Are dwarves gay?

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Alright, look at Lord of the Rings. Nary a female dwarf in sight. And yet, Gimli is son of Gloin, so... er... are all the female dwarves stuffed out of sight under a mountain somewhere? Or is there a little too much Greek influence in Dwarven culture?

 

who do you think work in the mines?

 

Male dwarves?

 

There is very little difference between Male and Female dwarves. The both have beards, and only they can tell the difference.

 

Kinda of like dogs ... you have to be very brave to look.

 

no the female dwarves. They have to support their males adventure funds

 

Anyone read Terry Pratchett? He carries Tolkien's suggestions about female dwarves having beards to its logical (albeit somewhat extreme) solution - "the courtship of dwarves is therefore an incredibly tactful affair and most of it is spent in finding out the sex of the other dwarf!!".

 

Nooooo how dare you say that!

 

Of course dwarves are not gay! Dwarves live far away from other people, and they don't like travelling. If they travel, it would be for causes such as dragons slaying or discovering great mines. Maybe the dwarven women are not interested in such things?

 

Vudolak, I've read him too

The female dwarfs (To use Pratchett's spelling) stay home, making Dwarwen (Dwarf? Can't remember how it goes...) bread to club the dragons to death with...

Ara
(Would fit Unseen Universe perfectly... well, ecxcept for the gender and all...)

{Edit: Had a syntax error}

[This message has been edited by Arabwel (edited January 31, 2002).]

 

According to Tolkien, female dwarves form about 1/3 of the population. However, most (male) dwarves do not marry, as they are much more interested in doing their work. Female dwarves are considered a rare, valuable resource, and are so kept away from outsiders. The only female dwarf mentioned in Tolkien is Dís, sister of Thorin, mother of Fílí and Kílí. I don't think Tolkien ever mentioned male and female dwarves both having beards, but on the other hand he didn't say that they don't, either.

 

Female Dwarves are rare... unlike with humans and elves, ot 50 percent of the dwarves are males and the rest females, but only a small part is female. The females don't travel but live in parts where almost only dwarves come. And when someone would encounbter a female dwarve, he might not recognize her as a female.... due to the beard.

 

Well, there's a female dwarf in Elaine Cunningham's "Elfsong" and she doesn't have a beard...but that may just be artistic license.

 

Maybe they naturally have hair-grow on their face... Maybe some choose to shave it... and some of them don't... Then we are both right

 

Female dwarves don't have beards. Female gnomes might have it .

 

Dwarves are neither male nor female, and here's how they procreate:
When a dwarf comes into puberty, a part of his brain starts producing a protein that tells the inner reaches of his nose to start producing spores. When a batch of theese is finished, they break free and travel furter down into the nose. There it causes irritation, so the dwarf sneezes it out, encapsulated in snot, before he wipes his nose with his beard. A lot of the spores are lost in the sneeze, but some stick to the lower reaches of the nose, and are transferred over to the beard. Here the snot is weathered away and the spores starts to grow into full dwarves, eventually emerging from their creator's beard.

 

This reminds me of something I read about LOTR in a dutch magazine. It was not about dwarves being gay, but the elves. Lothlorien was described as the gay-capital of middle earth, because you couldn't tell if most of the elves were male or female. So I watched this closely in the movie, but I thought it was OK. Except for the moment that a group of elves pointed their bows at the party from close range, I thought to myself, are those male or female elves?

 

There's a bristly bearded feirce warrior of a female dwarf in the Forgotten Realms Moonshae Trilogy. I think her name's Ellyn or something. Now, that's a role-model for little girl dwarves to look up to!

 

For all we know, dwarves could be hermaphroditic. Just take the D&D based game of Baldur's Gate. Male and female dwarves are 100% identical. And gnomes are also. Why do dwarves and gnomes look so similar and yet act so differently. Gnomes are descendents of dwarves, but use magic. How come one race of non-magic users develop into one that does? And why are dwarves so stoic but gnomes so playful if they are cousins? Wait, I'm getting off topic.

 

In the 3ed D&D Phb, neither dwarven nor gnomish females have beards.