Has Chaosium gone fully woke?

[Jason D]

This is the most affirmative post I've seen in months. 

[svensson]

OK, like a lot of you, I object to the restructuring of language and culture to fit modern '-isms'.

What I DO NOT object to is the inclusion of LGBTQ characters. Or Colored characters. Or any other character that is present in the humanity. And let me also be clear here... I have no objection whatsoever with plotlines based on those characters. If we're playing a 20's game and two gay lovers, one Black and one Puerto Rican, are central to the plot, so what? Every single author from the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' onwards has had non-mainstream, alternate lifestyle people in their stories, and people from every single viewpoint in humanity do stupid [i.e. 'plot point'] stuff for the sake of love, money, power, and all the other sins of Mankind.

But do I see the need to alter 'he /she' for the sake of appeasing the mob of activists on the net. 'He /she', 'him /her', 'his /hers', are not sexual slurs. They are not 'nigger', 'gook', 'wetback', or any other pejorative. They are words that describe 99.9 of humanity. I have absolutely no problem with people unashamedly being who and what they are, because all they are is 'people', no matter what other label they apply to themselves. But to try and eliminate gender in our language because 0.1% of the human genome is hermaphrodite [or whatever else they 'identify' as] makes absolutely no logical sense.

[g33k]

5 hours ago, svensson said:

... But to try and eliminate gender in our language because 0.1% of the human genome is hermaphrodite [or whatever else they 'identify' as] makes absolutely no logical sense.

FWIW, the estimates about "gender-nonconforming" people generally runs between 3% - 15% (experts' estimates vary; it's known that people often lie to the official queries).

A few points of reference:

• The Jewish population of the USA is about 2.5%.
• PhD's run just over 1.5%
• Green eyes run about 9%

Consider when and why you'd like to use language that's actively offensive to any of those groups, exclusionary against them?

(Also, in regards it being "unnatural" and a "choice" -- homosexual behavior is seen in *ALL* the Great Apes -- and many other species as well)

I think whining about a "Pronoun" label on a character sheet is... eh... why bother?
Just put down "he" for your vanilla cis-male PC, "she" for your cis-female; costs you nothing.

We're not talking about eliminating gender; just eliminating "defaults to cisgender" usage.

And "they" is (in fact) the correct word in English to do that ... no need to use the awkward "he/she" (and similar) constructions.

Edited April 7, 2022 by g33k

[Qizilbashwoman]

6 hours ago, svensson said:

OK, like a lot of you, I object to the restructuring of language and culture to fit modern '-isms'.

What I DO NOT object to is the inclusion of LGBTQ characters. Or Colored characters. Or any other character that is present in the humanity. And let me also be clear here... I have no objection whatsoever with plotlines based on those characters. If we're playing a 20's game and two gay lovers, one Black and one Puerto Rican, are central to the plot, so what? Every single author from the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' onwards has had non-mainstream, alternate lifestyle people in their stories, and people from every single viewpoint in humanity do stupid [i.e. 'plot point'] stuff for the sake of love, money, power, and all the other sins of Mankind.

But do I see the need to alter 'he /she' for the sake of appeasing the mob of activists on the net. 'He /she', 'him /her', 'his /hers', are not sexual slurs. They are not 'nigger', 'gook', 'wetback', or any other pejorative. They are words that describe 99.9 of humanity. I have absolutely no problem with people unashamedly being who and what they are, because all they are is 'people', no matter what other label they apply to themselves. But to try and eliminate gender in our language because 0.1% of the human genome is hermaphrodite [or whatever else they 'identify' as] makes absolutely no logical sense.

first, you shouldn't ever use "Colored" unless you are South African and describing a specific ethnic group; but then you'd spell it Coloured. Colored (or coloured) is a racial descriptor historically used in the Jim Crow United States and is a slur.

second, we don't use they "for the sake of appeasing the mob of activists"; we use they, because it is the historical epicene pronoun that English speakers use when speaking. Since the FOURTEENTH CENTURY. In fact, people often use it while arguing that 'they' is not legitimate. Prescriptivists attempted to force English speakers to use only "he" for a long time but it failed outside formal writing, and that standard is no longer the norm, the spoken form is used. People say "someone forgot their flashlight", not "someone forgot his flashlight", when they don't know who it is who forgot the flashlight. You can argue all you want about how it's An Oppressive Minority Changing Speech but it's frankly untrue - and also ignores that speech communities change their norms all the time. If we no longer use "he", then i'm sorry your toes are bruised but that's just how people speak and now how people write.

You can read all about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

 

[Kloster]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

And "they" is (in fact) the correct word in English to do that ... no need to use the awkward "he/she" (and similar) constructions.

You lucky guys. French language does not have this possibility.

[Ali the Helering]

When I was in college in the early '90s a Hungarian pastor studying with us threw away another draft of prayers, adding to the growing pile around her.  I asked her what was wrong, and she replied "Why do you have to have a language with gendered pronouns?"

I had, and have, sympathy with her viewpoint.

[MOB]

On 4/4/2022 at 11:35 AM, Welkin said:

Has Chaosium gone fully woke?

Only a true Scotsman Orlanthi could say.

On 4/4/2022 at 11:40 AM, JDS said:

But it will impact my willingness to buy more products, at least until they stop discriminating against me.

Heh, see what you did there.