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[Starver]

I'll just point out that His Dark Materials overwhelmingly has the external 'souls' that are the dćmons of each person are overwhelmingly of the opposite gender of their person. Word of God on this (Pullman) is that even he doesn't know why the extremely notable exceptions are exceptions, so you can make free with your own theories on what that signifies (and if it's as a yin to your yan, why then does your dćmon otherwise settle down into a creature-form that matches your nature/nurture at that point in life in all other ways).


And, though I wasn't going to say more about DF's dwarves or much else in the psychological side, but as far as one element of the trans* scene I could point at the Discworld's Second Greatest Lover (stepladder provided), the Low King and Cheery Littlebottom as diverse approaches, plus the Petunia The Desert Princess group in XXXX (with special note to Neilette) and the behaviour of their adopted Trunkie.

[Cruxador]

Sounds like that's more an issue with assuming mental issues are an innate part of it (rather than just a very likely outcome in the real world). Regardless what one thinks, for a game there's nothing wrong with just distilling it down to the very core of it (being the mismatched mind/body part) and representing it in a suitable fantasy way for added character flavor etc.

Dysphoria is an inherent foundation of the trans* condition and, setting social concerns aside as you suggest doing, the mitigation of dysphoria is the primary reason to transition, and depression and anxiety are pretty basic outcomes of dysphoria. Certainly there can be things in the real world that further complicate the issue, but there's no way to separate the basic notion with being uncomfortable in the body you've got, and the more realized problems stem directly from that.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Dysphoria is an inherent foundation of the trans* condition and, setting social concerns aside as you suggest doing, the mitigation of dysphoria is the primary reason to transition, and depression and anxiety are pretty basic outcomes of dysphoria. Certainly there can be things in the real world that further complicate the issue, but there's no way to separate the basic notion with being uncomfortable in the body you've got, and the more realized problems stem directly from that.

From how I understand it (and a quick googling to make sure) one can be trans without experiencing gender dysphoria. What matters is the having a female brain/mind or however one wants to put it in a male body or vice versa part, not whether this fact causes said person discomfort. I assume (from my limited, outside PoV) that if society in general was more accepting of differences like this there'd be less people suffering dysphoria, which doesn't mean there'd be less trans individuals.

[Cruxador]

From how I understand it (and a quick googling to make sure) one can be trans without experiencing gender dysphoria. What matters is the having a female brain/mind or however one wants to put it in a male body or vice versa part, not whether this fact causes said person discomfort. I assume (from my limited, outside PoV) that if society in general was more accepting of differences like this there'd be less people suffering dysphoria, which doesn't mean there'd be less trans individuals.

That's down to gender roles, if you're going that route; transgender as opposed to transsexual as Starver was saying. Like nearly everything about gender identity it's somewhat questionable whether that's even an inherent human thing or an artifact of culture. It's certainly not a thing that can exist without gender roles though, which Dwarf Fortress very much doesn't have.

[Shonai_Dweller]

From how I understand it (and a quick googling to make sure) one can be trans without experiencing gender dysphoria. What matters is the having a female brain/mind or however one wants to put it in a male body or vice versa part, not whether this fact causes said person discomfort. I assume (from my limited, outside PoV) that if society in general was more accepting of differences like this there'd be less people suffering dysphoria, which doesn't mean there'd be less trans individuals.

That's down to gender roles, if you're going that route; transgender as opposed to transsexual as Starver was saying. Like nearly everything about gender identity it's somewhat questionable whether that's even an inherent human thing or an artifact of culture. It's certainly not a thing that can exist without gender roles though, which Dwarf Fortress very much doesn't have.

Yet. If gender roles get defined, it's part of the "Starting Scenarios" arc on defining societies and cultures (post Myth-Gen).

[Starver]

Ultimately, it could be Procedural Anything (as user-influenced by moderated by Init and Raw editing - or some successive interface to these), though with sensible core ranges to aim in the region of. And why can these not be centred around the tried-and-'tested' incidence values from IRL? And I mean everything, like Heterochromia Iridium, Situs Invertus, Uterus Didelphys, etc, if it becomes relevant to the level of simulation (or an emergent property of it) that is given to the game.

[Putnam]

Gender dysphoria is treatable and it's probably better that dwarves, at least, are assumed to deal with it so the player doesn't have to micromanage their trans dwarves. Down that way leads chaos of unfathomable proportions, just from my top-of-the-head considerations. I wouldn't mind it to be represented in cultures with more rigidly defined gender roles or similar, but for dwarves... yeah, unspeakable chaos.

EDIT: Vagueness ain't doing me any good. Let me explain why I think it'd be chaos:

1. Stress is a difficult system.
2. To deal with this, players do things to cull stress-prone dwarves from the herd, such as exiling them or unfortunate accidents.
3. Dysphoria is stressful.
4. As dysphoria is stressful, trans dwarves might be stress-prone, which leads to players wishing to cull them, independent of bigotry but not exactly doing anything to avoid encouraging it.

This is a very unfortunate situation that makes nobody happy.

[Jesterdwarf]

Gender dysphoria is treatable and it's probably better that dwarves, at least, are assumed to deal with it so the player doesn't have to micromanage their trans dwarves. Down that way leads chaos of unfathomable proportions, just from my top-of-the-head considerations. I wouldn't mind it to be represented in cultures with more rigidly defined gender roles or similar, but for dwarves... yeah, unspeakable chaos.

EDIT: Vagueness ain't doing me any good. Let me explain why I think it'd be chaos:

1. Stress is a difficult system.
2. To deal with this, players do things to cull stress-prone dwarves from the herd, such as exiling them or unfortunate accidents.
3. Dysphoria is stressful.
4. As dysphoria is stressful, trans dwarves might be stress-prone, which leads to players wishing to cull them, independent of bigotry but not exactly doing anything to avoid encouraging it.

This is a very unfortunate situation that makes nobody happy.

Well, people are already willing to kill everyone and everything in the game in very painful ways for no other reason that 'seemed fun', and this somehow isn't problematic. But killing transdwarves? No, we can't have that, no-no. That would be bigotry. Dropping undesirable dwarves into magma, gruesomely killing elves because hating elves is cool, building megaprojects that serve no other purpose than streamlining the process of killing everyone? That's okay, carry on.
Really? Maybe we should look into forbidding any geometrical pattern in the game that looks like swastika, removing color red because everyone knows red = commie and commie = bad, remove walls because that's what certain other bad person promised to build?
When gay dwarves were implemented, I don't remember much gay-hating commotion being here or in other places. Transdwarves will be no different.

[wierd]

Gender dysphoria is treatable and it's probably better that dwarves, at least, are assumed to deal with it so the player doesn't have to micromanage their trans dwarves. Down that way leads chaos of unfathomable proportions, just from my top-of-the-head considerations. I wouldn't mind it to be represented in cultures with more rigidly defined gender roles or similar, but for dwarves... yeah, unspeakable chaos.

EDIT: Vagueness ain't doing me any good. Let me explain why I think it'd be chaos:

1. Stress is a difficult system.
2. To deal with this, players do things to cull stress-prone dwarves from the herd, such as exiling them or unfortunate accidents.
3. Dysphoria is stressful.
4. As dysphoria is stressful, trans dwarves might be stress-prone, which leads to players wishing to cull them, independent of bigotry but not exactly doing anything to avoid encouraging it.

This is a very unfortunate situation that makes nobody happy.

Quite right, which is why I suggested it be added as an accessory to the magic arc releases.  Since this would require additional checks against the soul data, and the addition of a few new soul-data items to be able to check to initiate the dysphoria code, it makes it a great time to add in an additional source of fun:  Gender bending magic sources. 

Depending on the situation, this could either "fix" broody trans dwarves so they stop being fragile flowers, or cause extreme, and systemic unrest if unleashed against a whole fortress.  It would provide an alternative to mass executions due to gender issues (that is less likely to cause collateral damage from killed family members and friends), and would be more topic friendly.

Also more scary to the people who are squeemish about the idea, since such conversions would be "full".  (meaning babies from relationships.)

[Putnam]

Well, people are already willing to kill everyone and everything in the game in very painful ways for no other reason that 'seemed fun', and this somehow isn't problematic. But killing transdwarves? No, we can't have that, no-no. That would be bigotry.

You misunderstand. I'm saying if dysphoria would be added, it would be convenient, gameplay-wise, to discriminate against trans people, which, yes, causes problems.

Nobody can stop players from doing what they want, but it's absolutely best that the game itself doesn't make it not just convenient but beneficial to discriminate this way. It leads to less trouble in general, for everyone, forever.

[Cathar]

What's the point of that discussion tho? Toady already is set on how he wants to model transexuality, and inferring from what I know of the game, this is unlikely to be the big deal people make it to be.

Seriously people can chillax. My bet is ; it's going to be integrated in the model for sexuality and be dealt with like that, and people who are super, super annoyed by that will always have the option to mod it out.

When compared to stuff that really matter, like the magic system or the riding system, this is an absolute detail.

Edit : Welp, jesterdwarf already said it better than I did. Franckly I think this commotion is caused by people who want to interject their politics into everything and who do not play DF. Everyone in DF dies more or less gruesomly, gets impaled on stakes, melted in magma, eaten alive by GCS, drank out of their blood by the local vampire and rots from inside due to a rare syndrome.

Discrimination...that's not the local concern.

Also if "gender dysphoria" is added to the game by Toady, I will eat my hat on youtube. That is not happening.

[George_Chickens]

Also if "gender dysphoria" is added to the game by Toady, I will eat my hat on youtube. That is not happening.

QUOTED. Now there's no escape if it happens.

[Putnam]

people who want to interject their politics into everything

it's not like i want to, once i realized i was part of a demographic whose literal existence counts as political it starts getting hard to avoid

and who do not play DF

would you believe this is the first thing i've actually been offended by in this discussion

[therahedwig]

Yeah, uhm, can we drop the topic?

It's probably going to be handled much like homosexuality, dark skin, being female; we'll proly see a 'dreams of the physical body corresponding to the mind' or 'dreams of having a different body' combined with 'this is a dwarf, she has a male body' or 'this is a dragon, they have a dwarven body', which should be enough for histfigs to do interesting things but not enough for players to consider murdering all such dwarves.

[Manveru Taurënér]

That's down to gender roles, if you're going that route; transgender as opposed to transsexual as Starver was saying. Like nearly everything about gender identity it's somewhat questionable whether that's even an inherent human thing or an artifact of culture. It's certainly not a thing that can exist without gender roles though, which Dwarf Fortress very much doesn't have.

Right, it's not really a topic I bother with much so forgot that's a distinction people make (and that doesn't make much sense to me at least, I'm very much of the nature over nurture view of most things in life). Still, as Putnam and others have stated, adding dysphoria would be a giant can of worms that I sincerely doubt Toady has in mind with the whole thing.

I suppose if sex-change magic was made a prevalent thing it wouldn't matter much, but would also mean making the whole thing a bigger feature than just having them represented in the background for flavor. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing I'm sure some people would have very adamant opinions on.

Edit: People seem to be civil enough so far, but a loaded topic of course (for some reason) so you never know.

would you believe this is the first thing i've actually been offended by in this discussion

I think (hope) he probably referred to the people on the steam forums/twitter specifically, correct me if I'm wrong. Even though most of the "commotion" there are from different groups entirely.