Because I'm devastatingly witty? Left-handed? Empress of all ferretkind?the December King said:Well, this is rather interesting to me, because, and I beg your pardon if I'm being blunt, but I suspect that you might already have a special insight into this.
I'm just having fun. I know what you mean.
Gender identity is something we don't have a concrete answer to at this point. It's like sexuality in that there doesn't seem to be a single, direct factor, but it's suggested that there are biological components and there may even be strictly hereditary factors because the chances of another sibling being trans rise greatly when one is. When you're talking about a population that's less than a percent of the general populace and you have significant rises, there's probably something to that. But that there's likely some sort of connection is all we know.I don't really understand gender dysphoria beyond being told that you were born a sex that you don't feel you are. So why is that? Is it a feeling, or is it more biological?
But my point of view is very likely worthwhile here, and I'll get to that with a quote I missed until Beliyal quoted you:
I'm not sure how that really follows. Well, not in this sense. The idea that men and women are different is actually sort of a no-brainer to me. That there is some sort of delineation between the two that is highlighted by trans individuals. But I wouldn't say that those differences necessarily apply here.the December King said:Women and men are different, otherwise transgender people must be wasting their time and energy, fretting over nothing at all.
The reason I say this is personal experience and anecdotal, so take it as such. At the same time, I've been accepted by men as a man and woman as a woman without any sort of major change in personality or outward behaviour. I would think if there was some sort of essential difference between the two in a relevant sense here, in terms of behaviour, that one would have to modify their behaviour in order to be accepted. This is not to say that I have never had problems, or that you don't run into people who are, say, assholes, but on a basic level, my conduct appears to be acceptable both for a man and for a woman. Mostly, at least.
I mean, I can't entirely rule out the possibility that women as a whole have decided to adopt me and take pity on me and my actions are seen as the equivalent of being raised by wolves, but...nobody's really made an effort to correct or change me. Except, ironically, within the trans community itself. Which sort of makes sense, because there was a time in my own life where gender norms (and sometimes rather extreme ones) were still pushed as a condition for attempting to transition and especially if you sought surgery. When you use conformity as the carrot or the stick, you're going to get an attitude of conformity.
But on the whole, it doesn't seem like there's that much difference. This similarity may not seem so obvious externally, I don't know. I was actively discouraged from playing with girls as a kid, and encouraged to play with the boys instead. And I didn't see a huge amount of difference then and I don't see a huge amount of difference now. There are things I'm rather hesitant to get into in the line of this conversation that may somewhat alter matters, but I think the main thrust might be the visibility issue. Get some of my female friends together and they would very likely make you blush. And this seems to be a fairly common thing that is quite likely not perceived so much because the opposite is propagated by pop culture.
As this pertains to making a believable RPG character, though, what I said to Beliyal is still worth paying attention to: it really does depend.
For complaints about a female protagonist, one need only look at The Escapist community's response to Assassin's Creed Unity (where it was justified that there were four white men before we knew they were all Arno) and Syndicate (where it was bellyached that there was a female deuteragonist. And I call her that rather than a protagonist because she's still secondary to Jacob inthe story and the publishers told us that and people still complained). Or you can go look at Twitter, or KIA, or probably any social media outlet of your choice, I don't know.elvor0 said:Is this something that actually happens? Because I don't buy it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone shitting on the idea of a game having a female protagonist because she would be incapable. Do you not remember how fucked off people were about Other M? It's part of the reason TR2013 rubs me up the wrong way because the marketing and the game to some extent feels the need to bang me over the head about how capable she is "for a girl" despite original Lara kicking so much arse without need to prove herself that her shoes smelled permanently of shit.
I'm pretty sure this is just something the publishers of Bioshock Infinite told us was something that happens and people making up boogymen without it actually happening. Okay maybe Return of Kings, but those guys are absolute cunts in such a small minority as to not actually matter.
And, I mean, you can call RoK cunts, but they're not the only ones who bellyache over this crap. I could start linking you to videos of people who aren't from ROK who whine about this, but how many would it take? One? Five? Fifty? I suspect that no number of videos I could provide would constitute sufficient "proof."