Manon Delanoir's page

It creates a setting where women who want to play, have this icon, sitting there, saying that "Telling women that they should stay at home and just raise kids" is a wall of entry to those players.

And I'm one of those players, and I don't feel any such barrier from a god telling both men AND women (both Cayden AND Iomedae) that what they need is a spouse to balance them out, and that they should settle down a bit and have families. Especially when, if my character disagreed, and wanted to forgo children to devote her life to a crusade, she could just follow a deity who leads one.

If a god holds and promotes bigoted and harmful beliefs, but is well meaning and wants to help others, I consider that god to be neutral.

The problem there is that it's a gross oversimplification to say that Erastil is somehow harmful and misogynist just because he's telling people to be fruitful and multiply. It's the reduction and twisting of a sentient being's viewpoint to one stereotypical note, and then branding him as destructive for holding it. There's a word for such an act. Prejudice. Which, as we've established, is not a good trait.

Promoting procreation by loving couples is, by definition, not destructive. As I've always read it, GOOD is about respect, responsibility, and the promotion of life and vitality. A happy family, be it traditional biological or just a kindly lesbian couple adopting a bunch of orphans, is one of the single greatest symbols of good, and it would be a greater credit to write in how he's grown to accept such unusual things.

Destructive would be if he were telling his followers that women belong ONLY at home, pregnant or not. It would the advocating of women being kept as breeding stock ONLY, regardless of their other potential. Or the advocating of men to rape women for the purpose of progeny, when that would only bring forth more misery. Remember, in amongst those quotes, he praised Shelyn for inspiring love in arranged marriages, and keeping the chemistry going even between aging partners.

The thing is, tolerance is not about lack of difference, but the acceptance of them where they exist. Something that sends a far greater message of inclusion than an across the board "everything is fine, everyone is cool". And certainly better than "I don't like him telling me how to live my life, so now he never did."

From what I've seen all Erastil has proposed is that BOTH parents settle down.

That perhaps adventurers should be from necessity rather than a full business.

He's not espousing misogyny, he's espousing taking responsibility for your offspring once they happen.

This, precisely. I admit, I was a little taken aback the first time I read those thoughts of his on other gods, and how it seemed at first blush like he was telling all the female gods to go home and have babies. But once I had time to think it over, and looked at what he said of the male gods, the same focus is there too.

He complains that Cayden has a habit of leaving women in a family way and skipping town, and says what he needs is a wife to even him out. He then basically says Iomedae needs a husband to balance her out, while ALSO saying that while he doesn't normally approve of her 'strange ideas', the sheer magnitude of her good works has him convinced. He's not a hardline "women go back to the kitchen, the men are talking" sort. He's a family sort, blessing the binary that produces families.

Were the situation different, as with hermaphrodites or even a complete inversion of which sex gets what parts, he might be a bit bewildered. Yet from what he's said, as long as families are being made, and the old ways of hearth and home, field and family, flora and fauna were being carried out, he'd acclimate. And I think it's a far greater statement on acceptance and inclusion to show that happening, rather than retconning the opportunity because it made you uncomfortable.

And it most certainly doesn't make him evil.