Gender-locking isn't sexist

[Alucard135]

People's characters are them.

Nope, all characters' data (including your own character) are SE's property. You should check the user agreement that you accepted before you started playing the game.

[craybest]

gender lock in itself could not be sexist. if the female race would be a savave monstruous bad ass looking race, and the male race was a feminine race for example, it wouldn't be sexist at all (in fact it would be very much against gender stereotypes, which is what sexism is anbout)
BUT in this case we have a race of sexy looking female bunnies in leather/latex lingerie and a race of hunched beast male brutes in gladiator clothes, so it DOES reinforce gender stereotypes that females should be sexy and males should look strong.
so, by reinforcing gender stereotypes it IS sexist.
about the supposed reasons for it to happen we already know yoshi P himself said that "male bunnies would be weird". because there's nothing wrong with playboy like females, but god forbid there's a male counterpart because that's just "weird".
and we also know it's not just a matter of resources, since a second race for a gender is less work than a whole new second gender locked race made from scratch, lore, npc's and story need to be created all over again a second time.
no one thinks the devs ARE sexist or anything, there's vasts amount of evidence in game that they are not, and that they are trying to accomodate to all people, as diverse as they can. but that doesnn't mean they can't make sexist decisions from time to time (it can happen to any of us) the point is to know when it's happening and call them out for it, make them see their mistake and how to solve it.

[Clover_Blake]

[...] and even throwing death threats at someone just because you didn't get your own way

Wait... what? Death threats?

[Tempest222]

Agreed, it has nothing to do with sexism. It was still a poor choice imo. That doesn’t mean I think anyone is lazy or didn’t work hard on the content etc, I just think it was a poor choice and that citing lore is a very weak excuse. They make the lore, they can make it say whatever they want and/or change it to suit whatever they want to add to the game. But I don’t believe that lore is actual the reason the races are gender locked anyway. They probably just had an idea and wanted to do both races but didn’t currently have the resources to make two full races so they thought this would be an adequate compromise. Obviously many players disagree. I think it would have been better to pick one race and fully do both genders than to make two half races.

[Alucard135]

gender lock in itself could not be sexist. if the female race would be a savave monstruous bad ass looking race, and the male race was a feminine race for example, it wouldn't be sexist at all (in fact it would be very much against gender stereotypes, which is what sexism is anbout)
BUT in this case we have a race of sexy looking female bunnies in leather/latex lingerie and a race of hunched beast male brutes in gladiator clothes, so it DOES reinforce gender stereotypes that females should be sexy and males should look strong.
so, by reinforcing gender stereotypes it IS sexist.

So in order to avoid sexism, we should never make any muscular looking males or sexy looking females but instead make all females savage monstrous looking and all males feminine. Go it.

[J-Reyno]

So in order to avoid sexism, we should never make any muscular looking males or sexy looking females but instead make all females savage monstrous looking and all males feminine. Go it.

Wrong! But fortunately for you I'm here to help.

In order to avoid sexism we should make muscular, bestial female counterparts to the muscular, bestial males. Make sexy, alluring and lithe male counterparts to the lithe and alluring females.

In order to avoid sexism, we should offer gender parity. It's as simple as that.

[Alucard135]

Wrong! But fortunately for you I'm here to help.

In order to avoid sexism we should make muscular, bestial female counterparts to the muscular, bestial males. Make sexy, alluring and lithe male counterparts to the lithe and alluring females.

In order to avoid sexism, we should offer gender parity. It's as simple as that.

So if they were to give us male Viera and female Hrothgar instead, would that be sexist too? Because there are people that want Hrothgar, and there are those that want Viera. And the dev team doesn't have the resources to do all 4 of them at the same time. So according to you now this case will also be sexist, since we don't have the equal counterpart.

[Xebric]

This topic is not politically charged nor should it be made out like it is. This is all about fans of a series / game asking for content and being underwhelmed and unsatisfied with what answers we were given. We want to see the game succeed and we feel this decision is not fun for players already playing nor will it draw in new players by limiting options.

How do you explain to a person new to Final Fantasy (like many of my IRL friends and family) that they can't be something because "lore" when they're sitting on a character creation screen disappointed before they're even given a chance to play? A few lines of text on a clan / race selection screen is not going to be a satisfying enough reason when the race does exist - just not in the gender they'd prefer.

During the FFXI days I always played a "Manthra" because I disliked all the male options and male Mithra was not allowed because "lore". Once again, it's all about having fun and doing what's best for both the community and the game itself. Lore is the weakest and most unsatisfying reason for many people unfamiliar with a title ("Midichlorians" in Star Wars, anyone?), and I think that's reason enough to have a discussion without dragging politics into it.

[Izam]

I hope this doesn't surprise anybody, but I'm not a female Miqo'te in real life. I'm not even a monk! My character is not me.

[Arkdra]

So if they were to give us male Viera and female Hrothgar instead, would that be sexist too? Because there are people that want Hrothgar, and there are those that want Viera. And the dev team doesn't have the resources to do all 4 of them at the same time. So according to you now this case will also be sexist, since we don't have the equal counterpart.

Depending on their designs for them it might be less sexist if the genders were flipped, just because then underrepresented body types might be getting represented, but it would still on the whole be not great and they definitely should have done both genders of either Viera or Hrothgar. No real preference either way. It would also be fine if they did this split with the commitment to add the other gender eventually as well, even if that takes awhile.

Also it's cool that some people don't see their characters as extensions of themselves, but a lot of people do. And those people probably don't really want to be reminded of their every day bullshit when they play this game to get away from it all.