More transgender options in the cog/hosted games?

[Havenstone]

@Dominic

Precisely because it’s anachronistic, I suppose, rather than simply fantastic. It betrays a lack of imagination, that one can’t bear the depiction of a culture different than the one with which they’re familiar.

It’s a brave new world indeed we live in… where non-traditional gender identities are so thoroughly woven into the fabric of daily life that it apparently requires great imagination to depict a culture that doesn’t ask what gender you identify as.

You do say a few posts later that

@Dominic

the standard is not universally accepted [Ed: surely a bit of an understatement, esp. when it comes to trans issues?] within our present culture, so the projection of it into these settings serves as a sort of wish fulfillment.

But you think it’s not an imaginatively engaging project? Seriously, you should play Sea Eternal beyond the intro. As others mentioned, it’s not anachronistic; it’s put some thought into how a society would work when a range of gender identities is actually taken for granted; it has a fleshed-out character who deals with gender dysphoria and transition; and it uses a human weighing the irreversible choice to become a mermaid (and vice versa) to echo some of the issues that trans people face in the real 21st century. It’s done its research and thought through its themes.

As with Affairs of the Court, there’s room for debate over whether Sea Eternal is successful… but when I see people writing it off as unambitious or unimaginative, I think they’re closing their eyes to what’s clearly there.

Compared to some readers, I also find it easier to accept that gender relations in a fantasy culture could be different without needing a huge amount of comment, detail or justification. As I suggested a couple years ago, an Afghan villager reading a CoG set in any contemporary Western city would constantly be wondering how any society could be so cavalier about gender and how little people’s experiences varied on the basis of sex. While on the other side of the coin,

@Havenstone

Most Westerners see the Afghan construction of sex and gender as shockingly excessive, going to massive lengths to avoid problems which the West either doesn’t see as particularly problematic or is happy to manage in everyday social life. The practicalities of gender are far less foregrounded here than in Afghanistan. It’s plausible to me that in a more gender-egalitarian culture than the contemporary West, most of the questions that immediately occur to us as huge practical obstacles would be managed in a similar everyday fashion… and could fade into the background of the story rather than requiring foregrounding and extensive explanation by the author.

A setting like the one @Chrysoula was playing with earlier, which foregrounds quite a lot of gender stuff, is fun. But I don’t see why that level of detail should be required for gender any more than for religion – something else “deeply ingrained” in human cultures, but often handwaved, cavalierly altered, or omitted entirely from games without causing a “realist” ruckus.

Edit: And while I’m digging up sort of relevant old posts, here’s one where I talk about how critics of anachronism in speculative and fantasy fiction tend to be more selective than they think they are.

Anyway. I’ve been on the road, but catching up with the thread with my mod hat on:

@Dominic

That’s obviously incoherent, of course. The one thing that distinguishes ‘trans’ from ‘cis’ in any philosophically consistent sense is a mismatch between the self-image and the physical body.

Please don’t describe fellow forum members’ identities as “obviously incoherent.” CoG discourages subtle-isms when it comes to gender, let alone being outright dismissive of people’s gender and telling people what their gender is/isn’t.

(And that’s not just CoG being on the side of the SJWs when it comes to gender, Dom. If we’re going to do our bit to reduce the political atomization of the Western world, one part of that is not being too quick to wield the "obvious"es and "of course"s against people we disagree with. If you talk as if people’s views are worth only scorn, it shouldn’t be surprising when they walk away, or reply with reciprocal "obvious"es.)

@Bagelthief

Didn’t know I was dealing with some sort of… what do they call 'em now? Is it still truscum?

Please don’t refer, even obliquely, to fellow forum members as “scum” or any derivations thereof.

@cyanide

Who do you question the most? The person who spat on you or your friends who have been doing this for the whole night?

As a mod, I point out that spitting on people is against the forum rules. If I’ve somehow missed my friends spitting at people, I belatedly flag them and tell them to cut that shit out.