We are all free to make up any society we want for mythological dwarves in a fantasy game, and in most D&D settings nowadays I expect elves and dwarves are multicultural vegans free of any sexism or gender assumptions. But it did get me to thinking about properly alien nonhumans, like you find in Traveller or Tekumel. Let’s take Vegans -- beings from a planet orbiting the star Vega, that is. Just for simplicity, assume they have two sexes, which we’ll call priza and vysma. Vegan society is such that prizas are never seen in public and have no obvious roles in government. What would we do about it?
In a Star Trek game, obviously nothing. Dammit, Jim, it’s the prime directive. But what about other science fiction RPGs? Would player-characters take a stand? “We must liberate the prizas!” And would any player want to take a priza character, knowing that they would spend the whole game isolated from everyone else? Closer to home, if you were creating a character to play in a campaign set in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in classical Athens or among the Lev Tahor sect, you wouldn't get to do much if you chose to be a woman. Though no expert on either D&D or Lord of the Rings, I've got an inkling that dwarves in those settings sequester their womenfolk in a similar way, which would explain why Gygax didn't think they'd make viable player-characters.
It leads onto the whole question of whether the settings of roleplaying games should reflect 21st century mores or those of the period (if historical) or invented world (if fantasy). Personally, while I would like to live in a world with no hang-ups about ethnicity, sexuality, sex or gender, I don't expect novels, movies and TV to indulge my utopian dreams -- other than SF, where I enjoy a utopian vision but will settle for Blade Runner grittiness just as happily. On the whole I want fiction to be "warts and all". A WW2 movie in which the Nazis weren't a genocidal totalitarian movement wouldn't make any sense. What would Blade Runner be if humans were nice to replicants? The whole point of art is to confront the darker aspects of humanity, not pretend they don't exist.
And similarly in games. If there is slavery or sexism then player-characters could fight to overcome it -- that could be the point of the campaign, although history shows that they probably wouldn't even think to question it. The interesting thing is if and how they choose to react. I don't know if that moves us any nearer to resolving the squabble over female dwarves (are they still supposed to have beards?) but at least it suggests there might be some useful metaphors to be explored.
