Non-binary option for characters, please?

[kamenkuro]

"Gender is real and that's why it can be assigned to anything and everything like something that isn't innate almost as if it were a human construct." ~Literally you not seeing how you contradict yourself.

You can type paragraphs and paragraphs all you want, you'll still be wrong, even poking holes in your own arguments, but somehow unable to see it. Like how is a boat female despite having literally no traits that can be described as feminine. Do you see a woman wearing pants and get absolutely tilted because "dresses are for girls, pants are for boys?"

Plant reproduction and sexual reproduction in general refers to sex which has nothing to do with gender because one doesn't need an arbitrary title to reproduce, they need functioning sex organs.

Loosen the MAGA hat and read a book, holy. It's not hard.

This is unnecessarily hostile. You understand that the "human construct" argument itself is flawed right. Everything is essentially constructed by humans. The idea of time. The idea of gravity. All of it. Your attempts at derailing the conversation by derision was already anticipated.

However, because I want to help folks, I'll simplify this in the most simple of terms. Think of gender as color. For every color we have a clear and defined name. What do we call the sky and the sea? Blue. What do we call apples and sunsets? Red. Gender has that same concrete categorical property. Albeit limited to male and female and having 3 layers. The only time gender is arguable is when there are no biological indicators. So, this is only in regards to objects and ideas.

You can't simply remove the concrete categorical powers of gender. That would be like saying you can call a blue pair of jeans red.

[BillyKaplan]

Everything is essentially constructed by humans. The idea of time. The idea of gravity.

You're confusing 'defined' and 'constructed'. Time and Gravity both existed before humans ever evolved. You pick an item up, you let it go, it falls down. Gravity objectively exists because we don't float in space. Humans didn't construct it, we named it. We didn't invent time, though we defined units of measurements for it. Sex would fall under this as well (and even then there are exceptions to the standard male and female forms, and variations exist between species).
Gender does not. As is evident by what is considered feminine and masculine changes over time period and location. Pink used to be a masculine color. Guys used to wear high heels. Those things change.

Think of gender as color. For every color we have a clear and defined name. What do we call the sky and the sea? Blue. What do we call apples and sunsets? Red.

It's funny that's your example because we can't actually prove that two people see the same color. They just both know to call the ball they're seeing the color on by that name because it's a social agreement that that color, whatever it looks like to them, is "red". Regardless if what I see it as is closer to what you see as blue.
Another thing that's amusing in your example is that words by definition are context-driven. There are Eskimo tribes that have fifty words for snow. Because in their society, the nuances and contexts of snow matter much more than they do to people who live in other places and speak other languages. So you saying 'there is only male and female' isn't so much fact as it is a testament to the society and political climate you live in.

Nobody cares about your gender meat popsicle! Learn how to play your job instead.

"What's your gender?"
"Black mage"

[Shurrikhan]

You're confusing 'defined' and 'constructed'. Time and Gravity both existed before humans ever evolved. You pick an item up, you let it go, it falls down. Gravity objectively exists because we don't float in space. Humans didn't construct it, we named it. Sex would fall under this as well (and even then there are exceptions to the standard male and female forms, and variations exist between species). Gender does not.

That depends entirely on how you define it. Fundamentally and originally, gender is not biological, but linguistic. It is arbitrarily categorical and used solely for convenience of lingual sets, normally following a euphonic ruleset based on a terminal or elisioned component such as an ending vowel or lack thereof -- e.g. -a ending nouns and -o ending nouns for feminine and masculine, respectively, in Spanish. Since then, however, gender has been either or both a stand-in for one's sex itself or for those things attributed to or packaged with it. True, what we choose to ascribe to a gender beyond the physiological consistencies is, by definition, artificial and constructed. But there's still a large portion worth talking about which is not just the binary distinction itself (0|1) that is very much real and proceeds our perceiving it. There are real differences. Not as many as we may like to think, but also perhaps more than many others may like to.

It's funny that's your example because we can't actually prove that two people see the same color. They just both know to call the ball they're seeing the color on by that name because it's a social agreement that that color, whatever it looks like to them, is "red". Regardless if what I see it as is closer to what you see as blue.
Another thing that's amusing in your example is that words by definition are context-driven. There are Eskimo tribes that have fifty words for snow. Because in their society, the nuances and contexts of snow matter much more than it does to people who live in other places and speak other languages. So you saying 'there is only male and female' isn't so much fact as it is a testament to the society and political climate you live in.

If two sets hold a one-to-one correspondence between them, does it matter that, say, one's immediate association to "red" may be a different shade than your own? The sole purpose is communication, and parameters, lenient to irrelevant measures of nuance, are essential to communication.

Such lingual distinctions are created only when there is consistency and utility in those distinctions. Can such exist for genders? Can you generate words of consistent and distinct object that are worth that further differentiation? And would those words actually be spectral? I could take the modern use of "gamine" for instance, with a very distinct and unique sense of something alike to gender or gendered-ness, but that's not a position between male and female any more than those fifty forms of snow are measured by their progression between solid and liquid. It becomes something not quite describing gender, because it doesn't quite have anything to do with gender. And it's not merely because there are too few words for the existent sexes or how they may be perceived; it's solely because the things worth describing beyond that, outside of intersex or dualsex persons, clear-cut biological distinction don't really have to do with gender itself. And we have those words already. And if it actually becomes useful enough to make and use them, we'll eventually have more or new ones, just as others have faded from use. Having just a word each for solid, liquid, or gas, for electron, quark, or neutrino, isn't evidence of an empty system. It's just evidence of a technical division where the described is technically divided by the given factor. Other words for factors not thus divided are still free to surround and augment them.

[BillyKaplan]

Such lingual distinctions are created only when there is consistency and utility in those distinctions. Can such exist for genders?

It already does, it depends on language and cultural context.

I could take the modern use of "gamine" for instance, with a very distinct and unique sense of something alike to gender or gendered-ness, but that's not a position between male and female

We're not talking about sexes here though.

And if it actually becomes useful enough to make and use them, we'll eventually have more or new ones, just as others have faded from use.

Sadly that boils down to politics more than anything. Just look at this thread and the backlash over something that ultimately doesn't affect 90%+ of the people who replied in this thread. The words and terms won't hold so long as people reject them for no reason other than xenophobia and bigotry. "leave real life out of our games!" so it's ok to play a dragon waifu but gender ambiguity is too much. Ok.

[Lastelli]

Sadly that boils down to politics more than anything. Just look at this thread and the backlash over something that ultimately doesn't affect 90%+ of the people who replied in this thread. The words and terms won't hold so long as people reject them for no reason other than xenophobia and bigotry. "leave real life out of our games!" so it's ok to play a dragon waifu but gender ambiguity is too much. Ok.

That's not how it works. What the OP wants would pose two additional constraints on the dev team: a financial one, in case they have to go through all the text already in the game and modify it to make sure it's consistent with the the idea of gender neutrality, and one that has to do with creative freedom, since any choice going forward should also accomodate for the chance of having to deal with a third, neutral gender.

I don't want the dev team to waste time and financial resources on something that is relevant for <1% of the player base.

[kamenkuro]

snip

No, the reason I used time and gravity is because they are not so cut and dry. Time is constantly being studied and theories are constantly being put forth. The thing that we call time is simply a stop gap made so that we would have any easier understanding of our world. Many scientists are trying to better clarify what time actually is. Time is simply the name we give to this feeling of constant change. Some say we can measure it, others say it is immeasurable. Even gravity upon the conception of it's name was not what it is today. The major thing is that these changes and challenges are made with the mind to better understand the names that we have given to those things that we want to understand. This idea that people want to erase the definition of gender is harmful as it is not an attempt to better understand it, it is an attempt to destroy for their sake and theirs alone.
Also, your attempt to dissect my analogy is poorly constructed. Pointing out that 2 people might not see the same color is a poor rebuttal as we already know that color reception and color wavelengths are well documented.
That insistance to latch onto the language aspect does not do anything to prove a point either. It simply shows you have no argument that can challenge the content. Regarding a cultures practices on snow categorizing does not make it any less true. You cannot argue that a word in the language that you are conversing in does not suddenly mean what you want it to mean. You cannot change the rules of a language on your own.