Being Gendered Correctly

[Teppie]

Hello Dude!!!!!!!!! Hope see you in the Duty Finder soon Bro j/k

Hey man we're both on primal, we just might see each other some day! I've been in Sunken Temple all day if you wanna try to roulette to meet up

[Dawnshade]

How did this get to 44 pages lol.

[Kyras]

Some responses in this thread are incredibly tasteless and offensive, and as such I’d like to make a probably incoherent response addressing some of the major things I noticed reading through the thread.

In their responses, a number of people who disagree with the TC seem to like pulling the “A majority of players are male therefore I will refer to everyone as male” card. According to data from the the sixth volume of Nick Yee’s “Daedalus Project” report [1], 31.8% of MMO players are women (where n = 4429, a statistically massive sample). Some people responded to numbers like these by arguing that 30% if a minority and therefore irrelevant. One poster went so far as to argue that 55% of players being male would be enough to justify calling every player male.

Consider the following proposal. You’re given a choice, you can roll a 10 sided dice and if you roll between 1 and 7 (inclusive) you would be given $10,000. If however you roll between 8 and 10 (inclusive) you would lose that same amount of money (and go into debt if you didn’t have that much). Would you take the bet? If not, then why would you consider 30% of a population to be an insignificant minority.

The second major argument used is that her being transgender is a non-issue to other people and ignorable. The general public is blissfully unaware of how much discrimination transgender people face in everyday life (and can go as far to unintentionally support that discrimination). Transgender people are four times as likely as the general population to live in poverty (less than $10,000/year) and twenty-five times as likely to attempt suicide. More than half of the respondents were harassed in public accommodations (ex, hotels, restaurants, government buildings). [2]

When transgender people go online to find the same kind of archaic attitudes that are prevalent in real life it should hardly come as a surprise that they might speak up and ask to be treated more fairly, especially since speaking up for one’s self is significantly easier in an anonymous setting such as the internet. The fact that a simple request like “I want to be referred to by the same pronoun as my avatar’s gender.” is met with such vitriol is exactly the same problem that leads to the aforementioned discrimination. It can be a challenge for people, but once you learn how to be empathetic (which inherently requires making yourself emotionally vulnerable) you just might come to realize that your actions and the actions of some of your peers may have been hurting others around you.

And for the people who are intentionally misgendering the TC, your actions are absolutely disgusting and in the real world would get you in trouble, people have lost their jobs over much less horrid speech.

In regards to the prescriptivists in the thread who believe that the “singular they” is incorrect, it’s common usage among both academics and the general populace is enough to make it valid English. While historically “he” has been used to refer to unspecified genders (though not as far back as the singular they was used) it’s silly to try to argue that the word can be completely divorced from its gender implications.

I realize this has gotten rambly but as someone with transgender friends I have some strong feelings around the ignorance displayed in this thread that I felt needed addressing.

TL;DR: Show some empathy for your peers.


[1] http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/6-1.pdf
[2] http://www.thetaskforce.org/download.../ntds_full.pdf

[PrimeEvilPanda]

Why is making fun of someone who is transgender funny?


And I don't get how you all aren't running into female gamers. I always run into other girls. Just yesterday I had 2 all female DF parties. We all confirmed we were girls. Someone might have lied but I will never know. Still a girl. There are a lot of guys but there is a good number of girls floating around. Maybe the reason you think you are running into guys all the time is because you are assuming every pixel body in front of you has a male behind them?

No one in this thread was making fun of her. They were just sorta pointing out the absurdity of this thread.

It's absurd to assume that every person in this game should apologize because they didn't correctly identify the gender of another player.

The fact I have to inform you I'm a female myself and that I don't understand why she (the OP) even posted this thread is rather sad. The pitch-fork shakers need to listen to the few posters here who have said it shouldn't matter what gender we are in a video game. Because at the end of the day, if you don't step out of the red circle, first thing that comes out of the chat log is: "DPS didn't dodge"

[Gnova]

The way I handle this situation is that I tend to use very gender neutral language to speak to another person unless/until I find out what their gender is.

I think people need to wrap their heads around the fact that there is no promise of true gender behind a avatar and taking offense to someone guessing wrong is a tag ridiculous.
Knowing that over 50% of players are male why would anyone refer to someone by their avatar gender unless they prefer being wrong more times than right.

I've played mostly female characters in MMOs for more than a decade and I don't think anyone has addressed me as a "she" since Y2K was still a thing. Armed with that information I am amazed that anyone could be shocked/upset by not being called "she" when playing a female character.

[Gnova]

Recently i was reading "supposedly poll"..

In the 2014. 49% of the gamers in a MMRPG are Female and 51% Males.

BUT.............

Where are those girls? xD. I cant see they.

During my exp in ARR, FFXI, TERA, AION and Wow... 9/1 is the ratio.. 9 guys per 1 girl.

This is the reason most of us tent to think in "He".

Taking as example in my alt and main FC..

We have like 10 guys and 1 Girl...
In my other FC we have like 30 guys and 1 girl xD
The other one is a exception 3 girls and 14 guys lol

Regardless of the game, whenever I have played in a more hardcore / raiding type guild it has always been at least 1/3 female.
I think maybe the massive, invite anyone who is passing by one a mount, type guild/FC probably skews heavily towards the male side.

Actually there was one exception, AoC. That was mostly male.

[Shioban]

Some responses in this thread are incredibly tasteless and offensive, and as such I’d like to make a probably incoherent response addressing some of the major things I noticed reading through the thread.

TL;DR: Show some empathy for your peers.

There's a difference between deliberate 'I'm calling you [X] to annoy you' and simply using the wrong terminology based on a split second assumption.

I can assure you when I played a female Miqo'te that plenty of people assumed I was either Male or Female.
Did that bother me? Should it have bothered me?

No. Don't be ridiculous. It simply doesn't matter, no one really cares about your real gender.



Such minor things shouldn't offend anyone in a video game.
If you're going to get upset and self-righteous because someone said he instead of she whilst you're fighting internet dragons, you have some serious issues that you're trying to project into this digital medium, and I genuinely and whole heartedly think that you should seek further help if it's frustrating anyone to such an end.




TL;DR

Stop taking things like this seriously, you're fighting internet dragons to get yourself more gear and weapons for your imaginary warrior of light.
Your real life gender doesn't matter.

How did this get to 44 pages lol.

Fighting Internet dragons is a serious business.

Gender equality is important in an MMORPG. (apparently)

[Umbranox]

I can't even believe this is a thread, my hopes for the future of humanity are slipping

[Spot]

TL;DR: Show some empathy for your peers.

TL;DR 1st world personal problem. It's not other's burden to walk on eggshells with transgender people because of their choices/lifestyle/feelings.


[/QUOTE]

[NinjaTaru72]