I have some new founded players and they just finished their first campaign and want to try a new one but with new characters.  One of the females of the group(the group is all female but for myself, im a cis male) wants to make a "Chad like" paladin human/high elf male who is lawful good but is extremely misogynist towards women ( his non-intently a misogynist the female clarifies) . So I tried to see how someone could be misogynist but still lawful good from her point of view and she said someone who is lawful good can be misogynist because what if that's just the society and family they grew up in, and thats just how the viewed women, as lesser beings. [REDACTED], I then asked her if she understood how unlawful that is, that no matter if you are religious or not and then the rest of the table disagreed with Me, and agreed with her and said that makes total sense, because that's all he knows, so its not his fault. Therefore they said in their mind, they think a lawful good person can be misogynist and I just wanted to ask this here to see how yall view that question? Can someone be lawful good, but be misogynist? I don't think they can because obviously to be misogynist,  you must hate, and to hate is evil.  To see women or any soul as lesser beings is unlawful, so it goes against the whole alignment 

There won't be one answer that works for every table and every campaign.

The DM at your table is a good starting point for this conversation, but the other players should also be included. Your group's response to the question, "Is this fun for all of us?" will provide the best answer.

Debating real world morality and applying it to the game will likely result in frustration and focus on your differences as players of a game vs. your shared views. Danger lies down that path.

Also, as an example of the hair-splitting that could ensue...

To see women or any soul as lesser beings is unlawful

It was, in my country (USA), once the law of the land to deny women the right to vote. In D&D terms, it was Lawful to do this as you were following the laws of the land. Good or Evil absolutely plays in next but... hopefully you see the point.

I'd focus more on the "Is this fun for all of us?" conversation.

This is very much "the alignment system has a bunch of ill-defined principles, and, no matter how you define them, there are characters who don't fit".

First and foremost, does it matter if the character is lawful good or not? The mechanical consequences of alignment are pretty vestigial in 5e.

Secondly, it's possible for a character to hold to a set of principles, and still have flaws that mean they don't always do what they believe. There can be a lot of role-playing meat in that.

Thirdly, what does "Lawful" mean (in the setting, to the player, to the character)? If it means "Prioritizes society over the individual" or "Follows hierarchy" or "Has a code of values", all of those are compatible with this character concept.

Similarly, what does "good" mean? "Seeks to aid those in need of aid" is compatible here, as is "fight evil" (depending on your definition of evil).

Finally, it seems like this character may be overly-caricatured, which may or may not fit the vibe of your group.

That's was the law of the land yes, but in the forgotten realms and the world we play in, that is not the case so much, which I explained to her. After this, they compromised and she stated that he(the paladin) wouldn't be doing it on purpose but that he could unintentionally be misogynist because of his family up bringing. Which to i said " I understand that he can be that lawfully but I still don't see how anybody can be "good" with being misogynist, racist, sexist, or any can of prejudice towards a specific race or sex unless they are evil. And even then to be lawful good, especially as a paladin (at least for me) even if that race or sex is evil in your world, you must not always act with violence towards them, you must be govern by the most peaceful outcome that can happen, in ALL situations. Therefore if you unintentionally are misogynistic but dont do anything to fix that, you arent lawful good. I like the question you gave though, is this fun for everyone and I personally told the DM in private I didn't like the idea of that character and the DM(another female, also my girlfriend) agreed with me in private that it didn't make sense to her but in the group setting they played "Sweden" to avoid conflict with our friends. I really enjoy the group and loved playing with them but the DM and I( we are a couple) are thinking of not invititing her because of her trying to put in her real life issues into the game. (BTW,  just to add context to this weird forum and not that it matters to my girlfriend and I but the player just went through a bad break up a few months ago and has recently come out as lesbian, she was known as bisexual and she was with a man previously). 

Note that there is no requirement for a paladin to be lawful good in 5e. Perhaps lawful neutral would be a better fit here: the character holds their own personal set of principles in higher regard than the need to do good, fight Evil or aid those in need but he doesn't act cruelly or in a manner that advances the cause of Evil in the world. 

Quote from Born_of_fire74 >>

Note that there is no requirement for a paladin to be lawful good in 5e. Perhaps lawful neutral would be a better fit here: the character holds their own personal set of principles in higher regard than the need to do good, fight Evil or aid those in need but he doesn't act cruelly or in a manner that advances the cause of Evil in the world. 

 This is exactly what I told her that he would be lawful neutral. But the rest of the group disagreed, also as I said they just got done with their first ever campaign, therefore the rest of the group also are new players like she is, so I don't want them to feel like I am saying they can't create the character they want but at the same time there a rules within the game of dnd and especially paladins with their alignment.  But she kept on assisting that the character has to be lawful good and that in her mind it made perfect sense that he could still be misogynist and lawfully good. 

Characters can have alignments without being perfect within that alignment. It's not clear from the description whether the character is even misogynistic, thinking of women as lesser is chauvinism.

Quote from Schimentor >>

Quote from Born_of_fire74 >>

Note that there is no requirement for a paladin to be lawful good in 5e. Perhaps lawful neutral would be a better fit here: the character holds their own personal set of principles in higher regard than the need to do good, fight Evil or aid those in need but he doesn't act cruelly or in a manner that advances the cause of Evil in the world. 

 This is exactly what I told her that he would be lawful neutral. But the rest of the group disagreed, also as I said they just got done with their first ever campaign, therefore the rest of the group also are new players like she is, so I don't want them to feel like I am saying they can't create the character they want but at the same time there a rules within the game of dnd and especially paladins with their alignment.  But she kept on assisting that the character has to be lawful good and that in her mind it made perfect sense that he could still be misogynist and lawfully good. 

 Paladins have no alignment restrictions in 5e. Each oath has its own behavioral rules, but there aren't even mechanical consequences for breaking those.

It seems to me that the main problem here may be less the alignment and more the concept, and the alignment's become a proxy for that. 

someone who is lawful good can be misogynist because what if that's just the society and family they grew up in, and thats just how the viewed women, as lesser beings.

This is why Lawful and Good are measured on different axes. What you are describing is Lawful. Following the rules of society independent of whether it is good or bad. Not following those rules wouldn't make them Evil, it would just make them not Lawful. And following those rules doesn't make them Good, it just makes them Lawful. I think your group is confused about this distinction.

Ignorance of immorality does not make you moral in D&D - Good alignment has a definition that is independent of societal and cultural norms. Again, that's what Lawful is about.

It's going to be pretty hard for anyone to justify that viewing other people as lesser beings is Good-aligned, especially when you consider all of the societal consequences of that belief. It would not be Good at my table. But unlike D&D, our world does not have absolute rules around morality. So it depends on you and your group.

What this character sounds like to me is a Lawful Neutral character who THINKS he's Lawful Good. That can be fun to play out, assuming your group is comfortable with discussing issues like this at the table.

Unfortunately, I think this is a topic that you need to steer clear of in a public forum where there are a diverse number of people from different cultures and you are using analogies to existing religions to try to decide appropriate character alignments in a D&D context.

The question you ask is challenging because there are fundamental questions that need to be answered where each individual might have different answers.

Are Good and Evil absolute? Are Law and Chaos absolute? By this I mean, is there an absolute scale where everyone agrees that certain attitudes, approaches, beliefs are good and others are evil? I think you will find that there are some things people may agree are good and evil and others where they disagree.

So, in your case, I'd have a chat with your player and decide what you and they are willing to accept in the context of play at your table and in the context of the local culture where you live. Keep in mind that you CAN say no. If you don't like or are uncomfortable with a certain choice for role playing, feel free to express that and discuss with the players.

Personally, when running a game, I would not allow a mysogynistic, racist, psychopathic, sociopathic, or other similar type of character to be played in the game since it would involve addressing some nasty societal issues within a role playing game context that would be better discussed over a beer or in some other setting if someone actually wants to discuss them at all. I wouldn't find it fun to run a game with such a character so I'd just nope it in session 0 and ask the player to come up with a different character concept.

This would also avoid the discussion of what sort of real life "alignment" these cultural beliefs should be associated with which is something you don't want to discuss here.

First, I generally agree with the folks who say alignment is used to describe how you act, not as a straightjacket that forces you to act a certain way. Play the character how you want to, and then if needs be, you can hang an alignment tag on that behavior pattern. But deciding in advance and then saying you'll stick to it can often get in the way of developing your character's personality. So have the person start playing their character. Maybe they start robbing people left and right, and so can't reasonable be called lawful by any definition. Maybe they have some major personal event that changes their whole outlook on the world, and their alignment shifts. 

You could always sidestep the issue and not have characters declare alignments. They really, really don't matter in this edition (as jl8e was getting at), except for a handful of magic items. As long as people play their characters consistently, and don't switch to whatever kind of personality is most beneficial in any given moment, that's all that really matters.

P.S. Since it comes up in pretty much every alignment thread because his alignment is undefinable, I'm just going to get it out there: Batman.

There's a lot of philosophy in here to unpack and maybe more than is right for that table or even this discussion. For context, my pronouns are she/hers.

A couple of things - I don't actually know the alignments of the other characters in my D&D parties. So on that basis, I don't care. And defining "good" is full of nuance and contradictions that fuel an entire academic discipline, well above my pay grade.

So to me the question is more, are you okay with how this player will perform misogyny? Not knowing any of the actual people, IMHO that the player is female makes it more likely to be okay, but it's just hard to know if this is going to be gross and uncomfortable or an interesting redemption arc or what? And how will this impact the other members of the party, a group that must work closely together?

I personally think of "evil" as intentional harm. Prejudice, racism, misogyny, ageism, LGBT-phobia, ableism can be intentional and evil but it can also be thoughtless and ignorant. One kind can grow (sometimes) and the other cannot. But the thoughtless/ignorant style can sometimes be more harmful, because it is wrapped in camouflage and can penetrate more defenses, get more traction, appear to be reasonable and then cause great harm, intended or not. There are plenty of people who think they "love" women (or any other being) and are looking out for them but want to keep them metaphorically caged, just like there are people who will tell you they love all 47 of their unaltered cats. Love can be twisted and love does not always truly respect or understand the point of view of its object.

When you asked the other players, what you report makes it hard to understand what they truly think. They may not feel great talking this out with you, is actually the vibe I got. And you might do better with, "are you okay, will this make you uncomfortable?" I hear that you are uncomfortable which is absolutely your right, but it would be interesting to be careful to really listen to the others and see if it gains you insight.

One last thing: I suggest avoiding the use of female as a noun unless you're writing a scientific paper.

Totally agree with you on this as well, just felt very alone in the situation I was in but at the end of the day we can tell her no and move on. 

Before the response to the question we should clarify one of the most important "rules" in D&D these days. Steer clear of topics that people in the group find troubling. If you have one or more players who are troubled by sexism, don't bring Drow and Svirfneblin into the campaign. Troubled by slavery, don't bring in Duergar and Drow. Etc.. The DM is a player too and you, as the DM, find misogyny to be troubling, so just say that you wouldn't feel comfortable with a character like that, regardless of alignment. 

Now on to the actual question from a theoretical basis:

I think you're getting hung up on definitions and trying to project your moral compass on to a completely different society. For example, Julius Caesar was a hero to the Roman Empire. He successfully conquered territories and brought them under Rome's control. But if someone were to attempt that in the world today, our modern sensibilities would consider him/her to be the "bad guy". 

Why do you believe that "to hate is evil"? Do you not hate evil? Do you not hate famine, murder, pestilence and war? Is hating those things wrong? Should you not hate someone who is championing those things? Looking at it from the opposite end, do you also believe a Lawful Evil character would not be able to love cats? Dr. Evil certainly does. 

A misogynist doesn't necessarily hate women, (s)he can just be prejudiced against them or hold them in contempt. Imagine if the only experience you had with women were TikTok "Sprinkle Sprinkle" videos. Or if every woman you met treated you like Amber Heard treated Johnny Depp. You'd at least be wary of them. Especially if they had a 20 strength, two-handed axe and a barbarian's rage. 

A male raised in the mysandrist Drow culture could easily hold those females in contempt and hate them for the years they tortured him. The society this human/high elf is from could have been built by slaves who escaped from the drow and are terrified of that happening to them again. They could very well raise lawful good paladins whose primary goal is ensuring the freedom and security for men. 

The alignment system is a broad spectrum. Lawful means that the character lives by a set of rules and champions order. Good means the character is prone to self-sacrifice and seeks to aid others. There's a lot of paths through that forest. So yes, a lawful good character can be a misogynist. And learning to overcome those prejudices by interacting with "nice girls" could make for an interesting character arc. 

Before totally writing off the idea, it might be good to clarify what everybody means by misogyny -- "we need to protect our women and provide for them, because they aren't capable of doing these things for themselves" is still a form of misogyny even if it's not rooted specifically in hate.  There's also the question of whether the character would aggressively push their beliefs on others, or if they're potentially on a journey of self-discovery, or what.  A sort of "lawful good but misguided" character could still be interesting, as they encounter the wider world for the first time and slowly learn that their previous perspective wasn't accurate.  If nothing else, knowing stuff like that would help to predict whether this kind of character will be derailing the campaign and causing issues among players, or not.  (Maybe you've already had those discussions, I don't know.)

1. Ask other players and yourself if they/you are comfortable with it

if yes, than he can - since good alignment isn't  equal to perfection

2. Ask to what degree he will push that "trait", since if he will overused it could make campaign derailled and unbearable, even for players which accepted 1. If he overuse it be ready to take measures

3. Be ready that pc have more flaws discovering which you will say something like "wtf?" A lot of horror stories start with something small issue, having start with misogynist may be just way of player messing with table just because she can. So i would say - proceed with caution, it can be non issue or a first red flag

It's interesting. No one - that I can readily think of - would ever question 'can you be LG and hate all orcs'. That's like automatically ok.

Quote from Acromos >>

 

It's interesting. No one - that I can readily think of - would ever question 'can you be LG and hate all orcs'. That's like automatically ok.

 

 I mean, it has come up before. It's one of the standard rote arguments around alignment debates. Generally, hating "all" of a group tends to be frowned upon for obvious reasons. 

That said, as OP is the group DM and looking for advice about a slightly different issue, my suggestion would be to roll with it. As pointed out above, alignment is a flawed system and has little to no real ramifications in-game with respect to the paladin class. All of the players at the table seem fine with the character concept on a social level (and, as with most role playing exercises, may be using this as an outlet for some real life frustrations).

As also pointed out above, you can probably mine the concept for fun and entertaining character drama. 

For a novelized example of how a misogynistic character in a party led by a woman might work out, T. Kingfisher's Clockwork Boys has a scholar from an order that generally does not allow associations with women who nevertheless is compelled on a particular adventure. I don't think you'd categorize him as evil - he pretty clearly has a Lawful Good personality, it's just that he's been raised in a system with problematic Law.

Quote from Acromos >>

It's interesting. No one - that I can readily think of - would ever question 'can you be LG and hate all orcs'. That's like automatically ok.

 Actually I think a lot of people would question that. An LG paladin isn't going to slaughter orc children in an orphanage just because they're orcs.

Because of the way orcs were depicted in the game, hating orcs and hating what orcs do can be easily confused.

There's also an underlying issue that you find in any combat game where you need bad guys to defeat/kill and you need to contrive a reason that it's okay to do so. Link slaughters bokoblins because they are extensions of Ganon who is unquestionably evil. Mario slaughters goombas because - I guess they are minions of Bowser? - who is also unquestionably evil. Many games sidestep morality by setting the opposition as robots or aliens. But ultimately, you need someone to kill and a reason to kill them without feeling like a serial killer.

Classic D&D had certain races set up to be opposition, with kind of an unspoken understanding that you needed someone to be opposition to have fun, challenging combat encounters. Plenty of players understood it on that level and weren't actually relishing the idea of genocide or racism as they played. They weren't killing orcs to kill them. They were killing orcs because orcs kill people and the only way to stop that was to kill the orcs before the orcs killed the people. Kill or be killed. Self defense against an opponent who was beyond diplomacy or reason.

Today's world is fraught with moral complication and shades of gray. As a reflection of that, just unilaterally declaring that a pretend group of humanoids is evil in order to remove any moral consequences of killing them is not really a thing people accept anymore. And that's fine - I enjoy posing moral questions to my group and watching them figure out the best way to do what is right.

But I just want to point out that the "old way" - of which I have only experienced myself in small doses - was not necessarily morally bankrupt. They were just bought in to the assumptions of the game as they were presented back then.