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[smeeprocket]

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.

That's an interesting idea for modding. I don't fully understand it because I don't mod much but I think I will look into that. Would there be a way to also include non-binary and genderfluid dwarves?

Incidentally, urist, regarding a previous post, I was referring to a number of women that did actually pretend to be male (or were male, but just not cis-gendered, that wouldn't have really been documented one way or the other.) There are a number of accounts of women dressing and acting as men to serve in the military, with some only discovered after their death.

[Reelya]

Really, for a third gender all you can do is not assign either male or female to the caste, then you have a non-gendered dwarf caste which doesn't have a mars or venus symbol. And you can name this caste "genderfluid" if you want. but since they don't have a gender for someone to decide whether they're attracted or not they probably wouldn't ever form relationships, so they'd be more like a nonsexual person.

So, you can make as many castes as you want, name them however you like and give them descriptions, and try and tweak the tags for that caste so they mimic the behavior and relationships you want, but you come up against the limits of the tags that control relationships and bearing children.

[Dyret]

   [CASTE:FEMALE]
      The gender tag lets it know how breeding works.
      [FEMALE]
      [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
      To add beards, put square brackets around the following:
      BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS
   [CASTE:MALE]
      [MALE]
      [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_TYPE:LOWERBODY][BP_ADD_TYPE:GELDABLE]
      [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]

This is what sex looks like for Dwarves right now. More genders should be as easy as copying and pasting and renaming. Tokens for determining creature descriptions, frequency and such can be found here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token

Modding guide: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Modding_guide

[smeeprocket]

Really, for a third gender all you can do is not assign either male or female to the caste, then you have a non-gendered dwarf caste which doesn't have a mars or venus symbol. And you can name this caste "genderfluid" if you want. but since they don't have a gender for someone to decide whether they're attracted or not they probably wouldn't ever form relationships, so they'd be more like a nonsexual person.

So, you can make as many castes as you want, name them however you like and give them descriptions, and try and tweak the tags for that caste so they mimic the behavior and relationships you want, but you come up against the limits of the tags that control relationships and bearing children.

hmm so that would be more like asexual, but asexual is a sexuality in the game already, isn't it? It sounds like genderfluid would be cumbersome. But male or female transexual would be smoother. a male transexual having a baby isn't too big of a deal I think, assuming he was in a relationship with a male, or a female cis-gendered having a baby with a transexual female, that seems like it would make sense biologically anyway.

Or were you saying it would be more of a problem with a cis-gendered female and a transsexual male could have a baby?

Is there a way to have a caste, which can have any sexuality, that can be... well a transsexual is biologically also whatever gender they identify as, but that would be capable or incapable of reproduction depending on what would, in the real world, be based on reproductive organs, without having a male or female gender designation? Or would that require a lot more reworking.

I don't know much about modding at all. What tags would I be looking at adding, changing?

Actually, could we move this to PMs since this thread would be better suited for suggestions than modding. Or I could make a new thread in the modding forum if you like.

When I have it figured out I'll make thread either way so other people can mod in transsexuality, though I do hope Toady considers it for the future.

[smeeprocket]

   [CASTE:FEMALE]
      The gender tag lets it know how breeding works.
      [FEMALE]
      [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
      To add beards, put square brackets around the following:
      BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS
   [CASTE:MALE]
      [MALE]
      [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_TYPE:LOWERBODY][BP_ADD_TYPE:GELDABLE]
      [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]

This is what sex looks like for Dwarves right now. More genders should be as easy as copying and pasting and renaming. Tokens for determining creature descriptions, frequency and such can be found here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token

Modding guide: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Modding_guide

Oh so I could add like

[CASTE: TRANSSEXUAL FEMALE]
[MALE]

or [CASTE: GENDERFLUID]
[MALE]

Then a genderfluid with female, a transsexual male caste, etc etc?

[Dyret]

Yep, though if you define their biological gender (the in-caste [MALE] [FEMALE] tags) gender symbols will be shown based on those. I'm not sure there is a way around that, but I haven't played around much with castes yet... I'd ask around on the modding subforum.

[Reelya]

Somewhat related: I've tested and put into practice same-sex childbearing (male and female). The game seems to handle it very well, with the relationship screen saying "father" for both parents (for example, mother also works) and one parent taking care of the baby pretty elegantly.

And yeah, the separation of sex and gender would be good. It should probably wait until the family unit is more... considered. Right now it's "person who gives birth (regardless of sex) carries the baby around" (Yeah, I tested male childbirth. It works, as long as they're a female for the birth).

It'd be handy to further gender modding to know how you managed to get all this working.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Some women pretended to be men to fight, but most women who fought in history did so as women.

[smeeprocket]

Some women pretended to be men to fight, but most women who fought in history did so as women.

I don't really feel like we have the numbers for that to be certain one way or the other.

[Urist Tilaturist]

We know that historical armies did not contain large numbers of women disguised as men, as people looting corpses after battles would likely have noticed it and it is not recorded on a large scale - the fact that incidents of it happening are quite famous indicates that it was rare. We also know that many armies openly used women soldiers in some cases, especially in siege defences. With these together, my conclusion seems fairly valid.

We do know from studying graves and records that about 1/5th of Scythian troops were female at some times, and they were not disguised. We also know of many sieges when women aided the defence - again, not disguised. The numbers of these far exceed stories of women impersonating men. That was only common in Shakespeare plays.

[Dirst]

   [CASTE:FEMALE]
      The gender tag lets it know how breeding works.
      [FEMALE]
      [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
      To add beards, put square brackets around the following:
      BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS
   [CASTE:MALE]
      [MALE]
      [SET_BP_GROUP:BY_TYPE:LOWERBODY][BP_ADD_TYPE:GELDABLE]
      [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:FACIAL_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS]

This is what sex looks like for Dwarves right now. More genders should be as easy as copying and pasting and renaming. Tokens for determining creature descriptions, frequency and such can be found here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token

Modding guide: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Modding_guide

Oh so I could add like

[CASTE: TRANSSEXUAL FEMALE]
[MALE]

or [CASTE: GENDERFLUID]
[MALE]

Then a genderfluid with female, a transsexual male caste, etc etc?

DF's tags and raw files are incredibly flexible, but they are not a Turing-complete language.  Raw modding is limited to what tags exist in the game, which is why there was no way to manipulate sexual orientation until this release with its new ORIENTATION tags. The tags' parameters are a bit confusing, but for any civilized creature the default is to have a 75% change or being interested in marrying the opposite sex, a 20% of being interested in taking the opposite sex as a lover (but not marrying) and a 5% chance of being uninterested in the opposite gender.  There is a completely separate die-roll for the same sex: 75% uninterested, 20% lover and 5% marrying.  So having a Dwarf end up straight, bi, gay or asexual is already achievable.

The reason I can summarize the whole thing in three sentences is because sex has no game impact outside of reproduction.  In short, they are all genderfluid since they're all shifting across all possible genders continuously (which is one).

The [MALE] tag makes a caste^* capable of fathering children, the [FEMALE] tag makes a caste biologically capable of bearing children, and the [GELDABLE] tag in a bodypart allows a creature to be sterilized at a Farmer's Workshop.  When the game does get around to socially constructed genders, they will likely be defined at the entity (civilization) level and obey whatever randomization exists for every other civilization-level characteristic like ethics, values, noble positions, etc.

^*Caste doesn't have the expected meaning in DF.  Anything that requires the tags to be different for some members of the species than others defines a caste.  Many monsters have one sexless caste (called DEFAULT), most animals have two (MALE and FEMALE), bees have three (WORKER, DRONE and QUEEN), and ants have four (WORKER, SOLDIER, DRONE and QUEEN).  Note that WORKERs and SOLDIERs have no sex tags, and in the intelligent version (ANTMEN) they never form relationships.  Probably with ants and bees in mind, a sexless caste in a create that has sexes uses the feminine pronouns.

[LMeire]

Some women pretended to be men to fight, but most women who fought in history did so as women.

I don't really feel like we have the numbers for that to be certain one way or the other.

The Mongolian "Golden Horde" was known to recruit literally anyone, on the condition that they could ride a horse at a gallop and fire a bow from the stirrups. As it turned out, the list of recruits included a lot of peasant women that had to know horseback riding and hunting just to survive on the poor soil of the Steppes. Some estimates of the general make up for the soldiers indicate that by the time they turned around at Poland, the Horde might have had women filling in as much as a third of the entire Mongolian ranks.

[Magistrum]

Women in disguise apart, some cultures don't use women for attacking, all cultures defend with women(and children, must make the little buggers useful)  and some had no complaints for gender at all.

[smeeprocket]

I feel like I am getting a history lesson.

I* made a post in the modding forum about this for the more immediate idea of modding in transgender, intersex, and genderfluid, if any of you want to help out or provide advice there, since that seems more appropriate for that forum.

Overall, for this thread, I'm just suggesting to Toady (hope he's reading) that these genders would be really awesome to have in the game.

[Urist Tilaturist]

You are getting a history lesson because you engaged in a historical discussion and made some points yourself.

I do not think that gender identity would not be such a major issue for dwarves since they are gender equal and homosexuality is openly accepted. Without gender roles as such, it seems less likely that transgender dwarves would appear, and even if they did, there is not much than can be done about it with dwarven medicine.