) threat of sexual violence underpinned many gendered restrictions, especially the ones relevant to adventure stories like most of the ones we’re writing.

I’m also not persuaded that just because a rich vein of character-shaping material exists, there’s an obligation on authors to try to make good use of it. To switch topics for a moment: every known human society has had some kind of central metaphysics, which I’ll refer to with the sloppy shorthand category of “religion.” I suggest that it would be impossible to write a fully realistic historical game without touching on how the character has been shaped by the religious norms and expectations of their society.

Now, many of the games on the site and WiPs on this forum touch on religion fleetingly or not at all. (CoV is, once again, a notable exception). They are effectively religion-blind – which is neither “realistic” nor making full use of the drama inherent in the social environment. Yet I’ve yet to see anyone complain about this. People seem to be more comfortable with the assumption that religion is dispensable than the assumption that gender roles are dispensable – though those assumptions have a similar philosophical and historical pedigree.

Of course, it’s easy to write badly about religion, making readers feel forced into a simplified historical straightjacket rather than engaging with it in a suitably complex and insightful way. But that’s also true of gender roles.

So I’d suggest that perfectly good fiction can be written without delving into either – and in particular, some very enjoyable escapist fantasy fiction. I’d also note that many authors who try to write seriously about religion and/or gender roles risk biting off much more than they can chew. I can applaud their ambition… without necessarily wanting to read the results.

What do you reckon?

Drazen · 2013-02-03T20:09:39.000Z

@Havenstone, yes, my comments on the sort of levelling mind-set of egalitarian authors were inspired by a few phrases from @Ramidel’s post, and would probably seem out of place when detached from my perspective. Y’see, it was when he said “Choice of Romance, by contrast, took an inherently sexist genre (Victorian romance novels) and tried to make it accessible to all genders and sexual orientations” that got my attention. I find such a statement rather odd. The Victorian perspective is certainly idiosyncratic, but to brand it all outright as being “inherently sexist” is something more, - and such brandings are not uncommon.

You mention how every society has gender expectations, but what is seldom commented upon is why they have them. A historian needs to not only observe what has occurred, but also the reasons which led to its occurrence, after all. The reason is thus: From the dawn of human civilisation to the previous century, work was labour intensive, and housekeeping was a chore. Tending the fields, working the mines, et cetera, were very physical ways to earn a living, and similarly, the daily acquisition and preparation of foodstuffs and the tiresome manual cleaning of laundry required great attention. Pulling ones weight is non-negotiable. - “He who does not work, neither shall he eat”, after all, - but to what tasks should one be allocated? The biologically stronger males to the more labour intensive tasks and the less strenuous ones to the weaker females is surely the only rational solution.

We live in an incredibly comfortable age, with machines to do all the labours and chores for us, freeing both genders from their societal duties. I find it highly amusing when people praise the Suffragettes for the emancipation of women from the oppressive patriarchy - were it not for the Industrial Revolution, they’d be stuck in the washroom, and I’d be bound to the plough. But with many stories set in a less technologically advanced age, to pander to the egalitarian ideal is ludicrous. Even if the PC was an unusually strong female, or a weak male, they would not be handed different tasks to other men/women. Ideals are systemic, not specific: they would be expected to go down certain paths, act in certain ways, and so on. A good author really needs to factor this in when dealing with how other characters treat the PC, for the sake of realism at the very least.

But you are quite right, for most pieces there simply isn’t time to shape this aspect fully. However unlike the “metaphysics of the masses” (i.e. religion) gender is not something that can be ignored so easily. With religion, simply not mentioning it can produce a believable environment, regardless of how consequential it is. Yet religion is not something integral to the human, we can ignore it quite easily, should we be so inclined. For were religion to be more fundamental to our being, a veritable extra limb, then simply not mentioning it would itself require some explanation; and this is exactly how it is with gender.

Although retrospectively, using the analogy of an extra limb to discuss gender was poorly planned, it still adequately illustrates my point that gender ideals are connected to ourselves far more intimately than the merely intellectual. If you want to negate religion, don’t mention it; if you want to negate gender, don’t mention it - but people are not comfortable with this, since it is far closer to their being. It takes some work to be able to mention gender distinctions in language and setting without it becoming a key aspect of the story, but it’s something that needs to be done, so as to avoid the absurd stance of ‘Genders exist, but they have no consequences whatsoever’.

So you can have good fiction which doesn’t tackle with gender, but that would require one of two things: either totally nullify the gender environment, as was done with The Fleet, or carefully plan the surroundings and happenings to make the PC’s gender a non-issue, with the pronouns merely in place for comfort. The second is the more difficult to master, I should say, but one that, indeed, must be mastered to retain realism without a consequential gender backdrop.

Drazen · 2013-02-04T19:29:40.000Z

@Havenstone I do find it odd that you would reply to that point alone, since it was a simplified account of one aspect of a detailed tapestry of factors - I make no effort to deny this. Your refutation did remind me of a remark by David Starkey, however, when he said “Mostly I think that philosophers are rather tiresome people who make very simple things rather complicated” - now as a devoted adherent to the tradition of Speculative Metaphysics, I find this a rather entertaining quip, and I can see his point. I could very well say “Plants grow when they have soil and water”, yet would this be falsified by any observations about phototropism in morphogenesis? Of course not. Simple accounts exist for the reason that they give a nice, concise answer; that they sacrifice accuracy to do this is irrelevant.

Besides, my account does not collapse as quickly as you take it to. You highlighted my use of the word “tiresome” to describe housework, yet for some reason conditioned this by the word “merely”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Housework, without the ease of modern technology, was tedious and required endurance. But what it didn’t require was, as you stated, the “bursts of upper-body strength” that would take place in agrarian labours. Women in technologically primitive societies might require great physical endurance, but they still lack the muscle mass required for those essential bursts. At least, this is a dominant factor in gender development in agricultural Europe; how well this transfers to the pastoral White Nile lands, or to mountainous Nepal, is open to question, and irrelevant to my main argument.

For it is interesting that despite your habitual “knee-jerk scepticism”, this conversation has served to illustrate perfectly my point that gender is a real issue. Your campaign against the giving of clear answers to questions about gender has highlighted many factors: the social factors of the tribal Shilluks, the religious factors of the Gorkhali Hindoos, the physical factors around agricultural technology in Europe, et cetera. What I’m objecting to is simply doing away with all these factors, as if they’re somehow not relevant, when they clearly bloody are.

To answer your question, no, it’s not outrageous for there to be a story where gender relations never took hold. But I’d challenge the implicit stance behind that question that an author can just declare this to be the case and proceed without challenge. If they want no gender roles, they’ll have to work for this by creating a world where, feasibly, such wouldn’t arise. My objections are towards neglecting this challenge to an author, and I am not advocating constricting them.

Havenstone · 2013-02-04T18:24:03.000Z

“The biologically stronger males to the more labour intensive tasks and the less strenuous ones to the weaker females is surely the only rational solution.” For now, I’m just going to respond to this point, I’m afraid. This kind of theorizing about gendered division of labor is attractive in its simplicity. But most such theories are inadequate to the complexity of reality… and this articulation is not just over-simple but inaccurate.

I grew up in an agrarian society (rural Nepal) and my work regularly takes me to them today, which has given me a healthy appreciation for just how strenuous and labor-intensive women’s agricultural work is. Women’s role in rice transplantation in Nepal takes tremendous physical endurance – I found it vastly more difficult than the bursts of upper-body strength required to guide a plow effectively – and across much of the world women are responsible for agricultural land clearance by hoe, which requires both endurance and body strength.

Indeed, in many extant societies which have long-established folkways from closer to the “dawn of civilisation,” the gendered division of labor is very different from your assumptions. My colleagues who work in remote areas of the Shilluk kingdom in the Upper Nile carried out a standard assessment exercise in which they asked both men and women to describe their day over 24 hours. The women described a physically demanding day which included hard agricultural labor and carrying heavy burdens over long distances (water, fuel), not merely “tiresome” housework. The men described… very little. Eating meals prepared by the women, drinking tea, socializing. Making sure the boys were keeping an eye on the cattle. If the Shilluk division of labor had anything to do with sex differences in muscle mass, it was following a very different causal chain than the “only rational” one you suggest.

“The males to the less strenuous tasks (so they have more time for higher-status activities like community rituals and decision-making), and the more physically demanding work (both in and out of the home) to the females,” is a much more common rural division of labor than you’d think. It’s certainly what the Nepali village I grew up in looked like.

Which is why I stick with that combination of agnosticism and skepticism I described earlier. I’d be particularly skeptical of any account that suggested that only one scheme of division of labor was “rationally” consistent with the biological differences between sexes. The interplay between biology, technology, and society is more complicated than that, and results in much more diverse results.

For example, the sexual division of labor around agriculture tends to look very different in areas that adopted a specific technology – the plow – that disproportionately rewards upper-body strength. And there’s some interesting evidence to suggest that attitudes around gender remain abidingly different in areas with a history of plow agriculture (more restrictive, less open to women’s participation in the economy or politics – areas where, as you say, even a physically strong woman would be excluded from some tasks which should rationally be open to her). On this evidence, in areas where women remained more active in the strenuous work of field clearance (e.g. through hoeing), their societies remained more economically and politically equal, and attitudes toward gender more open.

Is it completely outrageous to extrapolate from evidence like this, based on the diverse and contingent gender relations we see on Earth, to imagine worlds or societies where many of the other gender ideals we take for granted never took hold?