Why Are All Dwarves Male

A Short History of Dwarves, by Rocknose Threebeers

Chapter I - Why are all the Dwarves Male

When the first tall folks explorers and Dwarves encountered each other, the tall folks thought that all the short, muscular, bearded folk before them were all male. After all, for the other types of surface folk, facial and gruff voices were masculine traits. When the linguists finally reached the pronoun portion of translation, they assumed that the Dwarves they were working with were He and Him. Eventually, somebody asked the Dwarves.

“Where are your females?”

This question led to a great deal of confusion and complications for the Dwarven team, who really didn’t understand the question. This resulted in a wall of silence, since the team had no idea how to answer. The tall folk linguists assumed this meant that the Dwarves were hiding their females away, that the Dwarves were an extreme patriarchal society, only allowing males to leave the strongholds and interact with outsiders.

This of course is as far from the truth as a troll is beautiful.

The other races use gender and gendered terms as part of daily life. For most human languages, masculine and feminine are separated, using different words based on the gender of the person or even animal. Examples include: King/Queen, Prince/Princess, Buck/Doe. Some races go even further, including gender for inanimate objects, such as She Moon, He Sun, she chair, he table, etc. Dwarves however, are the opposite. There are no gendered terms. All people, animals, and objects are neutral. A dwarf is a dwarf. A parent is a parent. For the times when it matters, there is a dwarven adjective meaning “capable of giving birth” that is added before a noun. This is used primarily when conducting trade in animals. For example: “I will give you 5 pigs and 2 birthing pigs in exchange for 8 wagon wheels and 5 bushels of dried mushrooms.”

When Dwarves realized the extent of how other races used gender and gendered terms, it caused a significant amount of concern among the clans. Initial reports indicated that some races used gender as a means of oppression and class division. As Dwarves continued to explore the surface and interact with others, this fact was proven true over and over again, with some races and cultures being more extreme than others.

The Dwarven society itself is gender neutral, as reflected by their language. There are both dwarves (male) and birthing dwarves (female), the difference between them for societal roles is non-existent. While this seems obvious to all who are born and raised in a Dwarven society. The fact is that other races do not operate like this, and that some Dwarves could be treated differently by other races, based solely on the fact that they are capable of giving birth. And that is not something that Dwarves as individuals or as a society can accept.

A great council was called. The discussion was long and heated, with many factions calling for a complete retreat from the surface, leaving those tall folk to themselves. But eventually a decision was made, and the caverns remained open to trade.

A new decree was chiseled into the book of law at the center of Hearth Mountain. Let the tallfolk continue in their assumption that all the Dwarves they see are ‘male’. Never reveal to them how to tell which Dwarves are capable of birthing.

That was a millennia ago. Dwarven folks continue to live and work among the tallfolk, wagging their beards, waving their hammers, and gruffing their way through the surface world. Not one Dwarf has revealed the secrets, and not one Dwarf ever will. The tall folks still believe that all Dwarvish folk they encounter are ‘male’, based on the beards, the voice, and the muscles. And we continue to let them.