Dragonbums said:
Not gonna cover everything here, but here's my thoughts on the Asari matter.
1) Almost everyone in Mass Effect uses universal translators. You have no freaking clue what word, gendered or otherwise, an Asari from previous games would use to refer to themselves, because whatever word they used was simply translated into English. And perhaps, given the obvious physical likeness to women, the translator was simply coded to use female pronouns.
2) Following the "universal translator" angle, Asari referring to other Asari as "mother" makes perfect biological sense from a human standpoint. When Asari mate with other aliens, they're taking in biological information from them. You know, kind of like sperm. The other alien acts as the "donor" of biological information, just like how a human male acts as the "donor" of biological information in human sexual relationships. The Asari are the receptacle of the information, akin to a human woman, and thus "mother."
(And whoever was giving this information, is referred to as "father" regardless of who they are. There's a brief dialog somewhere where Sheppard is called "anthropocentric bag of dicks" for saying he would call both Asari parents "mothers")
3) If you're curious about why, then, all Asari would refer to each other as "daughter" and "sister" (I don't even remember if they actually do that or not), I refer you back to the fact that there is a universal translator that converts everything into English. Given the obvious physical characteristics it would make a great deal of sense for the English translations of whatever words the Asari used to be translated into the relevant English variations for females.
4) There's a FUCKING UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR SO ALL OF THIS SHIT SHOULDN'T EVEN BE A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. No Asari should ever be in the POSITION of being insulted by an improper gendered pronoun since the universal translator should translate it into whatever ungendered pronoun there is in the Asari language that they would use to refer to one another.
I feel the need to reiterate that the game contains a discussion on gendered nouns and pronouns that are only relevant to the English language in a game series with a perfectly operational, instant, universal translator.
Heck, even among human languages English isn't representative, some languages don't have any gendering on words and some have it on every word.
Let's take Japanese as an example: it has multiple forms of 'I/me' dependant on gender, age and formality of conversation, multiple forms of 'you' depending on relationship to the subject, and multiple forms of third-person that are less context-sensitive than English, plus entirely different verb endings dependant on formality. That's one language, and Earth has hundreds. One would expect that all the other species in the galaxy would have a similar large number of languages.
It also doesn't help matters that the scene in question is REALLY freaking cringe inducing.
asari: Yes, the gender binary of other races is irrelevant to us.
angara: I?ve been using feminine pronouns this entire time. Should I-
asari: In my case it?s fine to continue. Thank you for asking, I appreciate it. Some asari prefer male pronouns, while others gravitate toward gender-neutral where language allows.
angara: My people have several pronouns to identify themselves with. Perhaps I should prepare a document.
asari: Please do.
Yes, the gender binary of other races is irrelevant to us.
Rest of the conversation contradicts the first sentence
