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

Neither do I particularly, but at the moment it's just a framework for further development.
I think "It" would be more accurate and provide many more avenues in that framework for story-lines exploring the nature of their sentience, personality and consciousness as they pick up the pieces after Time Designation 0.

So what is the difference of "he" or "they" and why would "he" be more desirable? There is an issue that having everything default as male promotes that womanhood is somehow exceptional and non-natural.

I would like to distance myself from inclusion of your cultural reference class and point out we don't live in a unified culture. In this regard I live in a more advanced culture, it's YOUR english problem. Given that at a period of past existed that singular they sounded way more natural there is no heavy inertia on account of history to keep using the word. You have been swayed to use it like in my native tongue but it did stick because it didn't fit because you are a backwards male-tinted culture. I do have to say that I didn't strike me as conveying masculinity and perhaps that is what you are referring to. That how the words ring matter a lot more than what words are used.

I have been lead by female commanders and find it odd that army would be a conceptualization incompatible with feminity or that it would be inherently masculine.

Perhaps you're right. Changing it would be the work of the moment, swap out the pronouns and see how it reads. I don't really know what else uber is planning to do with the lore so I'm not sure if it's going to be very impact-full in the long run.

Woah hold on I didn't say I ascribe to using "he" in a non-gendered way. I'm so touchy I say things like "humanity" instead of "mankind". I agree we don't live in a unified culture, that's what post-modern society is all about ^^

Also you're a tiny bit vitriolic in your assessment of your cultural superiority. You might have a better means of referring to neutral persons - but as I know little about your culture I'm not going to pass judgement it. You do have some right to judge ours as you are partially in it but please try to understand that while it may be our problem some of us are looking for a solution and do not blindly ascribe to cultural norms.

We are not a "backwards male-tinted culture". Or at least my personal culture isn't, and I'm English.

It'd read bloody odd, but that's a good thing. Art is supposed to de-familiarise.

I'd just like to interject here; as was mentioned before, 'she' can also be used to refer to gender neutral entities (usually ships, large machines and devices, etc). Earlier, you stated that you found these to be mainly sexist because you speculated that it has something to do with "lonely guys being out at sea too long" which I do not think is the case, especially nowadays and when referring to other machines and devices. In this case, you consider naming things "she" sexist.

So when asexual entities are referred to as feminine, it's demeaning, but when they are referred to as masculine, it's automatically oppressive? The logic behind it is basically this: if one group is suppressed by another historically, using a term used to differentiate between the two either way is considered prejudice against the suppressed group. This honestly appears to be the case for a lot of terms, but it shouldn't be. Some members of society apply positive and negative connotations this way, but it is not because one pronoun or the other is used, or that either is used at all. It's a perception issue from whoever holds that view. I think my point here can be summed up by this:

TL;DR: If someone held no prejudice views, they would not see a tunnel boring drill referred to as "she" demeaning, while viewing one described as "he" oppressive.

I would love it if we had a gender neutral pronoun to refer to asexual entities such as AI though. The wikipedia article on pronouns touches on the subject of suggested gender-less pronouns. I mean, we'll probably need one eventually, and "it" doesn't cut it unless the connotation attached to "it" can change drastically over the next century.

When certain asexual entities are referred to as feminine it could be seen as vaguely demeaning. If those entities are ships full of lonely men.
In anthropomorphising an object into a woman, you are (somewhat; not explicitly) objectifying a woman. The space between the woman and the object is our minds is shortened. It'd be the same if you characterised a sword as male.
Objectification transfers the connotations that object holds to the gender it is personified by.

I disagree with your TL;DR - You yourself admit there are both positive and negative associations brought by characterising certain objects as masculine or feminine. Only some are objectionable. To see the potential phallic imagery in a boring drill is not the perception of a prejudiced mind. That boring drill was an "it" before you brought penises into the equation with "he".
It's language which draws out cultural connotations.

Really, I wasn't the one who brought up ships and machines and objects in general. These are sentient life forms. It's a different ballgame. I'd just prefer it if we didn't call them men when they aren't.

I think "It" is much closer than "He" as an asexual pronoun. I would prefer Commanders not to have assumed metal dangly bits. "It" has already been used in Science Fiction a lot.

Many wrong things have been argued for 400 years.

However, singular "they" has been acceptable for as long as English has been English, except for the period around 1880 to 1980. Shakespeare used it, as did Austen, and many other illustrious writers of the language. My rule is that if a grammarian and Shakespeare disagree about traditionally-correct English, the grammarian is wrong.

For myself, I think using less gender-biased language would be a positive move.

Thank you for coming out of the woodwork to say this, kindly lurker

I think using "they" should be fine. Even if you think of it as a plural we are talking about robots that replicate at an amazing speed. We have limited lore, but considering how everything dies with the commander it's safe to say the commander is connected to every robot. So "plural" is rather appropriate

I have no qualms with characterizing a sword as either male or female. If one is objectifying a gender, so is the other, but I think it's ridiculous to say so either way in that case. It's giving a personality to something, based on your own prejudices. If you feel "she" comes with an offensive connotation in the same situation when "he" would not, that's the result of your own prejudices.

Now, I'm not saying it's never a bad thing. If something clearly taboo is personified one way or the other, you could certainly argue that it is offensive either way. But if it's offensive for one, it's also offensive for the other.

...no, that actually is prejudice. Equating 'he' and 'phallic' just like that isn't normal. In fact, I was using that as an example of something described as female, since I'd remembered one had a female name on a Discovery Chanel show I watched and you had previously mentioned you thought such traditions were sexist.[1][2]

Again, "he" might bring in some connotation to "men" based on the reader's own prejudices, but it's rather common to be used as a gender-less pronoun. As you can tell by the first page of responses, most people assumed the commanders were gender-less regardless of the use of "he". If "she" were used exclusively, they would probably come to the same conclusion, but she is less common. Mixing-and-matching the two would make people question why that was being done, and probably come to the conclusion that gender is supposed to matter when it isn't. Using "it" to describe beings that act quite human will generally have a much stronger connotation as well. I know I would find it jarring to read, because it is very uncommon in most literature.
Oh, and when most people think "he", they probably don't automatically think "dangly bits". That's probably just you.

EDIT: (for anyone who may not have seen my first post, I support using "they" as a gender neutral singular pronoun. While I don't think "he" is all that bad in this case, it is when referring to unknown gender, and they is a better choice for gender neutral entities anyway)

Nice, I hadn't considered this! I agree.

Thanks for the engaging conversation but calling me prejudiced and attempting to single me out as some sort of oddity is not likely to result in productive conversation and frankly I've had enough patronisation for one day. Cheerio.

Edit:
Also you seem to have taken me using the plural pronoun 'you' as the singular accusative. I was not referring to you specifically. I was not making a personal attack.

Everyone knows the Centurioness.

I would like to say 2 things:

-i think you're bringing up legitimate points. While it's not really a big deal in the great picture, culture changes one tiny bit at a time and the only way to change it is to, well, make changes. I do think some aspects of our culture are horribly outdated (e.g. certain cursewords, but also endless He-ing, though i myself am not free of that).

-A slightly less intuitive, but equally valid system is the one used by Orion's Arm (http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/495360fba7a46)


subjective e / ey
objective em
possessive adjective eir
possessive pronoun eirs
reflexive emself or eirself

(although the Hemoth or Neut ones might work well too)
Hemath:
Se
Hir
Hir
Hirs
Hirself

Neut:
Je
Jer
Jer
Jers
Jerself

So, they are genderless, I'm okay with that.

But the fact that you have to point it out in a thread and it's not immediately obvious from the lore itself is a big flaw of the writing, and not just language.

Add a commander with feminine name. Still refer to it as "he". Then it will be clear that they have no concept of gender and use "he" as neutral pronoun.

If you don't do it, or something similar, these threads will appear regularly. That would make you look bad.

Also, about gender of things: in my native all nouns are about equally distributed between masculine, feminine and neutral. And I don't see that as discriminating or offending anyone in any way.

I saw this thread with interest this morning. Can't really be bothered to trawl through it.


While I respect the work of the writer of PA, I think it's quite irrelevant that machines have no gender. It's an emerging idea in human society that the binary gender does not exist. I.e. it's an emerging idea in human society that actually, humans have no gender, because although they have a biological sex, the social norms of gender are a cultural construct.

It is a rather irrelevant point in any case.

A better question is why did the writer of PA not include female viewpoints in his story, for the sole benefit of the human audience that will appreciate that story.

No sorry, I am not compensating, the desire for submarines is to maintain the naval trilogy and maintain the feel of naval, rather than just tanks with inconvenient pathing restrictions.

I might be wrong, but I don't believe English is very good at gender neutral language, it's simply not setup to handle it. You get into confusing issues like whether you mean they as in an individual or they the group.

This is why writers will generally choose a gender pronoun, and that will be he because in all circumstances he, sir, etc. are the "defaults". You could use she, but under most peoples' understanding of English it would feel like the robots now have gender because you have made a choice to change genders (thus indicating there was a reason i.e. they have a gender), where as he is used for things like robots without gender.

You can use "it", but I think it gets a little clumsy, and by the very nature of English is depersonalises the thing you're talking about.

In german television we have a construct called "Quoten-Schwarzer", wich is basically the "black dude in horrormovie who dies first". He is there to make the movie or series appeal to a wider audience, and that is his whole purpose. This is often done bad and thus makes the character stand out wich takes away from the immersion.

To me, if we just go and change half the pronouns to a female variant, it will only stand out as some oddity, as the "Quoten-Frau", wich will drag political and cultural issues into a vidiogame - a thing wich is mostly used to get away from those issues in the first place.

You would then also need to create a somewhat more female looking Commander on wich a female pronoun can apply. In doing that you would actually hurt the lore of "self replicating mechanisms of war" as most female attributes are meant to support children, a thing wich robots do not have.

You are right that we as a culture have to change and evolve to be more accepting of the needs and feelings of as many individuals as possible, regardless of gender or ethnic background. I do not think tho that we need to shoehorn gender equality into a videogame about robots who blow up planets.

...what the hell?