Being Gendered Correctly

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Originally Posted by Pantz

If I were to use the OP's name as an example,

Kimmy Dee tells a lot of funny jokes. She is a funny person.

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That only works because Kimmy Dee has told us she is female. If we were talking about Alex Ample whose gender we do not know, because they haven't told us, then it is perfectly correct to use "they" and not arbitrarily assign Alex with a gender we can not know. If Alex was playing a female character in an MMO, then I would probably refer to them as "she" because they have presented as female, unless Alex corrected me otherwise, or stick to the neutral singular "they/them"

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Originally Posted by Tharian

That said, if you refuse to class Sylvari as truly inhuman Plant-based Sentience, then what about the Ent's from Tolkein's Lord of the Ring Trilogy?

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My argument might be incorrect, but it's how things are generally perceived. I am willing to bet that the majority of players refer to them with gender-specific pronouns, rather than using "it" (and in other languages, "it" is not even an option in the first place), since appearence plays a big part in everything (and moreover, when you create a character you have to choose between male or female anyway...even if they are technically "genderless").

I don't think Ents have that same amount of physical features that make their gender (no matter if they actually have genders or not) easily discernible. But tbh, I think most people are going to use the next thing useful to determine sex: voice. Treebeard is most likely considered male, due to his voice in the movie and...well.."beard".

EDIT:

About your comment about me citing Italian, I am sorry but I am not sure I understood you - there is no "gender neutrality" in Italian - almost every word changes, yes, but it's either masculine or feminine. There is no neutral, ever, in terms of grammar, just like French. The "neutral" is the masculine, usually. I know this does not concern the language we are using now - I just wanted to point out that every language behaves differently :P You can disregard my comment about this, anyway - not really relevant.

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Originally Posted by Pantz

It is wrong to use "they" in that context (even the singular they). And the English language doesn't have any word to replace he/she as a genderless term. And as someone said, using "it" is definitely worse.

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But a player's actual gender is unspecified and unrelated to their character's gender? If their gender is unknown, "they" is correct.

Also, why are we to page 15 of this subject anyway? Gents playing cat ladies complain about being assumed to be actual ladies all the goddamn time and no one continues to insist on calling them "she".

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Originally Posted by Tharian

So you would refer to Commander Spock as an "It" even though the characters in Star Trek constantly refer to him as a He?

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I don't watch that show... so sure?

/species in fictional stories = srs buizneses

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Originally Posted by Tharian

Yeah, but I add like 5-10 RMT to that list practically every day.

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It's pretty safe to remove the old ones. If they havn't been banned they wouldn't use that char past the intital spam-fest as they then proceed to make a new one to bypass the blacklist list, so can spam you again. Rinse, repeat. I only keep the last couple of days worth of Gil sellers. Rest, never hear from again.

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Originally Posted by Remilia_Nightfall

My argument might be incorrect, but it's how things are generally perceived. I am willing to bet that the majority of players refer to them with gender-specific pronouns, rather than using "it" (and in other languages, "it" is not even an option in the first place), since appearence plays a big part in everything (and moreover, when you create a character you have to choose between male or female anyway...even if they are technically "genderless").

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Meh, the problem your having here is that you are failing to realize just how unimportant physical appearance is for the Sylvari in that game. Yes they refer to each other by the terms of other species. But within their own species you can have a Sylvari who appears female, but who considers herself to be masculine, or no gender at all whatsoever. It truly doesn't matter to the Sylvari what gender they appear, because that is just an appearance to them.

You could be correct about the Ent's, but I got the impression that they were all slow ponderous creatures, and thus would all probably sound like Treebeard did. Also, keep in mind plants (especially tree's) are typified by having access to both gender's sexual organs on the same plant in many cases.

Oh, I understood you. What you need to understand is that Italian is only one language. It is also a relatively young language having it's oldest written forms dating back to 960-963 Common Era. It was predated by Vulgar Latin, which itself was predated by the Celtic Dialect native to that region. Vulgar Latin should not be confused with Classical Latin. Classical Latin being the language that is used by Lawyers and Doctors for their legalese.

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Originally Posted by micropanther7

This. I think people who say it isn't an issue are kind of missing the point :p It IS an issue for Kimmy because she is transgender and it's important to her.

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It's only an issue if you allow it to affect you so much that it becomes an issue. If it was being done maliciously then that is something totally different. Real Life is only relevant to an in game world if you make it relevant.

Personally I think the OP is being overly sensitive to the "issue". I want players to see me as a fun player who brings enough to the game that I make a good part of the team. Not base their attitude on me having breasts.

As I said before, we are all Gender: Gamer.

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Originally Posted by Remilia_Nightfall

I don't think Ents have that same amount of physical features that make their gender (no matter if they actually have genders or not) easily discernible. But tbh, I think most people are going to use the next thing useful to determine sex: voice. Treebeard is most likely considered male, due to his voice in the movie and...well.."beard".

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But we never see or read about the physical description of ent-wives, so we don't know if they are noticeably different XD

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Originally Posted by Tharian

Sylvari issue

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Point it, it DOES matter to people who look and talk and refer to them.
They might not care if they feel "male" while having a pair of huge bazongas and cute leafy eyelashes, but other people (not sure about other Sylvari, I admit) would refer to them basing on their appearance because this is what people are used to do.
Problem is, we are hardly used to sentient, genderless (or with multiple genders) bipedal plants in our everyday life - so this is hardly something that can be solved. Everyone has its own views about things, and no one is really right or wrong I fear :P

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Originally Posted by Tharian

Italian issue

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I perfectly know it's only one language - as said, it was just an example. I know where my language comes from :P

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

I want players to see me as a fun player who brings enough to the game that I make a good part of the team. Not base their attitude on me having breasts.

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Um.. and that has what to do with wanting to be talked about/referred to with the correct pronouns?

It's not asking to be a special case or be treated differently to suggest that people use pronouns that match a player's presented character or remain gender neutral unless corrected or informed by that player differently. That's just basic human decency. Nothing to do with gaming really. It just comes up because in a social game, people use words, and words matter.