Originally published on Gaming as Women by Mo on August 14, 2013

Note: The terms “women”, “girls”, “men” and “boys” in the articles of this series are assumed to be inclusive to transgender people who identify as each unless otherwise specified. While I can’t be sure my assumption is valid as none of the research I’ve read have specifically included trans-folks, I have chosen in writing the series to assume inclusivity: that trans-women and trans-men would exhibit the same gender trending as cis-women and cis-men. It’s an imperfect solution, but If I have to choose, I’d rather make mistakes while assuming sameness rather than difference.

One of the areas of sociolinguistics that I find particularly fascinating to read centers around observance and documentation of children at play. There’s a lot of research on this front as sociologists and linguists try to pinpoint the chronology of our psychological, behavioural and linguistic development. It’s fascinating to learn just how early in the process of language, identity formation and interaction that our behavioural patterns become entrenched.

These studies seem especially relevant to me when they are about observing boys and girls playing pretend. Just as our childhood language programming and practice informs our patterns of adult speech, it goes to figure that our childhood pretend play should inform our adult pretend play. As children, we began our patterns around what we think creating shared fiction looks like and how we work with each other to achieve it. As well, we began to form patterns that governed how we work with each other to resolve disagreements while playing our games.

As I understand it, as early as age two, girls and boys generally begin to exhibit a preference to same-gender play groups, and to exhibit behaviour called “benign hostility” towards children of the opposite sex (“Boys have cooties!“). From this point on, and for quite a span of developmental time, play and interaction styles become increasingly gendered. Playing with each other – especially playing pretend with each other – allows us to try on, play with and make sense of roles we might be called on to play, including gendered ones. As sociologists and sociolinguists compare and contrast different genders at play with each other, a lot about our differences are revealed. Conflict resolution styles are one of the major areas of focus.

One of such studies centered around and substantiated a behavioural theory that described two distinct forms of conflict resolution: care oriented mediation and justice oriented mediation(1). Both orientations are offered as two equally viable but convergent paths towards conflict management.

Care mediation is focused on relationships. It has primary concerns which prioritize interdependence, empathy, communion and affiliation. Working from this orientation assumes that those in conflict are connected, and working through conflict is about relationship management. This orientation generally encourages tolerance, compassion, and responsiveness to others. It emphasizes active listening and communicating. It values attention to the needs of everyone involved, including those who may not be central to the conflict. It is agreement seeking, is non-reliant on rules or laws (will also bend rules and laws for the sake of community or agreement) and greets things as particular or contextual and less as global or universal.

In short, when care oriented individuals come into conflict, they approach it this way: We talk through it with each other, we are responsible to each other to fix it together and internally, our relationship must come out in harmony, and there should be a sense of reciprocity.

Justice mediation is focused on self. It has primary concerns which value, autonomy individuality, agency, and self-assertion. Working from this orientation assumes separation, and working through conflict is about rights management. This orientation calls upon a universalized point of view rather than a particular one and centers on one individual’s rights vs. another’s; it aims to ensure those rights be maintained. This orientation calls on an external structure of connection. It values detachment, logic, rationality and control and attends to rights, respect, and status by appealing to rules, principles or laws.

In short, when justice oriented individuals come into conflict, they approach it this way: We assert our case to each other or to those present, we appeal to the external principle to fix it, our individual rights and status must come out intact, and there should be a sense of fairness.

It’s probably not surprising to discover that in terms of gendered play, girl playgroups exhibit a preference for care mediation and boy playgroups exhibit a preference for justice mediation. What makes it all more interesting is the observation that when girls engage in care mediation to resolve conflict, they generally do it through the fiction of the pretend, whereas boys more often step out of the fiction of their pretend space to engage in justice mediation while pointing to things within it(2).

So what does all this mean in terms of roleplaying and mechanics? I can’t of course say for certainty without laying the kind of groundwork in RPG study that sociolinguists do, but there are pointers there that I find very interesting. I think that ideas like this can become useful heuristic tools – we can apply them loosely as frameworks and use them to re-evaluate what we know about games. For example, traditional roleplaying systems have focused heavily on conflict mechanics. In their best known form, two or more individuals come into conflict (the GM and PC(s)) for the purposes of resolving a fictional situation.

Fiction is often suspended while procedure is discussed (who is involved in the conflict, who is taking what agency, what action, in what order, and how we should proceed). Individuals call on rights and privileges (what they are legitimately allowed to bring to the conflict based on the rules of the game and the stats on their character sheet). The participants defer their conflict to an external system of resolution that is separate from all participants and aims to ensure fairness in resolution (a dice roll). The participants return to the fiction and incorporate the judgement into play.

This sequence exhibits obvious justice orientation, and that’s not surprising given that the origins of the hobby were predominately male and strongly informed by other predominantly based male hobbies (e.g. war gaming). People generally and understandably build the systems they are best equipped to build, and which serve their needs to the best extent.

However, today, woman are (in many RPG communities) a pervasive part of the hobby. What can this mean to her relationship to the system, the game, the experience, the people she plays with and the hobby at large? And while women seem to exhibit preference for care mediation, there are male care-mediators too. What does this mean for them?

I’ll posit some potential impacts in the next up: How we fare in Care and Justice.

(1) Gilligan, Carol (1988) Two moral orientations: Gender differences and similarities, p. 223-237.
(2) Sheldon, Amy (1993) “Pickle Fights: Gendered Talk in Preschool Disputes”, Gender and Conversational Interaction, p. 98.