The Dwarf Rant

"That's some fine axework, even if I do say so myself!"

"Fine?! You almost cut him to pieces!"

"Aah, well he wouldn't stand still, would he?"


I kinda love the irony of people getting upset over certain topics. So to start off, I'm warning you guys sexism is going to come up, and if you don't like reading about it, there was your trigger warning. This is also your trigger warning for if you think trigger warnings are upsetting. So, to recap, Trigger Warning: Sexism discussion, and Trigger Warnings.


People think I hate Dwarves. I think I've probably even said that in the past. No, I think what I hate about them is pretty complicated. First is the Dwarven absence paradox. I've seen a large amount of Dwarven PCs, more than a lot of other races. However, virtually all of them were prefaced with the statement that they chose the race because "Nobody ever plays a Dwarf". Thus creating a paradox where we've seen a huge amount of Dwarves(all men but one. Hello, Bira!) but everybody thinks they're rare. It's like watching a bad Christian movie, the kind that expects you to believe that white conservative Christians in the deep south are being oppressed in some way. Okay, buddy.

Ahem. Anyway. The treatment Dwarven females get from a lot of people annoys me too. "Dwarven women have beards" and "You can't tell the men from the women" crop up a lot. It's dumb and I hate it. Pathfinder makes no mention of Dwarven women having beards. I didn't check 3.X, but it probably does say they do because 3.X is fucking stupid. Every time I see badass female Dwarf artwork out there(there's a ton) I can't help but picture some jackass hurr-hurr giggling over how ugly or mannish he apparently thinks Dwarf women should be and it kind of ruins me on the whole thing.

There are two places this comes from and I'll tackle them one at a time. Tolkien's dwarven women have beards. They are also "incredibly rare" and also "disguise themselves as male" when "forced" to travel. So considering Tolkien is gospel in most places, the (incredibly dumb) idea has legs it's never gonna shed. I hate Tolkien, and no, it's not just because the reading is dry. He obviously wrote only for himself and on some level I can respect that. However, his books have regressive ideas and arbitrary plot points indicative of the time he grew up in. While some of that is understandable, it doesn't mean I have to like it. So the pedestal he's put on and his awful ideas irritate me greatly.

Was Tolkien sexist? I'm not gonna go into it here. You can find resources on why this debate happens yourself. I'll only say this: It's not a discussion that ends in "Of course not".

Being unable to tell Dwarven men from women actually crops up somewhere else too. Dwarves in Terry Pratchett's Discworld are fairly different from normal fantasy stock. The genetic line between Dwarves and Humans in Discworld is a little blurred, and "Dwarfishness" is seen as an important aspect of their culture. Both sexes have beards, and Dwarven men and women are nearly indistinguishable. The Dwarven language doesn't even have gendered pronouns in Discworld, just a single, gender neutral pronoun that translates to "He" in English.

The thing people may be missing is that Pratchett sure did love using Discworld for social commentary. I don't know HOW you'd miss something so obvious, but the possibility exists. On its face, his Dwarves are an homage to Tolkien's, but it quickly turns into some fairly clever commentary. Dwarven society in his setting is dominated by the idea that you don't openly express a feminine gender. You're not allowed to do feminine things or have feminine pursuits. You don't wear feminine clothing or call yourself a woman. They even have a vicious, hateful slur for openly feminine Dwarves: Ha'ak. It's never translated, but the meaning is clear. In several of the books, there is a subplot of a growing movement of gender expression in female Dwarves.

Funny how something that's meant as commentary on the LGBT community and Transgenderism can get taken at face value and create something negative. Maybe I'm the only one who read Discworld and I'm just mentioning Pratchett to hedge my bets and stop people from yelling BUT PRATCHETT! at me after this posts. Forgive me if I'm a little tired of counter-arguments being centered around trying to somehow prove I'm a hypocrite instead of discussion the information presented.

The females of fantasy races don't have to be conventionally pretty. That's not what this is about. Female orcs, goblins, ogres or dozens of other races aren't likely to have the same standards of beauty as us. They are, however, still feminine. As Pathfinder's flagship race, there's plenty of artwork out there of females of even the official big headed sharp tooth idiot goblins and way more from other games or artists.  Taking away or belittling their femininity by adding purely male traits is awful.

And no, this isn't the same thing as lizardlike races which may not be sexually dimorphic in the same way as a mammalian race like Dwarves. Put another gold star on your nerd card if you immediately thought to say this to me, you clowns.

There is more to gender than genitals. There are many traits associated with each gender, and pointing out what does and doesn't have a penis or vagina doesn't get you out of this discussion. The fact that Games Workshop Orks are plant spores doesn't mean they don't have gender: They all look, sound, and act male. They just don't have a biological sex. The fact that they don't have penises and reproduce through spores or some dumb shit like that is a technicality at best in terms of our discussion. I believe Tolkien used a similar loophole with Uruk'hai, didn't he? Huh, so that's two entire races of people in his books that didn't really have women at all.

Neither does it "work" to point out that it's okay that there are very few feminine Transformers because none of them have genitals. They may not, but they ARE gendered. They sound like men, they act like men, obviously think of each other as men and most(but not all) have bodies that remind one of men. If you want to see a legitimately agendered robot, I'll direct you to Overwatch's salt-powered gatling demon Bastion.

And I swear to god, if I hear a "did you just assume my gender" joke I'm gonna be real close to physical assault. It's not funny. You're not fucking funny.

The point is, saying "But they still have a vagina!" doesn't end this discussion about female dwarves. I think diminishing their femininity sucks, and "Because I think it's funny" is a really stupid reason to do it. Or to do anything, really. Shame that it's also the most common reason attached to this habit. "Because Papa Tolkien did it" is another really dumb reason to do anything too, and one day I'll get into enriching your world by carving new territory and not just relying on old, tired racial stereotypes from books or movies. Dwarves are victims of this so often it's got tropes named after them...but we're already tying a long tail on this post as it is.

This is probably a really long rant for something that, on the whole, doesn't matter that much. It just bothers me. I can't help it. I think maybe I'll go make a dwarf lady.

And she's not gonna have a fucking beard.

P.S. If you're saying you can't tell them apart because they're all wearing full plate...that's fair, but full plate is expensive, guys. A whole society of it is just plain unlikely.