Can we have a debate about women without getting it locked?

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I think the thread title is already stupid enough, so that's the maximum amount of stupidity I expect from participants.

The topic of women in M&B seems to trigger all sorts of people so I would welcome it if we could refrain from calling people sexist or misogynist. This also includes posts which could be interpreted as such, so if you think your post could be interpreted as sexist or misogynist try to find different words for it.

To the mods, I understand that you hate these topics because they tend to go south. But not allowing such a discussion when everyone manages to behave themselves (fingers crossed) would be even worse, it's a universal topic that deserves its place in all parts of our global society.

Now my personal opinion is that women are kind of overrepresented as leaders on the battlefield in historical terms. Historically there probably weren't as many 'Warladies'. But we don't have a problem that we have lots of 'Warlords', which seems to be anachronistic as well because the vast majority of lords and kings would've preferred to rule from their throne rather than being in a bloodbath.
Historically there are most definitely more ruling men who fought in battle than women, but the amount of lords and kings who fight in Bannerlord is just as overrepresented as the amount of women in the ruling class in Bannerlord. So if your aim is historical correctness, you should only allow participation of lords and kings in 1/10th of the battles taking place in Bannerlord. I guess we can all agree that this would be bad for the game, which leads the argument as absurdum. Assuming that every lord would rush into the frontline is just as wrong as assuming that half the armies were led by women.

Regarding ruling women, there are countless examples in history, both as direct rulers and as the strong woman next to a king.
 
This also includes posts which could be interpreted as such, so if you think your post could be interpreted as sexist or misogynist try to find different words for it.
Make misogynistic comments but camouflage them as non misogynistic comments, got it
 
The histrionic medieval gender studies crowd can't handle a debate. They want to claim Medieval society was sexist but want to say that women were accepted as warriors. It makes no sense, you can't debate with someone who has come to their conclusions without any logic. They have been instructed by modern academics to be offended by all of things they view as sexist, history is not safe to alteration. 20 years ago there was no gripe in this area of history, this mantra sprouted up in the last 10 years. It is what it is. Anyone who looks at medieval history knows that women were almost never combatants in warfare. Women in this time period also did not believe it was sexist for them not to fight in wars; again this is also a recent drift in egalitarian views of gender. The "gender is a social construct" argument is an anti western philosophical proposition, that is where this stems from. Most of the kids posting in here don't have enough education (self awareness) to understand this is an ideological battleground.
 
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TL;DR: It doesn't matter if putting women in combat or leadership roles is ahistorical up to a point - games are entertainment and most people want to see them there, because this reflects our society.
Gamers that get offended by any hint of inclusivity have other problems which are ideological or even psychological, rather than historical.
 
Personally while I don't think it's historically accurate, it doesn't bother me as it's not a historical game it's in a made up fantasy setting. Therefore I'm happy for as much gender equality as they want to put in. By the same logic they could add female troops (I actually kinda miss the old Sword woman tree from warband) as it's not got to be historically accurate and they've had to create female versions of all of the armour so why not get more use out of them.
Plus it makes that charm perk to effect either the opposite gender or your own into less of a no brainer.
 
TL;DR: It doesn't matter if putting women in combat or leadership roles is ahistorical up to a point - games are entertainment and most people want to see them there, because this reflects our society.
Gamers that get offended by any hint of inclusivity have other problems which are ideological or even psychological, rather than historical.

Of course, if a fantasy video game offends you then you need help.

Aside from that point, what our society reflects currently is not a spotlight for historical truth. That's my contention. I would never post about this topic if the claims made were not historical assertions that Bannerlord represents the roles of women in the Middle Ages. Because it most certainly does not.
 
They want to claim Medieval society was sexist but want to say that women were accepted as warriors

Not really a statement on whether it's historical or not, but these aren't theoretically contradictory statements. A group of people can be generally oppressed and still have outliers. That's why Warband handled this well imo; it was just harder to do things if you played as a woman, some social barriers you had to overcome with many lords and kings. If Bannerlord just like prioritized men of clans to lead parties (or does it already? idk) then I think it'd be fine.
 
Historically there were less fighting women than in-game yes, for Calradia i think it's fine and i don't find them over represented, there are just a few women leading parties in-game for each faction with much more men in contrast.

I can remember one or two notable "shieldmaidens" from each faction and the rest goes down to RNG since if a lot of the male population gets killed in-battle or old-age without proper number of sons to replace them eventually there will be a few more women than during early game leading parties, the marriage feature comes in to balance that since women that get married are transferred to their husband's clan as a sidekick for them and another noble to lead parties or govern fiefs if their skills are good and there are no other option.

Where my sword sisters at?
The interesting clans mod add them back as a minor faction for runaway women that want refuge in the military life for whatever their personal reasons, quite an awesome mod for some more flavor.
 
IMHO the historical discussion is a non sense here due we are not speaking about a history simulator, what we want in the game is what we can disscus.

If you check the enciclopedia there are about 168 female nobles NPC and 22 of them are shield maidens... they aren't so much, the problem here is that you find other women leading parties due the lack of free male NPC to keep the clan parties in correct numbers.

You may notice it when after the battle if you choise to free one of this maidens the dialog is like "I free you because you are not a warrior"

IMHO there should be enough male NPC available to keep the clan parties in numbers and avoid using non shield maiden ladies to lead them but probably is not easy to implement because i think you can not have lords without parties waiting to lead one when other lord is captured or dead.

Just my guessing.
 
I think the thread title is already stupid enough, so that's the maximum amount of stupidity I expect from participants.

The topic of women in M&B seems to trigger all sorts of people so I would welcome it if we could refrain from calling people sexist or misogynist. This also includes posts which could be interpreted as such, so if you think your post could be interpreted as sexist or misogynist try to find different words for it.

To the mods, I understand that you hate these topics because they tend to go south. But not allowing such a discussion when everyone manages to behave themselves (fingers crossed) would be even worse, it's a universal topic that deserves its place in all parts of our global society.

Now my personal opinion is that women are kind of overrepresented as leaders on the battlefield in historical terms. Historically there probably weren't as many 'Warladies'. But we don't have a problem that we have lots of 'Warlords', which seems to be anachronistic as well because the vast majority of lords and kings would've preferred to rule from their throne rather than being in a bloodbath.
Historically there are most definitely more ruling men who fought in battle than women, but the amount of lords and kings who fight in Bannerlord is just as overrepresented as the amount of women in the ruling class in Bannerlord. So if your aim is historical correctness, you should only allow participation of lords and kings in 1/10th of the battles taking place in Bannerlord. I guess we can all agree that this would be bad for the game, which leads the argument as absurdum. Assuming that every lord would rush into the frontline is just as wrong as assuming that half the armies were led by women.

Regarding ruling women, there are countless examples in history, both as direct rulers and as the strong woman next to a king.
I can completely understand where you are coming from but honestly it looks like taleworlds won't be going back on this one there will always be a lot more female lords in Bannerlord maybe because of the much larger player base that they are catering to now (console) personally. I think they didn't do it in warband put so many female lords in warband so why do it now not because I'm a horrible person but it would be nice to have the base game somewhat historically accurate certainly not something I will be holding a grudge over Bannerlord though Taleworlds can do what they do
 
Firstly, I can't recall any argument led by any semblance of historical merit that claims women never held positions of power in the political doings in court. Noble Women were often very involved in military decisions in certain medieval societies and across history too.

"the amount of lords and kings who fight in Bannerlord is just as overrepresented as the amount of women in the ruling class in Bannerlord."

Kings and generals have been killed in battles all over the world for millennia, this above statement is a terrible analogy. Women were very common in the ruling classes in many societies. There are just not many examples of women leading armies in history, there are only a handful. There's almost no evidence of noble women ( as a cultural practice) leading an army and actually engaging in combat anywhere in history. The outlier argument is arguing a handful versus the sands on a beach, That's not outlier material. Is Bannerlord a representation of Medieval societies /late Byzantine Empire? No, it's not close. There's never been a woman in all of Roman history that was a consul or a centurion. I am not even sure why the debate about the participation of women in war even comes up to begin with.
 
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Whose gonna make me get my first warning point

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:lol:
 
We have a certain picture of medieval times, shaped by movies and stories, which allways show a heavily male dominated world with mostly male heroes. It just doesen't fit our picture of that, to have so many female lords in the game. Sure, it makes female players more compfortable, but lets be honest here, the vast majority of Bannerlord players are male. I probably can't speak for other males here, but if I'm going to play Bannerlord, I want to recreate this medieval world in my head, I want to dive into a world where I can be a powerful king who rides into battle, slaying enemies, dueling other lords to win the favor of a girl, crafting weapons, raiding villages etc. Say whatever you want, those things are heavily associated with manliness and having a bunch of ladies around you, doing those things just feels artificial and wrong for me. I don't want to dive into a world where I'm a politically correct part of a society where every gender is treated equally.

So if your aim is historical correctness, you should only allow participation of lords and kings in 1/10th of the battles taking place in Bannerlord. I guess we can all agree that this would be bad for the game, which leads the argument as absurdum. Assuming that every lord would rush into the frontline is just as wrong as assuming that half the armies were led by women.

With this kind of argument you could also justify wizards and dragons in Bannerlord.. The game aims to realism, as much as it is possible, while keeping Mount&Blade gameplay concept/experience alive. For keeping it alive, you "have to" give up some of the realism. For example, if only one of ten lords go into battle, the whole gameplay concept/experience wouldn't work at all, so you need to give up on some realism there, to keep the game concept gameplay concept/experience alive. Having many ladies in the game doesen't add anything to the gameplay concept/experience so it is dispensable. Every element that doesen't add to the gameplay concept/experience of Mount&Blade and diminishes the realism, should get eliminated. The game series lives of exactly that maximum realism with a very unique gameplay concept/experience (which only works when forgoing on some realism). This is what makes them so great and differs it from any others.
 
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