Changes for Trans Characters

Suladan

I, like Hasar, thought this was about trans skills, which is why I read it. That being said, when you start the game and create a character you choose male or female. Those are the options.

If you want another option, write to the admins. Use the IDEA command - HELP IDEA - that's what it's there for. We, as players, are not going to code it and talking about it on the forums is waste of everybody's time.

From a real-world point of view, I don't think they're going to spend the time and effort to re-code a ton of things (literally every he/she, him/her, his, her, in the entire game) to include an 'it'. That's a bad business choice as there's a LOT more things that are higher on the priority list and DEFINITELY more remunerative. E.g. Mhaldor houses finally completing, everybody else's houses finishing, multiclass, knight changes, ships, deleting veils, etc.

Daslin

Nikodemus said:

 I find it sad that I have to pretend the game is not misgendering me.

Going to address -just- this. The game is not misgendering you. Nor your character. You picked the gender/sex. If it's wrong, you only have yourself to blame here.

Aepas

This is pretty much a race argument as well. Some people are white, some people are black. But they're also british, american, or what have you. So which category do you put them into? Well I'm from america, so I'm american. I'm also white. I'm also a male.

So if I was in a crowd of people my pronoun becomes "that white american guy" over there. This is a form of identification especially in a place where that may not be the majority.

Now if I go into a crowded area and this kind of mentality exists, I'm in trouble. Here is how I see it breaking down:
Uhh. yeah, that guy over there
-records screech, everyone stares-
Woah, why's it gotta be a guy?
I dunno, cause it's a guy?
omg you cissexist get the hell out of my establishment.

I'm not having any of that.
Yeah, there is still racism in the world, and so there will be sexism or whatever paradigm this stuff falls under, but it's getting better. Designating people as Cis though, that's a step backward. Way to segregate the culture further.
Achaeans are a pretty multicultural bunch. We are all from different countries, different backgrounds, different colors, sexes, and plenty of us are trans. If you're in a community that 100% couldn't care less about our cultures and races, don't bring up the divisions between us. We're a pretty large respecting family.
*doesn't mean you can't push for things in the more social world, but here is not the place to do it. *

Atalkez

Wat

Shara

Jacen said:

Nikodemus said:

I'm going to go ahead and ignore the fact someone just used the transrace arguement on me. Implying gender is something physical just like race (Plot twist, it isn't).

As for what @Bukariin points out I do appreciate the insight on what it'd mean code-wise, I am not familiar with that.

I do know no one's going to .oppose. to me being whoever I want, or anyone. But there is a difference between letting people "cheat" a bit and actively offering the option. I find it sad that I have to pretend the game is not misgendering me. I find it sad that trans people have to pretend while cis people get the "canon".

I don't think anyone compared gender to race. @Blujixapug compared sex to race, which is a perfectly valid comparison. The male/female in your HONORS reflects your sex, not your gender.

I would agree with Jacen. I think Blu was referring to sex and race. Furthermore, it would be erroneous to say that a Asian woman, like myself, should have behavioural characteristics of Asian indentity, such as with gender stereotypes. Gender is a behaviour concept, as I said, the same as assuming there are things that ever race of people should be assumed to do based on their genetic make-up. Hence the term, racist, being not just the colour of one's skin but by stereotypically assume behaviours.

IRL Race has very small chromosomal characteristics within a species. Now, if we did consider the "races" of Achaea being different "species,"  then the argument would be a bit more valid against comparing gender to species. The difference between species of living things in terms of genetics is HUGE and is why most things cannot procreate across species lines. In Achaea, a Siren and a Human can have a Grook baby. Just as with races of homo sapiens, both can appear similarly but have different characteristics of detail.

Sarapis

People, whatever your view on gender identity and what makes someone a particular gender (or whether gender exists at all)....it's not a good topic for discussion here. Not that there isn't a real discussion to be had but as @Cooper said, nothing good can come from having it on the forums. It strays much too close to all sorts of political hot buttons for people. 

To @Nikodemus's request: I get what you're asking for and why, and I'm sympathetic to the frustration you must feel when almost every video game forces you into one of those two genders when you feel they don't encompass who you are, but I'm also afraid we have to say no. We're a 17 year old codebase with a LOT of disparate systems, and binary gender is too interwoven to be worth changing. Sorry we can't help there!

Nikodemus

@Shara Sure, of course there's a scientific way to define "biological sex". What I'm saying is that it's excluding intersex people, and thus insisting that there is such thing as black and white when it comes to gender, which is still harmful. And even if we consider "biological sex" as an actual thing, why should anyone know if I have a dick or not, no one has a right to know my "sex". In the end, I can be "biologically male" as you say (Which is still a harmful way to look at things) and identify as whatever I wish. Thus, my honours should reflect my gender just like everyone else.

Antonius

@Tharvis: Given how prevalent pronouns are in all of the game's output, I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually pretty easy to provide the option to pick a different pronoun in most cases. The character instance almost certainly has a method to return the correct pronoun for use in messages, they shouldn't be making that check everywhere they need to use it. There might be some instances where that's not the case, but they can be fixed as they're found by submitting TYPOs.

Sarapis

@Antonius You'd be incorrect!

Nikodemus

@Sarapis I understand the issue with the coding. Would being able to switch genders be an issue as well, though?

Or allowing for Satyrs and Sirens to be either gender, perhaps?

Antonius

Sarapis said:

@Antonius You'd be incorrect!

I should know better by now, but I still hope. I feel sorry for Tecton and Makarios.

Sarapis

No, we're not going to allow for switching sex, which is really what your male/female status means in Achaea. You can also pick either for your character when starting, so there should be no issue with gender and sex not matching, except in the case of Satyrs and Sirens, but as the defining characteristics of Satyrs and Sirens are that they only exist in one sex, we're not going to change that either I'm afraid. That's 15+ years of canon there.

Tharvis

I only recall two isolated incidents of character sex changes, and weren't those sold -very expensively- at auctions?

Sarapis

Antonius said:

Sarapis said:

@Antonius You'd be incorrect!

I should know better by now, but I still hope. I feel sorry for Tecton and Makarios.

Nah, you're just misunderstanding the issues involved. Obviously, there are various routines that you pass a gender to and they spit back whatever's required, but gender goes beyond just that, into individual progs (the individual scripts controlling individual mobs) and some other things that expect a binary answer to gender. Anything's doable, but the effort-reward balance is just not worth it here.

Sarapis

Tharvis said:

I only recall two isolated incidents of character sex changes, and weren't those sold -very expensively- at auctions?

I don't actually remember, or I wasn't here for that. Quite possible it happened while I wasn't much involved with Achaea, from roughly late '06 to spring '12.

Jacen

Lynara and Artanis, though I don't know what it sold for.

Sarapis

I'm going to shut this thread down now, just because there's a high risk of someone reading only the first few posts, posting something inappropriate, and setting off a firestorm.