Guild Wars 2

I was reading the Charr lore and this glaring, kitten logic is killing me.

Just because she was like “Lol no” to worshipping flaming crabs, this meant it was okay for the Flame Legion to tell EVERY SINGLE CHARR WOMAN to get back in the kitchen? What the hell kind of logic is that? Why wouldn’t you want more soldiers for your army? What were they thinking? I know the Flame Legion are made up of a bunch of idiots but…seriously…? Nobody’s scratching their heads at this?

Okay, they sacrificed her. Wasn’t that good enough? I guess I can understand they would strip people of their ‘rights’ as soldiers because that’s how their honour system works, but… but the entire other gender because of ONE charr lady? Really?

I just don’t really understand since that’s 50% of your population, 50% less soldiers for war and 50% less brainpower. Why’d they want to hit themselves over the head like that? That’s REALLY extreme for a race that allows/encourages both genders to actively participate in war.

If a male charr was like “lol no” to crab-worshipping, does that mean that all warbands would be made exclusively of women because they’d go strip charr of their rights as soldiers and make them stay in the kitchen?

Hum… I just find it really, really, REALLY unbelievable considering their standpoint on war…

During the Ash Legion storyline, we’re told more about it – if you talk to NPCs a bit.

Bathea did more than just say no – she ran an underground (female primarily or solely, I think) movement against the Shaman caste. I’m guessing this movement is the originator of the secret training Kalla led.

That’s why they banned females – because of the movement that Bathea led, not just her own personal disagreement.

(and it kinda seems to me the Flame Legion were always a bit anti-female tbh, though this is just my perception)

Well to me that still doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying “There were some left-handed bad guys, so we are going to strip left-handed people of their rights regardless of their stance on the subject and regardless of their able-bodiedness.”

They willingly chose to forego perfectly good soldiers because of this dumb decision.

What am I missing here??? I don’t get it. I have never played a Charr so I might be missing something?

Well, if they were already a very male-oriented society, an uprising of females against them could have been enough for them to enforce this law on all Charr. As to why they put women to the kitchens, idk, they are just evil charr.

cough cough this is how stereotypes in the real world turn violent cough cough
The way you’re describing the flame legion treating females is pretty much how antagonism in real life is. I don’t like this person, so I don’t like everyone likethem

Kiriwar, you never had these same questions when looking at our own history concerning the women?

How come mankind made those decisions on women XX years ago? Was it a rational decision back then? Maybe, for them, in their own time. Would it be a rational decision if it would happen right now? Probably not anymore, people would oppose to such ideas, like you are doing right now.

Societies, be it ours or that of the Charr, we mostly do some things we later think about it and say “hmm, that wasn’t good”, but we learn from those past ‘mistakes’. (people back then thought they were doing the right thing). Think same thing happened with the Charr.
“Oh no, those women are always interfering with our superior plans, they are so useless, ban them all. This way our military plans and tactics will stay high in quality, yadda yadda blaa blaa.”
They could be thinking they were doing the right thing to do, but as we all know (many many years later), they were mistaken. But you couldn’t really blame them back then, imo.

Kiriwar.7382:

They willingly chose to forego perfectly good soldiers because of this dumb decision.

Same can be said regarding slavery and almost every single negative stereotyping and forms of hate crimes (racism, sexism, etc.).

You lessen society over a dumb as hell decision.

No one ever said these things make sense – because they don’t.

I agree completely and I’ve made threads about this very problem on other websites. My argument didn’t get very much attention, but I still wonder at this. You said it perfectly, it makes no sense.

Women in real life were oppressed over a long period of time. In the earliest societies, men and women were equal. However, people also did not know that sex resulted in babies—they just thought women became pregnant due to the will of the gods or some other reasons. This resulted in a society where women and men could have sex with whoever they chose, without any social taboo. However, when people found out that sex makes babies, men became jealous of the women they were mated to. The men wanted the children in the house to be their offspring. So, they forced the women to be sexually exclusive (this is why, if women have sex today, they are called slu*). They also took the women’s power by creating social taboos and separating women from their families (The female bride goes to live in the man’s house). This way, the men forced women to be dependant on them, for easy control.

This occured slowly over many generations. You don’t go from a sex-positive society where women hold equal power, to an abusive male-dominated society overnight. And charr society before flame legion took power was just that—equal.

What made male oppression of women in real life possible was probably the fact that men are, on average, stronger and faster. However, in charr society, this wasn’t the case—and that’s another reason why it’s weird that Flame was able to enslave women. While Charr women are weaker then Charr men, they are faster and more coordinated. This puts them on a pretty equal playing field, physically. So the Charr men wouldn’t have been able to physically force their will. Even in real life society, where men could force their will through physical power, it took hundreds of years. So yeah, weird.

I laughed out loud at “worshipping flaming crabs”. I really did.

Anyway, on-topic… it’s a really counter-productive, bigoted, illogical, sexist stance for the Flame Legion to take. It’s the stance they always had, and it was the attitude in the Flame-dominated Charr society of the past.

It’s also the same attitude that dominated most human societies in the real world, throughout most of history, and dominates many of them still.

It’s pretty plausible and realistic, really.

Weindrasi.3805:

people also did not know that sex resulted in babies—they just thought women became pregnant due to the will of the gods or some other reasons.

What? No! You can say many things what people did and didn’t know in ancient times, but this one is most certainly not true. Not only could people see the direct connection by their own species, but also with their cattle and if you want to go even further back, by animals they hunted.
And even if there was a point in human history were they didn’t know (though I can hardly imagine such), it has nothing to do with the equality of men and women. Women being oppressed and forced to be the “housekeeper” stems from the fact that they are giving birth to children and can nurse them. Even if you are stupid enough to think pregnancy is magic, you still know that only women can bear children. Staying with the children is by the human biology, the mothers job.
The important part is biology, before people start claiming I’m a chauvinist. I’m not, I’m all for womens right and see no difference between what a man and a woman can do, besides biological things, like bearing a child.
I’m just saying that most (not all!) human societies just expanded on this biological aspect. If the woman has to stay with the child to nurse it, she can stay at home all year long. So this were the unequality comes from, not from not knowing the relation between sex and childbirth.

I think that by banning females from army, the Flame Legion wanted to show their power over other Legions and discourage others to sniff around their stuff, because Bathea Havocbringer did it. Plus, they accused females of using their sexuality to tempt males from true path of their gods. So it was not a matter of biological/social inequality of males and females, but mostly religious doctrine, which was the source of Flame Legion shamans power.

BuddhaKeks beat me to it, but yes, the ‘earliest people’ (by which you almost certainly mean “the hunter/gatherer peoples that nineteenth century anthropologists assumed were the same as all people in the Stone Age”) are across the board well aware that sex leads to pregnancy. The idea that they don’t make the connection is a myth, based on the fact that it’s not always what they say happens – but scholars who looked into it further found they understood conception well enough.

As for the Flame Legion, I would suspect that they had other reasons for not wanting to involve women – the story of Bathea Havocbringer sounds like a justification after the fact, a story used to justify what they were doing anyway. It’s possible that the society the shamans were constructing required labour at home to support it, and they chose women as the group to do it. As BuddhaKeks says (more or less), females give birth and nurse young and so already have to stay near very young children, it is a small step to have them continue that role by staying with children until they are ready for adulthood. The Flame Legion may well have just exaggerated and formalised an existing division between the sexes.

Or maybe a couple of the senior Flame Legion shamans got rejected by popular girls in their fahrar days and never got over it. Who knows? Weirder things have caused turning points in our own histories.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Weindrasi.3805:

people also did not know that sex resulted in babies—they just thought women became pregnant due to the will of the gods or some other reasons.

What? No! You can say many things what people did and didn’t know in ancient times, but this one is most certainly not true. Not only could people see the direct connection by their own species, but also with their cattle and if you want to go even further back, by animals they hunted.
And even if there was a point in human history were they didn’t know (though I can hardly imagine such), it has nothing to do with the equality of men and women.

Well, I do know of one (now died out) religious group – though I cannot recall the name, I know it originates from a sect of Christianity – which apparently did not know sex led to pregnancies given that they preached sex of any kind automatically led you into hell. Kinda funny. One can only guess as to why they died out.

But his is all well off topic.

Thanks Konig, This really made me laugh.

But more on topic if it is right or wrong, or counterproductive. Keep in mind that even though I’m a big fan of lore and roleplaying, in the end this is a fantasy world. No real cub’s are produced through reproduction as we know it. We make player characters and developpers make npc’s and their story’s and characters. This fanatasy is mostly created for our amusements, but like many great storytellers, Arenanet might have a message behind this part of the story. It is in the way the obvious bad guys (Flame legion) are against feminism. And think that female’s have a different role in life then males. So maybe all that is behind this story is the warning to male players to treat woman with respect and as equals

J.K. Rowling wrote it down perfectly: ‘Of course it’s all in your head, Harry, but why should that mean it isn’t real?’

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Weindrasi.3805:

people also did not know that sex resulted in babies—they just thought women became pregnant due to the will of the gods or some other reasons.

What? No! You can say many things what people did and didn’t know in ancient times, but this one is most certainly not true. Not only could people see the direct connection by their own species, but also with their cattle and if you want to go even further back, by animals they hunted.

I know it sounds dumb, but don’t dismiss something and argue against it just because it doesn’t sound viable at first sight. I’ve studied human sexuality and anthroplogy some—I’m by no means an expert, but the lack of knowledge early humans had is true. Do some research for yourself—I suggest ‘Sex in History’ by Reay Tannahill.
In early societies, yes, women did stay home with children. But unlike today, raising children was a thing looked at with respect and honor. Motherhood was greatly respected, and as a result, women were greatly respected too. They held leadership positions and had equal say in society. Now, there were other factors besides discovering the connection between sexuality and pregnancy which led to the loss of women’s status—but the discovery certainly played a role.

We shouldn’t digress into off-topic stuff here, but I think you are giving the human species less credit than it deserves. Of course intelligence is not a stable value, so some tribes might have not known, but sooner or later some one will point out the connection. You know we are kitten sapiens for a reason. (seriously the latin word for human get’s replaced with kitten?)
And as I said, even if that is true (which I still don’t believe and, even though I’m not an expert on that area, I have done quite some research in that field myself), it’s still not the reason of inequality between the sexes.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

We shouldn’t digress into off-topic stuff here, but I think you are giving the human species less credit than it deserves. Of course intelligence is not a stable value, so some tribes might have not known, but sooner or later some one will point out the connection. You know we are kitten sapiens for a reason. (seriously the latin word for human get’s replaced with kitten?)
And as I said, even if that is true (which I still don’t believe and, even though I’m not an expert on that area, I have done quite some research in that field myself), it’s still not the reason of inequality between the sexes.

It’s not the only reason for inequality, true. At any rate, we’ll agree to disagree.

In terms of Balthea, perhaps we’ll get more details about her in further expansions. Balthea was Blood Legion, and so was Kalla Scorchrazor. The Blood Legion homelands are still closed to players, but I’ll bet Blood takes great pride in the fact that two of the great heroines from charr history were from their Legion. So perhaps Blood Legion will be able to answer some of our questions.

A couple theories could be as follows.
1. Flame Legion was already sexist. It seems like the Shaman Caste must have been composed only of males. No female shaman would have accepted the enslavement of her gender and loss of her power. So perhaps Flame females were already restricted before Flame came into power.
2. Modern charr society has no gender roles, but maybe ancient charr society did. They could have functioned like a pride of lions—where males and females are equal in warfare, but mostly males hold leadership positions. If this was the case, females would be the primary hunters and food-providers—and despite not being leaders, their important role would have made them equal without question. However, once the charr advanced from hunting to herding, that could mean females would stay home as herders more and more. If it became tradition for females to stay at home to tend the herds and raise the cubs, that could be the beginning of a society with sexist ideas of what a woman should/shouldn’t do. Especially if status comes from being a warrior, and less females are joining the warbands because of responsiblity at home.

Ahem.

As the article states, the only people who did not know sex was connected to pregnancy were those Trobianders about which the article also states: “You can’t exactly blame the Trobianders for coming up with such a supernatural explanation when they were practically living on contraceptive yams (yes, apparently that’s a thing). It turns out that if you’re unintentionally on birth control most of your life, it’s actually pretty hard to make the sex-pregnancy connection, and ghosts start to make a whole lot more sense.”

So those were special circumstances, all other articles don’t state the respective people didn’t know about the connection. Yes they had some weird theories, but they still all saw the connection. Which prooves my point to be honest.

Why would Jormag exclude half the the Norn population by not allowing women to worship him – all because of the action of one woman, Jora…?

Because he is not an equal oppurtunity badguy.

No I guess it’s not Jormag’s will, he would just corrupt anyone he deems worthy, since he also corrupts female Kodan. It’s just the Sons, they dislike women for what Jora did, so they don’t allow them in their ranks. The have no controle over what Jormag does. The reasons why we don’t see female Norn Icebrood with the Sons, is probably that Jormag just barely cares enough about them (as they are worthy reinforcement for his troops) to not let send female Norn along with them. I mean, why would an elder dragon care about his minions gender? They possibly don’t even have genders themself. He does however care about the moral of his reinforcements, since he isn’t directly mind controlling them. Showing he uses females could potentially drive them away from him.

Oglaf.1074:

Why would Jormag exclude half the the Norn population by not allowing women to worship him – all because of the action of one woman, Jora…?

Except that it’s not Jormag.

Its the Sons of Svanir – fanatical die-hards for power and Jormag.

We don’t know Jormag’s stance on female norn, or what he does to female norn.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Oglaf.1074:

Why would Jormag exclude half the the Norn population by not allowing women to worship him – all because of the action of one woman, Jora…?

Except that it’s not Jormag.

Its the Sons of Svanir – fanatical die-hards for power and Jormag.

We don’t know Jormag’s stance on female norn, or what he does to female norn.

It was a rhetorical question, questioning the Sons of Svanirs’ stance on the matter, just like the Flame Legion’s stance on women.