Yes! Thank you @loke 
You did a much better job articulating what I was trying to get across.
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You know, if so, it was only possible by standing on the shoulders of the giants who posted before me.
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@Colleen , I would be willing to carry out the experiment!
But first I would need to know in which previous editions of Ars magica female gender was a game Flaw. I cannot remember such a Flaw in 2nd, 3rd or 4th edition, despite playing multiple female characters myself - though it was a long time ago. In fact, I quickly skimmed the core books of those editions, and failed to find anything ... can you help me?
You mentioned in your original post that it "made a big difference" to you, so it should be much easier for you to at least roughly identify when the change occurred.
Part of what I like about generalizing is that it makes the rules more independent from the setting while still having both together. If I want to run a fictional world in Ars Magica it makes my job easier if I can simply decide that "In this world these things are outside the norm and likely to be persecuted" and the flaw is transformed without having to rewrite it. The same goes for different locations and societies within historical Europe which had different cultural norms. Being Muslim in England is very different from being Muslim in Spain in 1220.
Woops. Hedge Magic, and Aaron Link is a trans man. That will be why I couldn't find it — I had remembered it the other way around. In any case, the main point stands.
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The consensus seems to be moving towards renaming and rewriting the Flaw rather than removing it.
I'll take a stab at it.
Gender Nonconforming
Personality, Major or Minor
You do not conform to the expected behaviour of a person of the gender that your society would naturally assign to you. This may mean that you dress as a member of the other gender, or that you structure your life in a way appropriate to the other gender, or that you are sexually attracted to members of the same gender. It does not necessarily mean that you disagree with society about your gender, although it may. As a Minor Flaw, it does not normally cause you problems, whether because your society accepts your behaviour or because you are very good at pretending to be the other gender. As a Major Flaw, it does cause you problems.
The above is within the scope of errata. The below may not be, but I will see what can be done. This is a suggestion for some added text in the V&F chapter.
Choosing Flaws
Your choice of Flaws, particularly Story and Personality Flaws, is a way of indicating the stories that you want to tell about your character. Particular concepts may suggest particular Flaws, or vice versa, but there is almost always flexibility.
For example, suppose that you came across the following medieval story, and were inspired by it.
A monk at a certain monastery was accused by a serving woman of getting her pregnant. He refused to defend himself by accusing her of lying, and the abbot assigned strict penances, which he performed without complaining for several years, until he died. After his death, the brothers laying him out discovered that the monk was a woman. Everyone marvelled at her humility and obedience.
Which Flaws would you take?
The obvious choices are Dark Secret (Actually a Woman) and Gender Nonconforming, both as Major Flaws. The troupe might say that they overlap too much and require you to reduce Gender Nonconforming to Minor. However, these are not the only choices.
You might take Monastic Vows as your Major Story Flaw, Pious as the Major Personality Flaw, and Gender Nonconforming as a Minor Personality Flaw (because the character is, and might as well get a point for it). In this case, the stories focus on the character's commitment to the monastic vocation, rather than the gender nonconformity.
You might also take Curse of Venus as the Major Story Flaw, Pious as the Major Personality Flaw, and, again, Gender Nonconforming as a Minor Personality Flaw. In this case, the character became a monk to get away from all the importunate men. The Flaw is still there, though, so the problems have not gone away. A serving woman gets a crush on the monk, and claims to have been made pregnant.
Another option is to take Enemies as the Major Story Flaw, and Optimistic as the Major Personality Flaw. She became a monk to get away from a match chosen by her father, whom she does not like at all. The abbot, and select other monks, are perfectly aware that she is a woman, and approve of her decision to run away. They aren't quite as sure as she is that everything will work out. In this case, you might not take Gender Nonconforming at all, because the character just thinks she is in disguise. The stories in this case are likely to tend towards farce.
There are many other options, and the same is true in general. These Flaws should serve as inspiration, but you should not feel forced, by a character concept, to take any particular Flaw — not even the Flaw that originally inspired the concept.
Incidentally, that is a real medieval story, but I can't remember the source. If anyone can, please let me know.
Comments?
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In defense of broad Flaw definitions, I want to point out that at least in my experience the mere existence of an authoritative list of Virtues and Flaws undermines the exemplary function especially since Flaws like Affinity with (Ability) explicitly call out substitutions (Dark Secret does this implicitly). The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is no guidance on how one creates a Flaw from scratch; leaving that to the troupe or "in time, you'll learn" provides little comfort to the overwhelmed newbie with a cool idea. (Maybe a survey of how often ability specializations come from the suggested few rather than not could shed a light on how big the suggestive effect is). Either way, there hardly is any harm done, to combine flaws that follow a pattern into a single Flaw which itself includes a list of possible variations. (I personally think it improves clarity and readability as well).
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I support the modification to Gender Nonconforming. I think its a good Flaw, with a lot of potential, and which can be applied to games in pretty much any area of the setting. So yeah I like that.
I also really like Choosing Flaws as a description. Its a perfect way to state that flaws are chosen for the story potential and so there are varying options on how they can be taken. So I hope this could be included because I think its important.
I expect you're thinking of Saint Marina.
Oh, and I support both of the passages you suggested.
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Thank you David! I appreciate the time you've taken on this, and all the diverse views expressed here in the discussion.
There seem to be forum members with deep historical knowledge of queer issues during the time period, and many LGBTQI ArsMagica players, all of whose input is far more valuable than mine at this point in the conversation : )
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Yes, that's it. Thank you!
This, in and of itself, would really open things up to a lot of people. A lot. It puts the power in the hands pf the participants. Do you as a player want to explore the struggles of being Jewish in the Middle ages? Great! Do you want to express your Jewish identity, but would rather play it off like Mel Brooks or Harrison Ford? Fantastic!
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Just did some online research and found these possible sources for the story:
12th Century monk Joseph of Schonau
Saint Eugenia of Rome, who was falsely accused by Melania
Also a few pieces of writing on transgender saints in the middle ages. (here, here) Grouping the references here in case someone wanted to follow up on gender and transgender issues in Ars Magica.
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Oh, I like that talk title. "Assigned Female At Death".
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Totally! It would make a neat title for one of your shadowboxes with story seeds
It is the story of Saint Marina - told also after 1263 by Jacobus de Voragine in his Legenda Aurea. Marina is a Saint for the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox and the Coptic Church - so her legend should be widely known around Mythic Europe. Also, Marina as a woman's name is appearing in many places.
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And that was probably my source.
I love this forum.
There is also a famous 'cross-dressing' Christ in Lucca: the Volto Santo.
As traders brought his image back to their northern cities, where his robe was considered obviously female, in the 14th century the legend of Saint Wilgefortis, also Saint Kümmernis, appeared.
While it may or may not be true, the legend of pope Joan does appear on the 13th century.
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Hmm, I think it should definitely be renamed and probably rewritten. One of my players was a transwoman and she had her character take the Transvestite flaw.
The flaw was free points for something she already planned on doing, and also highlighted the kind of story she wanted to tell. The story we got to tell was a very beautiful story about someone realizing who they are and it benefited from the fact that hermetic wizards are allowed to transgress more social mores than most people.
However, the name of the flaw is definitely archaic- and not in the sense of flowing from medieval historiography. Yet, I feel like including an explicit story hook about this is really important.
I admire that there was an attempt to include the existence of queer people, because so many fantasy stories and games just don't. It can be really discouraging and alienating to look at a story, or an entire world, and know that you were never intended to exist in it.
I support rewording or renaming the flaw, but I think some consideration should be kept for preserving the inherent queer potential it has. A story flaw about being gender non-conforming is a pretty good step. (Especially since this can't be resolved by more holistically mentioning queer people in the rest of the text, since it's an errata and not a new edition.)
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