I’ve been catchup on my Slovenly Trulls episodes, now that I once again have time to listen to slay feminists Dungeons & Dragons lore podcasts. Recently I listened to Gnoll & Beholder1 Shardae & Lyssa Episode #53 “Gnoll & Beholder” (1 August 2025) The Slovenly Trulls and was entertained by Shardae and Lyssa puzzling over the oddity that gnolls are, in all other lore, misogynistic patriarchal assholes… but in Monster Manual IV (2006)2 “Monster Manual IV” (July 2006, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 67-71 and Dragon Magazine #367 (2008),3 Keith Baker “Playing Gnolls” in Dragon Magazine #368 Editor-in-Chief: (September 2008, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 47-54 it seems to claim it’s a matriarchy, and specifically explains that the female gnolls are indistinguishable form the males?
What happened around 2006 – 2008 that inspired this fascination with the ideas of gnolls being a reverse patriarchy with reverse dimorphism… that seemed unsourced and faded away?
Or to put it another way, why we all briefly agree that female gnolls had massive alpha male big dick energy? What was the “magic” element?
Allow me to offer my not so humble theory as a wise old man who was active in a bunch of online communities at the time.
Firstly, and most importantly, it is important to understand that while it’s reasonably common knowledge that hyena’s have unusual dimorphism and social models, due to the females being larger and more dominant – the distribution of this knowledge came from a particular quirk of the Spotted Hyena.
Specifically a trait among them that makes them unique among mammals.
Pseudo-penis.4 “Psuedo-penis” Wikipedia <en.wikipedia.org>
This became a surprisingly common topic of conversation among nerds in the mid-2000s. Remember, this was the era of blogs & forums – we didn’t have video essays or TikToks. We were also starting to get more access to scientific materials directly, so long before we had Tumblr, you could find articles with the most Tumblr of headlines possible:5 Laurence G. Frank “Evolution of genital masculinzation: why do female hyaenas have such a large ‘penis’?” Trends in Ecology & Evolution Vol 12 Issue 2 (February 1997, Science Direct) <www.sciencedirect.com> at 58-72
In 2002, Science News would refer to it as the “Rebranding of the Hyena“.6 John Pickrell “Rebranding of the Hyena” (23 April 2002) Science News <www.sciencenews.org>
In April 2006, Nature would publish an article on the many unique traits of the spotted hyena, including their pseudo-penises. This was not really new, but it got a little attention and a blog entry from Muton7 Muton “The oddness of Hyaenas” (20 May 2006) Blogspot <muton.blogspot.com> but was otherwise easy to overlook.
Wikipedia user Dionyseus created an article on this phenomena two months later, coinciding with the release of Monster Manual IV. As I said, it was an weirdly popular topic of conversation among nerds at the time.
All this led to nerds who wanted to seem informed posting about the unique biology of the spotted hyena (which let’s be real, is the main one depicted in art) as though it applied to all hyenas.
A lot of this is now no longer accessible since it happened on limited access blogs, forums that are long gone, etc but for a few years it as a “did you know…” type of conversations where people would talk about them as general hyenas.
At the same time, access to older D&D materials was harder to obtain, die-hard “the lore is scared” types were hanging out on UseNet, their own forums, ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM etc and Wizards of the Coast were trying to expand the market – so were quiet comfortable with disregarding old lore and re-writing everything if it would appeal to “the youths”.
Hence there was suddenly a collective agreement that we had all known that gnolls were a matriarchy, and female gnolls were bigger and looked “indistinguishable” from male gnolls.
But sadly, we live in a cowardly society where nobody was willing to explain in the “family friendly” books (featuring torture, murder, etc) why they gnolls females had these particular traits.
- 1Shardae & Lyssa Episode #53 “Gnoll & Beholder” (1 August 2025) The Slovenly Trulls
- 2“Monster Manual IV” (July 2006, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 67-71
- 3Keith Baker “Playing Gnolls” in Dragon Magazine #368 Editor-in-Chief: (September 2008, Wizards of the Coast, Seattle WA), at 47-54
- 4“Psuedo-penis” Wikipedia <en.wikipedia.org>
- 5Laurence G. Frank “Evolution of genital masculinzation: why do female hyaenas have such a large ‘penis’?” Trends in Ecology & Evolution Vol 12 Issue 2 (February 1997, Science Direct) <www.sciencedirect.com> at 58-72
- 6John Pickrell “Rebranding of the Hyena” (23 April 2002) Science News <www.sciencenews.org>
- 7Muton “The oddness of Hyaenas” (20 May 2006) Blogspot <muton.blogspot.com>