Dear WotC, please don't explicitly include gender stereotypes

One of the common reactions to my discussion of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was, "Oh come on, that was written so long ago. Why are we talking about it?"

The reason why I discuss it is because if you immerse yourself in D&D material from that time period long enough, you start bringing the points of view into the current project. I already pointed it out a bit with the races, but it's even clearer in the deities section in the classes.

Sedille: "Sedille" © 2012 Jenna Fowler, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Here are the deities: Arcanist, Lifegiver, Lightbringer, Protector, Reaper, Stormcaller, Trickster, and Warbringer.

Now, I happen to like the creation of archetypes instead of specific deities. This is important because D&D Next is meant to unite editions. By using archetypes, they can provide mechanics for the different deities that work in Greyhawk and in Forgotten Realms. It's weighted a bit towards martial, but that makes sense given D&D Next development until this time, it's largely been dungeon crawls.

However, I do have issues with the descriptions of three of them. Lifegiver, Protector, and Stormcaller. Suddenly, out of nowhere, these deities and the concepts and traditions they represent become gendered. The Lifegiver deity, the one involved with growth, healing, and fertility, is "usually female." The Protector, the domain of defensive strength. As a martial deity, it's usually male, but as the community building, caregiving version, it's usually female. Finally, Stormcaller, which represents storms, wars, physical might, and courage is commonly barbaric and male.

At this point, some will argue that this is traditional, we shouldn't get upset at this. Yes, in patriarchal societies, this was typical but far from universal. But, those are patriarchal societies, something that should not be assumed for all games of D&D. What happened to not setting the thermostat?

Additionally, some may point out that well, we're talking about the deities themselves, not the player characters. The problem with this is that it still implies that there are gender-based distinctions within the setting itself. That men are war-like, courageous, and barbaric. Women are the lifegivers, community builders, and caregivers. Add on top of this the sexual dimorphism, and we're right back in the 1970s. Sure, there are strong female characters in the setting but they are rare and exceptional.

My suggestion, leave out the "usually male" and "commonly female." It doesn't add anything while still setting the thermostat as it were. For those of us who don't want that in our games, it's one less thing we have to explicitly fight against. Our players won't be reinforced into believing that genders are a particular way in our game. People who want this gender bias in their games will bring it to the game on their own. They are still fully supported, especially since the settings mentioned have this bias in them.

Please, don't explicitly put gender stereotypes into your setting, Wizards of the Coast.