Being Gendered Correctly

[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

[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)

[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]

[Aescha]

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]

Expecting human decency is a "burden"

I agree with Kimmy it's extremely annoying, and is a sensitive place for most transgender people.

in ffxi i rolled a hume once because I was tired of people assuming I was male on my mithra, I thought knowing i had the choice of gender might help, but no.

1st world problem is racist and implies lgbt people do not exist in the developing world. You do not actually care about developing countries, only about making yourself sound smart.

When people do this, I ask politely for them not to do that. if they ignore it i interact with them as minimally as possible to complete the instance, and then preferably, never have to see or hear from them again.

[Skivvy]

]
1st world problem is racist and implies lgbt people do not exist in the developing world. You do not actually care about developing countries, only about making yourself sound smart.

People throw the "Racist" card around way too freely. This has nothing to do with racism. And yes, the fact that we can all sit around on our computers, complaining about hurt feelings, that would be a 1st world problem.

[Aescha]

People throw the "Racist" card around way too freely. This has nothing to do with racism. And yes, the fact that we can all sit around on our computers, complaining about hurt feelings, that would be a 1st world problem.

people have computers, and feelings, in countries like Nigeria.

first world problem in your case seems to your lack of the latter

[Skivvy]

Your quote is broken. You have me quoted with your comment. But anyway, arguing about what makes for a 1st world issue may be more enjoyable than the current topic.

[Aescha]

Your quote is broken. You have me quoted with your comment. But anyway, arguing about what makes for a 1st world issue may be more enjoyable than the current topic.

fixed. Though given your insensitivity to the original poster, and use of basically the idiom "Race card" i doubt I'd enjoy discussing anything with you to be honest

[o3o]

Expecting human decency is a "burden"

I agree with Kimmy it's extremely annoying, and is a sensitive place for most transgender people.

in ffxi i rolled a hume once because I was tired of people assuming I was male on my mithra, I thought knowing i had the choice of gender might help, but no.

1st world problem is racist and implies lgbt people do not exist in the developing world. You do not actually care about developing countries, only about making yourself sound smart.

When people do this, I ask politely for them not to do that. if they ignore it i interact with them as minimally as possible to complete the instance, and then preferably, never have to see or hear from them again.[/QUOTE]

Its just a game. Nobody cares what you are.

Did you honestly expect they would?