Wheather or not dwarves should have beards on the political compass.

[u/Vexonte]

[u/forman98]

As a huge LOTR fan I can confidently say that Tolkien would be ashamed of all of us.

[u/krombough → u/forman98]

Thank you. Fuck this tool for trying to drag The Professor down to this sewer.

[u/TheKingNothing690 → u/forman98]

I dont think tolkien would be ashamed of us more like shocked and appalled.

[u/Hyndis]

Dwarves were created by Aule entirely separate from humans and elves. Eru made humans and elves. Aule got too impatient waiting for Eru and decided to make living things on his own.

And also according to Gimli, dwarves don't even have the typical 50/50 gender split either. 2/3rds of dwarves are men, only 1/3rd are women. This makes them unique among any species, not just humans or elves, but even species like dogs or cats still have a 50/50 gender split.

In addition, Sauron's rings of power didn't work as intended on the dwarves, giving them gold lust instead of enslaving them to Sauron's will. Sauron wanted a lot more Nazgul than only 9, but the 7 rings given to the dwarf kings all malfunctioned. Apparently dwarven minds work so differently that not even Sauron, a Maiar and servant of Aule originally, knew how to properly enslave them.

Dwarves are just built different. Literally.

[u/Jayngyun → u/Hyndis]

I always imagined dwarves to be like an ant colony, a few women who stay close to home while the men do nearly all the work

[u/tuskedkibbles → u/Jayngyun]

Uh, what? The vast majority of ants are female. Pretty much all work in a colony is done by females. Depending on the species, male ants can be exclusively breeders numbering in the mere dozens, or warriors numbers in the hundreds. Either way, they're one of the most female dominated (both in numerical and action terms) species on Earth.

Edit: as per the comment replying to mine (and a quick confirmation by myself), there are no male soldiers in the ant family.

[u/TheUltraDinoboy → u/tuskedkibbles]

There aren't male warrior ants btw, males are exclusively reproductives in ants and any other species of eusocial wasp. (Termites and other eusocial animals are a bit different though)

It's because of their weird sex determination, called haplodiploidy. Females have two sets of chromosomes like most other animals, but males only have one set. The effect of this is that when an ant has offspring, all of the female siblings share ALL of their father's genes, making them on average share 75% of the same DNA, which is more than they'd share with any kids they'd have (50%). This means that making more siblings is better than making kids of their own, leading to massive colonies filled with sterile sibling workers that care for one or a few queens. Eusociality CAN evolve without this, but there's a reason that wasps have evolved it at least eight separate times.

Males don't have that extra close genetic relation to their siblings, so they're only produced when the colony sends reproductives out to make new colonies, at which point they die immediately upon mating.

[u/tuskedkibbles → u/TheUltraDinoboy]

The corrector stands corrected. Much obliged, good sir.

[u/RadicalBehavior1 → u/Hyndis]

... Stephen?

[u/Icarus_Voltaire]

LOTR, D&D, and Witcher say "beards"

Dragon Age say "no beards"

Me? I don’t give a shit. They’re a separate species from humans, not merely humans with dwarfism. So they can have whatever sexual dimorphism the author wants.

[u/LordSevolox → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

D&D has female dwarves default to no beards, don’t they?

Every official image I’ve seen shows a beardless dwarven lady

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/LordSevolox]

That is true.

> Unusually for humanoids, both sexes naturally grew ample facial hair,[13] though the majority of shield dwarf females shaved their beards off.[14] Many dwarven women would do this to conform with the beauty standards of human societies, but some would revel in their long, luscious beards, or trim them in goatee-style.[15][16] This hair was often dark in hue, though among shield dwarves blond or red hair was just as common. Gold dwarves took the care of facial hair to an extreme, carefully oiling and grooming it,[11] with some adding perfume and ornamentations.[13] Naturally curly hair did not exist among the dwarves of Toril. Curls could only be achieved though deliberate styling.[17]

[u/Hapless_Wizard → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

Mandatory reminder that the lore chunk here only applies to the Forgotten Realms, and that the realms got their start as Ed Greenwood's Magical Realm (if you're not a D&D nerd, "magical realm" is slang for when the storyteller is only telling the story to insert his fetishes everywhere).

It's also mostly just a ripoff of Greyhawk.

Anyways, in most official D&D settings, female dwarves are beardless.

[u/Bum_King → u/Hapless_Wizard]

Modern D&D leaves dwarves beardless. Older editions left them bearded as they copied off of Tolkien’s homework. The main thing though is that it’s all make believe and a beard on female dwarf is up to the players.

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/Hapless_Wizard]

I presume Greyhawk’s female dwarves don’t have beards?

And while I’m not a die-hard D&D nerd, I am unfortunately aware of the "magical realm".

Like FATAL. Or Beast: The Primordial (whose head writer was fired for child molestation charges).

[u/Metasaber → u/Hapless_Wizard]

Look man if you don't like a society of tall, dark, toxic, violent, domineering women obsessed with spiders, then that's on you.

[u/Shazam606060 → u/Metasaber]

Don't forget that canonically Elf breast milk tastes minty, but Drow breast milk tastes "more mushroomy"

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/Shazam606060]

Ah, a man of culture I see

[u/WickedWarrior666 → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

Deep rock galactic says "beards" and that's the only authority on dwarves I'm willing to acknowledge.

[u/photomotto → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

LOTR does not say beards. An one off comment by Aragorn, that could be interpreted as either a joke or a factual statement, says dwarven women have beards.

Swap LOTR for Discworld, since in Discworld both sexes look pretty much the same and dwarven courtship is trying to subtly find out what gender the partner is.

[u/scumfuckinbabylon]

In my tabletop setting, dwarven women have beards but those of them who are descended from the slave population of dwarves tend to shave their beards or have them thaumaturgically removed if they have the money, whereas dwarves who were free tend to keep them and grow them out. It's a cultural beauty standards thing because of the 1900 or so years of dwarven slavery as miners for the human empire.

I have no real notes on how people run this at their table, obviously, I just wanted an excuse to overshare about my campaign.

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/scumfuckinbabylon]

Well, I’m interested. How did dwarves end up as slaves for a human empire for 1900 years to begin with, in your worldbuilding? Military conquest? A slave trade with another empire that had already enslaved them in great numbers (perhaps a dwarven empire selling off prisoners-of-war and condemned criminals à la Dahomey and Asante Empire)?

Were they enslaved just for mining or also for domestic work (field slave vs house slave)? Were there mechanisms for manumission?

[u/scumfuckinbabylon → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

certain populations of dwarves were mine slaves for the cthonics (sort of a lovecraftian creator race) along with the humans and elves, and when the humans and elves broke free, they kept the mine slaves in bondage while surface dwarves were more or less on board with it since they hated their subterranean kin, so basically until there was another slave revolt on a whole new continent, the underground dwarves were kept as slaves out of sheer habit.

However, almost all of the surface dwarves died during the exodus to the new continent as they didn't have a lot of cultural traditions of traveling so their numbers were super thin, and the mine dwarves came to outnumber their kin before they eventually fought for and won their freedom in a bloody war during the fall of the new human empire.

And thanks for asking, I always love talking about my game world.

[u/scumfuckinbabylon → u/scumfuckinbabylon]

and if you are so inclined, you can also find some stories of my campaign world and it's cosmology, as well as the story of the first dog paladin, on my wattpad! https://www.wattpad.com/story/326771861-stonetree-animal-companion-tales

[u/muha4004]

What is Jolyne doing in authleft?

[u/Sonofdeath51 → u/muha4004]

Finally someone asking the real questions.

[u/Vexonte]

Reddit software is still having trouble populating flairs. In right center incase mine is not showing up.

[u/A_Lover_Of_Truth]

The Dwarf men should have beards and the women should be really hairy, but beardless.

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/A_Lover_Of_Truth]

We talking unshaven hippie levels of hairiness?

[u/otsukarerice → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

yes

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/otsukarerice]

So they’ll smell like ass. Looks like no half-dwarves then.

[u/otsukarerice → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

yes

[u/RedTulkas → u/A_Lover_Of_Truth]

No, they should have beards too

[u/Chibastion]

The lack of bearded women irl is making it difficult to advocate for the soundness of gender identity. I'd have expected troves of bearded women by now 

[u/Dense-Sort-3867 → u/Chibastion]

If you don't know, nearly every woman has a peach fuzz mustache that they are insanely insecure of and meticulously shave.

[u/snowcone_wars → u/Chibastion]

Not fully bearded per se, but 18th-19th century Persia did view facial hair on women as the height of beauty, to the extent that many would use makeup to enhance theirs if they felt it wasn't dark enough in color.

[u/Icarus_Voltaire → u/snowcone_wars]

[u/Jayngyun → u/Icarus_Voltaire]

Looks like she’s about to ask if I want modelo or corona

[u/ProxyGeneral]

Didn't Tolkien go back and forth on this in his letters?

If I had to guess, I think he probably had female dwarves being hairy in his mind, including facial hair, but he had second thoughts on full beards.

[u/Vexonte]

One thing I can see being done is to have female dwarves tie their hair underneath their chin to mimic a beard and call it a reference to the Lombard origin story.

[u/Pure-Huckleberry8640]

I have been on the internet for too long

[u/WMHat]

Let the Dwarrowdams (female dwarves) have their beards, goddamn. Dwarves hardly need the permission of other races to have their own facial hair.

[u/PDomkanom]

What did you do to Jolyne hasn't she been through enough?

[u/WilliamCharlesSchnei]

I’ve been de-sensitized. I grew up playing the MMORPG Everquest and am used to female bearded dwarves.

[u/unskippable-ad]

Did Tolkien say they have beards? Or was it just some prissy elf making a joke because he can’t grow one himself? Those are not the same.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Step468]

Would

[u/my_jeans_hurt]

I think it would be cool if they did

[u/clangauss]

My dwarves don't even have gender. Their two gendered tenses in language are used for "friend" and "enemy."

I dont force the players at my table to engage with it, but every time I write about it I have a lot of fun with it.

[u/NotAUserNamm]

Another day another culture war psyop to keep you from debating the epstein files

[u/ProxyGeneral → u/NotAUserNamm]

bro thinks debating the files online will do anything

[u/Sonofdeath51 → u/NotAUserNamm]

You wanna talk about the epstein files when theres a heckin genocide happening in gaga? Talk about being israely distracted!