Yes! Exactly this. It’s indefinable, which is why people should stop trying to define it for others.
As for how that can work in WoW, just give a choice from a few body types (just look at a group of humans in the real world, and you see there are a lot more than 2 body types). Then let people pick from a selection of gender labels and pronouns or write in their own.
Anyone who wants to can still select the bulky, muscular model and choose ‘man, he’ or the thin, curvy model and choose ‘woman, she’. No-one is hurt by this… except the people who want to force their view of gender onto others.
Whilst I’m all for people wanting to be who they want to be I find it absurd we live in a day and age where people get upset if they don’t see whatever they feel they are represented in a game.
It’s a game, it’s fantasy, games should not be changed based on your emotions on real life topics. I don’t think there is anything wrong with having Male and Female option in the character screen, just like I don’t see an issue with it being body type 1 and body type 2 but the fact it needs to be changed shows a glaring issue in importance of game design imo.
And to elaborate, if the people we’re trying to put into a category are like “no, I’m not a part of that category”, there’s very little we can do to force them into it, especially when they get enough social recognition for their rejection of the classification.
This is combined with how identities are socially formed and enforced, and how fluid they have always been - a good example is the races, and how Germans, Slavs, Irish weren’t always white. Or how Arabs and Indians were a part of the white race at some point. It just changes based on all kinds of social and political stimuli.
Trans and other gender-nonconforming people have already asserted their existence to the point where everyone recognizes it. At this stage, the debate isn’t whether they exist - as they objectively do - but whether they should exist in the first place, whether society should validate that existence. And at this stage, people are battling against manifest reality.
We are in a transitional period, and it’s hard to know where things will end up. But in my opinion that makes it all the more fun to be alive. The world can still move forward, which is to me an invigorating thought.
I see more people of the opposite here. It’s not the people that get upset because it’s female/male that spam the forums with stupid threads.
The whole whining comes from people that don’t want equality but “I want everything as it was AND forever”.
You are right, i’m probably offensive to those people by quoting one of the worst case known that really discredit their cause to do a little touch of humour in my post.
Well, if this is really offensive to someone in the end, humour is pretty much dead. Which sadden me even more XD
I think what Pop is referring to is the fact that race is a social construct and not scientific or biological. At one point all those peoples were referred to as inferior in one form or another.
Only on the surface level, it’s really more centered around whether someone who’s trans has a “valid” experience in existing as they do.
People say it’s a mental illness, or fake/made up all the time, and not an intrinsic aspect of said person.
And current science says that it is an intrinsic quality for those people. Which obviously makes the whole ‘debate’ a bit more nuanced than you can even reasonably have on video game forums.
Well, if you look back 2-300 years ago, you find plenty of evidence that the Germans weren’t considered white. Thomas Jefferson famously referred to them as “swarthy” and proclaimed how they will never have “our complexion” (literally using those words) referring to American whiteness. The French however, due to their willingness to adapt to American culture, were considered white.
Irish people famously weren’t considered a part of the white race until relatively recently. Italian and Spanish people are under question, some don’t accept them, others do.
The idea of “caucasians” was invented in the late 18th century by German historians (it is important to recognize it has no basis in biology or even science), who included Indians and Arabs into it, but excluded Slavs from it, because to them (Christoph Meiners in particular), slavs were barbarians, and as barbarians, they could not be a part of the caucasian race. Here’s worth mentioning that Slavs are not even a race, they are a linguistic group whose members come from all over the world. For example Kievan Rus was founded by vikings moving east into Europe, while people like Bulgarians are believed to have come from Asia.
With Bulgarians in particular, we have records from the 1930s of the Germans calling us “dark, barbaric savages”, and our leader at the time going into German courts to defend Bulgarian whiteness. He’s quoted saying “Savages and barbarians in Bulgaria are only the fascists. But I ask you, in what country are the fascists not savages and barbarians?” - this was in 1933, literally the year Hitler got elected.
Another interesting example is how Germany in the 1930s gave Japan and China a “honorary ary*n” status, with Hitler himself saying both nations have a history greater than Germany’s, praising their ancient civilizations and hinting that they may even be superior to the Germans. However, China’s honorary ary*n status was stripped in 1941 when they joined the Allies and persecution of Chinese people in Germany as impure began.
Race is just a made up thing. Nationality and upbringing count for way more.
Well yeah, trying to convey your inner, intrinsic experience to someone who does not share it is difficult and might make ‘Bob’ confused.
I’d say it’s difficult to even comprehend these kind of things about yourself, let alone describe it to someone else.
“Describe a colour to a blind person” kinda thing.
i think back to my cousin’s chihuahua dog. Gave birth to beautiful puppies. A brown one called Snickers (like the chocolate). a black one called Midnight. A white one called Snow.
they all chihuahuas
i also realized i hate chihuahuas. dont let the size fool you, they jump very high and they bite strangers
Remind me of an old joke
The poor old beggar knocks on the door, the young girl opens it
“Can I have something to drink my dear?”
“Sure, do you want milk?”
“I was poor my child in my whole life, like my family, heard of this ‘milk’, but we never could afford it; I don’t know what is it”
The young girl replied, “Why, milk… milk is a white drink”
“Now I know what a drink is”, the blind man responded, “but what is white?”
“Oh, white is the colour of a swan’s feathers.”
“Feathers… I know what they are, but what is a swan?”
“A swan is a bird with a crooked neck.”
“I know what a neck is, but what do you mean by crooked?”
The girl realised the discussion could go on for a while, so instead she guided the blind man’s arm, straightened it, and said There, now your arm is straight. She then bent the arm at the elbow, and said, ‘And now, your arm is crooked, like a swan’s neck.’
The blind man happily exclaimed "Praise the Lord! Thank Christ! Now I know what milk is!’
