So for decades RPG rules just used "he". Then I noticed disclaimers start to appear saying they were using he for simplicity's sake but it wasn't to be taken as exclusionary. Then I noticed alternating he and she. Then I noticed using she for the GM and he for a player. Now I'm noticing just she.
I am wonder why this is because it makes no sense to me. Everyone knows that the extremely vast majority of people who read RPG rules are men. Why not write to the person who is overhwelmingly likely to be your reading audience?
And if we assume they are using she so as not to exclude female rule readers, then what was wrong with the the alternating or the assigning one gender to the GM and the other to the hypothetical player? If you assume that using male pronouns was excluding female players and that was a problem, then isn't switching to female pronouns now excluding male players and alienating a vastly larger percentage of your reader base?
And if you assume that the male readers aren't being excluded, then doesn't that mean by assuming male players won't feel alienated but female players will feel alienated, aren't you then assuming that female players are less secure and more fragile than men who goes completely against the notion that women are just as strong as men?
I just don't get this trend I'm seeing more and more of in using purely female pronouns. It just seems to be potentially alienating the majority of the players while also sending a message to female players that they aren't in fact equal to men. So what's being gained here? I don't undersand.
It's bettter than Cyberpunk Red using the pronoun "they". I kept wondering why there were multiple GMs and mulitple players per character.
Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 01:14:40 PM
I just don't get this trend I'm seeing more and more of in using purely female pronouns. It just seems to be potentially alienating the majority of the players while also sending a message to female players that they aren't in fact equal to men. So what's being gained here? I don't undersand.
Culture war identity politics stuff. I'm surprised when people pop up who haven't heard about it.
Pander to women to appease the progressive activists but then it's insulting to non-binary people and it's a death spiral of constantly trying to keep up with the latest activist-speak.
What's being gained here is control over the discourse and what people think.
You see feminine pronouns in use, as early as the core books for D&D 3rd Edition; which were released in the year 2000. So this has been a trend, for 20 years now.
I guess men are considered to be evil; so they must therefore be demonized and assimilated, or else destroyed?
Yes, it's bullshit.
Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 01:14:40 PM
So for decades RPG rules just used "he". Then I noticed disclaimers start to appear saying they were using he for simplicity's sake but it wasn't to be taken as exclusionary. Then I noticed alternating he and she. Then I noticed using she for the GM and he for a player. Now I'm noticing just she.
Your interpretation aside, this is a false perception. For example, AD&D 1st edition by Gary Gygax used "he or she" throughout. For example, from the Player's Handbook:
QuoteEach player develops the abilities of his or her character through random number generation (by means of dice rolling) to determine the basic characteristics of the persona, the abilities. The payer then decides what race the character is, what the characters' class is, the alignment of the character, and what the character's name is to be. The character will speak certain languages determined by race, class, and alignment. He or she will have a certain amount of gold pieces to begin with, and these funds will be used to purchase equipment needed for adventuring. Finally, each character begins with a certain number of hit points, as determined by the roll of a die (or dice) commensurate with the character's class.
I know White Wolf started using generic "she" in 1990 or so, which was thirty years ago now. So it's not like it's a new trend.
I don't think that it's a big deal, and I don't think it's a big deal to most players. I mildly prefer alternating or using singular "they" rather than "he or she". But mostly, I think it only stands out when one is looking for it.
I disagree that it only stands out if you're looking for it because my experience is the vast majority of gamers are men, so it's weird when I see the vast majority of rulebooks written using she as the pronoun. That is weird.
Just like when my ex-wife was into the scrapbooking hobby. Every scrapbooker around was female, so if I picked up a scrapbooking guide and found "he" uses throughout, it would stand out as strange.
Greetings!
The long-established convention of using "HE" is fine. The vast majority of DM's are men. A strong majority of players are also men. Insisting on using "Her" or "She" is ultimately political pandering to the activists, whether such are otherwise politically correct, Feminists, or now, SJW's.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 04:03:37 PM
I disagree that it only stands out if you're looking for it because my experience is the vast majority of gamers are men, so it's weird when I see the vast majority of rulebooks written using she as the pronoun. That is weird.
Just like when my ex-wife was into the scrapbooking hobby. Every scrapbooker around was female, so if I picked up a scrapbooking guide and found "he" uses throughout, it would stand out as strange.
So did AD&D1 stand out as strange to you? Do you think its pronoun use was a mistake, and Gygax should have instead used default "he"?
Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2020, 03:46:14 PM
I mildly prefer alternating or using singular "they" rather than "he or she". But mostly, I think it only stands out when one is looking for it.
I found the use of singular 'they' in CP Red to be like driving down a road full of potholes. Whenever the word was used, I'd have to stop and parse whether they meant singular or plural.
In formal English the default grammatical rule is that the masculine pronoun serves as both specifically masculine and as default generic neutral, and that feminine pronouns are used only when the subject is unambiguously female (e.g. if it's been established that one is talking about biological mothers). Recent decades have seen a protest against this by claiming that because female readers don't see female pronouns in contexts where the subject could be either sex, the cumulative subliminal effect is to convey a message of exclusion -- if, for example, an otherwise-undescribed player character is only ever referred to as "he", it is claimed that the inevitable inference will be that all player characters are male.
I think that in part the desire to use the feminine pronoun as the default neutral is an attempt to prove this effect to male readers -- and to be honest, I do sort of see it myself, despite being a thorough skeptic of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of which this is an offshoot. Part of the reason I was unable to get through the recent SF novel Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, was that her protagonist and narrator is established as speaking a language which has no gender pronouns, and for which (for some reason) the in-universe English translation convention is to use the feminine as the default. As a result, every time I tried to read the book, I kept tripping up on the fact the protagonist/narrator identifies every other character encountered as "she" or "her" in ways that I knew would not always be accurate, and so I got stuck every time trying to figure out if this character actually was female or not. Ultimately, I was never able to get through more than a chapter or two of the novel, both because I found this a fundamental block to understanding the story, but also because I simply could not shake off the feeling that the author was trying to say, "See, this is what it feels like when the 'generic default' of a language excludes you," and however important that lesson may be considered, I don't want to fight through it every chapter to enjoy a novel-length story.
For games, I find the best approach is, wherever possible, either to name example players and characters first ("Craig, and his character Sam"), or to write in second-person directly to the reader ("If you buy this Power, your PC can fly"). Do this often enough so that the reader isn't drowned in generic neutral "he"s and most sane readers will generally not complain.
I tend to use "they/their" in my own writing, cuz it feels weird for me to assign a gender to a hypothetical player or character I haven't even visualized and I'm just referencing in passing, and constantly using "he or she" is just awkward, and "s/he" is just silly (haven't even seen that used in decades). But I've often wondered what pronoun I would use if I ever end up publishing anything.
And here I just always used either "you" "the PC", "the player" and "the GM" depending on the situation... but mostly "you" as I tend to write as if addressing the actual reader of the book.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 29, 2020, 05:18:14 PM
And here I just always used either "you" "the PC", "the player" and "the GM" depending on the situation... but mostly "you" as I tend to write as if addressing the actual reader of the book.
I also tend to use "you/your" a lot. Even when I'm talking about characters or character abilities ("Your ability scores are a measure of your innate aptitudes, blah blah blah"), where "you" is "your character", which I think sounds more personal (and also saves me a lot of space and effort from having to write "The character", or guessing a player's pronouns). But sometimes I start talking about "the player/character", or "players/characters" (plural), for example, then slip into "they/their" rather than constantly bring up "the player/character" over and over again in the same paragraph.
Instead of either pronoun they should just say "person constructed in such a way as to feature a rectal opening, or USB port, utilized primarily for offload but which is capable of hosting input up to size 10 & 1/2 in mens footwear".
I think that would be the most inclusive and politically neutral whilst still remaining accurate.
Tunnels & Trolls back to 1979's 5th edition and possibly earlier used "she" frequently.
I think the editor was female.
It's the usual PC bullshit to be celebrated in a cucked hobby.
"He/she" or "he or she" is fine since there's always been enough female players in the hobby for that to make sense.
"They" is fucking retarded.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 29, 2020, 05:13:49 PM
I tend to use "they/their" in my own writing, cuz it feels weird for me to assign a gender to a hypothetical player or character I haven't even visualized...
So instead of assigning the character a sex, you've assigned the character a multiple-personality disorder. Makes sense nowadays...
Quote from: Razor 007 on December 29, 2020, 01:27:02 PM
You see feminine pronouns in use, as early as the core books for D&D 3rd Edition; which were released in the year 2000. So this has been a trend, for 20 years now.
I think that in 3.x (and I know 1e Pathfinder) they basically just went by the gender of the iconic character. So for monks (Ember the human female iconic) the book used "she", while for bards (Gimble the gnome male iconic) the book used "he". Seems like a decent way to go about it.
I have noticed this switch to exclusively She over the years, which is slightly jarring, but I don't stress over it much really.
I would prefer if they just fluctuate between what gender to use or just use names of people, as suggested earlier in the thread.
One thing I found a bit odd was a Dungeon delve type card/boardgame where they decided to only make available exclusively Female characters. I can't remember the name of the game though.
They did explain their reasoning as "It just seemed right to do it that way".
I decided it just seemed right not to buy it on principal at that point, even though it looked like a fun game.
It's the first time I have mentioned this game in any discussion though, as I'm pretty picky with what games I buy, so anything that makes me feel uncomfortable at all, I just don't buy.
I'm old enough that I've always considered "he" an appropriate neutral pronoun, applying in a generic sense or when the gender of the person is unknown. That's how we were taught, and that's how I read a generic use of "he." I do understand that some people started objecting to that use, even if I find that objection to be kind of mystifying.
I find "he or she" is a bit clumsy, but it isn't too jarring. (And these days, I'd bet there are people who object to "he or she" as too limited...) I find constructs like "s/he" very jarring. I also find the use of "they" as a singular pronoun to be very jarring. I think "she" is fine if the person under discussion is female. I find the an alternating use of "she" and "he" as generic pronouns to be jarring.
But I can't say I'm too concerned about it, in any case. I try to be reasonably polite and consider my audience, but I also have some long-ingrained habits when writing. Ultimately, with the whole mess I'm kind like, whatever, man...
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on December 29, 2020, 11:27:40 PMUltimately, with the whole mess I'm kind like, whatever, man...
Yeah, pretty much this.
Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2020, 03:46:14 PM
Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 01:14:40 PM
So for decades RPG rules just used "he". Then I noticed disclaimers start to appear saying they were using he for simplicity's sake but it wasn't to be taken as exclusionary. Then I noticed alternating he and she. Then I noticed using she for the GM and he for a player. Now I'm noticing just she.
Your interpretation aside, this is a false perception. For example, AD&D 1st edition by Gary Gygax used "he or she" throughout. For example, from the Player's Handbook:
QuoteEach player develops the abilities of his or her character through random number generation (by means of dice rolling) to determine the basic characteristics of the persona, the abilities. The payer then decides what race the character is, what the characters' class is, the alignment of the character, and what the character's name is to be. The character will speak certain languages determined by race, class, and alignment. He or she will have a certain amount of gold pieces to begin with, and these funds will be used to purchase equipment needed for adventuring. Finally, each character begins with a certain number of hit points, as determined by the roll of a die (or dice) commensurate with the character's class.
I know White Wolf started using generic "she" in 1990 or so, which was thirty years ago now. So it's not like it's a new trend.
I don't think that it's a big deal, and I don't think it's a big deal to most players. I mildly prefer alternating or using singular "they" rather than "he or she". But mostly, I think it only stands out when one is looking for it.
He or she, never has bothered me. Flipping all the he's to she's, does though; because there's an agenda behind it.
As others have noted. The usages go wayyyyy back.
Sometimes it is simply the writing style the author or editor was taught. Way back I was taught to use "he or she" as it was more clear and that using just he, or she, or alternating back and fourth could be jarring to a reader for various reasons.
Later it became popular to use they/their as it was at the time considered less cumbersome to read and simple to parse.
Around the 90s in the prior iteration of this political correctness+femnazi movement there was a push to use she by marketing. As it was "trendy" or somesuch.
Then by 2010 we were seeing bigger pushes to use only she again as the next iteration of this mental disease began to gain momentum.
I firmly believe that if there were not an agenda behind the usage of "she" only then no one would really care other than at worse a mild curiosity as to why its written like that.
And that is ever the point of irk for people. When its not being done just "because" but is instead being done to serve or kowtow to some agenda.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on December 29, 2020, 11:27:40 PM
I'm old enough that I've always considered "he" an appropriate neutral pronoun, applying in a generic sense or when the gender of the person is unknown. That's how we were taught, and that's how I read a generic use of "he." I do understand that some people started objecting to that use, even if I find that objection to be kind of mystifying.
This is me too. I stick with what I was taught because there's no real reason to do anything else, and I find the modern usages jarring and distracting. I also find it useful as a litmus test. If I use "he" and someone objects, then I don't want him as a member of my gaming circle or a friend.
'He' suits me... It's always been that way in general writing terms, etc. I'm not going to change anything to please anyone... They can simply ignore my writing (or products) and I'm alright with that.
The "Modern Language Association" (MLS) has had an agenda at least since the 1960's. Probably longer, but they were quieter about before that. As with a lot of things involving prescriptive style and grammar, the supposed narrowness of the MLS style bleeds into other writing, particularly the stilted styles taught by second and third rate English teachers who didn't really learn the nuances of grammar between their odes to various causes in their "literature" papers and other activities. Games are downstream from culture. News at 11:00.
On the other hand, this is hardly the first time for such twisting by English. Generations of school children taught by the previous group of prescriptive English teachers have absorbed all kinds of grammar "rules" imported from Latin, such as being a little too concerned with split infinitives (where English can eventually get twisted but is much more relaxed). And also it is OK to start a sentence with a conjunction (for style reasons) and prepositions are sometimes for ending sentences with. :)
The first time I actually noticed it was with in the White Wolf games. And it just felt so pretentious even though I loved Vampire. Now it's ubiquitous (in games anyway) and it still feels pretentious to me. But even worse it's now just about pandering to a bunch of grown up babies.
Don't get me wrong, I believe in equality... But I'll not be told by any wee shitebag what I can and can't do.
Quote from: Razor 007 on December 30, 2020, 12:22:38 AM
He or she, never has bothered me. Flipping all the he's to she's, does though; because there's an agenda behind it.
Seconded and I feel the same way. It's when they claim their is no "agenda" behind it which is laughable at best.
Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2020, 04:47:58 PMSo did AD&D1 stand out as strange to you? Do you think its pronoun use was a mistake, and Gygax should have instead used default "he"?
Gygax' usage of "he or she" was part of the same pandering mindset that eventually led to the removal of demons and devils from AD&D.
As for the current trend, any RPG writer that is so obsessed with pronouns that he uses "she" or "they" will also censor himself in a myriad of other ways. I don't need another safe and sanitized RPG world full of non-offensive and committee approved adventures.
Which just shows how long this nonsense has been going on. What do they do in other languages where nouns have a gender?
Surprised that they haven't shifted to Xe or Xir or whatever other nonsense words they have made up to appease their mental illness. In short documents, he or she is fine, however it becomes cumbersome in long books or instructional materials. I prefer the neutral "they" for its brevity...
Quote from: mightybrain on December 30, 2020, 09:23:42 AMWhat do they do in other languages where nouns have a gender?
Tell us to remove the vowels at the end of them and replace them with an X, then pretend that it's still a real, pronounceable word and that it helps address real discrimination, somehow.
Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2020, 04:47:58 PM
Quote from: kidkaos2 on December 29, 2020, 04:03:37 PM
I disagree that it only stands out if you're looking for it because my experience is the vast majority of gamers are men, so it's weird when I see the vast majority of rulebooks written using she as the pronoun. That is weird.
Just like when my ex-wife was into the scrapbooking hobby. Every scrapbooker around was female, so if I picked up a scrapbooking guide and found "he" uses throughout, it would stand out as strange.
So did AD&D1 stand out as strange to you? Do you think its pronoun use was a mistake, and Gygax should have instead used default "he"?
At this juncture I believe you are intentionally missing my point purely in order to be argumentative and my initial post was put up in good faith. I have no interest in arguing for arguing's sake. My intention in putting up this point was trying to understand why it has become MORE common to use the pronouns for the gender that's LESS common as gamers, as some way of being inclusive. It makes no sense to me and I was hoping someone could explain how rulebooks are improved by employing this practice.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 29, 2020, 05:09:23 PM
I think that in part the desire to use the feminine pronoun as the default neutral is an attempt to prove this effect to male readers -- and to be honest, I do sort of see it myself, despite being a thorough skeptic of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of which this is an offshoot.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 29, 2020, 05:09:23 PM
every time I tried to read the book, I kept tripping up on the fact the protagonist/narrator identifies every other character encountered as "she" or "her" in ways that I knew would not always be accurate, and so I got stuck every time trying to figure out if this character actually was female or not.
I think there is definitely some effect from language onto culture and viewpoint. I think it's more a question of how strong that effect is. Some people certainly overestimate it, but I think it is there. Certainly in English, many people feel an overwhelming need to know whether someone is male or female, to the point of being confused as to how to think about a person or character without knowing. I find it bizarre. It's particularly strong with babies, where people will get angry and be unable to interact with the child without knowing. My impression from people who speak gender-neutral languages (like Finnish, Korean, and Chinese) is that this is less of an issue. So, for example, you could have a minor character in a book whose gender isn't specified, and it isn't considered a problem.
That said, there's still plenty of sexism in those cultures. So I don't think the effect is strong, but I'll buy that there is an effect.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 30, 2020, 10:48:47 AM
Quote from: mightybrain on December 30, 2020, 09:23:42 AMWhat do they do in other languages where nouns have a gender?
Tell us to remove the vowels at the end of them and replace them with an X, then pretend that it's still a real, pronounceable word and that it helps address real discrimination, somehow.
The "x" ending isn't used in most of the Spanish-speaking world. There is an "e" ending has slightly more adoption, from what I hear, but it's still rare. (ref) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/teens-argentina-are-leading-charge-gender-neutral-language/?arc404=true) Still, "he or she" is relatively common in Spanish, along with collective nouns instead of masculine default ("la plantilla de la empresa" instead of "los trabajadores").
In Swedish, a new gender-neutral pronoun has been widely adopted, now included in the dictionary but not in formal style guides. As an alternative to "hon" and "han" (he and she), there is now gender-neutral "hen".
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 12:11:37 PMQuote from: VisionStorm on December 30, 2020, 10:48:47 AM
Quote from: mightybrain on December 30, 2020, 09:23:42 AMWhat do they do in other languages where nouns have a gender?
Tell us to remove the vowels at the end of them and replace them with an X, then pretend that it's still a real, pronounceable word and that it helps address real discrimination, somehow.
The "x" ending isn't used in most of the Spanish-speaking world. There is an "e" ending has slightly more adoption, from what I hear, but it's still rare. (ref) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/teens-argentina-are-leading-charge-gender-neutral-language/?arc404=true) Still, "he or she" is relatively common in Spanish, along with collective nouns instead of masculine default ("la plantilla de la empresa" instead of "los trabajadores").
In Swedish, a new gender-neutral pronoun has been widely adopted, now included in the dictionary but not in formal style guides. As an alternative to "hon" and "han" (he and she), there is now gender-neutral "hen".
I saw someone post about that a few weeks ago, but it's still not used outside of rare instances in social media (in Puerto Rico at least), and most regular people wouldn't even know WTF you were talking about if you were to tell them about it. It doesn't even make sense, because there isn't a single Spanish word that I can think of that you would even understand what someone was telling you if you pronounced it with a "e" at the end, instead of an "o" (masculine) or "a" (feminine). The post that I saw had a picture suggesting that people use "Todes" instead of "Todos" or "Todas" (Everyone), and I'm like, WTF does "TodEs" even mean? Who tha hell speaks like that?
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 12:11:37 PMI think there is definitely some effect from language onto culture and viewpoint. I think it's more a question of how strong that effect is. Some people certainly overestimate it, but I think it is there. Certainly in English, many people feel an overwhelming need to know whether someone is male or female, to the point of being confused as to how to think about a person or character without knowing.
That effect has also become much more prevalent with the dominance of the "show, don't tell" school of fiction writing that is so dominant nowadays, which often attempts to evoke the experience of being visually present for key scenes. For example, I have no problem not knowing the sex of a minor character if the prose never brings the character "on stage", but find it very frustrating if the prose is presenting it as a "live" scene; consider the difference between the following prose samples:
QuoteI visited the DMV today; the clerk, a thoroughly unpleasant individual, kept me hanging for nearly an hour before finally admitting there was nothing that could be done here, and I left in high dudgeon.
and:
QuoteI stared at the DMV clerk in disbelief. "Nothing can be done? I waited an hour to find that out?"
The clerk, a middle-aged fat woman with tiny rimless glasses, shrugged and favoured me with a smile just short of a sneer. "Sorry," she called after me as I stomped out.
That the clerk isn't visually described takes nothing from the first sample, but if you take that description of the clerk out of the second sample it immediately renders the scene less vivid and tangible.
This is part of why I think Leckie's novel didn't work for me; the clash between the habits of imagination created by the prose style, and the deliberate denial or misrepresentation (because the feminine pronoun isn't just used as a default neuter where sex is not known, but as the
only pronoun regardless of whether sex is known or not) of information normally used in that imagination, continually thwarted the "flow" of the reading experience for me.
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 12:11:37 PMThere is an "e" ending has slightly more adoption, from what I hear, but it's still rare.
And there was me thinking they'd just be more sensible and write it off as baizuo nonsense.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 30, 2020, 10:48:47 AM
Quote from: mightybrain on December 30, 2020, 09:23:42 AMWhat do they do in other languages where nouns have a gender?
Tell us to remove the vowels at the end of them and replace them with an X, then pretend that it's still a real, pronounceable word and that it helps address real discrimination, somehow.
God, that is so annoying. Priviliged white folks inventing words for poor, oppressed minorites.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 30, 2020, 01:12:37 PM
have no problem not knowing the sex of a minor character if the prose never brings the character "on stage", but find it very frustrating if the prose is presenting it as a "live" scene; consider the difference between the following prose samples:
QuoteI visited the DMV today; the clerk, a thoroughly unpleasant individual, kept me hanging for nearly an hour before finally admitting there was nothing that could be done here, and I left in high dudgeon.
and:
QuoteI stared at the DMV clerk in disbelief. "Nothing can be done? I waited an hour to find that out?"
The clerk, a middle-aged fat woman with tiny rimless glasses, shrugged and favoured me with a smile just short of a sneer. "Sorry," she called after me as I stomped out.
These examples don't really illustrate the issue at hand. In the second one, the clerk is already described as a woman - so it doesn't matter if the pronoun was gendered or not. Changing to use ungendered pronouns wouldn't make any difference to that case. I think a better example for the issue is where the only marker for gender is the pronoun. For example,
QuoteI visited the DMV today; the clerk, a thoroughly unpleasant individual, kept me hanging for nearly an hour before she finally admitted there was nothing that could be done here, and I left in high dudgeon.
This is almost exactly the example where you didn't mind not knowing the gender, though.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 30, 2020, 01:12:37 PM
This is part of why I think Leckie's novel didn't work for me; the clash between the habits of imagination created by the prose style, and the deliberate denial or misrepresentation (because the feminine pronoun isn't just used as a default neuter where sex is not known, but as the only pronoun regardless of whether sex is known or not) of information normally used in that imagination, continually thwarted the "flow" of the reading experience for me.
This is where Sapir-Whorf issue comes in. For example, if you were Finnish and read a translation of the novel, do you think you would still feel like there was deliberate denial or misrepresentation? I wouldn't think so. That would imply that because of English grammar, people *need* to know the gender of minor characters - and it's denial or misrepresentation if it isn't specified.
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 12:11:37 PMI think there is definitely some effect from language onto culture and viewpoint. I think it's more a question of how strong that effect is. Some people certainly overestimate it, but I think it is there. Certainly in English, many people feel an overwhelming need to know whether someone is male or female, to the point of being confused as to how to think about a person or character without knowing. I find it bizarre. It's particularly strong with babies, where people will get angry and be unable to interact with the child without knowing. My impression from people who speak gender-neutral languages (like Finnish, Korean, and Chinese) is that this is less of an issue. So, for example, you could have a minor character in a book whose gender isn't specified, and it isn't considered a problem.
My personal experience agrees with your supposition. When I learn a new language, I find myself thinking new things and in different ways, enabled by the language, which supports my belief that we think at least partly in language, rather then just worldless brain-activity. This is why I find the PC SJW language fascists so offensive. They're trying to change my mind by coercing my language, which is a disrespectful and deceitful way to approach it. If you want to persuade me of something, I'm generally willing to talk - maybe I'll think you have a point. But I will not go along with being manipulated in this fashion.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 30, 2020, 04:34:35 PM
My personal experience agrees with your supposition. When I learn a new language, I find myself thinking new things and in different ways, enabled by the language, which supports my belief that we think at least partly in language, rather then just worldless brain-activity. This is why I find the PC SJW language fascists so offensive. They're trying to change my mind by coercing my language, which is a disrespectful and deceitful way to approach it. If you want to persuade me of something, I'm generally willing to talk - maybe I'll think you have a point. But I will not go along with being manipulated in this fashion.
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
People have a tendency to say that whatever language they were raised with is normal and natural -- and newer ways of speaking are wrong. But language is always being manipulated and changed. The way people spoke in 1970 is different than the way people spoke in 1920, which is different from how people spoke in 1820 or speak now in 2020. Whatever language you were raised with was the result of prior manipulations.
People who insist on older language rules (like generic "he") are using exactly the same tactic -- influence minds by controlling their language. Either old language or new language can be seen as manipulative -- but whether it's deceitful or disrespectful depends on how they approach it, I would say.
Quote from: Spinachcat on December 29, 2020, 07:07:57 PM"They" is fucking retarded.
I know. It's as bad as the moronic use of the singular "you." We should never have started that newfangled pronoun stuff when we had perfectly good words like "thee" and "thou."*
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 29, 2020, 05:09:23 PMPart of the reason I was unable to get through the recent SF novel Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, was that her protagonist and narrator is established as speaking a language which has no gender pronouns, and for which (for some reason) the in-universe English translation convention is to use the feminine as the default. As a result, every time I tried to read the book, I kept tripping up on the fact the protagonist/narrator identifies every other character encountered as "she" or "her" in ways that I knew would not always be accurate, and so I got stuck every time trying to figure out if this character actually was female or not. Ultimately, I was never able to get through more than a chapter or two of the novel, both because I found this a fundamental block to understanding the story, but also because I simply could not shake off the feeling that the author was trying to say, "See, this is what it feels like when the 'generic default' of a language excludes you," and however important that lesson may be considered, I don't want to fight through it every chapter to enjoy a novel-length story.
I found the pronoun use odd. I guess I had an easier time than you adjusting. After a time I mostly gave up concerning myself about the gender of most of the characters. Usually knowing the gender wasn't necessary and the novel was relatively easy for me to follow without the additional information. I'd say the use was definitely intentional and for effect. (I think I read or heard something by the author to that effect.) While I wouldn't want everything I read to be written that way, it didn't seem any more unusual than a few other speculative fiction stories I've read such as Poul Anderson's
Fire Time where there were beings consisting of three separate species linked symbiotically. I seem to recall he did some odd things with pronouns for diads and for singular components.
* Would someone remind me, do we have a specific color we use for sarcasm?
Quote from: Bren on December 30, 2020, 05:16:04 PM
* Would someone remind me, do we have a specific color we use for sarcasm?
I use black myself.
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:53:55 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on December 30, 2020, 04:34:35 PM
My personal experience agrees with your supposition. When I learn a new language, I find myself thinking new things and in different ways, enabled by the language, which supports my belief that we think at least partly in language, rather then just worldless brain-activity. This is why I find the PC SJW language fascists so offensive. They're trying to change my mind by coercing my language, which is a disrespectful and deceitful way to approach it. If you want to persuade me of something, I'm generally willing to talk - maybe I'll think you have a point. But I will not go along with being manipulated in this fashion.
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
There's a difference between being manipulated through your language and being influenced by it. I see a strong, conscious, current effort by the left to manipulate our language to force people to think the way they do. Looking back I don't see similar efforts, though it's certainly hard to be as sure about times that I didn't personally experience. As far as I can tell, it mostly just naturally evolved - I see no particular entity behind the changes.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 30, 2020, 05:40:29 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:53:55 PM
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
There's a difference between being manipulated through your language and being influenced by it. I see a strong, conscious, current effort by the left to manipulate our language to force people to think the way they do. Looking back I don't see similar efforts, though it's certainly hard to be as sure about times that I didn't personally experience. As far as I can tell, it mostly just naturally evolved - I see no particular entity behind the changes.
Yeah, the rest of my post was commenting on this. I think this is pure bias. People always think that the way they grew up is the normal, natural way things are. And later changes are weird, unnatural manipulations.
In previous decades, there was still constant conflict over language. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, there was constantly complaints over "politically correct" manipulations of language and the acceptance of "ebonics". But similar fights happened in previous decades, just not using the term "politically correct" since that usage only cropped up in the 1960s -- which itself is an example of how language changes. There were pushes to change language in First Wave Feminism in the 1920s, and in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and ongoing throughout.
How we speak is always invented and manipulated - it is never natural.
It's been "he or she" as far back as I remember. I've always found it clumsy despite never knowing anything else.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 29, 2020, 05:09:23 PM
For games, I find the best approach is, wherever possible, either to name example players and characters first ("Craig, and his character Sam"), or to write in second-person directly to the reader ("If you buy this Power, your PC can fly"). Do this often enough so that the reader isn't drowned in generic neutral "he"s and most sane readers will generally not complain.
Mostly this.
It also can be vaguely helpful for the lazy writer (and I can be) to have opposite genders interacting. "Mindfire raised his arm and hurls an flaming barrage at Emerald Hawk, but he easily dodges it." is pretty obvious but "Mindfire raised his arm and hurls an flaming barrage at Emerald Hawk, but she easily dodges it." May be slightly more obvious.
When you have longer more involved passages you are less likely to have a sentence or paragraph where it's hard for the reader to tell which of the two "he's" you are talking about in your example.
Mostly I don't care. But I think it is a little weird to not use both at some point.
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:23:56 PMThis is where Sapir-Whorf issue comes in. For example, if you were Finnish and read a translation of the novel, do you think you would still feel like there was deliberate denial or misrepresentation? I wouldn't think so.
Truthfully, I'd say yes, I would; even in languages like Finnish where pronouns don't have a gender to quickly indicate the subject's sex, there is no shortage of ways to identify characters as male or female. But Leckie's protagonist, for at least the first few chapters, doesn't seem capable even of perceiving or recognizing biological sex in the characters she interacts with (she frequently guesses wrongly on the occasions the question actually comes up), and yet she's established to know of the concept.
I would have been far more interested if Leckie had invented a fictional genderless pronoun and confined her character to using that, because that would have felt genuinely alien, and I could have gotten used to a fictional pronoun much more easily than I could to a deliberately chosen "wrong" English pronoun for a source language which isn't supposed to have the concept at all. The latter simply felt too in-one's-face to me. (It's worth noting just how much of the positive press for the novel turned on this pronoun gimmick; without it, you still have what I'm sure is an entertaining and well-told space opera, but would it have won the Hugo, Nebula
and Arthur C. Clarke awards? I confess to some skepticism.)
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:53:55 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on December 30, 2020, 04:34:35 PM
My personal experience agrees with your supposition. When I learn a new language, I find myself thinking new things and in different ways, enabled by the language, which supports my belief that we think at least partly in language, rather then just worldless brain-activity. This is why I find the PC SJW language fascists so offensive. They're trying to change my mind by coercing my language, which is a disrespectful and deceitful way to approach it. If you want to persuade me of something, I'm generally willing to talk - maybe I'll think you have a point. But I will not go along with being manipulated in this fashion.
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
People have a tendency to say that whatever language they were raised with is normal and natural -- and newer ways of speaking are wrong. But language is always being manipulated and changed. The way people spoke in 1970 is different than the way people spoke in 1920, which is different from how people spoke in 1820 or speak now in 2020. Whatever language you were raised with was the result of prior manipulations.
People who insist on older language rules (like generic "he") are using exactly the same tactic -- influence minds by controlling their language. Either old language or new language can be seen as manipulative -- but whether it's deceitful or disrespectful depends on how they approach it, I would say.
There's one huge flaw in that argument--it ignores the difference in descriptive and prescriptive "standards". Language is primarily about clarity of thought in communication. To the extent that grammar standards reflect descriptively how the language is used in conversation, it helps with communication. Obviously, the conversational language is looser than what the grammar describes. There has to be some limits. In short, English had no gender-neutral pronoun and used "he" for that purpose for the simple reason that it reflects the way people spoke most accurately. Whereas the push for the alternatives is not arising spontaneously in the language and then being reflected but rather being prescribed systematically from those with a specific agenda that is not related to clarity of communication but indoctrination of thought.
Yes, I'm aware that some of the ones behind it are convinced that the spoken language is itself evidence of systematic bias, but you can't argue with people who beg the question, as they aren't capable of some of the fundamentals of logic and wouldn't argue in good faith if you tried.
If anything, the language used in games should more accurately reflect the conversation people use at the table. (Not in the reference sections. Those are technical manuals.)
If I ever publish a game, I'm going to use "it" for the gender-neutral pronoun. People with a clue will get the joke and those without can read into it what they choose.
All of this is ignoring the actual economics of this decision. How many times are pronouns used in an RPG book? Assume a pronoun is one out of every 20 words (scale up or down to preference). At 250 words per page (scale as well), that would mean about 12 pronouns per page. In a 200 page book, that's 2400 pronouns. Going from "he" to "she" means 2400 letters (assuming the average word has around six letters, that's 600 words or 2-and-a-half pages) wasted. Using "s/he" doubles that waste. And "he or she" is nine characters (including spaces) instead of two. How much content did we not get, just because the authors are wasting space on useless elaboration of pronouns? And I would bet that most RPG books get way fewer than 250 words per page...
My dad lives near a farmer and lets him graze his cows on his field. The farmer always refers to individual cows as 'he' even though they are all female. But I don't imagine he does that to stop women thinking of themselves as cows.
It's quite common for people to refer to their cars as 'she' or 'her' but I don't read anything into that either. It's all just part of the English language. Any attempt to change it, by edict, will ultimately fail.
Quote from: Shasarak on December 30, 2020, 05:30:10 PM
Quote from: Bren on December 30, 2020, 05:16:04 PM
* Would someone remind me, do we have a specific color we use for sarcasm?
I use black myself.
Well that avoids any confusion.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 30, 2020, 10:40:06 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:53:55 PM
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
People have a tendency to say that whatever language they were raised with is normal and natural -- and newer ways of speaking are wrong. But language is always being manipulated and changed. The way people spoke in 1970 is different than the way people spoke in 1920, which is different from how people spoke in 1820 or speak now in 2020. Whatever language you were raised with was the result of prior manipulations.
People who insist on older language rules (like generic "he") are using exactly the same tactic -- influence minds by controlling their language. Either old language or new language can be seen as manipulative -- but whether it's deceitful or disrespectful depends on how they approach it, I would say.
There's one huge flaw in that argument--it ignores the difference in descriptive and prescriptive "standards". Language is primarily about clarity of thought in communication. To the extent that grammar standards reflect descriptively how the language is used in conversation, it helps with communication. Obviously, the conversational language is looser than what the grammar describes. There has to be some limits. In short, English had no gender-neutral pronoun and used "he" for that purpose for the simple reason that it reflects the way people spoke most accurately. Whereas the push for the alternatives is not arising spontaneously in the language and then being reflected but rather being prescribed systematically from those with a specific agenda that is not related to clarity of communication but indoctrination of thought.
The distinction between spoken language and written language is irrelevant. *Both* spoken language and written language change over time, as a result of people's changes.
Your premise here is that in past eras, people were all pure of heart and *only* used language for clarity of communication. It's only uniquely modern SJWs in all of history who thought to manipulate people through language. I consider that hopelessly naive.
Language is a tool, and it's never a neutral one. People throughout the ages have tried to use language to try to support and reinforce their views.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 29, 2020, 05:09:23 PM
. . . . is established as speaking a language which has no gender pronouns, and for which (for some reason) the in-universe English translation convention is to use the feminine as the default. . . . "See, this is what it feels like when the 'generic default' of a language excludes you,
Sorry, but no, that's bullshit. You're talking about a situation in which she is used as the default and there
is no way to identify someone(or ones) as unambiguously male by pronoun. This is very much
not the same situation at all. A proper example would have been something like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, which uses she pronouns as the default, but still uses he/him for unambiguously male subjects.
As for myself, I hardly notice. I only notice when someone points it out to me, either directly or via a disclaimer. In the latter case, why are you justifying your pronoun usage to me in the first place?
Just do it and shut up about it. I really, really don't give a fuck, and I'm certainly not going to hand out woke points. I also don't give a shit about English language conventions, as trying to hold a language in place is just . . . not how language works, so seeing them flip the script doesn't bother me in the least. As long as they don't virtue signal about it. Fuck pronoun usage disclaimers.
ETA: This does give me the slightly evil idea to find the person(or persons) who wrote the disclaimer, tell them to "here, have a cookie" and then link them to that horrid Cookie Clicker thing in the hopes that they'll lose hours, if not days, of their life to it. It's nonviolent, and it might keep them from writing something else stupid for a while.
Quote from: jhkim on December 31, 2020, 05:53:13 PM
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 30, 2020, 10:40:06 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2020, 04:53:55 PM
But if we accept that language influences thought, then you *already* have been manipulated -- by being indoctrinated by the language you were raised with.
People have a tendency to say that whatever language they were raised with is normal and natural -- and newer ways of speaking are wrong. But language is always being manipulated and changed. The way people spoke in 1970 is different than the way people spoke in 1920, which is different from how people spoke in 1820 or speak now in 2020. Whatever language you were raised with was the result of prior manipulations.
People who insist on older language rules (like generic "he") are using exactly the same tactic -- influence minds by controlling their language. Either old language or new language can be seen as manipulative -- but whether it's deceitful or disrespectful depends on how they approach it, I would say.
There's one huge flaw in that argument--it ignores the difference in descriptive and prescriptive "standards". Language is primarily about clarity of thought in communication. To the extent that grammar standards reflect descriptively how the language is used in conversation, it helps with communication. Obviously, the conversational language is looser than what the grammar describes. There has to be some limits. In short, English had no gender-neutral pronoun and used "he" for that purpose for the simple reason that it reflects the way people spoke most accurately. Whereas the push for the alternatives is not arising spontaneously in the language and then being reflected but rather being prescribed systematically from those with a specific agenda that is not related to clarity of communication but indoctrination of thought.
The distinction between spoken language and written language is irrelevant. *Both* spoken language and written language change over time, as a result of people's changes.
Your premise here is that in past eras, people were all pure of heart and *only* used language for clarity of communication. It's only uniquely modern SJWs in all of history who thought to manipulate people through language. I consider that hopelessly naive.
Language is a tool, and it's never a neutral one. People throughout the ages have tried to use language to try to support and reinforce their views.
That is not my premise, and you know it. But I'm not going to argue about it further here, as it is borderline off-topic already. When you are losing the argument, you try to change the subject. I've said my rebuttal for the benefit of other readers, but I don't care to play your game at the moment.