I really appreciate the open mind and level head you are using to respond here, Nergal. We don't always agree, but you do try and be fair and level headed. And I appreciate that.
I am referring (if you look at the above post I made with the two pictures) to people who are biologically of female sex, and male sex respectively. They are not transgender (as Andrej(a) Pejic) in Raptor_Dan's post is. Casey Legler works exclusively as a male model and is female. Alexander Bekker has more fluid presentation.
I'm not asking for (or suggesting) the ability to pick a neutral gender role, but instead to be able to pick an option that does not gender all targeted emotes, assess -v, wear, and many, many other commands, to something that should not necessarily be he/she. The people in the pictures are not biologically intersex or even transgender. They are a woman who legitimately looks like a man, and a man who legitimately looks like a woman. Not necessarily all of the time. At many junctures, you are able to tell their sex is one or the other.
As a question/aside: If I was to want to play Casey Legler from the above pictured - she is biologically female and for all apparent appearances is male, should I choose male or female in character creation? Bearing in mind in the answer: all coded echoes, emote targeting, assess -v, look, and dozens and dozens of other commands will tell you that Casey is a woman, even though she looks entirely male. Could you choose male instead, even though you are not biologically a male, so that the hundreds of thousands of times (over a few years, granted) that these coded things will be a part of your character's experience reflect their male appearance?
What about someone who looks female all over but is 95% genetically male on a chromosomal level, and is not technically intersex because their genitalia is not ambiguous and they only present the sex characteristics of one sex? Should I choose female even though they are not a female via their biological sex?
I am not asking this because I want to stir up problems or be difficult, but because there are thousands and thousands of little ways that the game genders your character based on your decision of 'sex', and there are a lot more grey areas and places where this is not 100% obvious on a glance, than a lot of people might think.
I'll grant that I am a mite bit obsessed with such things. (I don't know how many people realize the difference and similarity in the cowper's/skene's gland, or that both males and females have a prostate that can be stimulated but the female prostate is actually what is commonly referred to as the 'g-spot'. I don't know how many people understand that you can be perfectly female physically and genetically 95% male. There is a lot about sex and biology that many people are not aware of.)
Should I pick a female gender with Casey and a male gender with Alexander? If so, does it not seem more strange and jarring that someone who looks female or looks male consistently and constantly be misgendered (mis-sexed?) in every emote or time that code comes into play? What would be considered the best solution and way to broach it (again, bearing in mind that neither is intersex, they just look different than their biological sex)?
Especially in light of hearing from Akaramu about player complaints for trying to convey someone that does not have the binary appearance of X or Y gender, how can we better reflect this in the game? Because it seems like it is a problem if trying to convey this lack of physically apparent sex results in player complaints to be fielded.
I am asking because you are not just choosing their sex. You are choosing the gender pronouns that will be enforced on you by code during every interaction that you will ever have for the life of a character. I would honestly prefer it if coded gender pronouns were all changed to they/their/them, and let players show through emotes on the part of their own pc what the pronoun appropriate for their appearance is, without the game enforcing it based on biological sex, when biological sex can be at total odds with actual apparent sex, even when you are not clinically intersex. But I doubt that will ever happen. Which is why (and I'm not seemingly alone in this) it would be nice to have an option to choose that for yourself, rather than having the game pick a biological sex for pronouns, that may be 100% at odds with what people are seeing in your description.
