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

Why would a writer not want to?
Are male characters naturally preferable to women ones?
Why is the idea of female leaders in the Lore unacceptable?

Sure it works as a cultural trope. But that's like saying any language works to communicate anything.
It doesn't change the fact that it's sexist to completely exclude women. Also as there are books out there with female protagonists... What exactly are you getting at?

The answer to 'why would he want to break that quick, instinctual process?' Is that they would want to think as an independent human being whose actions were not dictated to them by cultural norms. That's the function of Art; to de-familiarise the everyday so that we look at it in a different light and are capable of introspection/'extra-spection'.

'To appeal to a great minority of people that may take notice?'
50% of humans aren't a minority. I'm sure if you weren't a man you might notice if there were no female characters.
It's not a minute thing to fixate on in terms of the Lore, it's bound up in their characterisation. We have four Leaders. Four characters. They're all men.

Language and cultural norms shape the way we think. I'm not asking for anything particularly radical, and if it's such a tiny change as you say then I can't see what your problem is.

We can push writers towards making less offensive, more inclusive, less cliche-based stories. We are doing this right now, see?

I think it's a really big missed opportunity. The universe populated with technically sexless robots does have more possibilities to work with gender than normal human based universe, not less. Rather than locking everyone to default male, wouldn't it be more interesting to have many options? You could totally make more than two genders: neutral can be still on board. That would highlight the characters and ideologies better. And you could even add some subtle LGBT references, just for lulz. That would be amazing...

Fair enough. If they wanted to do this I'd be perfectly comfortable with them doing so.

It's equally incorrect to call them male, but nobody has said of the sort until I asked we have some females!

Erm

Can i just say that we are interacting with a faceless world of robots. We call them him instead of it, for the simple reason that it is how our culture works.

There really isn't an issue here. Much ado about nothing....

A culture in which everybody should naturally be referred to as a man?
That's not how my culture works. If we're going to have men then we should at least have women in equal proportion.

That is how the language culture works however.

Honestly I'd be much more interested in emotional, intellectual and/or moral engagement with the causes that each Commander is fighting for.

Gender for a fictional robot is a non-issue for me; it can call itself anything it wants... since it's not real. My connection to its cause has much more potential to be real, rather than the robot itself.

I see. So we refer to all women as 'he' now?

It's how a male dominated culture writing about men for men works. In short, it's a holdover from when we had a male dominated culture in which only men wrote or read. In other words, it's utterly indefensible to call on culture and tradition as justifications for upholding an outmoded literary trope.

'Because that's how our culture works' has and never will be a good reason to do anything/not object; just look at basically any point in history for where that can take you. I'd personally vote they are genderless, but that's just me.

The best response in this thread so far in terms of where things could go.

Because people such as yourself demand it, based on tradition, as what other reason is there? Why think about something when you can just do what has simply always been done? A completely non-compelling argument.

I demand nothing. I merely inform.

As I said in my previous post, I don't CARE what the robot wants to identify with when it comes to gender. It's a NON ISSUE for me.

I realise that I've been drawn into an argument in which I have no stake. I therefore take my leave of the conversation.

Goodbye.

Forget the pronouns. "He", "She", " It" - no bloody difference.

But names are male. You can't say "that's how our language/culture works" about them.

Your information bank is an store of cultural influences. The way you and I think is shaped by language.
We should pay attention to that, and shape language so that it shapes us and the world around us positively.

Sorry but there is difference when you call somebody "He", "She", "It". They tell us who and what we are dealing with.

I'm merely pointing out that you very assertively suggested that language culture is a certain way, however language culture is created by people. Not all people would agree that the culture is or should be as you claim, was my point, and that suggesting more inclusive alternatives is also encompassed within language culture itself; it is not so binary. Clearly you can tell how I feel about such arbitrary traditions that needlessly disenfranchise from these posts...

And this is how culture changes. Slowly, one erotic burrito at a time.

And that argument is... what? Because that is the prevalent cultural norm at this point in time means that it shouldn't be discussed and critiqued? Or even actively opposed? At one time, women didn't have the right to vote, and that had quite a historical precedent behind it. For a period of time, people with brown skin were considered to be advanced forms of cattle. Should that practice not have been examined and found lacking, despite it's cultural normalcy? And no, that is not to draw an equivalency between those former cultural norms and a lack of differently gender-identified killer robots in a video game, so... don't even go there. It's simply to point out that these kinds of objections have been important in the past, when culture surely seemed just as immutable and monolithic as it does now, and that change is important and necessary. And change happens, in part, by the aggregate influence of discussions like these. So good for us.

Oh for the love of...
NO THEY ARE NOT.
They are genderless robots, they are referred to as "he" because that's simply how modern culture works.

But fine, don't want to look at it through literary culture? Let's look at it through military culture instead, after all these ARE weaponized death machines.

Oh, but you can.

If a weaponized robot capable of sentience were invented in our world, and the designers had to give it a code name, what would it be called?
"Isis" or "Osiris"?
"Hathor" or "Anubis"?
"Venus" or "Ares"?
"Aphrodite" or "Invictus"?
Etc.

We partly define what our culture is and what we choose to propagate. I am perfectly fine in my finnish intuitions where persons are humans first and genders distant second.

There has been issue of some women wanting to be accepted despite their gender into various circles such as gamers and what not. However some females do a silly thing they write a perfectly fine and to the point contribution to their hobby group and then postfix it with "btw I am a girl", as if that is supposed mean something or matter somehow. That is antimony of the request to be accepted despite gender.

In the same vein if Invictus goes "btw I am a guy" that's sacrificing a potentially original character framework with something that has been seen a thousand times and doesn't have any supporting reasons to be in the work. You are not cooler for being a guy or more leader because of that. It just signals you are stuck in a mindset that has been gone for millenia.

You mean the military where both men and women can sign up and eventually lead, right?
Are those women referred to as 'He', or did I miss something?

Modern culture does not work like that, sorry. Culture seventy years ago worked like that.
They are not genderless because they are referred to by their gender -_-

Yessss, nailed the appealing to extremes fallacy disclaimer.