[Lore Discussion] Commanders' Genders and the use of "He".

that's just an author's preference. it sounds better than "it" it could just as well have been "she".

Fictional War in the distant future isn't dominated by any gender, eroticburrito. It's fiction... and really poorly written fiction at that.

I didn't use the word dominated. Domination is a whole different ball-game to do with the relationships between characters, their characterisation and accomplishments.

I'm just talking about who is referred to by what pronouns.
It's not that bad ^^ Though I might have a few editorial pointers!

Then why wasn't it, and why is everybody not agreeing with me that it should be 50/50?
I stated already I was not having a go at UBER, I was just pointing out cultural norms.
Now that we have agreed these pronouns are interchangeable and there's no reason they should all be referred to only as men, why am I receiving such a vigorous defence of the status quo?

lol, I'm glad somebody had the balls (see? see what goes on with this language? ) to say it; I know some superfans will probably have an aneurysm if we talk trash about the lore, but it's atrociously written, I have to agree.

In regards to your other point above, I'll just say that nothing in my original post was a call for some militant-leftist endorsement of enforced gender equity, if you'll kindly read again. Or not. It was simply an endorsement of being open to recognizing and contemplating our fundamental biases, both individually and as a culture. So there.

Errrm... 'Scuse me, but you totally did.

Gender Equality should not be affiliated with the Left or Right in my opinion :/, it's not particularly crucial to most (sane) economic ideologies .

Thank you for being open minded though! .

Do we know if these robots identify as black or hispanic? Or asian! I always forget that one.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but trends don't have to hold water.
It's like the damsel in distress trope, is it sexist that the woman is always the one who needs saving? Yes.
Do I think the roles should change every now and again? Yes.
Do story-writers care about egalitarianism? No.
It's a harsh truth, but what can ya do?

Hahaha Oh damn sorry. You get my point though right?

You can put an 's' before 'he'.

Invictus does. Otherwise he would call himself Invicti (neutral) or Invictum (Female).
At least that what's Google Translate says...
Other names and titles are pretty masculine too.

Har har, quit using such dragonian languages and use languages like my native tongue finnish where you have a personhood respecting neutral prounoun (in addition to the personhood non-respecting one). You would so want to use it but it doesnt exist. In that regard it could be good to support the ones that are emerging.

It could also be considered disrespectful of both genders in trying to use a 50/50 split where no gender apply. They mean something. The whole world doesn't divive into the masculine and feminine, only some things do.

If these robots have voice boxes I can totally see them having male and female voices. Simply put the robot in question likes the way a certain tone of voice sounds and that would be used to identify them in the written form for the readers sake. It has no relevance to gender as they are robots and gender is a rather meaningless concept.

If you wanted to make that argument I would say then they all should be female as they spawn all of the other robots and are in essence a Hive Queens.

So my 2 cents on this... give us a nice 50-50 split or make them all female referenced.

'It' is not an emerging term. It's been around since 1160 A.D. It is our gender neutral pronoun but is used to refer to inanimate objects and wild animals so will always have a dehumanising quality. That's not handy when you want readers to identify with characters.
I do not expect UBER to come up with a gender-neutral singular pronoun.

That's an interesting perspective.
But in this 'world', we are assuming that mankind made the Robots at a late stage in their cultural development, in which men and women had equal representation in the workplace.

I thought about the Hive Queen thing when thinking about other games which have Female leads like Starcraft.
However I feel it's a bit clichéd and a kind of a negative trope; Females can only be leaders if they lead like insects and give birth to millions of babies. I'd prefer we just had womenbots leading in the same practical means as menbots.

The Uber cannon is obviously a penis.

Sure you can, but why would a writer want to?
I don't think you got what I said, the trend doesn't need to be abandoned because it's worked for a very long time and continues to work to this day.
It's something that people who put their life into writing pretty much learn to live with.

I'm willing to wager every single solitary thing I own that when the writer was writing the story, he didn't even think for a second about something as arbitrary and instinctual as the gender term for a machine, so why would he want to break that quick, instinctual process?

To appeal to a great minority of people that may take notice?
Hell, I'm pro equality and I didn't even THINK about the commanders being addressed as male until this thread came up, because it's a minute thing to fixate on.

Obviously. Impregnating those egg-shaped planets hahaa.

Honestly, I'm only suggesting we put an 's' before half the pronouns.

I'd like to call attention to this point insomuch that it is purely an assumption on your part. You have no evidence to back up that position.

I'm in no way opposed to the idea, but without empirical proof that human gender equality was achieved "in universe", you can't use it as a basis for a logical conclusion.

I mean they or er. They have a slight problem of not sounding as proper english to the ears of some. But that is only because of the draconian intuitions. UBER wouldn't have to come up with their own there are plenty around that they could hijack/support.

We currently have equal representation in the workplace so is your computer male or female? Because what our workforce split is doesn't reflect into what our products are.

It would be incorrect to call purely asexually reproducing species as female.