D&D 5E What happened to the Hermaphrodites???

[Azzy]

It is the scientific (and thus global, culture you're out) word used (currently used, goodbye time period) to denote a creature with both (all?) Of its species' reproductive organs (the context it is being used in, farwell "different context").

"Intersex people were previously referred to as hermaphrodites, "congenital eunuchs", or even congenitally "frigid". Such terms have fallen out of favor; in particular, the term "hermaphrodite" is considered to be misleading, stigmatizing, and scientifically specious."

 

[Yunru]

"Intersex people were previously referred to as hermaphrodites, "congenital eunuchs", or even congenitally "frigid". Such terms have fallen out of favor; in particular, the term "hermaphrodite" is considered to be misleading, stigmatizing, and scientifically specious."

Ah ah ah. No cutting out parts you don't like.

The word intersex has come into preferred usage for humans, since the word hermaphrodite is considered to be misleading and stigmatizing,[3][4] as well as "scientifically specious and clinically problematic".[5]

Emphasis mine. It's still the scientific word for every creature bar humans. Such as elves.
Additionally none of the reasons given for its proposed removal make rational sense. Rather, the vast majority either refer to mis-labelling or being to sensitive too deal with it (case in point: One of the arguments against the word is because it "invites fetishism"... What).

 

[MackMcMacky]

Many of us are weary of being told we are insufficiently sensitive because we don't accept another person's or group's sweeping solution to a problem. Hermaphrodite has its use in proper context. It does not need to be wiped out of existence because Imbeciles use it as a pejorative term. It simply needs to be used in its proper context.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'm sort of in the same boat. I think Corellon's gender-fluidity may have been mentioned in 1E or 2E, but I cut my teeth on 3E and there, to the best of my knowledge, there was no indication that he was anything other than male. Failing of 3E for not preserving that aspect of the lore? Failing of 1E/2E for not making a bigger deal about it? Who knows?

TBH I don't remember anything about Corellon being androgynous from any edition. But if it's a new thing that's cool.

But I've got to say it's kind of astonishing that the real wiki has an article on the elven pantheon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf_deities

Earlier in the thread, it was made pretty clear that Corellon's androgyny goes back to the 1E Deities & Demigods at least, if not further. Being described as a hermaphrodite, that came, and went, with 5E.

 

[Warpiglet]

We must be playing wrong. In decades (plural) of gaming I cannot think of a single time when medieval fantasy intersected with this term. Likewise, I cannot recall any gender issues being of note with one departure being the chief Elven deity. Duly noted ?!

I am not against people putting things that are important to them in games. I just do not understand the push to codify this sort of thing. Are there really games where these things are debated? Play it your way.

This reminds me of the mention of gender and sexuality in the PHB. Ponderous. Make your character up and play it for the love of Pete. If you are in a group that does not accept your choice, does the fact it is in the book with the "proper" terminology matter? You still would probably want a more welcoming group.

But to each his/her/their own. It is hard enough to find time to fight monsters for most people I know. Debating medical terminology is pretty low on our gaming to-do list.

Yes, I have opened myself up to criticism of minimizing an issue of great importance. I probably also cured disease with a paladin with scarcely a thought about our present day medical system too! I bet I wasn't even thinking about modern health care ethics at the time either!

 

[MechaPilot]

Wow, in what weird games did you play... really, in all the time playing, it hasn't happened that a gender switch changed the person's behavior, asides from having trouble with the new body and trying to get back to the old normal (which usually worked). Not ever has anyone tried to imply anything, although sometimes hormones had a certain effect but that was the player's doing in most cases.

I've certainly played in an odd game here and there. The comedy campaign with my pajama-clad pillow-fighting monk was certainly weird by typical D&D standards, but fun all the same.

That said, I believe a lot of people, particularly adolescents and adults who still act like them, did an awful job handling it when gender-changing cursed items dropped in a campaign. Which is hardly a surprise, given how badly adolescent and puerile adult gamers have handled such basic things as female PCs and even treating female players with basic dignity and/or respect.

It wouldn't be much of a surprise to me if the person who accused me of being "on the rag" for making a rules judgement against them in my capacity as DM was the same kind of person who would call a male player "gay" for playing a female PC, or who would try to tell a male player whose character was gender swapped that his character should cry and have wild mood swings because bewbs and lady-parts. And all of those are things I have actually seen at the gaming table, just not from the same person.

There is no shortage of people in this hobby who behave quite badly (and by quite badly let me clarify that most of it is general a-holishness, but it does get quite extreme as well: I almost left the hobby because of the humiliation and fear I felt when a group I joined through my local hobby shop pushed me to rp the rape of my captured character). Fortunately, some people who do misbehave grow up and regret the idiocy of their hormone-fueled youth. But. some of them never grow up and continue to treat other people as caricatures and stereotypes, or as things to torture for their own amusement.

 

[Warpiglet]

I've certainly played in an odd game here and there. The comedy campaign with my pajama-clad pillow-fighting monk was certainly weird by typical D&D standards, but fun all the same.

That said, I believe a lot of people, particularly adolescents and adults who still act like them, did an awful job handling it when gender-changing cursed items dropped in a campaign. Which is hardly a surprise, given how badly adolescent and puerile adult gamers have handled such basic things as female PCs and even treating female players with basic dignity and/or respect.

It wouldn't be much of a surprise to me if the person who accused me of being "on the rag" for making a rules judgement against them in my capacity as DM was the same kind of person who would call a male player "gay" for playing a female PC, or who would try to tell a male player whose character was gender swapped that his character should cry and have wild mood swings because bewbs and lady-parts. And all of those are things I have actually seen at the gaming table, just not from the same person.

There is no shortage of people in this hobby who behave quite badly (and by quite badly let me clarify that most of it is general a-holishness, but it does get quite extreme as well: I almost left the hobby because of the humiliation and fear I felt when a group I joined through my local hobby shop pushed me to rp the rape of my captured character). Fortunately, some people who do misbehave grow up and regret the idiocy of their hormone-fueled youth. But. some of them never grow up and continue to treat other people as caricatures and stereotypes, or as things to torture for their own amusement.

That sounds horrible. I am glad you were able to persevere in your hobby! Good hobbies increase quality of life. Sometimes they are what make life great.

However, there is no way to escape emotionally messed up groups other than to leave them. I do not think an admonition about avoiding triggering topics would stop such boorish behavior in those inclined to engage in it. And frankly there is a ton of murder pillage and everything else in a typical campaign (every one I have ever seen). People either know how to be sensitive and avoid going too far or they do not. If someone wants to RP sex and sadism to a great extent, I am bowing out. Although damn, we have had campaigns start when we came upon a town that had been impaled! Horrible! We use it to fuel our righteous anger, of course.

So using proper terminology may seem vitally important to some but I do not think it would do anything to curb insensitive behavior. Splitting hairs about medical terminology which changes over time suggests a luxury of time I surely do not have when it simply does not come up in games.

And if I am constantly confronting gender/sex conflicts on a regular basis I will know I am in the wrong game. I have people to save, monsters and evil priests to defeat etc.

 

[Azzy]

Ah ah ah. No cutting out parts you don't like.

The word intersex has come into preferred usage for humans, since the word hermaphrodite is considered to be misleading and stigmatizing,[3][4] as well as "scientifically specious and clinically problematic".[5]

I don't know what source you're quoting from, but my quotation is verbatim.

Emphasis mine. It's still the scientific word for every creature bar humans. Such as elves.

This is where I roll my eyes. Why you would want to not use the same standards for elves or other non-human humanoids that you would use for humans? That sounds more agenda-driven then any logical reasoning. Is that the hill you want to die on?

Additionally none of the reasons given for its proposed removal make rational sense. Rather, the vast majority either refer to mis-labelling or being to sensitive too deal with it (case in point: One of the arguments against the word is because it "invites fetishism"... What).

Look, you wanted to bring up scientific parlance, sorry if the scientific community prefers different terms now.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

It wouldn't be much of a surprise to me if the person who accused me of being "on the rag" for making a rules judgement against them in my capacity as DM was the same kind of person who would call a male player "gay" for playing a female PC, or who would try to tell a male player whose character was gender swapped that his character should cry and have wild mood swings because bewbs and lady-parts. And all of those are things I have actually seen at the gaming table, just not from the same person.

There is no shortage of people in this hobby who behave quite badly (and by quite badly let me clarify that most of it is general a-holishness, but it does get quite extreme as well: I almost left the hobby because of the humiliation and fear I felt when a group I joined through my local hobby shop pushed me to rp the rape of my captured character). Fortunately, some people who do misbehave grow up and regret the idiocy of their hormone-fueled youth. But. some of them never grow up and continue to treat other people as caricatures and stereotypes, or as things to torture for their own amusement.

For a long time I had trouble believing that anybody could actually be that level of horrible to somebody else's face when they're both ostensibly trying to entertain each other playing a cooperative game. The more I read about others' experiences, though, the more I realize that what I thought was social ineptitude in my own little band of geeks isn't even scratching the surface of just how sad, sick, and clueless people can get. I'm sorry to hear this. But can I assume from the fact that you're still here that your story has a happy ending and you did eventually find a group of decent human beings?

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot a single game book can do to fix the sad, sick, and clueless. I would like to believe that something in black and white like the PHB's entry on gender could be used as a sort of blunt instrument against a DM who had certain other ideas: you could point to it and say, "The rules allow me to do this, so let me do this!" But really, that's just the same misplaced optimism that made it so hard for me to believe players like that existed in the first place. A-holes are going to be a-holes regardless of some wording on a page. They're likely to reject it offhand, and even if they do acquiesce, that doesn't fix the underlying problem -- they're just going to find some other way to be a-holes. So no, I don't think the wording is there for them. It's there for the rest of us: to encourage those of us who might sometimes feel vulnerable in our lives to give this hobby the try, and to gently remind those of us who aren't committed a-holes but might still occasionally put our feet in our mouths to keep an open mind.

 

[Yunru]

I don't know what source you're quoting from, but my quotation is verbatim.

As is mine. But mine refers to the term in question, not the replacement for the soft.

This is where I roll my eyes. Why you would want to not use the same standards for elves or other non-human humanoids that you would use for humans? That sounds more agenda-driven then any logical reasoning. Is that the hill you want to die on?

Look, you wanted to bring up scientific parlance, sorry if the scientific community prefers different terms now.

Of course it is. If it's fine for every other creature, including mammals, its fine for elves. The only reason it's not considered fine for humans is because people are whiny.

The fact that the scientific community "prefers" different terms just means they caved in, as evident by the fact that said different term is only applied to humans.