Community Post #130 - What's Your Gender? Mines 'Whatever I Feel Like'

Community Post #130​

Read Only Memories. Seems prettying interesting. I like Cyberpunk stuff ordinarily and this wants to place unusual characters in major roles.

Downloaded the demo and played it for a bit. I have to admit, it's very good based on what I've seen. It’s been a rather enjoyable but rambling point and click adventure that I do think I’ll try going on with. Expect a full review of this at some point because, developers if your watching, you have my attention. Bravo.

However, it's not that which I'm going to talk about. It's one particular screen that stood out to me.

​

It’s the first game I’ve ever played that has gender neutral pronouns as an option. Heck, it's the first game I've ever seen ask that question. Ever!

He, She, Xe, Zhe and They.

In short, Boy, girl and three versions of ‘It’s Complicated’ as far as I can understand then boil down to something simpler than the chaotic maelstrom of precision it's expected to convey.

That’s pretty novel. I’m guessing this is part of what the blurb of the game means by putting unusual characters in leading roles. The eagerness to be as LGBT friendly as possible is commendable but , I was confused on what the three pronouns after the more usual ones actually meant. So I researched them a bit. The thing is that researching these things is mind-spinningly complicated because English wasn’t built to accommodate LGBT people comfortably as it turns out. At least, in it's current state.

Now, my grounding in the LGBT community is a LGBT Youth Club type thing. It’s all right. It’s one of those places where they hold meetings and ask young people for their opinions on things. They seem to like making us draw stuff a lot. It's in Brighton so Pride is practically a second Christmas. I mainly go because I’ve made friends there, they have free food and we all head to a bar afterwards to hang out. They are good people I always love to see. My involvement might be relatively shallow, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

But, in one of these sessions when I first started to turn up, I was in this Bisexual meeting to talk about masculinity and they were asking for Prefered Pronouns. It was an odd question for me at the time. I thought I’d be a smart alek and say ‘They’ as I’d never been asked the question before and expected everyone to giggle or hopefully catch onto the joke. I figured it was necessary as you don't want to offend a transsexual just because they happened to wear a pair of trousers. Short of wearing a badge, asking is the best method of proceeding forwards.

Because no one just automates to whatever their preferred dolls were wearing when they were kids. Unless they were. Which means a lot of Action Men in dresses and Barbies with Missile Backpacks. Honestly, that improves both toys a thousand-fold.​

‘They’ was accepted and perfectly valid there, much to my surprise,and it stuck with me right until I found out why when I glanced over this issue. I’d fallen into a little pitfall. A result of my own ignorance on the subject. It’s an issue that the LGBT community has to handle as it was an ever touchy and unusual issue while the community sorts itself out with everyone else in the world. And it’s an issue for all of us because The English Language usually likes it that a thing is either male, female or an object. He, She, It. In between is a little hazy.

Well, guess what? English has no Genderless or Both-Gendered Pronouns so it can’t really help when talking about this stuff.

Why? Well, it seems that the first thing you learn about LGBT is that your seen as being on a Spectrum of Sexuality or Gender, not a Binary Switch. It is possible to be both effeminate and masculine, or both, or neither. Your a mixture, a cocktail of characteristics with maybe a bias towards something but even that can fluctuate over time. It's more like a...A Rainbow of personality and preferences!

The Flag is making more sense now, huh?

If I might borrow a catchphrase here: SYMBOLISM!!!!!!!!!​

The thing to keep in mind is that there is the possibility of someone being halfway between a Henry and a Henrietta, despite upbringing or contents of underwear. Trying to figure out how to address such people concisely and accurately is awkward in English. There’s been attempts. I remember hearing about one suggestion that you should introduce yourself with something like a Hexadecimal Code, except it’s to show your gender preference, sexual orientation and level of sexual interest (which ranges from perfectly eager to asexual) rather than a colour if you’ll cast your minds back to when you were making websites in IT class.

Another effort is some Gender Pronouns that are supposed to help designate such fence-sitting.

One common one is the Singular They, that I invoked mistakenly as a failed joke but people have tried to come up with new ones. Because the alternative is ‘It’, except that ‘It’ is dehumanising and unpleasant.

Plus, it gives about as much identity definition as one of
these little fellas! You'd exist, yes, but that's about it.​

The issue is that, not only do most people not know it’s an issue, but almost every single one sounds like they belong in some pulpy sci-fi novel. Here’s a few examples I could find:

So, here’s a test sentence for a male, right?:

“He called out to me and then he approached with a smile on his face. He seemed pleased with himself.”

Simple. Now, let’s make the guy in this sentence less definite on his identity.

Let’s see…There’s one where we just throw on an awkward Z.

“Zhe called out to me and then Zhe approached with a smile on Zhirs face. Zhe seemed pleased with Zhimself.”

I can't quite figure out how it's pronounced. Is that a 'Z-he' or just a 'Zee'? Is that 'h' silent or not? If it's not, the added effort of pronouncing that syllable my English Accent dictates I should attempt makes me sound like I'm quite cross with whoever I'm talking to as I put extra huffs in to make room for all the disgust.

"What are you talking about? You sound perfectly fine to me."​

How about we try something less hard to mess up phonetically:

“Xe called out to me and then Xe approached with a smile on Xyres face. Xe seemed pleased with Ximself.”

It seems very sci-fi with all these extra X's. It makes sense, I suppose, as X seems a little starved for limelight. Maybe a pronoun could be it's big break. Plus, you wouldn't forget about it in a hurry. Although, it does seem to be a simpler version of the previous pronoun.

And those are the ones that are generally used and excepted to some extent. Would you like to see the other ones I found?

How about the Humanist approach on this? Don't bother with gender, just call them a 'human' instead!

“Hu called out to me and then Hu approached with a smile on Hus face. Hu seemed pleased with Humself.”

My issue with this is, once again, how is this pronounced? 'Hu' suggests it's pronounced 'Hoo'. But, it's likely derived from 'Human' so...Is that pronounced 'Hew' instead? And how about 'Hus'? Is that 'Hus' or 'Hews'? The only reason I would keep this one around is the chance to say 'Humself' though. That's a lovely word.

Humself! Hee hee! Hummmmmmmself! Sounds like Winnie The Pooh trying to think!

Not sounding Sci-fi enough? Try 'Jee'.

“Jee called out to me and then Jee approached with a smile on Jeir face. Jee seemed pleased with Jemself.”

Again, functional if a little weird. Apart from 'xe' with it's too cool for school 'X', this is one sounds the most sci-fi. Although, it's ruined by the fact that I can't stop adding 'Wilikers!' to the end every time I read it.

Hmm...'Jemself'...

"Believe in Jemself and you can accomplish anything!​

And last, we can go one goofier sounding.

“Thon called out to me and then Thon approached with a smile on Thons face. Thon seemed pleased with Thonself”.

What I like about this one is that, unlike the others on this list that will change between linguistic perspectives, 'Thon' is unchangeable. Thon is like a brick. You slam it into a sentence and it will be correct. No moving parts, cannot go wrong. Nothing to remember other than Thon. The simplicity is kinda admirable. It reminds me of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy with it's straightforward, blunt logic.

I don’t make fun to be mean, but to show how how daft some of the proposed ones sound. If you use them, fair enough. But I think it’s something to wrap our heads around for a Gender Neutral Pronoun that could be accepted. These would sound a little daft to a lot of people I know, which harshes their propagation into common parlance.

I mean, would you say 'Jee'? Or 'Thon'? I know 'Humself' is now my favourite word ever but I'm not sure on it's mileage.

I ask and think on this because I agree with the game here: there’s going to be a point where people aren’t going to fit into one category comfortably, which could be anything from 30 to 200 years into the future, sure, but something a little more user friendly than ‘Jee’, ‘Thon’ and ‘Hu’ are going to be required to not stamp over a person’s identity.

Or at least agree on one and stick to it. ‘They’, ‘Zhe’ and ‘Xe’ are the only ones I’ve ever seen or used. Having more than one is hard to keep track of to the uninitiated. And the incurious. Maybe Darwinism will kick two to the curb, leaving one? Who knows. For now, it's mildly interesting to me that so many people came up with so many possibilities.

I mean, how can you come up with an alternative to 'he' or 'she' without sounding like George Lucas trying to top his latest sand metaphor?

Because right now, where here:

​

- Site News

Dragonbait giveth yet never taketh away. Unless your particularly naughty...

Artist - Song

174UDSI - Under Our Spell (174UDSI Mica Cover Remix)
Donn DeVore - Don't Forget
Eternum - Rainboom (ft. Automatic Jack)
Exiark - Rebirth -The Phoenix Anthem-
Flyghtning and Sonia - Chrysalis Hardcore Syndrome
The Wonderbolts - The Stare Master Final Master

Garrison Ulrich - IThoughtTheyWereNuts
Starlight - Dare Me
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 01 Sister - Cherax Destructor
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 02 Magic Show - Jeff Burgess
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 03 Bridemaids - FritzyBeat & Almost Anyone
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 04 Porcelain Doll - Injustrial
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 05 When You're Not Here - Nikki Layne feat Itchigotchi
vaceslav - Neat Songs by Swell People - 06 Our Heartless Master - Cherax Destructor

A little bit of news. Kinda interesting.

Below is a Screenshot of Everypony.com Version 2. We're still working on it but we're close to finishing. This will be the new home of the forum, the radios and the blogs.

The current sight has a few bugs and issues all over the place. vBulletin is kinda horrible. It's clunky, awkward and now looking a little archaic. Now, we do well with what we've got but, we figured an upgrade would do us good. Plenty of good. Enough to look into upgrading everything. We'll get back to you closer to the big reveal but, I'm sure your familiar with xenForo, a few other forums use it and, we quite like it.

Don't worry, functionally, we'll work to make sure it's identical to the Everypony.com of now as we can. But some glossiness can't hurt.

Plus, xenForo has an achievement system. Ooohh...The fun I can think of with that!



- Recommended Reading

Right, let me get my stuff out of the way. First, I'm running a poll on what I know I have available to play for Let's Play Thursday and request thread. Come check that out if you enjoy the show or want to see something specific.

Second, I made a little grab-bag review on some weird drinks I've managed to find. Some good, some kinda revolting. Come see which is which. It's not what you think too!

This is a cute thread. I like this. It simply asks the question: which episode do you wish you could appear in? Very fun. I hope there's some good examples.

I'd go for the one where Maud is introduced. All that Rock Candy and it's going to waste on Maud! Hey! Toss some over here! Heeey!

Elunna...What the hell? I mean...whut?

Huh...Animated Pixelated Gifs? Lucky, you tease! I wonder if there's anymore on the way.

I dunno what's braver here: being so gun-ho about the costume being athletic looking or opting to show your face in the pictures. Usually considered an internet no-no, unless you've been to our 'Show Your Face' thread or weird like me. Either way, great pics! I hope you kill at whatever convention you wear that to.

Just...Pack a jacket. There's a chance it might not be optimal weather for short-shorts.

Still, I love this gif. Snarkily placed as it might be, it's a pretty good one.

​

Which brings me onto:

Rest in Peace Leonard Nimoy - 1931 to 2015.

A lot of my family are pretty big on their sci-fi so, of course, Nimoy passing is sad. It's showing that a part of something we hold dear has come to an end. We're grateful for what we have gotten from the man; the good and the dubious. Need I mention Hobbits or Robots? Still, one of the most credible and respectable actors I can think of. The guy did tones. I'm going to be hearing his voice pop up all over the place. I'm sure he'll never be forgotten.

Anyway, good night, good morning or good afternoon folks. See you around for the next post. Maybe I'll have something else to nerd out over prepared by then.

 

I think it's 'Zee'. Like the X in Xylophone. 'Zhe' was something I brought up and apparently, it might be a silent 'h' after all.

And thank you.

For proof of an issue at the heart of this article, I present Exhibit A.

Apart from an Otherkin being something wildly different, I can see your point. Really, it's a matter of how someone identifies.

Yes, I'm sure it sounds daft. But not all of us are comfortable as a big, hairy-chested mountain of muscles, brute strength and masculine animal magnetism as you undoubtedly are, Ridley. There is a movement that suggests something more undefined that some feel describes them better. The times, they are a changing. Immeasurably slowly, but change they do.

Discussing this moves us into a world where people are simply looking for what they find comfortable, regardless of established norms. Whether that's as simple as asking for a small change in language to putting on a skirt or growing a moustache. Gender doesn't have to go away. As far as I can make out, the intention is to loosen it up to accommodate everyone.

The reasoning being that humans are more complicated than a binary switch. Small changes like being given a preferred pronoun can have a huge effect on a person's self-esteem, well-being and long term general mood to list but a few benefits.

I'm sure you'll be quick to point out a load of people you'll call 'Tumblr Posers' but there are idiots in all camps. As Bronies, I figured we'd know this by now. Maybe they are just riding the coattails of a big movement. Maybe. However, I happen to meet the genuine cases regularly and see the effects myself.

So, if you reply, make it a bloody good one. Because it's a lot of my good friends your talking about here.

 

Interesting...
[MENTION=7134]Minterwute[/MENTION]

I guess that could be a thing in the case of someone genuinely trying to make themselves a 'special snowflake'. After all, you are going to find someone looking to ride the coat tails of a movement to make themselves look important. Happens everywhere. Just think of most companies that throw out a reference to something to appear up to date with something, usually months after it was relevant.

But, there may be benefits there too. I'm gonna throw up something I think I can talk about comfortably so, I apologise profusely if I get something wrong.

Gender Dysphoria is the monkey wrench to the issue at hand. It's becoming a little more known as LGBT voices grow ever louder and is something of a peculiar issue as causes can come from anywhere.

In short, it's a discontentment in a person's gender. The disorder goes in plenty of different directions at that point but it boils down to either anxiety over a persons own body or strong desire to be seen as another gender.

Now, this is theorised to be caused by plenty of different things. It's true basis is argued in many ways but the one with the most stable basis seems to be altered brain chemistry possibly during pregnancy due to abnormal hormones. Other theories suggest trauma or IQ but they're a little shakier on their exact influence.

But, most likely, these would be slightly more extreme cases as they're more definite on what they feel they ought to be. Arguably, 'milder' cases would be people classified as 'Gender Fluid' or 'Genderqueer'. Or, even more relevantly, 'Non-Binary'.

You see, it's this likely more common pool of people that we're talking about. People that genuinely feel like they are either a mix of both genders, or neither. While they might not be in their thousands, they do exist. I dunno about you but I'm not the type to trample all over another person's identity as it belittles them horribly to do so.

You'd get pretty sick of being called a girl, I would imagine, as much as being considered...I don't know...Romantically attracted to pencil sharpeners because you feel it doesn't apply to you. Your identity does not overlap into being female or holding stationary in any kind of loving regard. Prolonged opinion that these two ideas are true from your peers would likely drive you nuts.

Those who identify as Genderqueer have to deal with that all the time. And so, more accurate language has been called for. Which is what I was writing about as, I think the only one likely to gain traction is the Singular 'They'. It's already in use, it simply has to be given a new context. And we've done that for plenty of words. 'Gay' and 'Queer' being pretty apt examples.

But, I do agree that people using it as a power-play is stupid. For those people doing it purely to dictate how they are perceived, feel free to be annoyed with them.

I want to make it perfectly clear that there is a place where this stuff is a genuine thing and to try and separate it from attention grabbing idiots. Because I think we can both agree, they don't help matters at all. Genuine cases of Gender Dysphoria exist. Demanding that everyone step into line, from my point of view, causes more problems than it solves.

 

I think I see what your getting at.

Yes, gender should have no connotations whatsoever. Yes, in of itself, these words are meaningless. We should all be changing our perceptions towards such ideals where calling oneself as male or female is as meaningless as calling oneself 'mammals'. However, seeing as the change of such outlook is, at best, glacial, I can't help but feel that we're at two different ends of the same argument for different reasons.

You seem to be way off at what should be done while I'm trying to get a better understanding of what is being done now and where the best next step should be for everyone.

I get that a term like 'Genderqueer' could quite easily cause rifts by distancing people by way of a label. But it could also help create a bond with people too. Labels are a hand-me-down from when being part of one tribe could get you killed or net you some companion ship and protection by being part of a group. Grooming that out of a human brain is very difficult. Not entirely impossible but very hard and very slow. That sense is part of the primal 'Lizard Brain', as I like to call it because it makes me smile, is elusive and deeply rooted.

Hence, the discussion on 'Non-Binary' Pronouns or even the idea of it being necessary. The collective Lizard Brain works in labels. They're a handy shorthand. With a 'male', you get an idea of what your dealing with. With a 'female', you get an idea of what to expect. Wrong? Possibly. After all, it's a prejudice to assume that the woman you described in your example is being gotten completely wrong from the start.

It's making sure that you'll alter the perception of that person as you get to know them that's important. If anything, that's what needs to be imparted.

However, the idea of being considered outside or a mixture of both of these ideas either has horrible pre-established connotations or none. Like I said, most people are content to start from the label they have in their head, thus causing issues. The aim is to alter those pre-established labels as much as possible so that members of the LGBT (yes, I know it throws out other slants on the theme like Asexual from the acronym but they are generally assumed to be included. It's not correct but please, one imperfect system at a time.) have a better footing to work from when introducing themselves.

And that's even if they even lead with 'Hi, I'm gay/lesbian/deeply in love with my pencil sharpener, Penny/so on and so on' which would only be in certain social groups. I think a good impression is how you engage with a person and what you flag up in their Lizard Brain as a label applied to you. Most normal human beings are going to lead with a label that will match the group they're moving into.

Like with this site. You can lead with 'I'm Pansexual' but your more likely to introduce yourself with 'I like Fluttershy' because your Lizard Brain realises that your sexuality isn't as important as establishing that you like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in this context. You would only usually going to lead with sexuality if your looking to interest people of the same ilk because you feel it safe or a good strategy to be accepted into a group. Sexuality is likely to come up much later when there's a degree of trust. Much like everything that might be considered a little touchy such as Religion or Political Standing. Only the highly fanatical will lead with one identity label regardless of whether it's applicable or not.

Yes, yes. Obvious but true.

I don't think we should loose sight of what should be done as it can help steer the efforts of now. However, I don't think dismissing what is being done now as being pointless gets us anywhere. This is the state of play right now. Having an LGBT community sets up an understanding that people that were unified now have something they can evoke to get some manner of belonging. The Lizard Brain's influence is hard to get rid off so, for right now, it's a matter of lessoning it's impact so that people can live more comfortably. And that means, creating a tribe to garner comfort from as well as attempting to alter the perception of a set of labels within the collective consciousness.

 

Oh shucks! Thanks you guuuuuuys!