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[Ronnekk]

What is the role of marriage in dwarven society? If we take the civilizations in human history as a base for analysis, we'll see that marriage was normally a really practical affair where love or attraction didn't play the biggest role. Simply put, people married to have descendants and for status. Even in societies where homosexuality was somehow accepted, marriage between people of the same sex wasn't.

Also let's not forget that when we talk about civilizations that accepted homosexuality, we are almost always talking about pederasty. Pederastic relationships were the most common form of homosexual relationships from the ancient world all the way to the modern era, and only recently pederastic relationships have become less accepted than relationships between two adult men. In fact, if we look at the ancient greeks, we'll see that pederasty was the only form of homosexual relationship widely accepted, and all men were expected to marry a woman and have children, even if they continued to fuck boys in their spare time.

Your understanding of history is pretty damn selective.

As a matter of fact, I did read wikipedia before posting. Pederasty was the norm of homosexual relationships with some famous exceptions. It hardly disproves anything I said.

[pisskop]

I submit this.  Says what Ronnekk about said, only with many more words.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With this system, sexual orientation would be set at birth (no big deal)

But that is the a deal, to me.  Its why I'm against adding homosexuality to DF.  It only furthers an incorrect assessment made and pushed by the media.  Its just not realistic, and we have a way of making it realistic. . .  Aside from the philosophical contradictions, science has proven that genes ≠ sexuality.  Not 100%.  Not even 50%, by many studies.  Most scientists say its a combination of enviornmental and some genetic predisposition.

[Reelya]

You do realize that genes =/= sexuality doesn't mean you can't be born with a trait?

Ever heard of hormones?

Anyway if you're going to argue from 25+ pages of material, can you at least cut out the quotes that support your argument? Just blasting lengthy encyclopedia entries at people isn't an argument. I'm pretty sure I could find material in that lengthy article to support my position - and then you'd have to argue why they were not relevant.

Anyway:

Wouldn't arguing that sexuality is purely a social construct imply that you'd have to make all dwarves pan-sexual? You need to explain to me why "sexuality is a social construct!" automatically implies "straight dwarves only, please!"

[pisskop]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Even though the gender that one was erotically attracted to (at any specific time, given the assumption that persons will likely be attracted to persons of both sexes) was not important, other issues were salient, such as whether one exercised moderation. Status concerns were also of the highest importance. Given that only free men had full status, women and male slaves were not problematic sexual partners. Sex between freemen, however, was problematic for status. The central distinction in ancient Greek sexual relations was between taking an active or insertive role, versus a passive or penetrated one. The passive role was acceptable only for inferiors, such as women, slaves, or male youths who were not yet citizens. Hence the cultural ideal of a same-sex relationship was between an older man, probably in his 20's or 30's, known as the erastes, and a boy whose beard had not yet begun to grow, the eromenos or paidika. In this relationship there was courtship ritual, involving gifts (such as a rooster), and other norms. The erastes had to show that he had nobler interests in the boy, rather than a purely sexual concern. The boy was not to submit too easily, and if pursued by more than one man, was to show discretion and pick the more noble one. There is also evidence that penetration was often avoided by having the erastes face his beloved and place his penis between the thighs of the eromenos, which is known as intercrural sex. The relationship was to be temporary and should end upon the boy reaching adulthood (Dover, 1989). To continue in a submissive role even while one should be an equal citizen was considered troubling, although there certainly were many adult male same-sex relationships that were noted and not strongly stigmatized. While the passive role was thus seen as problematic, to be attracted to men was often taken as a sign of masculinity.

This part pertains to ancient greece in particular.  This is literally the fourth paragraph in.  Status was important, and young men did not have the status the citizens did.

  The link is more because it is interesting, not because I'm arguing anything particular.

edit: in response to your edit.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not saying the enviornment is the sole factor, but to make it purely genetic is assinine, and kinda lazy.  If we cannot find a way to impliment this correctly, than clearly the game isn't ready for it.  There have been offered solutions, but all of them (I think) have suggested a born gay, 100% I have no free-will to choose otherwise, homosexuals.

[Reelya]

BTW forget genes, they're not relevant - and they are a straw man argument, since they form no part of my reasoning.

Environment includes biological environment - and that includes hormonal environment in the pre-natal phase.

Environment of an organism doesn't have to just mean social effects.

Here's an actual study on the effect of pre-natal environment on sexual orientation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation

The fraternal birth order effect is the strongest known biodemographic predictor of sexual orientation.[3] According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%.[4][5][6][7][8] The fraternal birth order effect accounts for approximately one seventh of the prevalence of homosexuality in men.[9] There seems to be no effect on sexual orientation in women, and no effect related to the number of older sisters.

The fraternal birth order effect has also been observed among male-to-female transsexuals: MtF transsexuals who are sexually interested in men have a greater number of older brothers than MtF transsexuals who are sexually interested in women. This has been reported in samples from Canada,[12] the United Kingdom,[13] the Netherlands,[14] and Polynesia.[15]

The effect has been found even in males not raised with their biological brothers, suggesting an in-utero environmental causation.[3] To explain this finding, a maternal immune response has been hypothesized.[16] Male fetuses produce H-Y antigens which may be involved in the sexual differentiation of vertebrates.[16] Other studies have suggested the influence of birth order was not due to a biological, but a social process.[17]

The fraternal birth order effect appears to interact with handedness, as the incidence of homosexuality correlated with an increase in older brothers is seen only in right-handed males.[11][22][23][24]Bogaert (2006) replicated the fraternal birth order effect on male sexual orientation, in a sample including both biological siblings and adopted siblings.[3] Only the older biological brothers influenced sexual orientation; there was no effect of adopted siblings. Bogaert concluded that his finding strongly suggest a prenatal origin to the fraternal birth-order effect.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The last time this suggestion was made, I outlined a solution that should keep all parties happy. It would be trivial to code, so would be more likely to see light of day in an update. Plus, it would be customizable, and optional, so that the player gets to decide how it affects their game, and the change would have other modding uses, too:-

- Change the hard-coded gender pairing, into caste-based pairing. For the vanilla game, things would work the same, but it'll be trivial to code pairing-rules for 6 castes:

GayMale (pairs with GayMale and BiMale)
BiMale (pairs with GayMale, BiMale, BiFemale, StraightFemale)
StraightMale (pairs with StraightFemale and BiFemale)
GayFemale (pairs with GayFemale and BiFemale)
BiFemale (pairs with StraightMale, BiMale, BiFemale, GayFemale)
StraightFemale (pairs with StraightMale and BiMale)

With this system, sexual orientation would be set at birth (no big deal), you could also hand-code the percentages of each type, making customization easy for the player, actual breeding would still use the [MALE] / [FEMALE] tag system, so no real changes the breeding code. You could also give all the castes of the same gender, the same text descriptions, so you wouldn't know which orientation they were until they grew up and paired.

The same change to pairing based on Castes could also be used to create modded "sub races" or actual social castes in the Dwarf world which only marry ones of their matching social rank, or, mobility could only be allowed to one rank higher or lower. This would work especially well, if the [POP_RATIO] tags for children were to be made a Caste-level tag, taken from either parent.

Putting aside issues of if people are born homosexual or not*, there's a big issue there: Not much room for good social dynamics to come out. There could also be amusing bugs where lesbians get each other pregnant and such, but that's not really so much a disadvantage as something to look forward to.

*Frankly, I don't see it making a practical difference. Whatever path is taken to choose if a given dwarf is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, it will annoy people who don't think that's how homosexuals are "really" made, and it'll make only a small amount of difference. The biggest difference would, of course, be that two heterosexuals raising a child would bring up a homosexual child as often as two homosexuals. I'm not going to judge on which way would be better.

[Reelya]

I agree it's really a derail to throw the nature/nurture debate in here, i purely responded to an attack against what I had written.

what's needed is something that:

- at least gives the semblance of the behavior

- pisses the least number of people off (every version of this idea pisses SOMEONE off, as seen by the guy pissed off by my model)

- and has some actual chance of being coded by Toady.

I believe my caste-based optional-modding model is the best candidate filling those 3 criteria.

Could you be more specific about the social dynamics problem?

[lordcooper]

Just make all the dwarves homosexual.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I agree it's really a derail to throw the nature/nurture debate in here, i purely responded to an attack against what I had written.

what's needed is something that:

- at least gives the semblance of the behavior

- pisses the least number of people off (every version of this idea pisses SOMEONE off, as seen by the guy pissed off by my model)

- and has some actual chance of being coded by Toady.

I believe my caste-based optional-modding model is the best candidate filling those 3 criteria.

Aside from Criterion 2, I agree, and even Criterion 2 has a firm "maybe" from me.

Could you be more specific about the social dynamics problem?

In the real world, most societies have had some amount of social conflict over homosexuality, or made it taboo. That's certainly the case with societies most modern people are familiar with. Not including social conflict would remove one of the big things homosexuality could add to the game.

Just make all the dwarves homosexual.

...This is a joke, right?
A 100% homosexual race or culture would die out in a generation.

[Reelya]

...unless they're hermaphrodites.

One thing I don't like about the "making it a social statement" thing, is that then you have to drag every social issue into the game, and for me at least it will cease to be fun, and become nothing but a lecture on political correctness.

Seriously, we have books and movies to give you a social statement. I don't want every time I open dwarf fortress to get a constant lecture on gay rights. I think even gay rights activists don't want the "message" infused into literally every form of media they ever consume.

And of course, it would be discriminatory to not include cross-dressing dwarves, and the social conflict that causes as part of the narrative of every single fortress, and about 100 other social elements where there is conflict.

[G-Flex]

Why does including homosexuality have to be a "social statement" to begin with, or have anything to do with "political correctness"? Is it also a politically correct social statement that there are dark-skinned dwarves?

[Reelya]

If you're replying to me, you're reading something into my statement that wasn't there. I was replying to GreatWyrmGold's suggestion to add social conflict over sexuality into the game.

My entire suggestion was to include the mod for gay dwarves without any "social statement".

GreatWyrmGold was the one who said it didn't go far enough and social conflict in the game over homosexuality was required.

Why does including homosexuality have to be a "social statement" to begin with, or have anything to do with "political correctness"? Is it also a politically correct social statement that there are dark-skinned dwarves?

If the programmer was required to say dark-skinned dwarves were discriminated against, or persecuted, or executed, then it would become a social statement and a political-correctness issue.

Look - can we agree to split the issue into 2 separate things - #1 adding the extra sexuality. #2 conflict over sexuality.
because if you demand #2 you'll probably never get #1.

I really do not want to play a game where I have to go "oh look they're beating up the gay dwarves again in this fortress". I know brutal discrimination exists in the real world. I play games for fun, not to be reminded of depressing shit.

[G-Flex]

That's a fair point. However, depending on how far Toady goes with diversifying maritalfamily structure and sexual/romantic relationships between cultures and races, conflict might be seen as an inevitable or at least fairly obvious thing.

[Reelya]

Do you really want to play a game where your dwarves beat each other up for being gay? I do not. And I think most gays would not.

I hope you get where I'm coming from with that, it's like yeah, a movie or a book, you get the message once, but a game like DF which you play over and over, you really don't need that occurring every single time.

[misko27]

Considerign he stated in the recent Future of the Fortress that dwarven Society will remain un-abashadly equal, I doubr there will be much difficulty. Especially since he said tha tthe dwarves as a whole will be more culturally continguous then other races.
 
If there's conflict, it will be in the same vein as a regular male-female romantic conflict. So like Romeo and Juliet, but with 2 Romeos.