Bigotry in our LARP is inevitable in many forms, but sexism is one of the more pervasive things that we deal with. As a female presenting human being, I exhaustively deal with microaggressions of this sort every day. A lot of LARP runners hope to minimize this by writing into their setting that it’s egalitarian or that sexism hasn’t ever existed, but in this one person’s humble opinion, that approach isn’t the only good approach.
Now I must stress the opinion part. Every human being is going to have a different take on how microaggressions and more serious aggressions affect us.
I’ve played in plenty of LARPs that both acknowledged and featured sexism and many who insisted it wasn’t a part of the setting at all, and I found in the latter that I personally felt less heard. Let me explain why. Sexism, whether we like it or not, exists in our day to day lives. Male and male presenting transfolk (non-binary. A trans male is just a male.) have certain privileges in society that females and femme-presenting transfolk do not. I personally enjoy rising above that challenge in a fantasy setting, but think there should be avenues for females to ignore those aggressions built in. You should have a matriarchal society somewhere in your setting, for example, or a matriarchal group.
What breaks down for me when you say that your world is egalitarian is that your players, by nature of their society, are not egalitarian. They just aren’t–it’s not that they do not try, but they will, unfortunately, frequently slip up. By acknowledging sexism in your setting, you give us a voice where others would silence us. Taking this very real issue and putting it on the fantasy palate, acknowledging it, forces the players on both sides to know it is real. In a society that frequently claims that a woman’s voice is hysterical, telling a woman she is not experiencing sexism because this world doesn’t have it, when you cannot truly remove it from the play sphere, is often extremely alienating.
“We must strive for the best version of ourselves,” I can hear you say. That’s noble, and I’m not saying that my opinion is every woman’s opinion. What I can tell you is that in a world that takes my oppression and pretends it does not exist in any meaningful way just because it’s uncomfortable for you to grapple with, I feel incredibly silenced. Some others will feel freed, and so I am not saying it is wrong, but I am saying that if you think you are taking the moral high ground, you are not thinking about the issue with nuance.
Opting to remove a horrible experience from discussion and the roleplay of the world is not a moral win in any circumstance. It’s perhaps an easier stance, and a more comfortable one, but it has its own consequences and fallout–and the victims are often the ones put underfoot. This applies to many topics that are uncomfortable in our society.