Androgyny

[Heade]

If you are playing an androgynous person your coded gender is a dead give away making it impossible to truly surprise people as to what your gender is

Can you give me a couple examples of how you would expect such a "surprise" to be played out IC, and what you'd expect the outcomes to be?

Personally, I would love for gender politics to stay out of Arm. If there are ever OOC rules governing how you respond IC to someone's IG chosen pronouns that differ from their coded pronouns, that will likely be the day that I end my 20 year relationship with the game.

The game is supposed to be gritty and archaic. Respecting chosen gender pronouns is anything but.
Armageddon is supposed to be the opposite of a safe space. It's supposed to be dangerous, miserable, and unforgiving.
In such a place, when people's lives hang in the balance daily, social issues like racism and gender pronouns would never become important enough for anyone to care about.

I play arm for a lot of reasons, but high among them is an escape from the daily barrage of RL politics. Here, we can play in a more simple world, where survival and trust are more important than who you bump uglies with, or what does or doesn't lie between your legs.

[JohnMichaelHenry]

If you are playing an androgynous person your coded gender is a dead give away making it impossible to truly surprise people as to what your gender is

Can you give me a couple examples of how you would expect such a "surprise" to be played out IC, and what you'd expect the outcomes to be?

Personally, I would love for gender politics to stay out of Arm. If there are ever OOC rules governing how you respond IC to someone's IG chosen pronouns that differ from their coded pronouns, that will likely be the day that I end my 20 year relationship with the game.

The game is supposed to be gritty and archaic. Respecting chosen gender pronouns is anything but.
Armageddon is supposed to be the opposite of a safe space. It's supposed to be dangerous, miserable, and unforgiving.
In such a place, when people's lives hang in the balance daily, social issues like racism and gender pronouns would never become important enough for anyone to care about.

I play arm for a lot of reasons, but high among them is an escape from the daily barrage of RL politics. Here, we can play in a more simple world, where survival and trust are more important than who you bump uglies with, or what does or doesn't lie between your legs.

I have to admit, this scares me a little as well... Let's just say staff codes another option 'androgynous' along with male and female and they get their pronoun and all that... and in game I have a character that treats that person differently because they are neither male nor female. Will I be allowed to call them a disgusting freak? Or will there start to be OOC and IC rules about how they should be treated as equals? I'd have to go along with Heade if something like that happened. Please don't let it.

[Cowboy]

What Heade and JohnMichaelHenry said.  Agree.  There are like couple dozen genders.  New pronouns and such for each one?   And rules to use them?

[valeria]

I know I said I was done with this thread, but uh... literally nobody was proposing anything about coding in more genders. Despite some serious, serious digression about what pronoun you would use to describe someone who is androgynous, the OP was about letting people choose to be androgynous at char gen. That is, not obviously masculine or feminine.

Have you guys never seen a person with no hips, a flat chest, and no facial hair? Maybe even an indeterminate range voice? No?

Well, I have. What's more, I've even seen some on Zalanthas. The thing is, codedly, they aren't allowed to be androgynous. They're either him or her when you target them in the code. That's literally the one point of the thread.

Presumably, you'd treat them as their race requires. Like everyone else of either sex. The person playing an androgynous character might have to field the question "so are you a man or are you a woman" quite a bit, but I think a person who didn't want to endure that RP would probably not pick androgynous in char gen.

tldr; Your slippery slope argument is based on some other slope. Anyone with any familiarity with genders would be very perplexed by that idea of hard coding in a bunch of genders because the whole issue with gender is that it is separate from your physical parts. [Edit: don't even worry about this part.]

[Malken]

How about you just don't play an androgynous character - there are plenty of ideas that I can't create in-game for a reason or another. If you really must play an androgynous character to enjoy Armageddon then maybe it's just not the mud for you.

Pick male or female and come up with something else to flavor up your character's story, it's pretty simple.

But I understand that it's an idea like any other, so I'll let Staff decides if it's worth coding or not. In my opinion, seeing "they" to describe a person is jarring and confusing as hell, as a non-native English speaker.

[sleepyhead]

I know I said I wouldn't comment again, but I just want to pop in to say that Shakespeare used the singular "they." Even without this change, I use it all the time in-game for people whose gender I don't happen to know.

I don't think the "it's incorrect/jarring" argument is a good one. Singular "they" has been a part of English for a long time. I understand that if you're ESL you may not be super familiar with it, but it's just one of those things that's not going anywhere.

[Sedora]

My main concern here would be for the extreme reasons behind wanting this sort of change. I'm definitely not here to start any sort of argument or make anybody feel like I'm pointing fingers, so please don't jump on a box and start yelling at me for saying something  you think I intend to be mean. That isn't true.

My worry is that for at least some people the reason for exploring this kind of thing in Arm would be to self-insert themselves into the game world because they can't be who they want to be IRL because of culture/religion/whatever causes these sorts of problems (to note, I think resistance to acceptance of these sorts of things is bs, I'm totally on board with IRL support of this stuff). I know that people self-insert all the time to varying degrees and that the argument initially was that everyone else can play to their preferences without problems, but self-insertion isn't generally what the game is about. I feel like more than a few who would want to utilize this change would be the ones who want to self-insert to experiment with how it feels to them or to live out who they want to be OOCly via IC.

Arm is here for us to participate in the fantasy world experience of Zalanthas, its not here for us to live out idealized versions of ourselves, and I worry that would be something that happens more often with this kind of change than it already does with the current way things are setup.

[Namino]

Gonna be blunt here, protect your toes, everyone.

I'm sorry, Valeria, but I don't believe you. This isn't about closing some code oversight where coded pronouns don't match indeterminate sex traits ICly. This is not, in my judgement, an attempt to close a gap in immersion. This is not, in my judgement, motivated by in character, in universe concerns. By your own admission in your initial post, this is about being a more welcoming, inclusive community. Backpedaling after this and claiming that this is not about gender politics OOCly, and that it's solely in character and focused on Zalanthan's inability to discern sex when observing indeterminate sex characteristics rings very hollow to me.

It would be a more welcoming, more inclusive feature.

Welcoming and inclusive to whom, exactly? The obvious answer is, of course, more welcoming and inclusive to individuals who OOCly do not identify under traditional gender schemes, and that the inability for them to recreate a gender identity that matches their OOC identity is unwelcoming of us. However, as other posters have pointed out, this only becomes an issue if your principle goal when designing a new character is to construct one that matches your OOC struggles: in brief, to self insert. I do not condone coded alterations to the game to facilitate self insertion, even if we thinly veil them under the guise of code not representing character perception.

But, in the interest of being thorough, I will respond to the in character argument none-the-less. For the record, I don't buy it. I believe it is a veil. But I will address the veil regardless.

What other characters can or cannot perceive about your character is not up to you, truly. We have very well established ground rules regarding this. We do not allow people to say they are ugly, or beautiful, or charismatic in their descriptions. We have roleplay guidelines that discourage forced emotes that inform people what they feel or think or believe about other character's personality, behavior, or traits. If you wish to define your character as a genetic woman who is androgynous (ie, flat chested, masculine chin, broad shoulders, et al), then feel free to do this. And leave it up to me to determine if my character can or cannot determine your true sex. There is variation in people's ability to discern androgynous character's sex, and so there is variation in character's ability to do so, as well. Stripping away people's ownership of their character's ability to do so by forcing indeterminate pronouns is in the same vein as telling me that I have to find your character ugly or beautiful. Don't tell me what my character can and cannot perceive. That's not up to you.

Edit: It's important to me to reiterate that these views are related to Armageddon MUD, and characters within them, not the players. Again, I am fully supportive of pronouns OOCly. If any player were to approach me with indeterminate pronouns, I would honor and respect that identity OOCly, have done so, and will continue to do so. My issue here is that indeterminate pronouns are out of place ICly and strike me solidly as an attempt to self insert, rather than represent some in character facet of perception.

Edit #2: Also important that I acknowledge that special apped true hermaphrodites would of course occupy an indeterminate sex category (that is, possess both male and female primary sexual characteristics) and are exempt from this. But there's a reason that they're under the ownership of special applications and require setting up, as Brokkr has stated. Having indeterminate secondary sexual characteristics means you have to leave it up to the characters you interact with to determine how they react/perceive that, much like other secondary characteristics determining beauty.

[Brokkr]

If you are sort of androgynous, but folks can discern your sex, choose your sex in chargen.
If you are androgynous to the point you would be obviously mistaken as the other sex, choose the other sex in chargen.
If you are so androgynous that it is the thing folks will most remember about you, use androgynous in your sdesc.
If you are sexless (which may or may not be androgynous), do a role application and we can make you neuter sex.

There are options for androgyny.  There is one specific form of androgyny not supported.  There are no plans at this time to support it.

[Refugee]

If you are sort of androgynous, but folks can discern your sex, choose your sex in chargen.
If you are androgynous to the point you would be obviously mistaken as the other sex, choose the other sex in chargen.
If you are so androgynous that it is the thing folks will most remember about you, use androgynous in your sdesc.
If you are sexless (which may or may not be androgynous), do a role application and we can make you neuter sex.

There are options for androgyny.  There is one specific form of androgyny not supported.  There are no plans at this time to support it.

<3

[Rathustra]

Gonna be blunt here, protect your toes, everyone.

I'm sorry, Valeria, but I don't believe you. This isn't about closing some code oversight where coded pronouns don't match indeterminate sex traits ICly. This is not, in my judgement, an attempt to close a gap in immersion. This is not, in my judgement, motivated by in character, in universe concerns. By your own admission in your initial post, this is about being a more welcoming, inclusive community. Backpedaling after this and claiming that this is not about gender politics OOCly, and that it's solely in character and focused on Zalanthan's inability to discern sex when observing indeterminate sex characteristics rings very hollow to me.

It would be a more welcoming, more inclusive feature.

Welcoming and inclusive to whom, exactly? The obvious answer is, of course, more welcoming and inclusive to individuals who OOCly do not identify under traditional gender schemes, and that the inability for them to recreate a gender identity that matches their OOC identity is unwelcoming of us. However, as other posters have pointed out, this only becomes an issue if your principle goal when designing a new character is to construct one that matches your OOC struggles: in brief, to self insert. I do not condone coded alterations to the game to facilitate self insertion, even if we thinly veil them under the guise of code not representing character perception.

But, in the interest of being thorough, I will respond to the in character argument none-the-less. For the record, I don't buy it. I believe it is a veil. But I will address the veil regardless.

What other characters can or cannot perceive about your character is not up to you, truly. We have very well established ground rules regarding this. We do not allow people to say they are ugly, or beautiful, or charismatic in their descriptions. We have roleplay guidelines that discourage forced emotes that inform people what they feel or think or believe about other character's personality, behavior, or traits. If you wish to define your character as a genetic woman who is androgynous (ie, flat chested, masculine chin, broad shoulders, et al), then feel free to do this. And leave it up to me to determine if my character can or cannot determine your true sex. There is variation in people's ability to discern androgynous character's sex, and so there is variation in character's ability to do so, as well. Stripping away people's ownership of their character's ability to do so by forcing indeterminate pronouns is in the same vein as telling me that I have to find your character ugly or beautiful. Don't tell me what my character can and cannot perceive. That's not up to you.

Edit: It's important to me to reiterate that these views are related to Armageddon MUD, and characters within them, not the players. Again, I am fully supportive of pronouns OOCly. If any player were to approach me with indeterminate pronouns, I would honor and respect that identity OOCly, have done so, and will continue to do so. My issue here is that indeterminate pronouns are out of place ICly and strike me solidly as an attempt to self insert, rather than represent some in character facet of perception.

Edit #2: Also important that I acknowledge that special apped true hermaphrodites would of course occupy an indeterminate sex category (that is, possess both male and female primary sexual characteristics) and are exempt from this. But there's a reason that they're under the ownership of special applications and require setting up, as Brokkr has stated. Having indeterminate secondary sexual characteristics means you have to leave it up to the characters you interact with to determine how they react/perceive that, much like other secondary characteristics determining beauty.

Isn't this a post supporting us removing hardcoded references to biological sex though? The hardcoded echoes are codedly telling you something you would rather be discerned through you having your PC interpret things like description, vocal emotes, etc.

I mean that seems like a pretty good argument for the whole thing - we remove all hardcoded references to biological sex, or assumptions on someone's presentation. That way nobody is forced to assume anything, nor is anyone forced to be anything. People can go on being "the x man" or "the y woman" and dealing with them would be the same. Of course we're then faced with niggling cases like how voices are heard in adjacent rooms, via whisper, etc.

It's an interesting thought experiment though - because the only values that your character's coded sex determine are the pronouns used in emotes and a few coded impositions.

As Brokkr said, however, we currently have means to support this, after a fashion.

Edit:

Also, please bear in mind that Zalanthas is a world where we've completely excluded prejudices that exist in the real-world in order to accommodate people who experience these prejudices in their real-world lives. Homophobia, racism and sexism are absent in their real-world forms in Zalanthas because we want people of all walks of life to enjoy the game and not have to deal with situations they might have to deal with IRL in-game. In their place we've placed fantastical and entirely imaginary prejudices that are pursued with the same vehemence, cruelty and callousness and it's that atmosphere that many in this thread are pointing to when they speak of Arm's 'grit' or how Arm isn't a 'safe space'. So yes, in a way we don't recoil from allowing scenarios that explore the worst of humanity - hatred against other species, other nationalities or hatred of something inherent to a character that they can't ICly control - like magick, or mutation - but we actively weed out, correct and exclude attempts to introduce real-world hate into the game - so, in this way - yes, we are a safe space. But we've been one for a very long time, likely before the modern "safe space" concept really formed.

[Namino]

Gonna be blunt here, protect your toes, everyone.

I'm sorry, Valeria, but I don't believe you. This isn't about closing some code oversight where coded pronouns don't match indeterminate sex traits ICly. This is not, in my judgement, an attempt to close a gap in immersion. This is not, in my judgement, motivated by in character, in universe concerns. By your own admission in your initial post, this is about being a more welcoming, inclusive community. Backpedaling after this and claiming that this is not about gender politics OOCly, and that it's solely in character and focused on Zalanthan's inability to discern sex when observing indeterminate sex characteristics rings very hollow to me.

It would be a more welcoming, more inclusive feature.

Welcoming and inclusive to whom, exactly? The obvious answer is, of course, more welcoming and inclusive to individuals who OOCly do not identify under traditional gender schemes, and that the inability for them to recreate a gender identity that matches their OOC identity is unwelcoming of us. However, as other posters have pointed out, this only becomes an issue if your principle goal when designing a new character is to construct one that matches your OOC struggles: in brief, to self insert. I do not condone coded alterations to the game to facilitate self insertion, even if we thinly veil them under the guise of code not representing character perception.

But, in the interest of being thorough, I will respond to the in character argument none-the-less. For the record, I don't buy it. I believe it is a veil. But I will address the veil regardless.

What other characters can or cannot perceive about your character is not up to you, truly. We have very well established ground rules regarding this. We do not allow people to say they are ugly, or beautiful, or charismatic in their descriptions. We have roleplay guidelines that discourage forced emotes that inform people what they feel or think or believe about other character's personality, behavior, or traits. If you wish to define your character as a genetic woman who is androgynous (ie, flat chested, masculine chin, broad shoulders, et al), then feel free to do this. And leave it up to me to determine if my character can or cannot determine your true sex. There is variation in people's ability to discern androgynous character's sex, and so there is variation in character's ability to do so, as well. Stripping away people's ownership of their character's ability to do so by forcing indeterminate pronouns is in the same vein as telling me that I have to find your character ugly or beautiful. Don't tell me what my character can and cannot perceive. That's not up to you.

Edit: It's important to me to reiterate that these views are related to Armageddon MUD, and characters within them, not the players. Again, I am fully supportive of pronouns OOCly. If any player were to approach me with indeterminate pronouns, I would honor and respect that identity OOCly, have done so, and will continue to do so. My issue here is that indeterminate pronouns are out of place ICly and strike me solidly as an attempt to self insert, rather than represent some in character facet of perception.

Edit #2: Also important that I acknowledge that special apped true hermaphrodites would of course occupy an indeterminate sex category (that is, possess both male and female primary sexual characteristics) and are exempt from this. But there's a reason that they're under the ownership of special applications and require setting up, as Brokkr has stated. Having indeterminate secondary sexual characteristics means you have to leave it up to the characters you interact with to determine how they react/perceive that, much like other secondary characteristics determining beauty.

Isn't this a post supporting us removing hardcoded references to biological sex though? The hardcoded echoes are codedly telling you something you would rather be discerned through you having your PC interpret things like description, vocal emotes, etc.

I'd be fine with that, to be honest. I've played RPIs before where there wasn't anything other than the current ~ for targeting people by their whole sdescs and the rest of the emote you chose all the pronouns in third person yourself, and therefore were assigning gender based on description cues.

This does not, however, address the ample evidence, particularly in early posts in this thread, that this entire proposal was floated on the desire for players to more accurately self insert and play reflections of themselves, which I inherently oppose.

That being said, Brokkr has succinctly wrapped this all up, in my opinion.

[Zoltan]

At first I thought this thread was merely a collection of ultra-bad takes on gender neutral pronouns, but I've really learned a lot of useful information. I now know that gender identities are like Voldemort (shhhhhh!), or maybe Pringles (because once you pop, you can't stop). Now I know that the singular th*y is a dangerous thing to introduce into the magick desert world where conventional gender roles simply don't exist, because

And somehow "it" is acceptable over "th*y" despite its dehumanizing connotations because

I was also shocked to learn that sometimes people insert a reflection or an aspect of th*mselves into th**r characters while playing this game. I guess things have really changed from back in my day, where we would put ourselves in the shoes of a character and portray th*m. We would insert ourselves into a role and play the game. A sort of role-play, if you will. I always thought self-insertion was necessary, since it was my knowledge of the English language that allowed me to play at all! But that must be why I never reached maxx karma.

Was it too much self-insertion to play as cis men in Armageddon even though I'm a cis man IRL? Or maybe, just MAYBE, there are some other underlying assumptions and attitudes at play here when it comes to playing nonbinary characters specifically.

(As a side note, back when I actually played and didn't just lurk the GDB and Arm vicariously through Valeria, having all the gendered pronouns switched over to a neutral "they" seemed like a no-brainer to me, for a few reasons already touched on by various people in this thread.)

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I'm honestly confused as to why this went into a game of Clue trying to figure out the reasons behind one or two posters wanting they to replace it and then applying it to all people who were in support of this no matter what.

Yes. Some people may want a thousand genders to self insert with. That's true of any game anywhere. Personally, I believe that Arma is not and never will be the place for that.

The addition of 'they' as /coded pronouns/ to cover all other bases isn't asking the playerbase to treat them special, or even to avoid the whole "eh so what, you got a dick or...?" stuff. It would be /odd/, of course, if on an OOC level you overtly or sinisterly took to treating androgynous characters with more scorn than those who somehow mystically remained utterly gendered even when fully cloaked, hooded, facewrapped and so on. But that's another matter entirely.

My wish for possible androgyny lies not in fields of representation flowers every colour of the rainbow, but in the hard goddamn code.

1) You should be able to set a shouting voice at chargen, though with staff approval - as part of the CHARACTER APPLICATION process.
2) If you're concealed to the point of becoming 'figure' in your sdesc, your gender should not be discernible. At this time, it should display 'they' instead of 'she' or 'he'. If you're so concealed I can't even tell if you're human or dwarven or black or white at a glance, I DEFINITELY can't tell if you've got a vagina or not.
3) (and the one most people here are fighting about and confused about) For humanoid individuals who are not displayed prominently as one gender or the other, they should be allowed to display as 'they'. People can gender them however the fuck they want in game as long as there's no (out of character) overt distaste towards people who don't have huge tits or something, but purely the third point I'm making is that by covering every nonfeminine or nonmasculine presentation, you're covering pretty much 60% of Zalanthas anyway, because few folk /ARE/ so masculine and feminine that you can tell what they fuck with at just a glance.

Zalanthas is a world where men and women have no discernible difference of ability and few of build beyond slight curves and breasts, so why does it even make sense for our genders to be so ingrained with our appearance that we can tell 'oh yeah, that's a girl mul' at a first glance even if we have never even seen a single Mul before in our life? How can we tell the individual genders of every single gith we come across, even if our character is 13 years old and never saw a gith before? Either the lore regarding Zalanthan gender equality is wrong, or the code is and a small adjustment would be suited.

I'm not asking for a rainbow of gender presentation. I don't come to Zalanthas to be validated as a trans woman. I come to Zalanthas to rip people open with bone swords. But the lore doesn't match the code in this scenario where everyone is innately a cross-races physician and vet both, with x-ray vision.

At the very least - the VERY least - allowing for concealment of race/sdesc/everything but size to actually also conceal your gender would work to mitigate this disparity. If I can't tell they're anything but 'short', I shouldn't be able to notice their tits before anything else.

At a kindness, setting a shouting voice at chargen would be nice. If I can't tell it's a gith yelling in githspeak, if I can't tell it's a tregil screaming in agony, if I can't tell it's a halfgiants booming roar of a voice, or Tektolnes himself yelling his army forth, how and why can I tell that the yeller has a dick, even outside of my own race or species?

And in a perfect world, a 'they' chargen would solve everything else. But that's the perfect world scenario. It would be fucking nice, yes, but if the other two are in place it's not necessary. Just nice.

For me personally, it's not about representation. It's about making the lore of Zalanthas, and the set guidelines of player presentation, line up with the 'I can see your dick at 900 yards' code.

And trying to dig into the meaning behind what people are possibly saying to be like "hah-hah, you said the word 'representation', clearly that means you want the trans to come here and wag their flag all over us!" is honestly kind of pathetic.

And to anyone who is openly wanting a million genders, well, you do you, but that's not my jam.

[Hauwke]

As a small note, I would like to posit that the fact we as humans are having a crisis of gender is because we have inequalities. Im not saying it is the case but it might be.

That said, in a world where there is perfect equality, no racism, no sexism or sexuality problems, would a Zalanthan actually care what their gender is and would it even come up as a thing? I personally dont think the considerstion like that would be thought of, people would just accept that they have a penis and act all froofy, they accept that they have a vagina and act all gung-ho, they have a penis and act gung-ho.

I really do not think gender identity would matter to a Zalanthan, and that this whole discussion is because a few people want to force that 'issue' into Zalanthas because they feel that it belongs, when it fact it does not.

[Nao]

If you are sort of androgynous, but folks can discern your sex, choose your sex in chargen.
If you are androgynous to the point you would be obviously mistaken as the other sex, choose the other sex in chargen.
If you are so androgynous that it is the thing folks will most remember about you, use androgynous in your sdesc.
If you are sexless (which may or may not be androgynous), do a role application and we can make you neuter sex.

There are options for androgyny.  There is one specific form of androgyny not supported.  There are no plans at this time to support it.

So, to clarify. Let's say I wanted to play a really butch woman. Could I pick 'male' at chargen, then put in a main description that's ambiguous or even states something like 'at a closer look, this person looks more like a woman'?

I doubt I would ever use this for a character, but it would be a nice workaround that doesn't require any coded changes or a special app.

[Nao]

As a small note, I would like to posit that the fact we as humans are having a crisis of gender is because we have inequalities. Im not saying it is the case but it might be.

That said, in a world where there is perfect equality, no racism, no sexism or sexuality problems, would a Zalanthan actually care what their gender is and would it even come up as a thing? I personally dont think the considerstion like that would be thought of, people would just accept that they have a penis and act all froofy, they accept that they have a vagina and act all gung-ho, they have a penis and act gung-ho.

I really do not think gender identity would matter to a Zalanthan, and that this whole discussion is because a few people want to force that 'issue' into Zalanthas because they feel that it belongs, when it fact it does not.

The proposed features were not about gender identity they were about what gender your character appears to be and how that is not always crystal clear. Metekillot even asked to discuss gender identity elsewhere.

Gender identity has only been brought up in this thread as a tangent, it appears mostly because people are afraid that anything gender related will turn into politics about 36 genders. It really doesn't have to (edit: but it will, if you make it a self-fulfilling prophecy). Please, at least try to separate this. People who either actively conceal their gender or just happen to look ambiguous without even trying have been around much longer than any modern ideas about gender identity. They're all over literature and history, too.

[Namino]

The proposed features were not about gender identity they were about what gender your character appears to be and how that is not always crystal clear.

I am willing to believe certain posters genuinely want this because its more immersive not to be able to tell instantly what people are. Posters like Nao and MatisseorOtherwise have consistently argued this point from the beginning. I actually strongly agree with this point, as much as I think we shouldn't be able to look at a cloaked individual and see their full description. It makes perfect sense that a blurry figure ten leagues off shouldn't be a 'male in a facewrap' but just 'a humanoid looking smudge on the horizon'.

However, many, many other posters in this thread 'showed their hand' early on about this being about OOC gender politics, and when hit with resistance, happened upon the 'imperfect perception argument' as a convenient stand-in for their true motives of desiring easier self insertion. I'm not buying it, and the more I'm being wrestled by eye-wool-wielding posters, the more irritated I'm becoming. Give us some credit. We're not idiots. We can discern what are actual motives and what are convenient excuses.

Mostly because I'm on that gay shit,

It's wanting to be able to play characters who are like me

It would be a more welcoming, more inclusive feature. 

If gamers aren't going to blaze a path for social acceptance of the LGBTQ community anymore

I am super femme outwardly, but super gender non-binary inwardly as a pansexual woman

Inclusion isn't picking sides.  Inclusion is inclusion.

I've advertised this mud to my polyamorous friends as being fully supportive of polyamory.  I can't say the same to my trans friends.

This is merely a selection of the ample evidence many (not all) on the pro-side are doing this because they want to self insert or facilitate the self insertion of others, and are using the perception argument as a crutch when challenged on this. For people genuinely wanting a more accurate representation of the imperfect perception abilities, I am with you 100%. But I don't like being taken for a fool and when people try to veil their true motives like this, I'm immediately antagonistic to the attempt.

Personally, leaving aside my aggrieved status at being taken for a fool, in my opinion, the best possible solution would be to remove all characters in emoting except for ~, =, and % (sdescs) and let people just type out their pronouns. For example:

Code Select Expand

>Em smiles at ~androgynous, nodding in support of their proposal.

What results, having played on MUDs like this before, is actually the most accurate representation of imperfect perception in which Amos emotes:

Code Select Expand

> Em smiles at ~androgynous, nodding in support of his proposal.

And Talia emotes:

Code Select Expand

> Em smiles at ~androgynous, nodding in support of her proposal.

And very rarely someone emotes:

Code Select Expand

> Em smiles at ~androgynous, nodding support of their proposal.

Basically showing that Amos and Talia have imperfect and varied perceptions of who ~androgynous is. I imagine this would not satisfy many posters in this thread who want to be hard-codedly restricted to 'they'. But the fact is, if this was about imperfect perception then you'd want people to be able to make mistakes in their perception, and not be restricted to a 'they', perfectly balanced (as all things should be).

[Synthesis]

Who cares if it's really about gender politics?

What do you have to lose if suddenly PCs can grammatically be referred to as "they?"  You lost some culture-war battle fought over some territory that only like a couple hundred people in the entire world care about? Who cares?

I mean...I really don't give a rat's ass, but the idea that this pisses people off to the point that they write multi-paragraph screeds in opposition is...really pretty amusing.

It almost makes me want to support it just to spite the people who don't have any good reason for opposing it.

[Namino]

What do you have to lose if suddenly PCs can grammatically be referred to as "they?"  You lost some culture-war battle fought over some territory that only like a couple hundred people in the entire world care about? Who cares?

That's not my argument. I'm arguing that we shouldn't be encouraging self insertion. And what annoys me is not, in fact, that people want indeterminate pronouns. It's that they're arguing disingeniously for it. I believe having to field disingenuous arguments is a perfectly reasonable source of irritation.

[Synthesis]

Rrriiiiiiight. 

[Namino]

I guess I should get out of academia then, as a bigot like me isn't going to make it in such a liberal environment. 

[Synthesis]

You ain't the only one in here with a doctorate, homie.

And you're right:  disingenuous arguments ARE irritating.

You still haven't answered the question:  what do you have to lose?  How will it demonstrably make the game any -worse- if we allow some marginalized players the comfort of feeling normal in-game?

This appeal to self-insertion argument is a red herring.  We all self-insert.  The question isn't whether we do so, but whether it detracts from the theme or not.

[Namino]

what do you have to lose?  How will it demonstrably make the game any -worse- if we allow some marginalized players the comfort of feeling normal in-game?

That's valid. Honestly the argument I'm making is purely one of semantics (flavored with umbrage at all these side-arguments) and it's very true that perhaps that pales in comparison to the feeling of normalcy that this might bring to some players. If the argument we're making instead is what is the 'greater good', then considering that, it doesn't cost us much to do it and just let people be happy.

In truth I don't have a dog in the fight, and the fact remains that as a gender binary individual, I do have the option to picking pronouns that represent me, and that probably isn't technically fair.

But that's why I'm backing Rathustra's experiment of just... removing all pronouns and leaving us with nothing but the descriptions of characters to make determinations and letting things proceed organically from there.

[MeTekillot]

Rathustra's idea is fine too but why is self-insertion bad? And could your reply be less than 6 sentences if possible?