Sex, Gender, and (Imperial) Titles

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Alright, I've made Baron and it's time for me to have my fit. It seems no one else cares much so I take it upon myself to vent my frustration into the void and hope someone who cares happens by to see it.

Sex: So, there's an option for "PILOT GENDER" in the game's options. I of course chose "FEMALE" because I prefer to be the LOUDEST kind of princess I can be (or I'm just trying to be funny saying so). I believe the only effect of this to be giving the character model only visible to myself and possibly a slimmer figure. As I expect and handful of you may know, developed are a characteristic of the female /sex/. So, this is wrong.

Gender: Gender, on the other hand, is... /almost/ nowhere. Even players don't refer to my gender unless there's more to them saying "Hey, guys" and the like than just the awkward but understood general usage of "guys." This is /almost/ fine, as I'm fine with the possibility of everyone growing out of fussing over binary gender or gender as a concept within the next thousand or so years.

Imperial Titles: So, you may have noticed that not only is my status as princess not recognised by the Empire (so I'm not a princess /of/ the Empire, surely they're beyond such petty details! (FD please make me a Princess of the Empire. PRCS Riikka (or such) would be fantastic as well ;P)) but my gender is also ignored. This is wrong.

Apparently this isn't an issue for anyone else, but I'm still sick of getting the "probably a man" "i bet ur rly a guy lol" crap everywhere else I go on the Internet. Anywhere else it's just thoughtless or outright hateful people calling me a fraud and a liar (potentially among other things) just for being there, but here the game itself has decided that I'm male. "Lord?" "Baron?" I deliberately told the game that my pilot's /gender/ is female (never mind all of the talk that "the character is /you/;" it's still a setting for the "pilot") yet gender is the thing that it gets /wrong/ the only time it ever uses any relevant (in this case, gendered) language and the option itself actually just affects sex. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Just in case someone thinks this is all a clever "oh, these terms don't have gender association anymore a thousand years into the future" kind of thing I'd like to point out that there's no indication to those of us who're playing in 2015 that this is the case. We just get a rank mission and then suddenly we have a new title once it's done... probably a male gendered one, if we're working on Empire rank. I feel it's plenty fair to ask that Frontier provide at least male and female terms if they must use terms of this type (is a non-binary/agender/third gender/etc. person a Lord, and Lady, or something else?) or use gender neutral/agnostic terms instead particularly for things that are directly labeling players. I can no longer /not/ have a male rank unless I just erase my progress completely. I find this unpleasant.

A bit long-winded, but I feel better now. I hope some people learned some things and I further hope that I've not legitimately offended or irritated anyone myself. I suppose it's probably going too far to hope this doesn't attract hateful types but I'll do that anyway as well. The best for us all, and the best for Frontier exploring new frontiers of respect, decency, and large-scale space adventure! ö/
 
I hope they look into this sooner than later. It seems like a thing that is not prioritised for some reason. If titles are not important, then what is?
 
Hadn't actually thought about this when I was ranking up but I agree it makes sense for the empire titles to reflect the gender choice you make.
 
This a completely irrelevant at the moment. The devs have far too much on their hands to even breathe at this.

As the teenagers would say, "take a chill pill", or perhaps a suppository.
 
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I think it may be a lore thing, federal ranks are all gender-neutral while imperial ranks are all male. The empire seems pretty, um, traditionalist while the federation is more progressive.
 
I think it may be a lore thing, federal ranks are all gender-neutral while imperial ranks are all male. The empire seems pretty, um, traditionalist while the federation is more progressive.

The Feds are progressively turning into fossils on their old worn-out worlds yeah. Can't argue with that. They also love Robots, that's why they have lost their ability to separate the genders. I doubt you get far in this universe without them. So might as well take them into account. ;)
 
You do have a good point, especially with Imperial ranks (as some of them do have gender specific alternates).

Have you filed a report with FDev (bug report, I suppose)?

Personally, I don't care what you are. I'll treat you the way you treat me. :)
 
There's also the point that the "Gender option" is actually in the.... GRAPHIC OPTIONS menu. Like, it's treated in the rawest technical way: you just swap a model. Remove the male suit, put a suit that is a bit more slender and has (if you look down). Other than that, no change in-game, nor any kind of indication (which for one part is nice, because we're in a "sex/gender doesn't matter" kind of work environment).

But then two delicate stuff can be brought:

One is the title stuff you are talking about. There's no "Baroness". No "Lady". No "Countess". The ranks are not gender neutral and they don't change based on your chosen gender (actually... on your chosen "sex". "Gender" is a different thing, but since we have little space for differentiation here, let's take them as approximate enough). And the problem is only on the empire side, because the Federation uses something similar to NATO ranks and the Alliance doesn't have ranks at all.

The other point is, retaking the "Sex as a Graphical Option" thing... you can swap and re-swap your character's sex at any given moment. Like flipping a switch. So even if the system took that into account for titles, pronouns etc, that is still linked to something that's still treated in the same tier as the "Enable V-Sync" option. Giving meaning to the pilot's sex and gender must reflect here as well.

And by the way, it was a nice play to put it into Graphical Options instead of a Gameplay menu or anything like that, giving the implicit meaning that "it doesn't carry gameplay difference, and thus it's merely cosmetic".

.....And then... I digress. It influences how people interact with each other and with themselves, in a social and psychological standpoint. And c'mon, this game has a strong multiplayer AND social factor, specially when you combine with Forum Activity as of now (my sex/gender is stated as Female here too, btw), and even more when we get the option to walk around outside our ships, if ever.

So... It is at least worth being a pet peeve now, but it'll surely become a bigger issue later. I second the cause: this needs to get more meaning. True meaning.
 
A agree, this too has bugged me. One of the issues will be there is no true feminine equivelent to an Earl, Countess is typicaly used but we have a count rank.

We could use Marquess, but that's way cooler than an Earl. Actaully just ditch Earl and use Marquess and Marguis instead, but this only works if they arn't planned to be added as higher ranks later on, because Duke and Duchess are typical reserved for members the ruling Royal family so don't work for ingame ranks.

EDIT: Also why do I know this stuff? That in itself is a bit concerning for a antipodean republican.
 
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I think we need some kind of character identification framework, to appear like more than ghosts in the machine...
 
I got told off the other day for calling a woman an "actress". Apparently that's wrong and I should have said "actor". Previously had the same confusion with manageress/manager.

Now you're telling me I should use gender specific forms?

Oddly most female brewers I've met are proud to be called brewsters rather than brewers.

Surely in 3300 we've got rid of all gender references to do with rank and position, replaced as above. The royals will always have their own rules of course. You'll need someone else to confirm how thus is handled in lore, I have no ides.

The Feds obviously have a superior system :)
 
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I got told off the other day for calling a woman an "actress". Apparently that's wrong and I should have said "actor". Previously had the same confusion with manageress/manager.

Now you're telling me I should use gender specific forms?

Oddly most female brewers I've met are proud to be called brewsters rather than brewers.

Surely in 3300 we've got rid of all gender references to do with rank and position, replaced as above. The royals will always have their own rules of course.

Be glad your not a native german speaker. I don't speak German - but my family are, I was talking with my Aunt about this very thing the other day.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/24/germans-get-tongues-around-gender-neutral-language
 
A agree, this too has bugged me. One of the issues will be there is no true feminine equivelent to an Earl, Countess is typicaly used but we have a count rank.

We could use Marquess, but that's way cooler than an Earl. Actaully just ditch Earl and use Marquess and Marguis instead, but this only works if they arn't planned to be added as higher ranks later on, because Duke and Duchess are typical reserved for members the ruling Royal family so don't work for ingame ranks.

EDIT: Also why do I know this stuff? That in itself is a bit concerning for a antipodean republican.

Actually Marquis is not the same rank as Earl so might not be a good idea to replace it directly like that (it is actually a full rank lower in the nobility system). Also dukes are not necessarily a title typically reserved for the royal family, just that it happens to be the lowest title a king can give to his any of his sons that will have even a remote chance of succession. Traditionally it has not much association at all. For example, the Duke of Normandy before William the Conqueror actually has not chance of succession to the England throne before the Earl Harold Godwinson crash his ship on William's coast. William would've not had much chance to be king of France because the Normans are from Viking bloodline, not the original Frankish bloodline of Charlemagne.
 
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Now you're telling me I should use gender specific forms?

If you're going to act like particular terms are not associated with a gender though they, you know, are, I recommend (1) making it clear that you're not referring to people using an incorrect gender (maybe some totally not conspicuous mention of gendered titles no longer existing?) and (2) not using gender variants of related terms while you do it (I wonder what the Empire's Princesses think of their "ess"es).
 
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If you had an actual gender switch, they could probably hook it up to a separate set of titles. So you move Countess up to Earl, and fill in something else for that old "Count" slot. Since it would be a separate set, a complete match would not be needed, more like an "alternate display" of the exact same steps. Unless we need alternate tasks as well... like a mission to buy shoes, and... Yeah, yeah, I'm kidding. :D
 
I completely agree with you, regarding the gendered titles. It's something FD will have to sort out if they ever have walkabouts in stations and whatnot. I suspect a bug report would be ignored, but it's not inappropriate.

In the meantime: why not make up something?

An Earl is approximately a Duke, in English history. So you could be a Duchess.

If I were a woman and an Earl, I would call myself "The Lady Earl so-and-so of such-and-such" and I'd have my seconds arrange an encounter with anyone who had anything sniffy to say about it.

By the way, this is a good opportunity for me to bump my "choose your demesnes" thread.

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Marquess/Marchioness :)

Or perhaps the ancient French "Marquise"
 
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