Non-binary option for characters, please?

[Iscah]

Well I mean, it's mostly the garbage way the OP decided to present their argument and responses. They're either trying to troll with some low-quality bait or they lack more self-awareness than Neil Breen.

I've seen people in this community make all sorts of inane "suggestions/requests" and people tend to rebuff them with general civility--so long as the OP doesn't come off like a complete berk.

The vitriol seems to be directed at the general concept, not the OP though.

(And I'll give the benefit of the doubt until someone is definitely trolling - answer them seriously and see if they are actually engaging in discussion or just keeping on their own path (like a certain poster elsewhere in the forum lately). I took them to be genuine but just overdefensive because discussions are likely to end up... well, like this. But yes, did not get the tone off to a great start either. Though I didn't fully absorb their tone the first time I read it either - just looked at what they were actually asking for, which wasn't even 'equal billing' with the male and female options.)

*** On a tangent about "singular they", I just realised I used it all through that last paragraph without even thinking about it. I think I use it a lot, especially when discussing things online - it's a lot easier than possibly referring to someone by the wrong gender. Though on the receiving end, some people default to using "he" to refer to anyone on a forum, and that always feels strange. Do I hold up the discussion to point out actually I'm a "she", or let it slide? (and I guess for someone who doesn't feel right with either set of pronouns, it must feel like that all the time.)

And I agree it's not worth the work to implement it into this game at this point - particularly relative to things that will benefit the majority of players. It's something that would need to be in there from the ground up.

I do have to wonder how people will handle it in future games with character-creator options though, because even the most idealistic "cater to everyone" aspiration needs to be balanced with how many extra options they can actually provide.

I guess it might depend on where society goes and what becomes the 'expected minimum', and whether people identify in more complex or less complex ways once (or "if", for those who don't see it as inevitable) things become more settled and accepted. Not having to 'make up their own answer' for how to handle pronouns, for example. Singular-they seems to be becoming standardised, in mainstream coverage at least, though I don't know if everyone thinks that's the case or not.

[Gun-Cat]

...I know that this is totally not adding to the discussion at hand, but just on the off-chance that someone is intrested in why "Mädchen" is gender-neutral in german: "-chen" is a special diminutive ending that you can put together with a noun. It automatically makes the word "gender-neutral" or at least gives it gender-neutral pronouns/the gender-neutral article "das" ("der Fisch" - "das Fischchen").

"Mädchen" is most likely derived from the word "die Magd" (maid; but also just a young, unmarried woman) - so: Die Magd - Das Mä(g)dchen. And it just ended up sticking as the word we're using for girls now.

But you're correct - everything in german is highly genderd, even when it makes little sense... our dogs are all male (der Hund), cats are all female (die Katze) and children simply have no gender (das Kind).
Gender-neutral options pretty much dont exist - sometimes I envy the english language for having "they". Not so much because of the topic at hand but more so because that way I can refer to people ingame without knowing their gender. Personally it doesnt bother me when someone refers to me as "he", but I may also not react to it, because as female I'm obviously not used to being adressed as "he" ("Oh, you were talking about me? Yeah, sure, sure can do that")

Ohh, thanks for clearing that up! It has been some time since I looked into my German textbooks. Interesting to know! While we are at it, I fraintly remember reading some letters in german that had some fancy endings like "Student/-innen", mind explaining what that is all about? Is that an attempt to address both students male and female? Might be atleast tangentially related to this thread.

[Alyssa_Secheh]

What about those who wish to be referred to by their specific chosen pronoun?

Should SE put the option for the Warrior of Light to be referred to as Zee, Zim or Zer into the dialogue?

Where does it stop? You're asking for a company with a global market to cater for the 1% of the 1% (at a push), and if denied will simply shout about how oppressed you feel, despite being alive at a time where more people have astounding amounts of personal freedom than in other point in history.

If it's of such concern to you to be referred to as non-binary in a computer game that you'd go to the effort of making a thread on the forums and arguing your point, I'd argue that we must have made some pretty damn good headway in solving the real, serious issues we've historically faced.

[kikix12]

God, when society in about 100 years from now looks back on this and how the word “SJW” is used as a slur for people who ask for more options of self expression, they’ll facepalm so hard.

Um...Twenty thousands years ago people that did not identify with either male or female were shunned or killed.
Five thousands years ago people that did not identify with either male or female were shunned or killed.
Two thousands years ago people that did not identify with either male or female were shunned or killed.
Five hundredths years ago people that did not identify with either male or female were shunned or killed.
One hundredth years ago people that did not identify with either male or female were shunned or tolerated.
Now people that do not identify with either male or female are shunned or tolerated.

I think that expecting people in a hundred years to take non-identification with male or female as an "obvious" thing is wishful thinking at best. I do believe that the "shunned" part will be reduced with time and the "tolerated" part will grow ever larger (even transforming to accepted in fair deal)...but "obvious"...it never will be. It threatens the survival of the species, and as such, there will always be significant masses that will not readily embrace it. As such, people that fight for that at the expense of freedoms (creative or legal) will never really be considered any less derogatorily. Even if the word used will change, "SJW" will end up being an "archaic synonym" at best.


As for the whole premise of this thread, the game is designed and established as it is. Redesigning the whole game is simply excessive, especially since that redesign is incompatible with at least some of the languages to which it is translated and therefore some versions cannot include it at all. Take it or leave it, but depending on how important that feature is to you, it may simply mean that you are not the target audience.

[Tint]

I do have to wonder how people will handle it in future games with character-creator options though, because even the most idealistic "cater to everyone" aspiration needs to be balanced with how many extra options they can actually provide.

I guess it might depend on where society goes and what becomes the 'expected minimum', and whether people identify in more complex or less complex ways once (or "if", for those who don't see it as inevitable) things become more settled and accepted. Not having to 'make up their own answer' for how to handle pronouns, for example. Singular-they seems to be becoming standardised, in mainstream coverage at least, though I don't know if everyone thinks that's the case or not.

We can't even create left handed characters here, despite the fact that left handed people are pretty much accepted as human beings, so I wouldn't expect too much o.ô;

(btw, why aren't left handed characters a thing)

[BillyKaplan]

Redesigning the whole game

The game already checks your character's sex when it does basically anything. In cutscenes and even emotes and it changes automatically based on what you decided when you last used a Fantasia. Design wise the game already does it, the options are limited, is all.

that redesign is incompatible with at least some of the languages to which it is translated

That's the better argument and why I agree we're likely not going to see it. If the game was ever translated to my native tongue (won't happen, thank the Twelve) this would not be possible. Although that really depends on how the existing system is implemented more than anything, going with what I proposed earlier in the thread that either gender has a "straight forward" and "ambiguous" option, such languages could just refer both options to the same text option. They will effectively miss out on the function but the system can coexist for all languages regardless.

[Iscah]

We can't even create left handed characters here, despite the fact that left handed people are pretty much accepted as human beings, so I wouldn't expect too much o.ô;

(btw, why aren't left handed characters a thing)

All summoners are lefties!

(But yeah, the option would have been nice. No doubt would have meant sacrificing something else though. I'd take the ability to flip hairstyles over body animations, given a choice of one extra thing.)

[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.

[Magic-Mal]

We can't even create left handed characters here, despite the fact that left handed people are pretty much accepted as human beings, so I wouldn't expect too much o.ô;

(btw, why aren't left handed characters a thing)

Time to make a controversial thread. I've come up with a new recipeh!

[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.