Currently Online 
| JuliusHackebeil said: Also, please consider this: gender, as modernity dictates, is a spectrum. So how come we only now get a spectrum of gendered pronouns and up until recently only had he/she – a binary? Because it is in direct relation to and consequence of another binary – sex. It is also an extremely modern mindset, that gender is everything and sex says rather little about an individual. |
Pronouns aren't binary.
English has used "they" as a singular for hundreds of years.
There are tons of different classes of pronouns in different languages. Quite a few languages have more genders than 2.
I think a big thing today is that we have a lot more information. If 1% of people were trans in the year 1500, you probably didn't know a single person. You lived in a very tiny town or potentially a several hour walk away from town. Especially if trans people aren't accepted, and are forced to be quiet, or otherwise get murdered for how they were born.
Today, not only do we have a lot more information on how bodies develop and how the brain develops, we also have a lot more connectivity. I can find 500 stories from 500 trans people in a couple of hours online. Practically 500 times more information than was even available to people, even 100 years ago frankly.
Sex is also a spectrum. People develop differently. There are people who develop both sets of sex organs, not the way they chose to be born. There are people with other sets of chromosomes. There's a whole spectrum of how and which sex organs develop. Some people have internal female sex parts, and external male parts.
99% of people generally fit pretty close to one category or the other, so we pretty much pretend that it's just a binary.
And for some reason, this reality gets denied, or swept away as "those people are exceptions". As if that changes anything. The strongest man in the world must not really exist, because there's only 1 of him.
| JuliusHackebeil said: A lot of people like the idea and theory of gender. But please note that it is just that, a theory. Set up in a way so it can never be proven or disproven. Unintelligible, non-empirical. My opinion, as I actually argued (above) is, that pronouns are not a way to identify what gender a character has, but what sex. |
That's not what the word theory means.
A scientific theory is the best explanation that we have that fits all the empirical evidence. It is empirical.
Transgender is from empirical evidence.
Gravity is also "just a theory".
It's not unintelligible and non-empirical.
| JuliusHackebeil said: Now a robot does not have a sex. But it can be programmed to come across as if it had. And if alien reproduction turns out not to work like it does with the human binary sex, then perhaps different pronouns, like “it” could be in order. But I cannot imagine the concord devs thought so deeply about it. But since pronoun choices also apply (presumably in concord too) to humans (and not just to robots and aliens) your point is moot again. Also, why choose pronouns at all, if they are dictated by how the fictional characters would feel inside or what social roles they take on? This at least should not be your choice but the characters. But since it is your choice, it is about you, not about humans, robots, aliens or anything else. This is just for the player. And this is also a common thread in the gender discourse – self-obsession – a downright recipe for unhappiness. |
To be honest, I think your robot example is pretty self-defeating.
We've culturally accepted that C-3PO is a "he", despite the fact that "he" doesn't have sex. No one would bat an eye about calling "him" a "he", because he fits our gender expectations. He has a "male" voice and a "male" body.
Does Concord have pronoun "choices"? I was under the impression that the whole thing was that it told people what identification was being used for each character.
