Why Only Female Personas?
We're glad you asked! We get asked this question a lot, and we have answers.
The short answer would be, for the same reason there are Women's Studies departments and programs at universities, while Men's Studies either don't exist, or are covered under Gender Studies. As a general rule, the history of humanity as it's been recorded is the history of men. Studying the lives of women in the past can often be a specialized study. How much this is true varies from culture to culture and time period to time period, so while we might have a great deal of information about Anglo-Saxon women in England, for example, we may have very little to go on for women in North Africa or Southeast Asia. This is especially true of information about daily life, which tends to be less available than military or political history. In cultures that were literate, women may or may not have learned to read, and even where they did read, they may not have written much. Even where they did write, they may not have written in any detail about their lives. We often rely on archeology as much as, or more than, documentary evidence to find about the lives of women in the past, but that doesn't give us a complete picture.
Much of the nitty-gritty reality of women's lives, of pregnancy, childbirth, fertility, barrenness, menopause, menstruation, or the daily grind of child-care, housework, caring for the sick, was either not recorded at all by male writers, or what was recorded was full of misconceptions and misinformation. Primary written sources from the time of a given persona may not give us much we can trust. This is why there are scholars who specialize in the lives and histories of women, just as there are specialist studies of slavery, childhood, specific trades and skills, the working and peasant classes, and other topics that may not be covered in depth by mainstream historians, anthropologists or archeologists.
We've also been asked about the legality of this. Aren't we all equal under the law? Yes, we are. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees this. However, under Section 15, Subsection 2, it states that any activity that will result in the amelioration of disadvantaged individuals or groups is not prohibited. Women are specifically mentioned as a disadvantaged group. See here.
Another factor is the structure of the event and judging. Currently, candidates are judged in round-table discussions. When the candidates and judges all identify as female, this is not a problem. Barring restrictions on different classes mixing in certain cultures, women can generally interact with other women, and we can figure out a way for any woman from a given culture to interact with the judges and other applicants without compromising the integrity of her persona.
But there have been many cultures in the past where women could not interact with men outside their family, and even if they could be physically present with men, they might not be able to speak. This is true of most Islamic cultures in the past, some more than others. In Heian period Japan, a woman at Court could not look a man in the face or speak to him or in his presence, even her own husband, in public. There are many more examples.
If we're asking our candidates to create a historically authentic persona, it becomes very challenging to judge men and women together if their personas are from cultures with strictures like these. If we did that, we'd be forcing applicants to ignore major social factors that would have affected the real people they're portraying.
There are also issues specific to each gender. There are few or no known cultures where men can't inherit. Not all men in a given culture could inherit, certainly. But it's possible to create a completely historical, authentic, accurate male persona and spend only a small amount of time and effort on the matter of whether and how he could inherit. Whereas this is almost never the case for a female persona. Even within medieval Europe, the laws about female inheritance varied sometimes from century to century or dynasty to dynasty within the same general part of the world. Or dowries and bride prices. Not just how much, but who pays whom, and how does that work into the business side of marriage? How does a given society view childless or unmarried women? What about sex? We don't need to think very hard about whether it's a good thing, as a societal norm, for men to have sex, in or out of marriage (at least heterosexual sex, and even homosexual activity was often overlooked as long as a man fulfilled his familial and social obligations. This is not going to be a pressing concern for most male personas in the SCA, and only someone who wants to do a specialized study really needs to look into this), how free women are to have sex varies a great deal from culture to culture, and can affect persona research.
These matters might come up in a discussion with a male persona, although that will vary. But they're almost certainly going to come up in some form in discussions with female personas, if these personas have been created with the thoroughness we expect from a successful Golden Swan. Yet, even among modern people, they're not likely to be discussed in mixed groups.
The Golden Swan event creates a safe caring atmosphere around the candidates, where they can talk to other women about women's issues, about children and child-bearing, issues around marriage and husbands or the lack of a husband, what being a widow means to her status, about family relationships, why she had to marry or what her family thought of her marriage, as well as matters of general interest. In a woman's life, how her in-laws treat her could be a matter of great importance, even life and death. In some cultures, the husband's mother has almost total control over the wife, even being allowed to beat her or deprive her of food, clothing and necessities. The same can be true in polygamous marriages.
A woman is not likely to speak out openly about her abusive husband or in-laws or the death of her babies in an open setting, where she'll talk about these with other women. To maintain the integrity of what it means to represent a female persona from a pre-seventeenth century culture, male and female personas need to be judged separately. Or else it would be necessary to change basically everything about how Golden Swan is run, from the categories to the way it's judged and the way the judging is set up at the event.
These issues have been discussed at great length many times among the Golden Swan sisterhood and in the shire of Appledore. Every time, we come back to the principle that if we want Golden Swan to be open to personas from throughout the world prior to 1600 and we're asking applicants to base their personas on historical information, not on SCA norms or modern standards, then we can't legitimately make them interact with men in a setting where we expect them to speak freely and share details about their lives. The norms of modern Canada are not the norms of the past or of other cultures. Either we're being true to the history or we're not.
It's also true that the details of life were different for men and women before we had labour-saving devices and modern technology. Most of the categories for Golden Swan work for male or female personas, but a couple don't work and would need to be revised to work for male personas. We've looked at the logistics of judging both male and female personas at the same time, or running a parallel competition at the same event, but this would mean a drastic overhaul of Golden Swan as it is. The event is already very complex to run, with 4 tracks of activities running most of the day over two days. Doubling the categories by running a parallel contest would mean either removing all the other activities at the event, or making the event that much more complex.
In the past 20 years, organizers of Golden Swan have talked at length with people interested ins tarting persona challenges of their own. Following these discussions, which were often quite detailed and in-depth, one male persona contest was developed and ran for a few years, then folded for what appeared to be lack of interest. Appledore is still prepared to work with anyone who wants to develop a similar persona contest for men. We've also had extensive conversations with people who wanted to create persona competitions for both sexes, and those have proven successful. We're happy to act as a resource for people interested in persona development and in running persona contests of all types.
The Golden Swan competition has changed many, many times over its history, in response to criticism and to changes in the SCA, and to make it run better for applicants and for judges. After much consideration many times over many years, we still want to keep Golden Swan for female personas only.
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The short answer would be, for the same reason there are Women's Studies departments and programs at universities, while Men's Studies either don't exist, or are covered under Gender Studies. As a general rule, the history of humanity as it's been recorded is the history of men. Studying the lives of women in the past can often be a specialized study. How much this is true varies from culture to culture and time period to time period, so while we might have a great deal of information about Anglo-Saxon women in England, for example, we may have very little to go on for women in North Africa or Southeast Asia. This is especially true of information about daily life, which tends to be less available than military or political history. In cultures that were literate, women may or may not have learned to read, and even where they did read, they may not have written much. Even where they did write, they may not have written in any detail about their lives. We often rely on archeology as much as, or more than, documentary evidence to find about the lives of women in the past, but that doesn't give us a complete picture.
Much of the nitty-gritty reality of women's lives, of pregnancy, childbirth, fertility, barrenness, menopause, menstruation, or the daily grind of child-care, housework, caring for the sick, was either not recorded at all by male writers, or what was recorded was full of misconceptions and misinformation. Primary written sources from the time of a given persona may not give us much we can trust. This is why there are scholars who specialize in the lives and histories of women, just as there are specialist studies of slavery, childhood, specific trades and skills, the working and peasant classes, and other topics that may not be covered in depth by mainstream historians, anthropologists or archeologists.
We've also been asked about the legality of this. Aren't we all equal under the law? Yes, we are. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees this. However, under Section 15, Subsection 2, it states that any activity that will result in the amelioration of disadvantaged individuals or groups is not prohibited. Women are specifically mentioned as a disadvantaged group. See here.
Another factor is the structure of the event and judging. Currently, candidates are judged in round-table discussions. When the candidates and judges all identify as female, this is not a problem. Barring restrictions on different classes mixing in certain cultures, women can generally interact with other women, and we can figure out a way for any woman from a given culture to interact with the judges and other applicants without compromising the integrity of her persona.
But there have been many cultures in the past where women could not interact with men outside their family, and even if they could be physically present with men, they might not be able to speak. This is true of most Islamic cultures in the past, some more than others. In Heian period Japan, a woman at Court could not look a man in the face or speak to him or in his presence, even her own husband, in public. There are many more examples.
If we're asking our candidates to create a historically authentic persona, it becomes very challenging to judge men and women together if their personas are from cultures with strictures like these. If we did that, we'd be forcing applicants to ignore major social factors that would have affected the real people they're portraying.
There are also issues specific to each gender. There are few or no known cultures where men can't inherit. Not all men in a given culture could inherit, certainly. But it's possible to create a completely historical, authentic, accurate male persona and spend only a small amount of time and effort on the matter of whether and how he could inherit. Whereas this is almost never the case for a female persona. Even within medieval Europe, the laws about female inheritance varied sometimes from century to century or dynasty to dynasty within the same general part of the world. Or dowries and bride prices. Not just how much, but who pays whom, and how does that work into the business side of marriage? How does a given society view childless or unmarried women? What about sex? We don't need to think very hard about whether it's a good thing, as a societal norm, for men to have sex, in or out of marriage (at least heterosexual sex, and even homosexual activity was often overlooked as long as a man fulfilled his familial and social obligations. This is not going to be a pressing concern for most male personas in the SCA, and only someone who wants to do a specialized study really needs to look into this), how free women are to have sex varies a great deal from culture to culture, and can affect persona research.
These matters might come up in a discussion with a male persona, although that will vary. But they're almost certainly going to come up in some form in discussions with female personas, if these personas have been created with the thoroughness we expect from a successful Golden Swan. Yet, even among modern people, they're not likely to be discussed in mixed groups.
The Golden Swan event creates a safe caring atmosphere around the candidates, where they can talk to other women about women's issues, about children and child-bearing, issues around marriage and husbands or the lack of a husband, what being a widow means to her status, about family relationships, why she had to marry or what her family thought of her marriage, as well as matters of general interest. In a woman's life, how her in-laws treat her could be a matter of great importance, even life and death. In some cultures, the husband's mother has almost total control over the wife, even being allowed to beat her or deprive her of food, clothing and necessities. The same can be true in polygamous marriages.
A woman is not likely to speak out openly about her abusive husband or in-laws or the death of her babies in an open setting, where she'll talk about these with other women. To maintain the integrity of what it means to represent a female persona from a pre-seventeenth century culture, male and female personas need to be judged separately. Or else it would be necessary to change basically everything about how Golden Swan is run, from the categories to the way it's judged and the way the judging is set up at the event.
These issues have been discussed at great length many times among the Golden Swan sisterhood and in the shire of Appledore. Every time, we come back to the principle that if we want Golden Swan to be open to personas from throughout the world prior to 1600 and we're asking applicants to base their personas on historical information, not on SCA norms or modern standards, then we can't legitimately make them interact with men in a setting where we expect them to speak freely and share details about their lives. The norms of modern Canada are not the norms of the past or of other cultures. Either we're being true to the history or we're not.
It's also true that the details of life were different for men and women before we had labour-saving devices and modern technology. Most of the categories for Golden Swan work for male or female personas, but a couple don't work and would need to be revised to work for male personas. We've looked at the logistics of judging both male and female personas at the same time, or running a parallel competition at the same event, but this would mean a drastic overhaul of Golden Swan as it is. The event is already very complex to run, with 4 tracks of activities running most of the day over two days. Doubling the categories by running a parallel contest would mean either removing all the other activities at the event, or making the event that much more complex.
In the past 20 years, organizers of Golden Swan have talked at length with people interested ins tarting persona challenges of their own. Following these discussions, which were often quite detailed and in-depth, one male persona contest was developed and ran for a few years, then folded for what appeared to be lack of interest. Appledore is still prepared to work with anyone who wants to develop a similar persona contest for men. We've also had extensive conversations with people who wanted to create persona competitions for both sexes, and those have proven successful. We're happy to act as a resource for people interested in persona development and in running persona contests of all types.
The Golden Swan competition has changed many, many times over its history, in response to criticism and to changes in the SCA, and to make it run better for applicants and for judges. After much consideration many times over many years, we still want to keep Golden Swan for female personas only.
Back to FAQ
