Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Bingo. Someone who actually managed to pull that "more gender options" idea instead of basically suggesting better body sculpting tools which have nothing to do with gender options.

Actually they arent.
Trans people want to be addressed as nothing but sir or madam as you would anybody else with the body type (post surgery obviously)

They do not occupy this mystical non binary group and more than anything want to occupy the proper body.
The issue is people dont want to see something so simple for bizarre reasons.
Seriously we have trans posting in this thread, ask them rather than claiming drama queen status on them.
because really drama queen belongs to the people that s

Did I mention I'd just rather have my ship as my Avatar?

Saints Row allows you to have whatever combination of male/female traits you want.

There are plenty of games that have done exactly what the OP is suggesting, so it's not a crazy idea but I think for every trans person who made their character look trans, you'd have 100 players who made their characters look trans just for the sake of trolling.

This trans player would much, MUCH, rather see them fix the actual broken gameplay aspects of the game before addressing flavor stuff like this. A genderqueer avatar won't make my phoenix stop sucking. Besides, trans looking avatars won't do anything to address the community's general attitude toward trans players either, which is a substantially bigger problem if you ask me.


Sidenote: I've heard of people successfully petitioning for a gender/name change on the grounds that they're trans and made their character pre-transition but I've never tried myself so I have no idea if it's just rumor. Can we get a GM to confirm whether this is or is not possible?

Trans myself, and...yeah. That's exactly what's going to happen, and CCP would take even MORE flak for mocking TG people.

Plus, it's not really something most of us want to advertise, you know? Why play a "transgender" character, when I can just play a "fully female" one?



In the end, the main reason people want this option is to create hideously ugly "she-male" type avatars for the lolz.

Don't forget the church of BOB!
All Hail BOB

^^ this!

I don't know what OPs expectations would be. Are we talking about a display perspecitve or is it simply an issue of converting the binary variable to a text variable so you can enter whatever descriptive phrase you feel best suits you(r toon)?

As for the visual aspects, I don't see CCP doing a bulge-in-tight-pants female avatar anytime soon :/ ... and rightfully so for all the trolling reasons mentioned above. You'll end up with the crew called "elite bearded ladies with bulge-in-pants and a monocle" ... we really don't want to give trolls extra opportunity, do we?

I think what he means is that, under normal circumstances, you either have a Y chromosome or you don't...which can't really be argued with. Barring genetic defects you're either male or female in that aspect, there's not really an in-between.

ugh, I had written a big long reply explaining the reasons why gender isn't binary. Then the forum software decided my "/rant" tag was html and ate my post as punishment.

The short version is this:

On second thought, this is a bid deal to me. I'll just retype it all. In the words of Bill O'reilly, "F@#$ it, we'll do it live!"

1. Those movies are a horrible list. Boys don't cry was good, but Rocky Horror, and Silence portray trans people as pretty much insane.

2. People conflate sex with gender. They aren't the same thing.

Sex is biological, and determined what particular set of organs you currently posses. It's mostly binary, but there are a host of intersex medical conditions that result in bodies that have all sorts of combinations. One of my favorites examples is CAIS (Complete Androgen insensitivity syndrome) in which a person with XY genetics is born with a fully female phenotype (It's almost never diagnosed until puberty when they don't get menses) I personally know someone who was born with one functioning testicle and one functioning ovary. Each of which were pumping their body full of testosterone, and estrogen respectively.

Gender is far more complicated, and consists of a variety of things including social interaction, outward appearance, cultural norms, internal sense of self, etc. This can be expressed as male, female, a mix of the two, or neither. While it's true that most folks' gender and sex are congruent, there are a significant amount of people for whom this isn't true.


How you interact with a person, and perceive their gender has no direct relation to what is in their pants. In the real world, I identify as both genders. I spend a good portion of my time as male, and a good portion of it as female. There are people who know me in both "modes" but there are also folks who have never met me in "girl-mode", as well as folks who have never met me in "boy-mode". What I have in my pants is irrelevant to my interactions with anyone except my spouse. For me, that means I inhabit both ends of the stereotypical gender binary at different times, but there are folks who don't do like me. The person I mentioned in the previous paragraph. They mix and match. Some days they dress in guy clothes with make up. Sometimes they wear a skirt and stubble. Their gender expression is as mixed and overlapped as their body was.

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Now that that's over with, as far as the options in the game go, I have to agree with Fappington and Teacher. The vast majority of trans people wouldn't wish this experience on anyone. Even those of us who are "out and proud" have had to deal with a massive amount of crap related to our gender (dysphoria, bullying, medical bills, painful procedures, two puberties, legal expenses, being disowned by family, divorces, and some of the highest unemployment, murder, and suicide rates of any demographic) Heck, I have anxiety attacks when I have to pee, because I'm afraid someone might flip out and call the cops when I use the bathroom. If I have to deal with that in real life, why the hell would I want to re-create that in the game. The sculpting tools that exist give enough variance that you can make a masculine looking girl, or a feminine looking guy if you are really interested in expressing something outside the binary. The potential for trolling is super high when you start letting folks mix options.

That being said, I would love to be able to resculpt gender on my character. I have a 23 million skill point one that I can't bring myself to play because I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not. Renaming and resculpting their appearance including gender would allow me to keep going on a character that I put over a year of effort into before I started transition.

Beyond that, I'd most like see them add a wider variety of body types to the sculpting, or allow some kind of multi-player interaction with avatars. We can make characters with scars, wrinkles, tattoos, piercings, and emaciated bodies. Obviously every capsuleer isn't the epitome of physical perfection. Why, then do we limit body type to thin or thinner. I haven't been less than 200 lb (90 kilo) since middle school. I'm not asking to play a 500 lb (225 kilo) 4 foot (1.2 meter) character, but it would be nice to make someone who had a little extra weight. Like many of us.