Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[Maxperson]

They do not even remotely mean the same thing. Cisgender has to do with one's own gender. Heterosexual has to do with who you're attracted to.

Okay. I can see the difference. The rest of that post is still correct, though. A cisgender individual who is born male identifies as a male and can't identify as any other gender without losing cisgender.

 

[Yaarel]

I might have worded it poorly; there are people I know who were biologically born “male”, but identify themselves strictly as “female”; not as “trans” or any other qualifier. They have no interest in bucking any sort of gender binary; they prefer to identify themselves as, and therefore be treated as, essentially as cis-women.

I don’t think of this as any more or less of a valid way to identify as “trans woman” or “gender queer”.

One time, at an airport, I ended up talking to an interesting person at a coffee shop, when both of our flights were delayed.

She was an elderly woman, who turned out to be one of the earlier participants in sex reassignment surgery. At the time, her wife supported her sex-reassignment procedure, and they remained married after it. When her drivers license, birth certificate, and other legal documents were legally changed to ‘female’, she became the first woman in US history to be legally married to an other woman.

I got the feeling she was trying to explain the situation in terms that were easier for me to grasp. But asked her, ‘So, really, you're a lesbian’.

She said, ‘Yes, exactly’.

She is someone who simply is a woman, who happens to prefer an other woman.



Oh by the way, before the surgery, she had her semen saved in a sperm bank, and they, thru her wife, continued to have children.

 

[Yaarel]

Yep, I'm actually putting together an IRL group for it right now. It seems like a pretty good mesh of d20 and Mass Effect.

Will certainly post a play report once we get into it.

Please do let us know how your Mass Effect setting goes. PM me about it too.

I hope scheduling allows me to get a group together to do this setting too. I like the themes, and the scifi, and the d20!

I will have a closer look at the Mass Effect d20 .com website.

 

[Gradine]

Cisgender and heterosexual, which both mean the same thing---

I'ma stop you right there--

They do not even remotely mean the same thing. Cisgender has to do with one's own gender. Heterosexual has to do with who you're attracted to.

Yeah, this.

Incidentally, one of the women I was referring to is attracted strictly to men and identifies as heterosexual.

Okay. I can see the difference. The rest of that post is still correct, though. A cisgender individual who is born male identifies as a male and can't identify as any other gender without losing cisgender.

The point isn't necessarily that they identify specifically as "cis"; the point is more that they do not identify as "trans". They are women; nothing more, nothing less.

 

[epithet]

...
The point isn't necessarily that they identify specifically as "cis"; the point is more that they do not identify as "trans". They are women; nothing more, nothing less.

Biology notwithstanding?

At the most basic level, a (mammalian) female has morphology for bearing live young, and a male for impregnating a female. If you get to a point where you say none of that matters and your gender is based only upon your declaration of same, then what does it mean to be a woman, or a man, or female, or male? It begins to resemble Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass, who insisted that no one could know the meaning of the words he used until he told you what he meant by them.

On a certain level, to be sure, it doesn't matter at all. A person can call himself whatever he wants, live however he wants, and enjoy whatever relationships other consenting people wish to share. That's all fine, but there seems to be an additional level of expectation place upon everyone else to carefully use that person's terminology. That seems unreasonable to the point of being impossible. The circumstance you seem to be describing would not align with the common comprehension of the phrase "women; nothing more, nothing less," and I don't think it is reasonable to expect it to.

 

[Gradine]

Biology notwithstanding?

We are talking about gender, which has nothing to do with biology. There are fewer and fewer every day who would disagree with that statement, and one who would be able to speak from any place of authority.

A person can call himself whatever he wants, live however he wants, and enjoy whatever relationships other consenting people wish to share.

Great.

That's all fine, but...

Why is it that whenever everybody says something that seems to be supportive, they always have to follow it with a comma, a but, and some kind of absurd statement that betrays their unwillingness to treat other human being with a shred of decency or respect because it might somehow inconvenience them, slightly?

...there seems to be an additional level of expectation place upon everyone else to carefully use that person's terminology. That seems unreasonable to the point of being impossible.

"Hey, here's that new friend I've been telling you about. He plays-"
"Actually, I prefer she."
"Oh, I'm sorry, my bad. She runs a 5e game on Friday nights!"
I fail to understand how this is either unreasonable or impossible. It's actually quite easy to treat people the way they wish to be treated. All that it takes is actually caring to. Which reminds me...

A person can call themself whatever they want, live however they want, and enjoy whatever relationships other consenting people wish to share.

There, that's fixed.

The circumstance you seem to be describing would not align with the common comprehension of the phrase "women; nothing more, nothing less," and I don't think it is reasonable to expect it to.

I'm also struggling to understand how a woman presenting as a woman, wearing what would traditionally be considered "womens'" clothing, and asking to be called a woman, could possibly fall outside anyone's common comprehension of the phrase "woman; nothing more, nothing less" unless they were abnormally concerned about the shape and manner of a person's genitalia, both currently and at birth. But that strikes me as rather unreasonable to expect of the average person.

 

[epithet]

We are talking about gender, which has nothing to do with biology. There are fewer and fewer every day who would disagree with that statement, and one who would be able to speak from any place of authority.
...
There, that's fixed.
...

Wait, what?

How does gender not have anything to do with biology? Biology, in the form of reproduction, is the reason gender came to exist in the first place! When you're talking about any species other than humans, gender begins and ends with biology. I get that the concept, at least in humans, has moved beyond the biological, but it's ridiculous to say that it "has nothing to do with biology." That's taking the issue out of the realm of fact and into the realm of belief and mythology. Mind you, I'm not suggesting that a person's gender needs to be constrained by his biology, but to say the two are unrelated is preposterous.

Also, "they" is plural. You can use it all you want to as a singular pronoun, I certainly won't try to stop you, but don't presume to "fix" my sentence by breaking its grammar.

 

[jgsugden]

What happens to a pregnant female elf with the Blessing of Corellon that elects to become male?

 

[Gradine]

Wait, what?

How does gender not have anything to do with biology? Biology, in the form of reproduction, is the reason gender came to exist in the first place! When you're talking about any species other than humans, gender begins and ends with biology. I get that the concept, at least in humans, has moved beyond the biological, but it's ridiculous to say that it "has nothing to do with biology." That's taking the issue out of the realm of fact and into the realm of belief and mythology. Mind you, I'm not suggesting that a person's gender needs to be constrained by his biology, but to say the two are unrelated is preposterous.

Gender is entirely a societal construct. Many of the cultures that exist currently, or once existed and left artifacts in forms that we can understand them from a modern lens, have often modeled their gendered structures around biology, which I think is the point you are trying to make. However, basically everyone who has taken the time to study biology, society, and/or gender have realized that there is nothing inherently biological about gender.

Also, "they" is plural. You can use it all you want to as a singular pronoun, I certainly won't try to stop you, but don't presume to "fix" my sentence by breaking its grammar.

Fun fact: the singular "they" is several centuries older than the more modern imperative towards a generic "he/him" (Shakespeare uses the singular they, for instance), and it has never universally been considered a-grammatical by the typical authorities on the subject, and in fact most of the style guides that have recommended avoiding it in the past have started to acknowledge it once again as perfectly acceptable in both informal and formal writing. At worst it's been described as clunky or sometimes unclear; which is rather the point, particularly in the case of the modern resurrection of the singular "they".

Other fun fact: Grammarians have been searching for gender-neutral singular pronouns for longer than they've been proscribing a generic "he/him".

Edit: Edited due to fact-checking.

 

[epithet]

Gender is entirely a societal construct. Many of the cultures that exist currently, or once existed and left artifacts in forms that we can understand them from a modern lens, have often modeled their gendered structures around biology, which I think is the point you are trying to make. However, basically everyone who has taken the time to study biology, society, and/or gender have realized that there is nothing inherently biological about gender.

Fun fact: the singular "they" is several centuries older than the more modern imperative towards a generic "he/him" (Shakespeare uses the singular they, for instance), and it has never universally been considered a-grammatical by the typical authorities on the subject, and in fact most of the style guides that have recommended avoiding it in the past have started to acknowledge it once again as perfectly acceptable in both informal and formal writing. At worst it's been described as clunky or sometimes unclear (which is rather the point, particularly in the case of the modern resurrection of the singular "they").

Well, no--the point I'm trying to make is that gender exists because of gender dimorphism in the animal kingdom, which serves the purpose of reproduction. I'm agreeing that humans have made more out of it than that for ourselves, but the origin of gender is all about the origin of offspring.

You've made a couple of assertions which are telling. First was that no authority would consider gender to have anything to do with biology, and the second was your statement that no authority has ever considered the "singular they" to be bad grammar. These statements suggest the possibility that you consider agreement with your current position on these issues to be necessary for a person to have authority with regard to the issue. It suggests that you are A Believer, that you are a person of faith on this issue.

And that suggests that I should drop the discussion.