Night elf gender roles in RP

Argent Dawn
1

Hello!

A question for those more well-read on lore and novels. How strict gender roles were in night elf society before Cataclysm and how they showed in daily life among night elves?

In my understanding, for what I have read wiki and played the game, night elven males were expected to become druids or take up civilian roles, but couldn’t advance much in militant organizations such as sentinels unless they showed great potential, while Sisterhood was all-females(?). And after Cataclysm those roles were lifted for more practical concerns in mind. Even while there would be majorities within night elven organizations, none were denied from joining just because of their gender.

However, with such long time having passed (even if it’s not that long for a long lived race as night elves), there seem to be some roleplayers who think strictly about these societal roles in RP. I think that it adds flavor to RP that characters have their own points of view and that characters sometimes have flawed bias, too. It’s still tolerable to RP that males would have to work harder to prove themselves capable of taking certain role.

While most of the community is friendly, it’s still somewhat draining to approach another character or try to have a basic conversation, or be part of a group dynamic, just to end up being ridiculed or bullied to the point where it disencourages interaction rather than creates it further. Especially if the roleplayers also sell similar degradatory views about male characters as lore-appropriate OOCly, although here I’m talking about singular cases, rather than larger groups. Were night elf males actually bullied in night elf society for their gender, or called inferior, according to any lore-source? Or were they just strictly expected to take certain roles in their society unless they proved to be exceptional?

Of course not all character connections and interactions should be friendly, but it’s always more fun to roleplay when you can influence the interaction with how you convey your character.

2

The Sentinels and the Priesthood were female only, the druids were male only with few exceptions.

These were lifted after the Third War, twenty or nineteen years ago as of Dragonflight.

Women weren’t denied from joining the ranks of the druids, presumably because the druids were less of a formal organisation.

It’s been twenty years since then, they have had twenty years to prove themselves capable in this role.

None whatsoever because it wasn’t the case.

It was a bit silly after the Third War with much of night elven territory decimated and the Sentinels all but culled fighting the Horde, the Alliance and later on the Legion. After Teldrassil burnt it’s a bit ridiculous for all but the most incredible stubborn of characters to still cling to this idea.

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3

I think that it’s worth remembering that many night elves are thousands of years old. Place them in the real world and the elders of the race would have been around before the pyramids were built. Malfurion would have seen the invention of agriculture, which happened in roughly 9000BC.

When we compare that to real people and their lifespans, and the proverb of being unable to teach an old dog new tricks, it gets into almost incomprehensible territory.

Imagine living for a certain way, with certain values and certain practices, for a longer time than Azeroth’s humans have even existed as an organised society. Even with such extreme impetus as the modern events of Warcraft 3 and WoW, I think it’s reasonable to conjecture that some elves would find it incredibly difficult to shake themselves out of these ideas.

For younger elves, though, I can imagine things being a lot different. They (on average) should be more open to new ideas and practices, less restricted by the shackles that formed over the Long Vigil.

Of course, it’s not a theme I explore in my own roleplay, because I don’t find any form of sexism to be a compelling aspect of my personal narratives. I do think it makes sense and I think there’s reasonable cause for - especially - an older elf to be very slow in the face of change.

I understand your frustration here, absolutely, and I agree that it would feel draining. If I wanted to receive derision from night elven characters, I would do something like play a warlock, demon hunter, or mage. They’re removed from any comparison to real world bigotry, making them a more immersive experience in WoW.

It’s especially true that when someone plays an irredeemably unpleasant character, without any redeeming features that makes themselves known during roleplay, there’s very little motivation to continue interacting with them. Nobody enjoys having their OC repeatedly insulted/belittled ad nauseum. Some people forget that in the haze of “it’s what my character would do”, when they’re the ones who decide what decisions said character would make.

Like Alannyse has said, there’s no evidence whatsoever of night elves being a society of misandrists. Their older lore had more entrenched gender roles, but it wasn’t designed with any sense of superiority/inferiority.

We see silliness and, in many cases, ridiculousness in our OOC lives too, in fairness. Elves aren’t immune to bouts of irrationality.

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To add on a little to what the other posters have said, there is an IC Artefact you can get from Archeology called ‘Druid and Priest Statue Set’ thats related to this subject. The description for this reads:

It was a tremendous societal change when night elf men were allowed to become priests and the women druids. For thousands of years previously, the two roles had been exclusive to the other gender. This pair of statues commemorates those momentous and tumultuous events.

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I believe that at this point the idea is that the Cenarion Circle was male-only, while druidism in itsrelf was more accessible.

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Which in turn explains the amount of female Archdruids.

Compared to the 3, dead(?), male Priests.

Wonder if males could become Moon-Priests without joining the Sisterhood, and if they would’ve been acknowledged :thinking:

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https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Elerethe_Renferal
She was already part of the Cenarion Circle when Hamuul Runetotem first approached them and became a druid in the aftermath of the Third War.

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Yeah, I was talking about before the Third War. You have certain individuals like Koda Steelclaw who seemingly have been druids for ages, though in her case you might argue that the Dreamweavers were not affiliated to the Cenarion Circle in early Legion. At any rate, I suppose exceptions are always part of a given rule.

That probably depends on your definition of a priest. I doubt they’d have any public credibility, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have grasped some teachings. After all, balance druids exist, don’t they?

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I will add that while in theory it could be true, in the lore night elves have been more versatile than fandom gives them credit for.

They have undergone noteworthy changes in their society - for example, during the WotA the military had plenty of males, so older characters may not be so opposed to the idea based on “tradition”.

Also if it was for the fanbase, we’d never explain how they re-introduced highborne into their society, etc etc.

That’s a huge chunk of the night elf community tbh.

It consists of great amounts of headcanon and insufferable superiority complexes which translate into, basically, being an insufferable hyper-conservative character.

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Her presence amongst the Cenarion Circle’s council right after the Third War would suggest her being a member of it prior to the Third War. The Dreamweavers existed before the Cenarion Circle did, but as you said. Exceptions are part of the rule, and there are more druidic exceptions than priests and Sentinels.

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Who hurt you?

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I don’t often agree with Zaphius, but he is entirely right when he says that. The night elven RP community has for many years suffered under the vast amount of headcanon employed by both people and guilds.

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At this stage in WoW’s story, gender doesn’t really matter anymore regardless. Just do your homework on your character’s chosen path.

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Like with most grey areas of lore, the answer is: Blizzard doesn’t care enough to elaborate. Make up something.

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A long list of night elves. At this point when I have an encounter with a night elf the chance that it will be a disappointing encounter is about 50%. You have better odds with vulpera, or any other race, I kid you not.

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Are you RPing a worgen of late?

And the odds of it being bad are low, unless you’re another night elf. But you may find some OOC snark if you do something they aren’t personally in favour of.

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You’re not wrong. The night elf RP community has a tendency to be insular and xenophobic, based on unsubstantiated headcanon. Lintian was created partially as a response to that.

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My last disappointing encounter was on a death knight. I was in Duskwood so you could say I was looking for a bad encounter. But I wanted to give the area a go and…

Needless to say, the druids would antagonize me the entire time. Because, duh, undead. A bit cocky and aggressive towards a potentially lethal and unstable killing machine, but y’know, I did not mind too much. They seemed more interested in insulting me than helping me (as I was new to the zone I made a small event in which we had to locate a cultist hidden among the region, so interacting with people and finding fel-touched clues was our goal, and we needed a demon hunter for that, and this brings me to…).

These druids who really hated undeads were completely fine with their demon hunter friend hanging around. For some reason, that guy was basically a sheriff for the druids, rather than y’know, part of the very same people they had exiled.

Short story, we eventually leave and a druid follows us the entire time, calling us stuff. Mind, in-game insults, such as “withereds” or “things that deserve to be killed”. I’m sure some people find this play style incredibly rewarding, because she kept doing that for quite a while. And it happens SO MANY TIMES. Eventually one of the death knights tosses her a punch, and for some reason she wants to call her friends because death knights “attacked her” by /yelling.

I defuse the situation because this really reeks of an outcome that can’t be anything but bad, and everyone else is on board with that, but if I had “to do what my character would do” I would have impaled her right there on my runeblade (she was literally surrounded by DKs, we had numerical advantage and I was right behind her after she declared the battle).

This, mind, is just a bad encounter that happened this weekend. I have plenty of tales of bad night elves like that. And of course, you also have the snowflake night elf, which is usually the polar opposite, in that he or she defies all night elf tradition, but is still as cringe.

I’ve found your character to be fresh and original compared to, well, a lot of others.

It is very much out of the ordinary but never in an obnoxious or exceedingly self-referential way, and it genuinely makes me wish to explore more about her - or with her. It’s basically an engaging, relatable and interesting character.

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Ah shame I wasn’t on my druid at the time.
Doesn’t like the undead, but pragmatism (cursed word!) dictates alliances to remove mutual dangers.

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It’s what I was going for there. Quite frankly I don’t mind hating undeads, it comes with the luggage, but a little bit of consistency/rationale is expected: you don’t follow a warband of death knights alone in the woods while antagonizing them unless you’re looking for trouble. :man_shrugging:

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