Warforged and Gender

[pawsplay]

It's not body style we're talking about ... it's personality. R2-D2 and C-3PO are definitely male personality. Characters refers to them are "he."

Yes, but they're anthropomorphic, and in english "it" refers only to objects. The generic third person pronoun is "he" or some convention, never "it." "They" is also acceptable, but is often scorned by grammarians, despite a centuries old pedigree.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Yes, but they're anthropomorphic, and in english "it" refers only to objects. The generic third person pronoun is "he" or some convention, never "it." "They" is also acceptable, but is often scorned by grammarians, despite a centuries old pedigree.

I'm not sure what your point is. All I'm saying is that R2-D2 and C-3PO are clearly masculine gender, from human and droid perspective. C-3PO, for instance, consistently calls R2 "he": "Oh, he excels at that, sir." Meanwhile, so far as I'm aware the villainous droids are left genderless.

BTW, there are many instances at odds with your assertion. Two that came to mind instantly were (1) a baby with a gender unknown to the speaker, sometimes because it's still in utero, is usually referred to as "it," all the way up to the point at which the gender/sex is discovered: "It's a boy!" (2) In the new BSG, Centurions and Raiders are always (well, one exception, which actually involved switching genders!) referred to as "it," and many Colonials refer to any Cylon, even the Twelve, as "it." The show, in fact, reveals that a character has begun thinking of a Cylon as a person when the human begins using the Cylon's apparent gender.

 

[DarkKestral]

Well, I suppose you could look to Terry Pratchett. He deals with this concept in his own way, due to the golems in his work being like the Warforged of D&D in many respects; they were originally products, but now their "foundry" has been destroyed and they are working towards becoming their own individuals.

But more importantly to this specific topic, most Discworld golems look and act totally sexless. There are several "main character" golems, including Constable Dorfl, and several of them are referred to as "it" except for one particular golem, who takes on a more feminine persona and to some degree personality. At one point, those most in contact with the golem question why, but then they decide that assuming a golem is automatically a "he" unless they decide to take on an actively female persona is actually unfair, since they're sexless in gross anatomy and often in personality. (Many don't appear to have much personality outside of their jobs and their desire to free other golems. The main character golems, however, tend to have specific identifying personality characteristics, such as being an active atheist in a world where proclaiming yourself to be such will normally get you a lightning bolt that will incinerate you and leave only your boots behind, but are still ones that don't necessarily have anything to do with gender) In other words, the golems are mostly being viewed as masculine only because they don't present themselves as being feminine.

In other words, you could just say that the Warforged are "its" by default when they come out of the factory, and maybe take on personalities over time which could be described by convention and/or self-description as being male or female, based on personal preference and perhaps to some degree on physical body type and their own apparent anatomy, as well as any other characteristics that would "identify" them as being a specific gender, had they been a normal humanoid race. Quite possibly, more than a few would remain somewhat neuter in the sense of not attempting to project any personality characteristics as having a gender-based association, or even would have a persona that has mixtures of elements typically associated as being male or female and would fall under categories better described in Wikipedia's articles on the subject of humanity and our definitions of gender. (Trying to claim just one or even a few might be bad, but trying to explain how we decide what gender we are is a weird thing and it's hard to say where Eric's Grandma Rule to dictate certain usages be avoided begins and ends at some levels of description, though in many cases they are ones actively taken by those belonging to certain groups to describe themselves...)

How they would choose to present themselves in terms of gender would be a pretty good way for them to make a personal statement about how they view the world, but I suspect, just like several other posters, that many would end up with one based on the people around they are in contact with most often or who they decide to be most influential, though certainly there would be some variation and individual choice would still probably play a large part. If the warforged is mostly around other warforged who don't have much contact with humanoids, but particularly if the warforged spends most of their time around those other warforged who are emphasizing their construct nature, it'll most likely be neuter. One who lives around women would be more likely to take up a more feminine persona and one who mostly interacts with men a more masculine one. One who lives around changelings might create a persona more inline with a changeling's fluid definition of their own gender and have one that combines traits associated with masculinity and femininity somewhat freely.

 

[arscott]

In that line of though, I imagine that having an NPC use "it" to describe warforged is a great way of demonstrating his or her contempt for the race.

It's also interesting that the Warforged statblocks I've seen have generally made explicit the Idea that a warforged's gender is only in his or her mind. Where another PC's statblock might say "Male human" or "Female elf", a Warforged Statblock would say "Male-personality warforged"

 

[Merkuri]

In that line of though, I imagine that having an NPC use "it" to describe warforged is a great way of demonstrating his or her contempt for the race.

My current PC actually referred to the warforged in the group like that. She was from Thrane, who I believe actively disregards the part in the Treaty of Thronehold where they made warforged free beings. The warforged PC and I roleplayed out some nice scenes where she began to realize he was more alive than she thought, and by the time he left the group she was starting to refer to him as "he".

And to address the concept of villain robots being genderless and hero robots being gendered, I think that happens because villain robots usually do not have much of a personality, but hero robots, who the reader/viewer gets to know well, do have personality. Whenever you give a robot personality it's almost a requirement to also give it a gender. I think you'll find that whenever villain robots have personalities they also have genders.

Part of it is like what another poster was saying about "it". "It" may be technically acceptable to call a person of unknown gender, but think about how insulting it would sound to actually use it. If you're in the room with someone who picks up the phone with an unknown person and you want to know what that person says, you wouldn't ask, "What did it say?" You'd be much more likely to say "what did they say" or "what did he say"? And you would absolutely NEVER refer to somebody you had actually seen as "it". If you were referring to a bus driver you didn't see well from the back of the bus, you'd never say, "It forgot to give that person change."

It's becoming outdated mostly because it seems sexist, but it's long been the standard to refer to an unknown gendered person as "he". "It" has a connotation of referring to objects, so referring to sentient objects (robots/constructs) as "it" seems to insinuate that they are objects, not people. This is probably why warforged PCs are highly encouraged (or required, depending on where you read) to have a gender. Genderless beings too easily become "its" in the human mind, and it's much easier for players to identify with a "he" or a "she" than an "it".

 

[WayneLigon]

In that line of though, I imagine that having an NPC use "it" to describe warforged is a great way of demonstrating his or her contempt for the race.

I know the books are not canon, but the Eberron novels really bring this home in a number of ways. There are a lot of people that don't like the warforged; only 2 years ago, they were mindless, soulless killing machines. The only tmie people saw one was if it was coming to cut them into bits.

 

[heirodule]

It strikes me we could have an alignment-debate kind of thread about warforged gender if we liked.

So a warforged picks "male-personality"

What does that mean he has to do? That he has to avoid doing? What about female-personality?

Like sports? intellectual challenges? word-play? mind-games? (the female warforged in Baker's novel seemed to like mind-games)

Can they switch between one and another? Can a warforged be male-personality (effeminate)?

Isn't C3P0 stereotypically "gay"?

The mind boggles.

 

[robertliguori]

Read the sidebar from RoE again. Warforged decide if they want adopt a male or female gender identity. "No, I do not want to adopt a gender identity." is a valid answer to the question.

Hey, WotC knew the risks when they gave us the race of dungeonpunk constructs.

 

[Scarbonac]

So for some choices we have:

or my preference

I like this'un.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I like this'un.

But my first one has a keg of beer built in and the second is just plain hot.