prescribed linguistic rules fail to take into account the arbitrary nature of language and the tenuous relationship between words and the things they are used to name. language is not a sacred cow, it is not an ineffable design of some creator deity, and to treat it this way ignores the immense social power that words can have.

trying to force everybody to speak the same way is an imposition on the expressivity of man, and i find strict adherence to other people's linguistic rules to be a sign of one's lack of capacity for creativity.

as for me, i use "he" when i am not thinking much about what i am saying, "she" when i am trying to intentionally mark my language as not bound by the artificial limitations imposed by others, and "co" whenever i am trying to mark myself as part of the intentional communities subculture.

i am glad that SR gives "he" and "she" equal time, but not because of any political views on my part (as a staunch supporter of LGBT rights, i could make the argument that using ONLY he and she is a sign of bigotry, but i won't). it's a stylistic choice, and one that shows a regard for the breaking of conventions, something i feel is appropriate for a cyberpunk RPG.

I believe you are correct for I vaguely remember someone telling me this at one time. Thanks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

now i as a german wonder why the ost people would go:"IT'S A DRAGON! RUN!" instead of:"HE/SHE IS A DRAGON! RUN!" O.o
and over here, we use es(german for it) even for humans if we don't know what gender the person is . . for example babies:"give it to me" is word for word translated pretty much correct, untill we find out the gender or get a name that we associate a gender to o.O

I do that also,i mostly started using she(when i happen to think what i'm writing)after reading few nWOD sourcebooks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)

So would any English speaker, since the point in this case is to note a threat, not to describe the dragon in detail. In your example the phrase "It's a dragon, run!" is the same as "There's a dragon, run!". The gender of the threat is inconsequential and taking the time to discern the dragon's gender would delay the fleeing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

However in a different context; "Who is Lofwyr?"
"He's a dragon." would be correct, "It's a dragon" would be odd, and possibly insulting.

yet, that's the exact way we over here in germany would answer that question in most cases . . if we did not simply say "a dragon" and be done with it *g*

As a professional technical writer, my team at work took a look into the whole he/she issue and determined that the emerging industry standard is to alternate pronouns in examples. So, if you read newer manuals, you should start seeing more of this.

However, unless you're giving a fairly detailed example, the pronoun isn't going to match the reader's expectations about half the time. If I'm thinking about my male character, then every "her" is going to look wrong. We decided to simply avoid singular pronouns whenever possible, so we either phrase things in the plural "Shadowrunners should mind their ammo," or in second person, particularly imperatives "Conserve your ammo, chummer."

As for dragons, having the legwork for a run include discreetly inquiring into the sex of a dragon would be hilarious.

In the specialized field of gaming rulebooks, I assume that the obstentation use of feminine pronouns serves primarily to create the illusion that there are more female players.

i've never seen the overall demographics, but i've actually been in gaming groups with more female players than male more than a couple times, and i doubt that this kind of "gender equality fantasy" would really enter into the choice of pronouns used in the books. furthermore, the gender of gamers shouldn't have anything to do with the pronouns used to describe characters (which it seems like most of the SR rulebooks do, which actually prompts further psychological questioning about who is really making all these tests, but i digress), as there is nothing (except uncomfortable gamers) stopping a person from playing a character of a different gender then their own.

well it seems to me they are trying to get women, yes i mean actual females!, to be more comfortable with the idea of playing this type of game. An excercise in futility it is, like trying to keep ice cool on the sun, it is just fundamentally not in the equation of women playing thses kinds of games. Picture it, they walk in semi interested because more babes are included in the instructions and they can relate better, but then they see the types of guys who play this and are like "like omg! these guys are like totally losers! *making the letter with their index finger and thumb against their forhead* they don't bathe, they are virgins, and like totally soooo perverted and disgusting! like gag me with a spoon ewwwwwwwwwww!!!!" then they run out the door.


so while it is a spot on good try to get women interested in gaming, by converting all the hims to hers and such i think it only servers to make us geeks even more uncomfortable, so the fact we can't get women IRL and now they are spilling into our games, taunting us with their bodacious bodies and now our last bastion of refuge is being infringed upond.

Um, hate to tell you this mate, but I think that's just you. I know that many of the male posters here are happily married. And modesty aside, I seem to have more than my fair share of attractive girls flirting with me (I've yet to work out why, but when I do, I'll let people in on it). And there were two girls in my last group both of which were perfectly presentable and only moderately crazy.

Of course you might just be joking, but if not...

EDIT: I also doubt the gender-balanced pronouns would actually make a difference to any girl about whether or not to play (one of the female DS'ers can correct me if I'm wrong). It's just about courtesy, at the end of the day.

I know there are competent, smart, sane female gamers; several of them are in my group. There is a perception held by many that gamers are great, unwashed males, and that can keep some women away, which is unfortunate. If messing with pronouns signifies an attempt to make gaming more accessible to women, then that's probably a good thing.

As the percentage of male pronouns used are aprox. 55% and the female pronouns used are 45% of the text, the male pronoun is still dominant. However, in the case of using the in-fiction examples (ie, Pistons is a hacker, she's coding some malware), I can say as a freelancer, I have been encouraged to use the established Shadowtalkers for examples. They are a mix of genders, metatypes, and archtypes. There is a list here.

As for the use of out-of-game pronoun references (ie, Mark is creating a character. He decides to make a mage.)... anyone here with lots of time on their hands want to go through Unwired's 997 different uses of he/she/his/her and tell us exactly how many are in-fiction references to characters, and how many are references to roleplayers? And of those, what percent is male and what percent is female? And when you're done, go back through the last several sourcebooks and do the same? We could see if there was a trend, from, say SR3 to SR4 moving towards more equal usage of the female pronoun. And then, if you still have time, I have some laundry that could use folding, if you don't mind. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Beho wants some sexy underwear but is low on nuyen so she takes her katana and uses it to rob an Irish lingerie shop. Her player is arrested for her crime and he is sentenced to two years in prison.

You see, it isn't too difficult to avoid using generic pronouns in examples by simply using specific characters.

No; it serves, in part, to create more female players. I'm not saying that girls go, "Oh, it says she! Now I can play, whereas before I couldn't! Tee-hee!" or anything so simple as that. People want to play in an atmosphere that welcomes them, and acknowledging their existence is part and parcel. White Wolf, for example, brought loads more woman into gaming, and consequently, into the gaming market, simply by acting like they might be players. Expanding one's market is generally considered a good thing, especially when the changes it makes are so minimal.

@hermit: It occurs to me that using exclusively "he" while objecting to alternating between "he" and "she" is also politicizing language. Language, in fact, is a political tool, and is extremely difficult to use apolitically - the best attempts are what is known as "political correctness" although as the term points out, the attempt to be apolitical is, in itself, political.

As for the less stressful and more exciting path this discussion has taken:



Does Hestaby act feminine? What about Arleesh on her mission? I guess I'm just asking, what's "feminine" for a dragon? Should she be helpful (lol)? Vain? Shy and retiring? I'm serious. They all seem more or less masculine to me, the "less" ones don't feel like much of any gender. And then there's good old Aden, whose gender is unknown.



Yes.

I say a book thats 50-50 is very fair for my household. My lady was not amused to hear of the Hocus-Stereotype. Now if you know real woman, they´ll be able to handle a roleplaying session, don´t be afraid (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You picked such an example at random, I suppose? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)



In other words, once the possibility of using mixed gender pronouns has been made clear to a person, given the minimal effort required to use them, the decision not to use them is as much an active choice as it would be to do so.

It seems only reasonable to mix things up a bit, to me.

you laugh, but if i were still in college i would probably do this, and then write a paper about it. oh god what has academia done to me *sobs* (the pronouns, not your laundry. not that your laundry is uninteresting, but, well... you know)

I had to read this a few times.

One interpretation is Beho want some sexy underwear for his character, who is a woman; he takes his katana to rob an Irish lingerie shop, he is arrested and is revealed to be a man and is sentenced to two years in prison.

Actually, I think the most 'feminine' of the known Great dragons would pretty much be Masaru, for all he's the sponsor of a revolutionary movement. He just comes across in the books as cheerful, friendly, gregarious, good-natured, and really, pretty genki. And also a big dork, but hey. Lung as described doesn't seem all that 'manly', either, which makes sense given that he identifies as Yin, I suppose, but the whole 'learned, reserved, inscrutable scholar-type' thing isn't really gendered either way. Celedyr's the same way, although more 'nerd' than 'inscrutable paragon of enigmatic wisdom'.

Really, I'd agree - most of them seem at best neutral in terms of how their personality matches up with the stereotype of their 'actual' gender, except for Sirrush/Vast Green, who's depicted 'rar survival of the fittest jungle warrior' super-butchishly masculine that it's almost comical. I don't think even Lofwyr is so much 'masculine' as he is just very ruthless and so intelligent he's kind of abstracted away that whole 'relating to other sentients as anything other than chess-pieces' stuff. Kind of Asperger's-y, really (cf. the last scene in Survival of the Fittest, heh.)

Anyway, it sort of makes sense that dragon gender wouldn't map to what metahumans think of as 'masculine' or 'feminine', given that we're talking about a species that generally lives solitarily and with almost no gender-based division of labor, doesn't pair bond, and where primary caregivers for young can be either male or female.



One man's junk, another man's hemi-pene?

the only dragon that actually acts according to the gender associated to her is the she-dragon, the leviathan with the singing voice that got tricked into making eggs by one of the english land-dragons who loves music *g*

I don't think that's acting according to her gender, I think any parent would act like that if their offspring were kidnapped.

as far as i understand dragonoid society? no.
eggs don't hatch into whatever species mama and papa were but into the species of dragon that actually cares for them before hatching . . and it's not seldom that another dragon takes care of the eggs a dragon has laid . . she's just bitchy because she was tricked due to him impersonating another leviathan and she wants to have the eggs be her species by taking care of them so there will be more leviathans later on that will take her revenge on daddy dearest . . granted, i understand dragons about as far as i can throw them so meh *g*

It is unusual for biological dragon parents to raise their own offspring, but it's hinted pretty strongly in Dragons of the Sixth World that she's pretty much the last Leviathan - so if she doesn't raise them and imprint them with her DNA, there goes her entire species. That transcends male or female, I'd say. Plus, given the rather hilarious conversation Lofwyr and Hestaby have in the back of Survival of the Fittest, I don't think Greats are usuaully much with the making of the babies hatchlings anyway; just the raising, so it might not be all that weird to have a Great who does wind up spawning raise his or her own kids.

'Bitchy' is also a pretty dumb way of categorizing her reaction. Say some freaky alien being disguised itself as a hot model and seduced you, but wound up anal-probing you and impregnating you with eggs. You'd be fucking pissed, too. And probably not that inclined to share custody.

if i got impregnated with eggs i'd want an abortion or have her carry them to term an let her have custody completely . .

Rhonabwy is actually Welsh not English. Rhonabwy is red and this is significant to Welsh people, as well, I think.