Obsidian accused of transmisogyny in Pillars of Eternity

[ZiggyE]

How many people are actually using these forums? It sincerely seems like there's maybe 100 or so, tops, who fill up all these pages with circular 'debate.'

I try to avoid these threads because very few people are ever willing to discuss these issues in good faith. Especially when I've got stuff I need to do. Like right now.

 

[Pr0]

Only if you assume, by reading the poem, that the individual that Firedorn bedded was a transsexual at all.

Right, the reasonable thing is to go out of our way with apologetics to find an alternative explanation for the sole sake of proclaiming that the joke is absolutely not offensive. And, if we need to assume extra details about the story like the character being a drunkard, so be it because not doing so would mean that the joke might be offensive and the PC police might have a point and we can't have that.

When you have one side that takes the joke as is to reach their conclusion, and another that has to (without any actual reasoning beyond the desire for an alternative) assume extra information to reach theirs, why would you ever go with the latter choice? Granted, in this explanation the assumption is that there's no blatant political motivation, which pretty much explains why someone would go with the latter option.

The assumption of trans-misogyny is reached by assuming extra information. The original conclusion was reached by assuming the other individual in the poem is actually transgendered...there is nothing stating that they were.

 

[Shinkicker444]

This is why we can't have nice things.

The Pillar's world is a dark place, or did you miss all the baby and mother murdering?

This isn't there to set up a dark atmosphere. This is there as a joke. It's there to make people laugh, and it ties into a culture and a set of conceptions that leads to a depressingly high number of violent murders and suicides every year.

You are away of this thing called Dark Humor, yes?

 

[Skatologist]

So you're on our side then? Great. Why are you arguing?

I ain't on your side chief, I'm doing the right thing and supporting Obsidian regardless of what they do. They keep it in? Fine. They remove it? Fine. But I'm getting the impression if they do the prior, some people will call them cowards or say they were bullied into doing it. I'm having none of that. And before you go "but what about if they keep it in and get called bigots by your friends", I won't care. I will not care. They're not going to keep it in out of spite for anybody I'm guessing, so I WON'T CARE. Friends can not support Obsidian or say it's a bad decision or whatever else

And I'm arguing because I hate overreaction to "overreaction" and offense at offense(even if you don't call it that, it is what it is where I'm sitting), the view any change of heart or mind from an outside perspective equals censorship, along with the abandonment of nuance opponents have on a subject.

Oh no, one tweet, out of at leat 30,000 active participants, what a nightmare.

I guess a prominent member of a group in favor of EIGJ making a joke that looked like a very specific threat is irrelevant to you in comparison to someone who makes vague "threats".

Meanwhile the progressives have sent people knives, had people kicked out of their homes, had people fired, actually SENT PEOPLE NEEDLES (you know, instead of just joking about it) all for having the nerve to demand integrity in games journalism.

Cite each and every one of those examples outside of using reddit, chan, or imgur link before you get back to me. I dare you.

But once again, none of this is relevant at all to obsidian's poem, so why bring it up? Are you not interested in discussing the issue in good faith? Of course, progressives rarely are, that's why terms like "cisplain" exist in the first place. To silence dissent.

You brought up the irrelevant stuff first and I'm not the imply all the arguments/viewpoints of my opponent to put me in bad faith, you are.

 

[dragonswarrior]

The assumption of trans-misogyny is reached by assuming extra information. The original conclusion was reached by assuming the other individual in the poem is actually transgendered...there is nothing stating that they were.

Whether it's specifically stated or not, it ties into the culture that trans women are out to "Trick our menz!" into having sex with them. No, it's not specifically stated. But a lot of people are clearly taking it that way, so to try and invalidate their feelings and conceptions of the poem by just being like "GUYS! It's not specific though!" Well... That doesn't really work. And it's also kinda rude.

 

[J Tyran]

That being said, I stand by my belief that someone who can't accept a transsexual person as anything beyond the physical characteristics they were born with has something to work out. The evidence points strongly towards transsexuals having brains that work like their preferred gender, and if you find someone attractive and can't get past the idea of "Eww, they were a man", then that's an issue. You might not be able to change it, but I don't consider it something you should be comfortable with thinking.

Once again... general you

You're making the same mistake that they are, its outside of your own personal experience about why they feel that way so you accuse them of "having something to work out" without really trying to both understanding why and respecting it. I always try to be careful when talking about things like this but it isn't a very common thing, for most of history it hasn't even been recognised or acknowledged for the most part.

Medical science has only recently started to unravel the reasons and ways of helping transgendered people, for lots of people the idea of someone being born as the wrong gender is unthinkable and (I apologise to anyone offended by this word as its not how I think) its even alien to a few.

They cannot conceive of it, so they invent reasons based on their own experience. Most are rubbish, some are simply taken from what others have said. Even for many progressive and tolerant people its akin to explaining to a blind man what the colour green is, or a deaf person reading about music but we either try to understand or we understand on an intellectual (certainly not claiming to be intellectual though) level about whats going on. Even though I don't feel the same way I can intellectually understand why people might feel like that and how people are often not responsible for feelings they have, I also try to respect it as well until it causes them to start mistreating others or having no respect themselves.

People cannot be held accountable for what they cannot understand, they are certainly accountable if that ever causes their behaviour to cross the line and are prejudicial, discriminatory, abusive and violent but simply preferring to avoid sexual encounters with a transgendered person is an inherent right. So is not being subjected to the psychological trauma that a deceitful encounter might bring, having sex without full consent is wrong and unless someone is fully convinced of consent they shouldn't carry on.

So you're making the same mistake, the question is are you capable of stepping back and being more understanding to the viewpoints of others?

 

[Thorn14]

Could someone please point out where there is proof its a transwoman the man who jumped off a cliff slept with?

I mean literally the first real member of your party is a long haired feminine looking elf!

 

[Redryhno]

And... fuck me, man. It's the SAME people (myself included) in here, on either side, spouting the same shit.

How many people are actually using these forums? It sincerely seems like there's maybe 100 or so, tops, who fill up all these pages with circular 'debate.'

I'd like to have a day where the normal arguers(myself included of course) in these kinds of things are banned from the topic and all that's left are the rest of the forum community, because it's always the same people with the same talking points, I mean, at the start of this it was interesting, I was seeing names and avatars I hadn't seen before and it was a pretty agreeable thread going on without -plaining and transphobia being thrown around like potatoes.

Then the outrage machine woke up and the ticked-off-at-this-happening-again machine woke up in response.

Welcome to the Hotel Califonia.

Oh lookie here, you're encouraging drug addiction now, aren't you? How nice...

[sub][sub][sub]see, I can do it too...[/sub][/sub][/sub]

 

[dragonswarrior]

This is why we can't have nice things.

The Pillar's world is a dark place, or did you miss all the baby and mother murdering?

This isn't there to set up a dark atmosphere. This is there as a joke. It's there to make people laugh, and it ties into a culture and a set of conceptions that leads to a depressingly high number of violent murders and suicides every year.

You are away of this thing called Dark Humor, yes?

*eye roll* The "Man sleeps with man by accident and then kills himself in shame" is NOT dark humor. Never has been. It's not about the person killing themselves, it's about the fact that he thought he was sleeping with a woman and it turned out he was wrong and then he's horrified.

 

[Pyrian]

...all that's left are the rest of the forum community...

The silence from the peanut gallery isn't because we have all sorts of fascinating insights held back by the flood of usual bile. We've said all we have to say.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I see the usual suspects are having an outraged fit in an attempt to demonstrate how having outraged fits on the internet is so outrageous.

Good title, too. Ensures maximum drama. It's good that we have people concerned with this sort of thing scouring twitter and Tumblr and Reddit in order to bring fresh calamities to our attention on an hourly basis. How else would I know what to be angry about?

Captcha: Sorry Sight. Does anyone fight it actually rather eerie, this bullshit with the captchas? They're on point way too often for it to be a coincidence.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

Based on what I know about Obsidian and Josh Sawyer this may well have been an oversight and something they otherwise wouldn't have included.

Someone at Obsidian had to approve the text and likely another person put it into the game ... so that's at least one person and likely two who didn't see the problem, or at least not a big enough problem to not take the guys money.

There's no backsies in the contract they quite willingly entered into.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Well that didn't last long. How does that song go? You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Don't get me wrong. Not much in the way of ill will toward individuals here. I mean. I disagree with a lot of ya...a lot...but ya all seem like decent folk. And I'm apparently a bit of a masochist, so woo.

So he has sex with somebody, that is revealed to them to be a man, which causes emotional distress on them, and you don't see how this perfectly mirrors a real life sterotype that has caused people to be killed?

Well, no.

I was responding to this, "The implication that trans women are gay men trying to trick straight men into having sex with them?" which is not what I believe to have been implied here. Just because the guy slept with someone he thought was a woman...doesn't mean that the 'woman' in this instance was attempting to trick him into it.

Mistaken identity, plus epic amounts of alcohol, plus a micro penis, plus clever clothing positioning, plus a dark room, and divide that by a penchant for the back door and this...look, I realize this is a lot of 'but maybe if'...but it didn't actually happen. :/ And there are trolls and werewolves and shit. Just roll with it.

People don't do that. Do I really need that "trapping" isn't a real thing and just a delusion of paranoid straight men that causes some to act violently? Furthermore, they wouldn't be trans because, shockingly, trans women don't think of themselves as men, and vice versa.

How, may I ask, do YOU know that? You're claiming to me that, out of all 7 or 8 billion people on the Earth, not one of them has ever done such a thing?

You're suggesting that some people aren't royally fucked up and, as is demonstrably the case, that's just not true.

By the same token, it's definitely not something common, nor would I even suggest it was something that happened more than once. Ever. Nor do I think that's what happened in this poem.

I could read the poem just fine, I know its not directly advocating harm. What it is saying is that "there's men pretending to be women to have sex with straight men and cause them emotional distress". Those people don't exist. Rather, thats what some people think of transgender people. Its not hard to understand why thats an insulting implication.

See, I didn't get the "There's men pretending to be women to have sex with straight men and cause them emotional distress" bit from the poem.

Welcome to the Hotel Califonia.

"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"

Snip

Snippety

I'd be fine with a day or so of normal poster bans, just to see what sort of stuff the normies talk about.

I see the usual suspects are having an outraged fit in an attempt to demonstrate how having outraged fits on the internet is so outrageous.

I'm outraged by your apparent lack of outrage.

 

[Redryhno]

...all that's left are the rest of the forum community...

The silence from the peanut gallery isn't because we have all sorts of fascinating insights held back by the flood of usual bile. We've said all we have to say.

Pretty sure you're kinda one of the people I was talking about along with myself...

And like you said, there's bile here, and from my experience that drives away people that actually want to talk about it more often than not because it's too much trouble to come in here and probably get jumped on by the usual people instead of, you know, having a conversation. That thing we used to have before transphobia became hip to say and claim about a whole slew of things.

 

[Svipur]

That tombstone could almost pass for a XIV-century vernacular poem.
The lack of Welshmen cuddling up to drunken Englishmen is, of course, a major faux pas - but customer satisfaction surveys aren't that big of a threat in the epitaph writing business.

When the others were asleep,
I should find my way, and come
Through the darkness to her room.
Love would haul my steps aright
Down the hallways of the night;
Love would steer my steps - alas,
This was not what came to pass.
For, by some outrageous miss,
what I got was not a kiss,
But a stubble-whiskered cheek
And a triple whiskey-reek.

Dafydd ap Gwilym, 'Trafferth Mewn Tafarn'.

 

[Pr0]

But I think it would test the patience of any one if they suddenly had a penis waved in their face that they weren't expecting. Man, woman, trans, straight, lesbian...whatever.

So if I have any physical body feature that somebody doesn't know about prior to sex, and they assault me for it, its morally justifiable? Should I tell people that I have armpit hair before going to bed for them, in case they decide to try and murder me for that?

That doesn't say that assaulting people for being dishonest is acceptable, but that doesn't mean the dishonesty that leads to the potential of an assault isn't the fault of the person that perpetuates it.

There is no dishonesty involved. There is no expectation to disclose the status of one's genitalia before deciding to have sex together. There's no expectation for cisgender men to tell their partners if they're circumcized or not prior to engaging in sex.

By your logic theres no expectation to disclose that you have herpes simplex II as long as you're not currently having a visible outbreak.

I'm not comparing transgender status to having an STD I am simply pointing out that there are certain things that are simply responsible human disclosures that are a common courtesy to anyone you may be becoming intimate with. The status of a circumcision isn't generally a deal breaker for most people, surprise penis can be a deal breaker, for a woman or a man.

And you keep going back to the victimization argument of being assaulted for being transgendered, even while responding to a post where I specifically state that its not appropriate to assault people for anything.

 

[skyn3t]

I love how I made what is the most equally defensive comment for both sides, that probably summed up this the best...and yet it was skimmed over to pay attention to argumentive comments by both sides going back and forth...as if one side is actually going to eventually "okay, you're right and I agree"...no matter how right or wrong the other side is.

This is the Internet people, where everyone is right that holds a particular stand on something, and the equalizers are ignored because they actually bring statements that end such arguments, while the people arguing are convinced that their opinion is the "end argument".

Oh irony.
($10 says that this will be skimmed over too)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm outraged by your apparent lack of outrage.

I have zero outrage. No outrage at the poem, no outrage at the criticism of the poem, and no outrage at the usual bandwagon of drama queens flipping their shit because the poem was criticized.

I mean, you could use the poem as a conversation piece for a discussion about trans-panic, which is a real thing and kind of terrible for transgendered people, but we don't DO discussions here. We just yell about social media and demonstrate our disdain for "social justice" by talking about it every fucking second of every fucking day.

Pillars of Eternity gaming topic? Couldn't even stay on the front page. Pillars of Eternity drama topic? 5 pages and counting. Woop. Carry on, warriors.

If anyone wants to talk about the GAME I'm down for that. That's what everyone wanted, right? Less "politics", more games talk? WHOOPS, my eyes rolled right out of my head.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I have zero outrage. No outrage at the poem, no outrage at the criticism of the poem, and no outrage at the usual bandwagon of drama queens flipping their shit because the poem was criticized.

Simply outrageous.

Kidding aside, I can tell that you're sincere and don't have a particular axe to gri-

I mean, you could use the poem as a conversation piece for a discussion about trans-panic, which is a real thing and kind of terrible for transgendered people, but we don't DO discussions here. We just yell about social media and demonstrate our disdain for "social justice" by talking about it every fucking second of every fucking day.

Pillars of Eternity gaming topic? Couldn't even stay on the front page. Pillars of Eternity drama topic? 5 pages and counting. Woop. Carry on, warriors.

If anyone wants to talk about the GAME I'm down for that. That's what everyone wanted, right? Less "politics", more games talk? WHOOPS, my eyes rolled right out of my head.

One of us. One of us! Gooble Gobble! One of us! One of us!

 

[Zeraki]

That is what everyone and their dog is getting all worked up over?

Oh internet, you really are so silly sometimes.