Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[smeeprocket]

Definite no from me.  I find the lack of gender roles incredibly refreshing, and besides, gender roles would remind me of how, because of my religion, I feel personably culpable for everything bad in the world.  I play this game to distract myself from that little problem.

Honestly, if it became a feature, I'd probably stop playing.

It should never become a feature for dwarves, because they are gender equal. It is one of their "ethics" which they actually follow.

Among humans, though, males are stronger and generally dominate is a way which is not, and never should be true for dwarves. For humans, though, there should be some kind of gender roles system in place, though remember that in reality a female metalsmith would not have been astounding because wives often helped in their husbands' businesses. Armies should be male dominated unless they are defending settlements against overwhelming odds or the civilisation is so martial that everyone learns to fight (the ancient Scythians were like this, and women also learned horse archery and fought to defend camps from the enemy, hence the Amazon stories. One Scythian queen, Tomyris, led her army to defeat King Cyrus the Great of Persia and kill him.) Nonetheless, men should dominate most human societies. Animal torture should also be common.

If you do not want to play with gender roles, stick to playing dwarves, who should not have them.

why does everything devolve to men are stronger than women. Since the beginning, plenty of women have been successful soldiers, masquerading as men. Women are perfectly capable of being soldiers. And saying women could be metalsmiths to "help their husbands" no. They should be metalsmiths because they want to be metalsmiths.

This game does not need those kind of limitations. They are an unpleasant reminder to some of us that this is very much a reality in current times.

I get that the game feels more period to you if humans are male dominated and oppressive to females and homophobic and what have you, but this is not real life. And statistically, in adventure mode, I get no physical advantages being male or female of any race, so physical strength isn't even different for even humans in this game. And physical strength was ultimately what caused the beginnings of the patriarchy.

There's literally no reason, short of say because of the ability to control women through their fertility, to have men in any of the races being superior. I don't really feel like that's a good enough reason either way.

Why make the game more exclusive instead of more inclusive.

[Dyret]

I'm always surprised by how upset the idea of being more inclusive is to some people.

I think people are just unsure how to implement it as gender is entirely meaningless beyond procreation and that little symbol on a Dwarfs profile. I suppose adding a little 'they identify as x' to their profile could do it. Not sure if that would be taken as overly hamfisted or not.

[smeeprocket]

I'm always surprised by how upset the idea of being more inclusive is to some people.

I think people are just unsure how to implement it as gender is entirely meaningless beyond procreation and that little symbol on a Dwarfs profile. I suppose adding a little 'they identify as x' to their profile could do it. Not sure if that would be taken as overly hamfisted or not.

I'm sure it would be by people that are inconvenienced by such things, but those people will always be put out by inclusion.

I'm not 100% sure how to implement it, but I think there are ways it could be possible. I just think it would be really progressive and worthwhile to include all genders.

[Graknorke]

Having gay dwarves also "doesn't add anything to the game" except make non heterosexual people feel included.

No, it adds flavour in an area that previously (and still kind of does, but less so) felt rather lacking. Dwarven relationships were something that we were told were important to them through mood screens but wasn't really reflected mechanically. Now that's got a bit more detail it seems less forced.
Gender identity not such a big deal. Gender roles aren't a thing and souls in general don't have much of an opinion about themselves. You'd be alluding to whether or not the individual in question conforms to a system that doesn't actually exist.

[Decidophobia]

That being said, a lot of the posts so far keep mentioning that babies are never carried by the father "fertilizing parent", I've just been interpreting this as dwarves being mammals that constantly require a milk-only diet for the entirety of their infancy.

That's not true, though, since when a mother dies other adults will feed her babies. They just won't pick them up.

[smeeprocket]

Having gay dwarves also "doesn't add anything to the game" except make non heterosexual people feel included.

No, it adds flavour in an area that previously (and still kind of does, but less so) felt rather lacking. Dwarven relationships were something that we were told were important to them through mood screens but wasn't really reflected mechanically. Now that's got a bit more detail it seems less forced.
Gender identity not such a big deal. Gender roles aren't a thing and souls in general don't have much of an opinion about themselves. You'd be alluding to whether or not the individual in question conforms to a system that doesn't actually exist.

I really don't see why it shouldn't exist, even in a society that has a generally neutral stance toward gender, someone might still identify as female or non binary etc.

I don't see how it would at all be a detriment, it could only add to the game for people that aren't cis-gendered.

You are arguing that it is unnecessary detail, but DF is full of unnecessary details. They only serve to improve the game.

[Orange Wizard]

Maybe we'll just have "overly complicated gender nonsense" as an init option or somesuch.

...

I don't see how it would at all be a detriment, it could only add to the game for people that aren't cis-gendered.

Wait, cis-gendered can't appreciate "inclusiveness" or whatever you call it?

[Putnam]

Having gay dwarves also "doesn't add anything to the game" except make non heterosexual people feel included.

No, it adds flavour in an area that previously (and still kind of does, but less so) felt rather lacking. Dwarven relationships were something that we were told were important to them through mood screens but wasn't really reflected mechanically. Now that's got a bit more detail it seems less forced.
Gender identity not such a big deal. Gender roles aren't a thing and souls in general don't have much of an opinion about themselves. You'd be alluding to whether or not the individual in question conforms to a system that doesn't actually exist.

I really don't see why it shouldn't exist, even in a society that has a generally neutral stance toward gender, someone might still identify as female or non binary etc.

I don't see how it would at all be a detriment, it could only add to the game for people that aren't cis-gendered.

You are arguing that it is unnecessary detail, but DF is full of unnecessary details. They only serve to improve the game.

I think that gender identity is a great idea.

I'm not entirely sure that dwarves have gender at all, though? I mean, when it comes to their society, they seem outright genderless. There's two sexes, male and female, and then there's the one gender, dwarf.

Actually, wait a sec, let me test something.

EDIT: Testing done.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  Sodel Gegetshem, "Sodel Violetplank", Woodcutter   
"One should always return a favor."

She is a worshipper of The Golden Boulder and a faithful worshipper of Limul Wanderpriced the Strangers of Jade. 
She is a citizen of The Pick of Budding.  She is a member of The Escorted Bodices.  She arrived at Bomrekatham on the 15th of Granite in the year 39. 
She has the appearance of somebody that is sixty-eight years old and is one of the first of her kind. 
She is tall and very fat.  Her sunken cobalt eyes are very round.  She has an angular chin.  Her straight hair is quite dense.  Her very long hair is neatly combed.  Her lips are thin.  Her ears are somewhat short.  Her head is somewhat tall.  Her hair is golden yellow.  Her skin is ecru.
She is very slow to heal. 
Sodel Gegetshem likes alunite, nickel, sapphire, crystal glass, alpaca wool and gems.  When possible, she prefers to consume two-grain wheat beer.  She absolutely detests bats. 
She has bad intuition. 
Like others in his culture, he has a great deal of respect for the law, greatly prizes loyalty, values family greatly, sees friendship as one of the finer things in life, believes that honesty is a high ideal, really respects those that take the time to master a skill, deeply respects those that work hard at their labors, respects fair-dealing and fair-play, values cooperation, finds merrymaking and partying worthwhile activities, values martial prowess, values leisure time, respects commerce and finds nature somewhat disturbing.  He personally has a great deal of respect for worthy craftsdwarfship, values a harmonious existence and doesn't care about art one way or another.  He dreams of mastering a skill. 
He never feels lustful passions.  He feels a strong need to reciprocate any favor done for him.  He is not the type to fall in love or even develop positive feelings.  He finds helping others emotionally rewarding.  He tends to be a little wasteful when working on projects.  He has an active sense of humor.  He tries to keep his things orderly.  He could be considered rude.  He is very humble.  He generally acts with a narrow focus on the current activity.  He can handle stress.  She needs alcohol to get through the working day.  She likes working outdoors and grumbles only mildly at inclement weather. 

A short, sturdy creature fond of drink and industry.

Unsatisfying as hell, but at the very least you can manipulate a dwarf's "soul sex" separately from "unit sex" and "historical sex". This dwarf is female, but in his soul he's male, but in her hist fig she's female.

This doesn't make any difference, I'm pretty sure. Like, at all, mechanically or otherwise. I guess you could consider it flavor, but it mostly just makes the status screen inconsistent, as you can see there. Obviously there should be something better if one were to go all the way.

[Graknorke]

I really don't see why it shouldn't exist, even in a society that has a generally neutral stance toward gender, someone might still identify as female or non binary etc.

Well we can't really know that, given the lack of egalitarian societies to study.

You are arguing that it is unnecessary detail, but DF is full of unnecessary details. They only serve to improve the game.

It's not (exactly) that it's unnecessary. I mean, the entire game is unnecessary. It's that there's no context for it to have significance in. Every other system in the game ties in to something higher up to the fort's wellbeing in some way, even if it is just that one dwarf doesn't like plump helmet wine or whatever.

[MDFification]

It would be nice to have non-binary genders, though. Without specific roles of their own. Transgender and genderfluid dwarves, for example, would be wonderful. There's no reason not to have them recognized as part of dwarven society since dwarves seem fairly neutral towards gender and gender roles.

Disagree. If dwarves don't have a gender binary, then dwarves as we currently know them are all non-binary. There is no genderfluid or transgender, because acceptible dwarven gender roles is a single, all-emcompassing gender that effectively is just a cultural standard rather than a gender for individuals. Essentially, their code of conduct to meet society's expectations for their gender is indistinguishable from the code of conduct to meet society's expectations as an individual. So varying from the dwarven monogender is the exact same for dwarves (as currently implemented) as exhibiting antisocial behaviors. Personally, I don't think that's a good representation of trans individuals to be putting out there.

Not saying that no system for genders should be implemented, but I don't see keeping the current absolute egalitarian model AND adding in transgendered individuals as consistent. One will have to go. I assume it's going to be the former, because there is no sophisticated culture modeling in-game ATM and there probably is intended to be.

I'd also avoid saying there won't be detrimental side effects - law of unintended consequences strikes again. Implementing a new feature means implementing new bugs, and the inclusion of homosexuality/asexuality/dwarves uninterested in marriage did majorly disrupt in-fort breeding, making it considerably more rare. Nobody's complaining about it though because what Toady wants, Toady makes and in this case Toady is kind enough to give us options to tweak it in the raws.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Definite no from me.  I find the lack of gender roles incredibly refreshing, and besides, gender roles would remind me of how, because of my religion, I feel personably culpable for everything bad in the world.  I play this game to distract myself from that little problem.

Honestly, if it became a feature, I'd probably stop playing.

It should never become a feature for dwarves, because they are gender equal. It is one of their "ethics" which they actually follow.

Among humans, though, males are stronger and generally dominate is a way which is not, and never should be true for dwarves. For humans, though, there should be some kind of gender roles system in place, though remember that in reality a female metalsmith would not have been astounding because wives often helped in their husbands' businesses. Armies should be male dominated unless they are defending settlements against overwhelming odds or the civilisation is so martial that everyone learns to fight (the ancient Scythians were like this, and women also learned horse archery and fought to defend camps from the enemy, hence the Amazon stories. One Scythian queen, Tomyris, led her army to defeat King Cyrus the Great of Persia and kill him.) Nonetheless, men should dominate most human societies. Animal torture should also be common.

If you do not want to play with gender roles, stick to playing dwarves, who should not have them.

why does everything devolve to men are stronger than women. Since the beginning, plenty of women have been successful soldiers, masquerading as men. Women are perfectly capable of being soldiers. And saying women could be metalsmiths to "help their husbands" no. They should be metalsmiths because they want to be metalsmiths.

This game does not need those kind of limitations. They are an unpleasant reminder to some of us that this is very much a reality in current times.

I get that the game feels more period to you if humans are male dominated and oppressive to females and homophobic and what have you, but this is not real life. And statistically, in adventure mode, I get no physical advantages being male or female of any race, so physical strength isn't even different for even humans in this game. And physical strength was ultimately what caused the beginnings of the patriarchy.

There's literally no reason, short of say because of the ability to control women through their fertility, to have men in any of the races being superior. I don't really feel like that's a good enough reason either way.

Why make the game more exclusive instead of more inclusive.

Most women soldiers in history were absolutely not masquerading as men. They were fighting because the state/tribe needed EVERYONE to fight, women included, and consequently could not afford to discriminate. Nobody thought the Scythian women horse archers were men, they just thought that everyone had to be ready to fight and defend the camps from the enemy. The same is true of female native Americans who fought. Even the Arab Muslim women joined in in some of their battles - notably at Yarmouk, where they used tent poles to first prod retreating men back to the line, and then to charge in and join the fighting themselves. Nobody thought that they were men, they fought because everyone did.

As for the metalsmiths point, mediaeval businesses were for the most part family businesses. Most marriages were arranged, though not always at a very young age, because people could not really prosper on their own - if a peasant's wife died, he married again so there would be enough people to work. Hence also the commonness of child labour. Men were not usually metalsmiths because they wanted to be metalsmiths either, they just inherited the family business or were apprenticed to an older metalsmith. There were traditions where young boys were sent away to be apprenticed and often abused for years before becoming tradesmen themselves. When women married, they married into the business too, and had to help, whatever it was. They did not have much choice in the matter, but neither did the men, really. If women were widowed, then they could go on being metalsmiths by themselves, but they would very likely remarry because it was too hard to work alone.

Either the "humans" in DF need their names changed to "animal-loving human-like creatures", or they need to have some kind of system of family trades and arranged marriages, since that existed worldwide in the kind of periods DF was based on. They do not need hard bans on women doing anything, or allow violence against them, since this varied from place to place, but all human societies shared the family businesses model where people did not choose careers for the most part. They should also show some sexual dimorphism in strength, again, unless they are "animal-loving human-like creatures". This does not have to lead to male only armies or governments, but it should favour societies closer to those which existed at the time. In fact, I may change that in the raws now.

This is not about what is happening now. It is about what happened around the 14th century, where Toady is taking inspiration. And the truth is that men were favoured, though not anywhere near as much as they are in parts of certain Islamic states now.

[smeeprocket]

Maybe we'll just have "overly complicated gender nonsense" as an init option or somesuch.

...

I don't see how it would at all be a detriment, it could only add to the game for people that aren't cis-gendered.

Wait, cis-gendered can't appreciate "inclusiveness" or whatever you call it?

you're right, gender identity is nonsense. All these silly people "Thinking" they are men or women when they clearly aren't. Utter nonsense. What a stupid idea to include them.

You can't really use the term SJWs and not being saying things in a derisive manner.

Cis-gendered people are already included. They already appreciate their own inclusiveness.

I'm not seeing a decent argument against including it. It would not actually be detrimental in any way. What reason could we possibly have to not have, it and yet want things like arranged marriages,etc, which have never been part of DF culture at all.

[Dirst]

There isn't a particularly good argument against including it, but in a previous post I did explain why it is such low priority.  Gender just isn't a thing for vanilla Dwarves, and anything that isn't a thing for vanilla Dwarves gets little or no development effort until it happens to overlap with some system rewrite that does affect vanilla Dwarves.

[Adrian]

Dwarf Fort is a city building game with a focus on resource- and labor management stuck in medieval timelock.
Variable gender identity would add nothing to either the setting or gameplay.

I'm starting to think the OP might have been a very successful troll that got access to someone else's forum account. Indicated by the OP's account having been comatose for the past three years, only to wake up a few days ago by posting a wall o' text suggesting the inclusion of a feature which is currently a hot topic in IRL society (and which is bound to get a long debate started on here).

[Reelya]

I don't think the OP is trollish. Those are legitimate beliefs in the OP, not exaggerations. There were similar arguments for and against same-sex relationships. The outcome of that was Toady implementing the bare minimum of new tags in the raws such that the same-sex behavior is possible. That's the most likely outcome here, too.

It looks like the Navajo and Hindu examples are actually every bit binary on the gender levels. Just the Navajo decoupled gender from genitals, but they drew clear boundaries between allowable masculine and feminine roles, including marriage. Modern Iran does something similar: they are strongly anti-gay, but pro sex change. As long as you have people of gender A marrying people of gender B, they don't care what your birth genitals were. If Navajo had had access to sex change surgery would they have done the same? Probably, yes. I don't see it as a clear sign the Navajo were extra-progressive, it's just a slightly different take on enforcing rigid binary gender roles. The people who say that Navajo had "4 genders" are basically making a mistake that contradicts their own general position: gender is social, sex is genitals. Having a word for a dude in a dress isn't proof that they have an "extra gender". We have words for that, too. If they are thereafter treated exactly the same socially as a woman, they have the woman gender.

As said above: dwarves really are mono-gender, with the only trappings being the bare minimum for mammalian procreation.

Modding in Navajo Genders in current system

Right now, any creature token that can be modded at the caste level could be altered on a per-gender basis. Then, you could make 2 male and 2 female castes and give each one opposite gender-related tags. Presto "masculine" female dwarves and "feminine" male dwarves. This wouldn't properly model the Navajo system though, because dwarf sexuality couldn't be constrained to only doing opposite genders. But SEX + ORIENTATION tags can actually restrict mate selection in a way similar to the Navajo! So the "fix" for Navajo modelling would be to use SEX tags as socially assigned gender instead, turn OFF same-sex relationships, and then apply the baby-making tags to whichever castes have the female "sex" (which can now be different to the SEX tags since we have stolen this to indicate gender). Chuck some description tags in there and presto, your own Navajo! The only weird behavior would be a pairing of masculine female/feminine female could still have children, which isn't too bad if you assume they had a donor.

Appropriating the SEX tag as gender instead has a lot of potential, since Putnam already showed it has nothing to do with whether and individual can bear children. Right now as far as I can see the only functional purpose of that tag is mate selection.

The only issue I have is with the word "procedural" in the OP. The OP has given some examples of some societies which either do or don't decouple the sex binary from the gender binary, but he/she hasn't given much if any examples of what sort of things this "procedural" system is going to model. If you give specific examples of how that could work as a system of variables then it might be more feasible. Just saying "procedural" doesn't do anything if you haven't shown a set of variables that could be adjusted in a sensible way.