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

I get what you're saying. But we shouldn't need women to be lampooned to say something. The absence of female representation is an act of characterisation too. Where are all the women if there are men? Why aren't there any female leaders? If there was just one faction I'd have nothing to say either. But there are four major characters and they're all dudes. Why? They're robots.

If there is no sexuality they should all be called "It". I don't call people "he" by default.

Well, that's how it works, unfortunate truth.

However, to be fair, for all we know there isn't sexuality, like, at all.
The inventors of the commanders are the progenitors, not humans.
For all we know, the progenitors were asexual, or, if they were sexual, they may have been male dominated.

At any rate, this'll probably be the last post I make for this thread, it was nice discussing.

It should also be mentioned I don't believe the lore ever makes reference to the race who created them as having gender as the robots themselves have no memory of their creators and therefore any concept of explicit gender. It could be argued that as commanders effective give birth to new units through replication they are an asexual race into themselves with no gender assignments. Any such assignment is a product of convenience and our own socially gendered society.

I always view the commander as the controlling intelligence of the entire army, containing a large central computer that decides on every movement and action. In this sense it's an avatar of the player and I think identifying all the commanders as male is not ideal because of this.

That's an good explanation of the Lore.
Though it does put the responsibility on our culture to decide whether we're going to refer to them as masculine or neutral. After all, "it" is the gender neutral term (and thus grammatically correct).
Or, if we are going to transpose our own genders onto them when writing, whether "She" would be an acceptable term to use.

I'd prefer it if the Commanders were gender neutral in our language if this is to be the case in the Lore; they're "its".
Though equally it might be good for characterisation for the Commanders to identify with particular genders - gender isn't sexual (physical). It's mental, and good for allowing us to identify different personalities.

As a side note to my previous post, I'm actually agreeing with both sides here.
No, there are no "female" commanders because there are no "male" commanders.
As such "he" as a pronoun is arguably the wrong one to use, but "it" lacks the context of sentience and "they" is considered by many to be bad grammar. In game we purposefully don't use any gender assignments at all. I can't speak to the lore author's thoughts on this as it's not been a process I've been involved in.

We live in a society whose languages have mainly been derived from male dominated societies. As such for better or worse we often use the masculine form when denoting "both". I personally believe the non-gendered "they" convention will become commonplace within a generation or two as it appears to have already become the preferred pronoun for many of the internet generation as society steers toward greater cognizance of gender inequalities and LGBT awareness and acceptance.

For now "they" is generally currently seen as a plural form of "he" and / or "she" and considered incorrect grammar to use as a singular in formal writing. The correctness of this has been argued for 400 years, so good luck with that.

I would argue that while the use of "they" as a gender neutral is a nice direct way of trying to remove explicit gender assignment from our language, to actually solve the societal gender bias we need to get to the point that "he" is no longer considered gender specific.

It could be argued that since the commanders are, in a sense, birthing new units, that traditionally feminine names and pronouns are all the more appropriate. Who's to say one or all of the factions aren't a matriarchy? But then it could be argued that one is simply arguing for the sake of aggravating the discussion. Surely there's a word for that. Hmmmmm...

A woman is born with as many eggs as she'll ever have.
A man creates new sperm for as long as he'll live.

The male analog to a Commander endlessly spawning units is obvious.

Edit: This also explains the desire for submarines.
No man is complete without his little swimmers.

"Birth" as a form of gender assignment is also somewhat inaccurate, even if it is most commonly the female of a species who give birth, it is not an absolute.

Commanders don't need another commander to create and are thus asexual. Sperm and egg analogies are not relevant.

Fair point, but... oh god. I'll never be able to see the nanolathe streams the same way again.

I love that this formerly contentious thread about the nature of culture and the way in which we both modify and are modified by it has come to rest with ridiculous rhetorical tit-for-tat. Good work all around, I say.

Why does it matter?

Thank you for the logical and sensitive replies bgolus.

I agree our language has been handed down from a male-dominated society. To refer to all sentient life (mankind) using the masculine pronoun "he" has a long precedent. Therefore it's not that it's "no longer considered gender specific" so much as we've always been fine calling things male until relatively recently.
I'm afraid I disagree that 'he' will ever be truly gender neutral. I recognise it can be applied to non-masculine things - however this will always bring up masculine connotations as "he" is also used to refer to men. In other words this convention represents the world according to a male perspective, perpetuating patriarchy.
Thus I agree we do need a term like "They" or (the more grammatically correct) "It" which is entirely divorced from such gendered associations as a completely gender neutral with its own connotations.

As I come to think about "It", it has been used to refer to asexual/unknown sentient extraterrestrial life before. Using "It" could be a really useful avenue in exploring these Commanders' coming to rediscover their purposes, identities and personalities - even the limits of their consciousness and sentience. Lots of juicy potential for story-lines. They might even decide to adopt (multi)gendered personalities on discovering ancient traces of past civilisations.

There may have been very few exceptions throughout history, but affairs of war have had much more to do with men than women. You can chalk it up to male dominated society, whatever, but that is why commanders are referred to in masculine context. If it's that big of a deal, then let's just replace every pronoun with their proper or improper nouns and move on to bigger issues.

If you don't think these issues matter I'd encourage you "move on to bigger issues".

I gave you a solution in two seconds that took six thread pages to do. You're welcome..

... These issues do matter to me.

It seems there may be need of a mod one day

As bgolus said, this is a fault in the English language, and it is not one that is easily remedied.

'It', as discussed, does not imply sentience and 'they' is incorrect. Yes I would have called them out on this, I like correct grammar.

'He' grates a little but is better than the alternatives. In a couple of centuries the language will have evolved past gendered pronouns. Until then we can put up with it.

"It" has been used to refer to asexual alien/monstrous life in fiction before. It would stunt our empathy with these genocidal sentient war machines, but that could be overcome with some good writing and exploration of them rediscovering their identities (potentially to a gendered state of thinking).

Hmmm, I don't really want to get into what I think of the lore here but suffice to say I don't empathise with them now. At all. Calling them 'it' isn't going to help.

I agree that 'he' being used as a neutral pronoun is annoying, but I think it's the best choice out of available options.