Gender Neutral PCs

It's really a shame. With -32 votes on the suggestions page it's unlikely this'll be implemented without some modly intervention.

 

I don't know, I don't really think the voting system holds much sway. If they see that 3000+ people like an idea they'll probably consider implementing it. But just because a handful of negative people vote down this suggestion doesn't make it any less relevant. With any luck, the dev team will notice the suggestion and say "Wow, that Greenman guy is really f--king annoying. He may have point though: increased user options is kind of a goal of ours, and we might actually do something positive for underrepresented people. Small things do add up, ya know."

 

I just don't see what all the fuss is about. Board Game Online and Fallen London both had these types of options and nobody threw a fit.
The above links are just images. Didn't wanna clutter the thread.

 

I'm sure everyone is pretty much fine with adding an unspecified choice. What he is trying to push for now is the complete removal of the male and female choices and having it replaced with just a body selector.

 

I don't understand the point of this. Don't genderless or transexuals usually take on the appearance of either a male or female regardless?

 

Those aren't transgender options. Those are cutesy variants of "I decline to answer" options. Calling them transgender is like saying that refusing to supply your income level is saying you make Martian money and can't be classified by the narrow-minded common perception.

In my experience a transgender only remains in the "I don't know" phase for a limited period of time, similar to closet homosexuals or any other subcultural entry way. Then they pick or invent an alternative gender and are pretty damn sure.

This message board itself has a similar option in that you can select a third "Screw you" option in your gender field. Mind you, I would actually support transgender options in the message board's gender field, because it is literally the gender identity of a real person. Just because I scoff at the concept does not mean I will snub it out of existence.

What you need to understand about transgender is that your perfectly innocent statement will offend them because they don't want to be equated in any way whatsoever to a male or a female. From their perspective it is like assuming all vaguely Asian-looking people are Japanese.

I can understand that viewpoint, but that does not mean I will agree with it, and I am not about to honor their pretense. They can identify as whatever they want; it doesn't change their gender any more than a furry or an otherkin isn't actually a human. And if it is being a jerk to give my honest opinion that those kinds of people are delusional cowards when that opinion is relevant to the discussion, then everyone should be a jerk.

 

Those are both really awesome ways to include everyone. I seriously doubt that anyone could muster a reason to complain. The suggestion in this thread makes sexual ambiguity even less obvious.

You could not possibly be more confused about the subject. I admire your willingness to appear as though you have an educated position on the topic, but clearly, you don't.

This is not some great battle where you've chosen a side and now need to oppose everything the other side represents. You're admitting to being a jerk, and everyone who doesn't agree with you is a delusional coward. I don't really know what else to say...

 

I can understand how you would think that this is the point of the suggestion, it actually is not.
Allow me to present to you a couple of images.

First the definition.
an·drog·y·nous

adjective \an-ˈdrä-jə-nəs\
: having both male and female characteristics or qualities
: suitable for both men and women
What this means is a person that could easily pass as both male, or female. They look neither, and/or both at the same time.

^ thats a guy.

^this one points it out more obviously. Both of those are the same woman.

What hes asking is to allow for this look to be more accessible. Instead of both having pronounced gender specific looks (like breasts for example, are a dead give away that 'hay thats a girl' Take those away and is it a girl? or maybe a guy? Only a private peek would tell.)

I do agree with a few things on this, such as having a transgender option on forums and such would be a nice addition.

however..
As i said above, this isnt about choosing 'i dont care' option or w/e, its about androgyny.

Also while i am happy to see you defending transgenders, and it is a nice thing. Only a bare few, shall we say, over the top transgenders will take offense to not being called a transgender. As a transgender, i prefer to called female, since thats the direction i am going, and this is pretty much the same thing for every transgender i have ever known. (which is a lot)
So please, try not to give the wrong message here >w<. While it is true we would rather be called transgender if you wanted to call us by our true gender (mostly for pre-op transpeoples) we would much prefer to be called what we are pushing to become (or in many cases have already become)
In short, you should call male to females as females. and the same for the visaversa.

 

It actually seems like he is very educated on this topic. And aren't you claiming that he does the exact same thing that you are doing. You are disregarding every negative comment and calling it completely asinine.

 

I am educated on this topic and I can say unequivocally that dracohandsome is not.

 

And I can unequivocally say that you are being completely ignorant. All he is basically giving his his opinion on the matter, so you are calling his opinion wrong. The definition of transgender is someone trying to be the opposite sex, so it is true that a transgender would most likely wish to be called one or the other.

 

You sure about that?

Sure thing.

But no, I haven't disregarded every negative comment. I'm doing the opposite. I'm responding to all of the negative comments. I've made an attempt to respond to people who are shooting down the idea, and I've tried to give you and others the opportunity to explain why you don't like the idea, but nobody has been able to do that so far. I've asked you, MorganRaptor, specific questions on multiple occasions, but you've avoided answering them.

I'm saying that fearing a response from Fox news is asinine because there's nothing to provoke it. That's about as close as I've gotten to calling certain comments dumb because that's the closest anyone has come to making a solid claim against the suggestion.

Thanks for contributing. My goal for the suggestion is not to merely defend transgendered people by possibly giving them a small amount of visibility, but to also make character creation as diverse as possible. You're right that a transgendered woman can choose the female character option and be perfectly happy. Androgyny, too, is certainly an important feature of character creation under this suggestion, but more to the point, I'd like to make it possible for players to create a character that doesn't identify as male or female as well.

 

I am serious when I say I am educated on the subject. The reason I say that guy is not, is

Those are not the words of a person who grasps this situation. It's like this; let's say we were talking about clinical depression. Would it be a accurate to say that people with clinical depression ought to just lighten up? No because there are chemical components, and underlying problems that exacerbate depression.

This person is essentially calling trans people delusional, and that they're gender identities are make believe. Sure they can have that opinion. However that is not how this is going down. They are expressing it as if it were fact, and in a very public way. People can also have homophobic and racist opinions. But those opinions are still wrong, and the person holding them should not express them publicly, and especially not present them as fact.

This is not something that is open for a debate. This is about peoples' lives. He kept saying "I don't understand it" except he would then go on to speak about why it was wrong, indicating some assumption of understanding. It is extremely insensitive to assume that you know what another person is going through, and then use that to invalidate or belittle them at all.

 

That's a partial definition. You're leaving out people who identify as neither male or female, or both.

But really, we could focus on the suggestion itself rather than debate terms. I would like to see character creation as diverse as possible. As it stands, males cannot choose from the female hair and clothing options and vice versa.
I welcome any and all possible solutions to this.

Amen to that.

 

A'ight. So, this is a big important issue to me, so I'm gonna' try to lay down some things so that people can understand some stuff.

Sex Vs. Gender. Sex is a set of physical characteristics. Gender is a set of roles, expectations, traits, etc, that a society will place upon a person based upon their biological sex.

How Gender/Transgender/GenderQueer/Andorgyne Works:

Imagine if society said there were two kinds (genders) of people in the world: blondes and brunettes. Blondes are supposed to be creative, physically weak, and unintelligent. Brunettes are supposed be boring, stoic, intelligent and strong. Now let's say that someone is born brunette, but is actually rather weak physically, and actually quite creative. Society tells them that they're wrong, evil, and bad, for wanting to be something that they aren't: "blonde." Maybe if society is open minded enough in the future, it'd let the creative brunette put on a blonde wig and live their rest of a life as a blonde. (This is an allegory to a trans* person, for whose who aren't following.)

Now instead imagine someone who is born blonde who is creative and incredibly physically strong, but might not necessarily be very intelligent. Suddenly, they have features that their society deems belong to EITHER Blonde or Brunette--not both, so they can't really qualify as one or the other. Even if they tried to be the things society asked of brunettes, there'd still be elements of themselves that they'd be denying or being berated by their society for possessing in the first place.

These people want to say "screw the idea that the color hair I was born with says anything about how I fit into society and what kind of person I am."
So they dye their hair purple. (This is analogous to gender-queer/androgynous person.)

Now, let's come back to our world, where it's male/female instead of blonde/brunette:

People in our world and our culture struggle with all manner of problems stemming from the idea that biological sex is linked to the kind of person you are and how you should interact with the world around you. Some people, as a result, end up feeling way more comfortable trying to become/emulate the other sex and what society says that other sex should behave like because it's more comfortable for them. In this case, being able to pick Male or Female ingame is not a problem. They can choose to play as whatever of the two is more comfortable for them. Some people, however, in real life, end up falling between the gaps and have traits that society says should be "male" and other traits that should be "female," and so they're stuck, unable to identify as one or the other, because either way, they'd either be denying a part of themselves to fit into that role, or have society berating them for not filling that role correctly.

So it's easiest for them to just say "Screw the idea of gender. My biological sex does not have anything to do with who I am, and this social binary of what "being male" means and what "being female means" doesn't let me freely associate with the roles given to either males or females in this society, so you know what? Screw these roles. I will be some other option."

And when they pick that third option--whatever they call it, androgyny/genderqueer, etc, people will tell them that they're confused, that they're terrible, awful, and evil. People will tell them that they're misguided and that they have to choose. So, their ordinary life has people constantly assaulting them for wanting to be themselves. They might want to retreat on the weekends into a place where they can feel like they can be themselves without having to resort to shoehorning themselves into something or another.

WHAT DOES STARBOUND HAVE TO DO WITH THIS?

The simple answer is that it'd be nice for those people who have to fight these battles outside their free time if they didn't also have to fight them in their free time too. It's not going to destroy anyone's experience if they have to choose male or female for their characters, but if male and female characters can't wear the same clothes, hair-styles, etc, it might be a little irritating. Might make them sigh, shake their heads and go "well fine, I guess I'll put up with this bulls**t here too."

HOW CAN STARBOUND FIX THIS?

Having a sexless option is one fix. (Because no matter what, people will sadly associate gender with sex and treat players and characters differently depending upon their avatar's associated sex.)

So maybe starbound for whatever reason is totally 100% opposed to removing the sex option at character generation. The easiest fix, at least, would be to let males be generated with all the options of females too, and vice versa-letting men wear dresses and have fluffy long hair, etc, and letting females wear pants and have short hair, hell, maybe even things like beards, etc. This is the future--I'm sure science has progressed far enough that if someone wants to be a female who has grown a beard, they can.

So yeah.

THIS IS ACTUALLY KINDA' IMPORTANT, IN THAT IT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOMEONE FEELING FULLY WELCOME IN A GAME, AND HAVING TO SHAKE THEIR HEAD AND GO "NOT THIS BULLS**T AGAIN."

 

Basically, discuss a suggestion in the context of the game instead of in the context of "trans people don't really exist" because chances are if you do that you're being a huge fuckface.

I personally disagree with the suggestion, by the way. Starbound just isn't the type of game that will support being opened to a more diverse range of gender identities. It all boils down to it being an indie game. It won't cause heaps of damage by enforcing a gender binary, people will likely have fun regardless. The developers will feel a lot less pressure sticking to the status quo than trying to please absolutely everyone. It's a shitty status quo, but one that really can't be radically altered by complicating the character creation of an indie game in which you won't even be whipping out your character's junk.

You'll be shooting aliens and building Pokemon statues.

 

Following the suggestion wouldn't be challenging the status quo either. You're not the first one to anticipate pressure, but I think you must have misunderstood the suggestion if you think any pressure or bad publicity could come about in any way.

Look, pretend the character generator had never been released. Now imagine the character generator becomes available and looks exactly the same, except without a male/female option. Instead you choose from one of two body styles. The one without boobs can wear all the clothes including dresses and skirts. The one with boobs can wear all the beards. You still have the option to create a traditional character without ever once considering the existence of transgendered people.

 

This is why i stated that this is what you are going towards. Androgyny is the very goal of what you are trying to get. To make a character that does not identify as either male or female would be more androgynous than the current system.

However.. I did forget to mention in all the hubub of the posts.
I highly doubt that such a feature would be possible. Or rather atleast removing male and female options is probably impossible this late in development. This very thing is most likely hardcoded, and if you were to change this would break many things, including the npc work that they have been working on for a very long time now, as i know for a fact that the humanoid npcs (or other races if you will) draw from the same CC (character creation) pool that players do. It could be possible to add a third option for Androgynous options, but in my opinion it would look kinda silly to the average player, who would ask 'why not just remove all 3 options and go with something like terrarias?'

 

You're asking that the titles of male and female be torn down for the supposed convenience of genderless/transgenders, which is ridiculous and unecessary. Choose whatever appearance fits your gender best, and forget about the male and female labels. Seriously, no one is going to take offence to that.

 

I think the only thing that upsets me is the male/female hairstyles. that annoys me xD What if i wanna use a male hairstyle on mah female character?