Gender appear breaks when naked
Gender is codedly sex unless hidden

If that didn't start being possible when we rolled out the 'appear' feature, we apologize for not conveying that intention to the team.

"This was about six months ago (Spring 2019). I didn't mean offense. I just wasn't aware that the term 'preferred pronouns' had been called out as something allies do not say because it makes assumptions that are unfair and negative (that someone doesn't really have right to the pronouns they are adopting). Our language around gender has been changing pretty quickly. That is a good thing in this day and age.

That does mean folks won't always be on the same page. Sometimes someone may say something that you find offensive. Sometimes they mean it to be offensive, and sometimes, like what happened with me, they just need someone to explain the situation to them that they might not make the same mistake in the future.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/open-discussion/anything-really/how-to-bgbb-1090/

So I'll take the cue from him and explain what I think is problematic, and why I think it's problematic.

It erases transgender, non-binary, genderqueer and genderfluid identities IC.

Under the appear system, characters can only present as genders different from their sex or genitals, but their 'true' identity cannot change and will revert when they're 'exposed'. They cannot have an identity, they can only dress up in a certain way.

It projects an exclusionary view of players' own gender identities OOC.

The idea that transgender identity is something that is disguising a 'true' identity, which can be 'exposed' is exclusionary to transgender players. Foremost the 'sex = gender' rubric invalidates transgender identity, and the concept of 'exposure' is at the root of trans panic defenses that have been used to justify violence against, and murder of, transgender people, as well being tied into the 'trap' fetishizing of transgender identity.

Roleplaying games like Sindome often appeal to LGBTQ+ players as they may allow them to explore their personal identity, whether that is gender or sexuality, where they may otherwise not be able to do so. In some cases players may face stigmatization or even violence for expressing their identities OOC.

I think Sindome has made some great strides towards inclusivity towards LGBTQ+ players and characters in the past two years. I applaud what has been done and I hope we can continue more in the same inclusive direction.

In that regard, simply allowing characters to have the gender identity they want, without making determinations of which identities are valid or not based on their sex or genitals or wearing the correct clothing, would be a further step forward that would cost nothing in gameplay terms and disadvantage no one -- and would be a strong positive change for players and characters whom may be effected.

Gender dysphoric people who pursue gender-affirming therapies of various kinds are completely valid, but their experiences are not representative of all non-cisgender people.

These mechanisms were added. Non-binary options were previously removed from the game, and gender restrictions were added to appear so that agender, genderfluid, genderqueer and transgender could only pass superficially and that their genitals strictly would dictate their identity.

In a previous post about non-binary options being removed from the game, Johnny said: "We give no fucks how your character self identifies." I think that's a good stance and there's no need to police characters or players about their sexual or gender identity.

I don't think anyone needs to struggle or be subject to challenges so as to be validated by anyone else when it comes to determining their own identity, and I think any standard for an inclusionary environment would be one where LGBTQ+ characters and players are not discriminated against through coded systems or OOC policies.

Transmen are men, transwomen are women, and Sindome already tacitly acknowledges the existence of gender spectrum identities through appear, as Slither stated:

"Another change to this is that gender can be more fluid and up to the person roleplaying. This does NOT mean that presenting yourself as female means you do not have male genitalia or vice versa. It means you are presenting yourself as feminine or masculine. Cyberpunk future. Gender fluid."

We're almost there! Doing away with the 'you can look like X, but you're not X, not really' element of locking gender to genitals/sex and relaxing binary gender expression is an LGBTQ+ friendly and inclusive step that really has no drawbacks, and doesn't effect other players any more than using a person's correct pronouns or having legal same-sex unions effects other people.

With more and more folks transforming themselves with modifications, there's a lot of discomfort around what humans are doing to themselves and trans-sexuality is part of that.

This place is first and foremost a dystopia. Lets not be too progressive. :)

In the spectrum of transhumanism and cyberpunk - I think choosing what kind of RP you embrace in that regard is a wholly personal choice as the player and one which has been executed well.

As for Transphobia IC and OOC along with any manner of refuge for the ignorant - it has no place here. As a community, we have grown over the years. Some of us have just gotten older. Others have been categorically banned for being unapologetic douche bags. Few things are perfect in Sindome but I think in this instance game design and social issues are well balanced. As for the community, I have seen a lot of opportunities to misgender or dead-name people and it simply hasn't been happening lately from my point of view.

I think we've reached a place to approach this ICly and OOCly responsibly as a community. That said, this is an important topic to a lot of people and I would urge those of you partake in it to do so with the sensitivity and respect it deserves. <3

@gender is based on the apparent anatomy

The 'right way' in the coded rubric is that if your character is a man, they have male genitalia, and if your character is a woman, they have female genitalia. There are different ways of changing a character's anatomy or genetics to enable this, but their pronouns are dictated by their genitals.

If this is the guiding staff policy towards transgender and non-binary characters, then I don't feel this is an inclusive or LGBTQ+ friendly policy, and is exclusionary towards transgender and non-binary players.

Anatomy is not gender. Gender a social construction separate from biology, and in LGBTQ+ accepting societies, one based on personal rather than assigned identity.

I don't see any reason or benefit to policing character's genitalia to the extent that happens now, or enforcing misgendering pronouns when they identify otherwise. Some character identities can 'fit' into the current system, or are tolerated by it, but not all will and it is not inclusive as currently implemented.

I don't disagree in a thematic way, but transphobia existing IC character-to-character or institution-to-character is not the same as the coded system misgendering characters. The system is not IC, it's OOC.

In my experience transphobia is almost always considered archaic and bigoted IC and it's extremely rare for characters to use it as a thematic tool. I've never known NPCs to be transphobic towards PCs. Hence this feels less like transphobia within the context of the IC world, and more like a trans-exclusionist rubric OOC.

Like to be clear, do you think transgender and non-binary identities are valid and should be accepted? If you do, then I think it would be much better to represent that purely through IC means and not through systems that effectively disallow gender expressions.

@Quotient

I'm not upset, but I do think this is an important issue and one that's good to address Sindome is going to present as an inclusive community.

In the situation you describe, if you've seen a character naked, are you really so lost that you need the system to tell you via shortdesc what male genitals are? Naive misgendering is not transphobia when corrected, but if you know a character identifies as a woman do you need the system to correct you as to how to refer to them?

If you say 'that is a naked man' you may be wrong if the character is a woman with male genitals, and if you are aware of that then your character may making transphobic statements, but if your misgendering is innocent and transient, then what point was there in the game system itself instructing you how to interpret a character's genitalia?

If we could learn to just love each other or at least tollerate each other for who we are, who we love and what we think then the world would be a better place. Take the time to get to know each other. Take the time to learn new things, expand your mind.

I'm not upset, nor am I being rowdy and going on and on, I'm taking the time to explain a perspective that may be non-obvious to cisgender players. Non-binary perspectives even moreso can often non-obvious to even transgender people, some of whom personally fit into a binary model of gender.

Assuming appear was changed to so that didn't break based on how a character was dressed, then no, that system would not also exist in any current form in-game. As Johnny wrote this is deliberate and meant to enforce a specific rubric of what is and is not valid gender identity. Gender identity is distinct from anatomy. A transman who has not undergone any transitional process is still a man, and may use male pronouns regardless of their anatomy.

These are not new questions or concepts. Statistically all players will meet a transgender or non-binary person in the course of their lives. Questions such as 'how will I know how to address them?' or 'what gender who I use to refer to them?' or 'are they X gender or Y?' are all good and there's many, many resources available online to assist in teaching what transgender and non-binary identities are, and what inclusive language is and how to us it.

A useful primer that may be of help:

https://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender

Ducky, your post was dismissive, not constructive, and probably not a stretch to call it insulting on kind of a couple levels. If you can't respond to a thread and act within Slither's reasonable guidelines (aka, if you can't resist shitposting) maybe avoid the 'Reply' button to begin with. You're a staff member, set a better example.

Hek,

You're basically saying, 'yeah well, things are never going tom be perfect, it is what it is, we do the best we can'. 0x1mm is making a very specific game mechanic suggestion resulting from a very specific gameplay problem as they see it, which does indeed seem to run aground of game design as expressed in other threads, so that seems fair to continue discussing. You just seem to be saying that this change would take away the 'agency' of someone in-game to presume gender based on what they observe, based on quite a bit of particularly dated presumptions that are your own to bear. The fact you or others carry these presumptions OOC and then also IC where gender SHOULD be treated far more fluidly but isn't shouldn't be something others have to help you deal with, particularly in a (relatively) far-future sci-fi, cyberpunk reality where transhumanism and bio-modification should be be quite commonplace.

Johnny seeming to arbitrarily decide gender instead of race (for instance) is a 'themely' friction point for IC 'dystopian feels' in one post in one thread should not end the discussion on its face for obvious reasons, and 0x1mm's continuation of it has been articulate, calm, and well thought out from what I've read. The only resistance to it I seem to see here is a loose collection, so far, of mostly OOC feelings on the subject bleeding into things, which doesn't really constitute much of a counter-argument.

You bring up some interesting points...

0x1mm is making a very specific game mechanic suggestion resulting from a very specific gameplay problem as they see it, which does indeed seem to run aground of game design as expressed in other threads

My understanding of the "issue" is that when the groin @naked is exposed, the code defaults to the @gender set on the character.

What is the "fix" to that? I haven't seen any proposed fixes. All I have seen is a bunch of opinion about why it "shouldn't" be like that.

That's why I brought up Agency. If @Johnny has to force a code fix so that a "male" groin @naked no longer identifies a character as male, wouldn't that be taking agency away from every player who wants to express their cis gendered character? Same for "female" bits and descriptors.

You just seem to be saying that this change would take away the 'agency' of someone in-game to presume gender based on what they observe, based on quite a bit of particularly dated presumptions that are your own to bear. The fact you or others carry these presumptions OOC and then also IC where gender SHOULD be treated far more fluidly but isn't shouldn't be something others have to help you deal with

To be clear, I do not need any help navigating the appropriate way to use people's pronouns. I do just fine with them IRL, ICly and OOCly. When my friend's partner couldn't get their pronouns right, I was the one who got called in to translate.

To get back to the original though, what exactly is the Issue, and what is the proposed Fix?

I don't know how the code actually works, but I think why what you want cannot happen is because Disguise / Appear has to be tied to some sort of clothing. Just like characters need certain items to cover up their shortdesc, from a code perspective, the 'appear' has to be linked to SOMETHING. That something is clothing.

Without a piece of clothing, the appear command, the actual code itself, will not work.

I don't think I'm divulging any major IC knowledge here. In order to 'appear' taller or shorter, a character needs to be wearing shoes. When the shoes are taken off, the taller or shorter modifiers disappear. That's just the way the code works.

Does that make sense?

@Johnny

Is any of this close to the mechanics of why 'appear' cannot work on a character with zero items of clothing?

Just thinking outside the box, it doesn't necessarily HAVE to be the genitals. That is just the most logical one. You could make it so that appear variables stick until someone takes off their hat (exposes @head) or takes off their shirt (exposes @torso). Right? It's just that you had to pick SOMETHING and the SOMETHING that you picked was @groin. ???

Like if a cis person is trying to appear as a man, and suddenly I see that they have a vagina, my reaction is a shrug and "oh, cool," not "omg you're a woman??"

If the game reverts to 'she' pronouns in that case, I think that's an unfair giveaway that something is afoot. I should be thinking, "oh cool, you're trans," but it sounds like I would get an OOC advantage based on their pronouns shifting? That sounds silly.

I'm all for attempting to see through disguises, but this is a freebie that doesn't feel like it should be a freebie.

And to the extreme, "Show us your dick and let's see if your pronouns change" is just hilariously meta.

As far as I understand it, this whole conversation is about outward appearances from a 3rd party in terms of what is seen. Appear can be used to change presentation until genitals are exposed. Biological genitals are a gigantic context clue in a majority of cases for the sexual identity (presented and otherwise) of a large portion of the population.

In ynk's quote, how would someone know that a person with female genitalia "is a man" if they haven't said anything yet? If it was just a person naked, standing in the street, their female genitalia heavily implies female sex (imo) until the speaker says they identify differently.

I don't think anyone is implying that people don't have a right to change their own personal image and say what they want to say about their sexual identity, but they're going to be dealing with the conceptions that other people have about others based on their genitals.

Like Johnny said, in SD everyone has coded genders. People have the option to change that gender icly through mods. They can keep their original gender and rp a personal identification as a woman or zer etc too. They'll still be dealing with the preconceptions of others when it comes to what they've got going on downstairs though in terms of how they perceive that. When their body is exposed they can still tell the people around them how they identify and it'll be up to the people they're with to support that or have their own feelings on it.

Would it be that troubling to see a person with male genitalia identified as a woman, as per her desire to be, or a person with female genitalia identified as a man? Because I can assure you that these people exist, this is not a fictional concept.

If you believe a person is a man when they have male genitals, and a person is a woman if they have female genitals, and you don't believe non-binary or intersex people exist, what purpose does the confirmation of a shortdesc and pronouns serve?

Why does the system default to supporting a transgender and non-binary exclusionary view of gender?

Characters are welcome to misgender other characters and otherwise behave in bigoted ways, the question is whether the game itself is being inclusionary or exclusionary by enforcing a rigid and narrow conception of gender that is at odds with modern discourse, let along a cyberpunk future.

Deliberately misgendering someone, regardless of their anatomy, would be considered discrimination under present day Massachusetts law, where the Sindome Corporation 501c tax-exempt social club is located. While many Sindome players are LGBTQ+, Sindome as a game is less inclusive than the legal baseline, not more.

Gender is not anatomy, and I think it's good to introduce and develop that concept and that it is not so difficult to divorce those ideas with a minimum of effort. This is a fundamental part of being an LGBTQ+ inclusive community.

Although I feel like it should be recognized that Sindome is a work of fiction, and if biases existing in fictional stories were to be outlawed, we'd lose a lot of important books out there. (A lot of unimportant ones too.)

"In ynk's quote, how would someone know that a person with female genitalia "is a man" if they haven't said anything yet? If it was just a person naked, standing in the street, their female genitalia heavily implies female sex (imo) until the speaker says they identify differently."

Well, things like a goatee, creased eyelids, sunken cheeks, hairy pecs, wide shoulders, and an overall masculine appearance (masculine hairstyle, lack of breast tissue, heavy eyebrows, wide jawline, happy trail) speaks louder than genitals for me.

When someone shows an active presence to look masculine, feminine, androgynous, or anything in between, that wins out over genitals.

That's just me.

I'm not the most educated in these matters, so again I apologise for anything that's coming off wrong.

I'll bow out of this conversation.

If you want people to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're engaging in the conversation in something resembling good faith, discontinuing the use of patronizing quotes around the word "problem" and elsewhere might be something to consider.

If you don't think it's a problem, continuing to engage seems like bad faith, that it's really just a "problem" and you're lowering yourself to humor those that actually do see an issue. You can just say "I don't see a problem" and leave it at that.

There's room for "I don't perceive this as a problem, but I acknowledge that others do and it's perhaps reasonable to make a change for that reason", but it'd be nice if you occupy that space without the bits of continued condescension.

@gender and the pronouns it defines are a linguistic shortcut, first and foremost. While we can say that this is the 'characters gender', that's glossing over that interpretation of all the context cues (hair length, style, eye shapes, necks, musculature, body frame, etc) that sum out to man, woman, or clearly not fitting into binary majority.

So I think we move @gender fully into the notion of 'apparent gender', where it is letting you define what assumption others will be left with if your character is left completely naked. This means we need to support someone whose determined that when naked, you can tell their character is not just male or female. We don't need to say its about seeing a penis or not seeing a penis - what it is can be left to define via @nakeds or descriptions.

We should add the 'third gender', but I put it in quotes because it represents individuals who, for whatever reason, may not be possible to tell their gender when unclothed. The cues might be conflicting, missing or so minimal that they are hard to judge. Would making the option 'Neither' be offensive?

Apparent Gender (how your naked corpse looks):

(M)ale - obviously masculine in appearance

he, his, his, him, himself

(F)emale - obviously feminine in appearance

she, her, hers, her, herself

(N)either - appears neither masculine or feminine

ze, zir, zirs, zir, zirself

Code-Wise, 3 option Apparent Gender will need to become a thing in char-gen, we'll need to explain a bit what we mean by apparent gender. And everyone should get an option to set their biological sex too.

I think it also means we need to loosen up restrictions around changing @gender due to RP events. Probably a new service request for this or enabling it through styling tools? We probably should discuss this aspect of any changes more.

Help gender needs to be written. And other stuff no doubt I am forgetting this morning.

I apologize for taking so long to get to this point of comprehension.

As far as I am aware, 'Non-binary' is the preferred term for an individual who does not wish to identify as male or female. They are 'neither' and 'both' at their preference. Categorizing them as 'neither' explicitly implies a lack of something, while non-binary is inclusive of both a lack of gender and an amalgamation of gender, and I would support the usage of the term 'non-binary' personally.

The idea of 'apparent gender' being necessarily a gender critical interpretation of gender seems more ideological than practical. If the entire description of a character is visible, why does the system need to instruct the viewer on how to interpret their appearance at all?

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/gender

APA style is one of the most broadly used-language style guidelines in all academic publishing, and in many fields is the foremost guideline for formal publishing.

I'm mostly saying appear is a near complete solution just in a practical sense, in that allows a player to set their character's gender descriptor and their pronouns, right now.

I think it makes a lot of sense in a theoretical way to have a system that distinguishes between self-presentation and self-identity, because those are two different things. I'm just advocating within the context of the tools we already have, in terms of the art of the possible.

But yes, players being able to set their character's @pronouns/@gender would also address transgender-related issues I've raised, and a third option for non-binary characters would address those issues as well.

I linked the wiki because it's what you're looking for, Johnny. 😉

In your example, "gender nonconforming" might be the phrase you're confused with. That's where visual cues do not match perceived gender.

If they decide they don't want to fall under either binary, they are by definition nonbinary. For example...

If they feel like they are any gender (agender), or feel don't feel strongly one way or the other (apogender), or swap how they feel on a whim (bigender), those are all nonbinary genders! 😊