Gender Restrictions was Re: [MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage

[Jon Lambert]

Nathan F Yospe wrote:
>
>Done that.  Oblians came in three genders, with severe restrictions from
>each on suitibility for certain professions.  Grahnka came in two, and a
>neuter, and Trilaci came in one, plus neuter.  There was also a group of
>humans who never revealed gender... which meant ungendered pronouns.  It
>didn't go over well, except for the ungendered humans - which were quite
>heavy on the RL female players.  People found out that they couldn't get
>a big brawny male with their avian trilac character - if they wanted the
>strength to be upper body, they could be a neuter, but they took the hit
>in lifespan and endurance that came with it, and couldn't get a pronoun.
>Players want to play the same sexist, racist, orientationist bigots they
>play in this reality, just with lasers and spaceships (or spells and the
>like), or they want to control the story to *exactly* match their little
>fantasy.  Few seem to appreciate a game that makes them be someone else,
>in a world that imposes itself on them.
>


I wonder how it would have worked out if the choice of being human had been 
removed from the game.   Sort of like the idea that Ling posted about a game
that is inhabited solely by gas-based creatures, along the lines of what some 
have imagined to exist on Jupiter.  
Still there are other difficulties...

Part of the problem, I think, is that we are too grounded in our own humanity;
a kind of species identification, that subsumes racial and sexual identity. 
We gravitate towards the familiar or attempt to impose our own identity on 
something unfamiliar.  It is something learned, continually reinforced and 
repeated throughout childhood.  Animal stories have been a constant feature 
of human conditioning from Aesop to Potter to Disney.    The conditioning
of TV makes it even harder.   

I wonder...maybe it's just not enough to just to provide alien creatures, plots, 
backgrounds and stories, but to actively manipulate reality in more subversive 
ways.  The primary tool for manipulating reality is the manipulation of words.  
If in a virtual world you control the meaning of the words in your presentation, 
you control the thoughts of the the people who must use those words in such 
a world.  If you can get them to see the virtual world in those terms, they will 
begin to think in that reality.  Comprehension follows perception.  And 
comprehension allows us to _willingly_ suspend our identity.   

So...design one's aliens to use a vocabulary that intentional obliterates and 
redefines words that are commonly used to express human notions of 
sexual, racial, and philosophical identities.   Perhaps the galactic standard 
of currency is done in units of man/men instead of credit(s) or gold.  When 
you go to the bank you deposit your 1000 men, or maybe you just wanted 
make change to 1 woman.   Perhaps Oblians genders are described with 
the pronouns 'free', 'slave', and 'beauty'.   Just a thought.

--
--*     Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email: jlsysinc at nospam.ix.netcom.com     *--
--*     Mud Server Developer's Page <http://jlsysinc.home.netcom.com>      *--
--* "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson *--





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