a) chicks don't exist. I know, everybody but me keeps getting this wrong. Some people even think they are females. But trust me, I know better. If women actually existed, I'd have to feel bad about my life because I don't actually know any. But life is worth living, therefore women are imaginary.
b) in some theoretical twilight zone where "women" existed, it would be kind of rude to not acknowledge them. Even if they didn't game at all, that doesn't mean gamers have to be dicks to them.
c) People keep talking about injecting politics into their speech as though its a bad thing. Do I say it's bad when you inject air into your lungs? It's not like one's politics are some arbitrary set of rules that one subscribes to for no particular reason. Everyone's politics are an inherent part of them, as is their language; I have reasons for having the politics I do, and those reasons are present with me every moment of every day. Of course they affect the way I speak. They also affect the way I act, the way I think, they way I relate to other people, etc. Just like all of those things in turn affect my politics. Part of my politics involves accepting other people, even if they think they're a unicorn, or a sasquatch, or a woman, or a dragon. Since a significant portion of people seem to prefer being referred to as "she," I think including that in a sourcebook's language is reasonable measure. If I was an RPG writer and knew a bunch of people that suddenly said to me "Jackass, I would prefer you refer to me as 'it' from now on," I would change the language in my RPG to include things like "he/she/it."

It's a right-wing talking point, though, is the thing - in fact, a very politically useful one. Pretty much the only people who ever use this phrase are either social conservatives, or people (like libertarians) who are basically carrying water for them, and part of the tactic is to make their politics invisible, or somehow transcendently "above" politics - and thus all the more politically dominant.

Basically, if you run into someone who believes into the whole ridiculous notion of "oppressive political correctness" and trots that myth out in an argument, it's pointless to try and engage them on the issue, because like you say, they're committed to the fallacy that their speech somehow isn't political, like the idiots in this thread who were insisting that only using male pronouns is somehow politics-free and completely neutral. Most of the 90s hoopla about "censorship" and "PC witch-hunts" was drummed up by people like Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh and injected into the discourse to rile up people who, for various reasons were cranky at having it pointed out that their speech was, you know, offensive or patronizing, and maybe they should stop.

This thread makes me happy, because I've never seen anyone on the internet other than myself defend "political correctness."
"

This is an important thing to remember. Also recall that the word "politically correct" was created as a modern phrase by those very same right wing speakers during the early 90s. And when they first trotted out the concept it was as a way to modify their talking points. So the "politically correct term" for fighting against abortion was "pro-life," the "politically correct term" for fighting against homosexuals was "pro-family," and so on. It was only later that the right wing political ideologues realized that they could accuse their opponents of doing it as a major talking point.

Remember folks: first the Christian Coalition wanted you to be politically correct in order to use friendly sounding names for their positions. Only later did they trot out political correctness as something that should be fought against. And even then, only when going after the positions that other people championed such as gender equality.

-Frank

Teal Deer? Is that Nisarg's Blue Rose Magic Deer? ;D

...

I will admit that when the books use a female pronoun to refer a player, I occasionally have to remind myself that the sentence or rule refers to any player and is not referring to some specific woman. I have grown accustomed to being sure that "she" is gender specific and that "he" could be either neutral or masculine. I am not opposed to continuing to learn otherwise, but it will be a retraining for me. Unfortunately this completely fails to acknowledge androgyny with which, to the best of my knowledge, I have no experience. 2

it's even worse for us germans, because the player is in german actually a male kinda thing . .

Yeah some times German genders for words don't make scene to me. But nor does a lot of German ( I can speak and read a bit but I'm still a non-speaker in my books)

German has three gendered nouns (das, der, die) (English being originally a Germanic language also had gendered nouns). Gendered nouns are not sexist they are a construction of language. In French gender is so important that it when changed you can actually be referring to a different noun.

However, sexism is intertwined in that traditional feminine objects become associated with the feminine noun and masculine objects with masculine noun. This does not always hold true at least in Old English as there is also weak and strong forms of nouns (often associated with feminine and masculine forms respectively).

If you are interested I recommend looking in an etymology dictionary on the changes that go on between the gendered nouns of King, Queen, Man, Wif (existing in English in the narrowed form waif and wife), & Wifman (later on meaning woman).

Gender for words don't have to make sense, anyway.
I don't have any specific knowledge in etymology, but I don't think that in French feminine objects are associated with feminine nouns. After all, vagina is a masculine noun. Maybe in some cases it is, but I think that most of the time it's more about how it sounds.

"This does not always hold true at least in Old English as there is also weak and strong forms of nouns (often associated with feminine and masculine forms respectively)."

Weak and strong have to do with association, in this example the French word vagin (nm) originates from anatomy and is considered more politically correct than the more vulgar form of chatte (nf).

Again gendered nouns are a linguistic construction but can be influenced by sexual roles. There are numerous other possible influences, but again language is a map of arbitrary rules and it could also be a fossilization of a fashionable expression of its time, or in the case of vagin could be as in the example of retaining its original neutral form from its Latin origin and because there are very few true neutral words in French it was a Tuesday so it took on the masculine form.

I know what your saying but some times it still makes me wonder why certain words are M or F.

On a side note I need to see if none Germanic languages are essayer for me to read and speak. Due to my disylxia and such Russian and Japanese are on my list along with Greek and Latin. My knowledge of Middle English is OK not as good with Old English. Finding the older meanings of words can be quite fun. As a 16 year old who didn't do languages at school because English is a pain for me (its the vowels that screw every thing up for me).

I don't think that Greek, Latin or Russian would really be any better for you, with dyslexia, since they all have alphabets which are similar to the english one, in that they're true alphabets, rather than a syllabary or logographic one. Japanese might be, though, since the characters do not represent letters, like in the greek, latin and cyrillic alphabets, but represent either syllables or entire words.

However- While learning those alphabetical languages, you may find them to be easier for you than English, because it is already necessary to devote a greater degree of care to your reading, due to its unfamiliarity, which may lead you to make fewer mistakes because of your dyslexia, as well. I think that, with an increasing facility with those languages, though, you would probably find that advantage to diminish.

well, as for japanese and chinese . . is it so much easier to learn a language which has more than 2000 signs in one of their "alphabets"? *g*

Oddly yes I do know a bit of Japanese its not as hard as it seams not much but enough to survive there for the 2 weeks I was there.



As I'm diagnosed with dyslexia all be it an odd sort I have found out that my mind is more capable in certain things such as design, programing and algebra. This shift in how my brain prossesses things and how the fact I'm also dyspraxic. Leaves me wondering about many things I think my linguistic weakness steams form vowels and there placement in words. I have found most non-English language easier than English apart from French. German was much easy for me same with Dutch my work with Russian I find it one of the easier language Ive tried. The only way I can work this out is my experimenting as I can't find any documentation on this idea.

But was "chatte" originally used to mean vagina? Can it mean a female cat?

Can we find a happy medium between you and Hocus Pocus?

I could just start sobbing quietly whenever someone says anything about alleged female gamers.

Dictionary.com's translator says that 'chatte' means 'she-cat' while 'vagin' means 'vagina'. Babel Fish agrees.

I imagine that getting these words confused can lead to some interesting hijinks.

I believe there's at least one other language that uses "cat" (or some synonym) to refer to the vagina.

But see, I'd argue that "chatte" could be a feminine noun because it refers to a female cat, and therefore it wouldn't necessarily be feminine because it can be used as a slang term for a berginer.

Ah, I see. On a tangent, I find the parallel to be interesting. I see no inherent connection nor similarities between cats and vulva.

Yes, "chatte" originaly means a female cat (the male being the "chat") and that's why it's a feminine noun. It is also a slang term for vagina and people probably choose that feminine on purpose. Another older slang word was "con" which was masculine, but was despisable since it's also an insulting slang word which, as Georges Brassens pointed out, is unproper to describe this exquisite part of the female anatomy.
We can also note that the most common slang word for the male's equivalent, "bite", is a feminine noun (but maybe because it comes from a quite unrelated feminine word).

Anyway, I still think that noun's gender are more often than not unrelated to what gender the object could be but are more related to that word's etymology and the sound of it.

Well also my understanding is that "con" is kind of an all round swearword in French. So for example if I'm confiding to you that I dislike someone, I might say, "Quel con, hein"?, which would translate to something like "what an asshole, huh"? It wouldn't really have much to do with genitalia, much like calling someone a "dick" in English wouldn't really have anything to do with genitalia.

I always thought that one was kind of gender specific.

Yes and those who believe in the termination of a baby, while still in the mother's womb, use pro-choice because it sounds so horribly evil and is the right terminology to use instead of using pro-abortion of pro-termination or pro-killing which all sound very nice and pleasant. Get real Frank both sides use terminology to push their agendas to help sway people to their side the only difference I have seen is when someone says they are pro-life I know they stand for a persons life, what other word should the people of pro-life use, pro-anti-abortion? A person says they are pro-choice what does that really mean? After all I am pro-choice for elections, drinking milk, going to school, playing games, and many other things.



You are so misguided.


Extremists are all the same, none of them ever stop to listen, understand, and think what both sides are saying they only wish to scream and demand you follow their point of view.

You do realize this is like the kettle calling the pot black? Basically what I am trying to say is I have seen both sides use the same argument; all you have to do is change a few of your words and your statement could be reveresed.

Actually Japanese has three different writting forms. Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. Kanji is the form I am sure you are referring to by saying, "since the characters do not represent letters...but represent either syllables or entire words."

Katakana and Hiragana represents letters of an alphabet just like the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic writtings do.

Are not Katakana and Hiragana characters a pairing of vowel and consonant, however? I was under that impression.



More recently, the term Pro-Abortion has come into use, because some of those who formerly identified as Pro-Life are claiming to be Pro-Choice, but their choice is for life.

The problem is that there is no extreme pro-abortion advocacy. The closest thing is China's One Child policy, and even that doesn't come near to extreme pro-abortion. Pro-abortion extremism is every pregnant woman must have an abortion, no exceptions. There might be a little wiggle room if not being pregnant is somehow life-threatening or with government approval, but otherwise abortions for all whether they are wanted or not.
The pro-choice position, then, is the happy middle ground. It only seems like an extreme position because no one is seriously arguing for the real extreme counter-position tp pro-life.


But, seriously, I hate BS political correctness. Lets call them what they really are. 'You can kill your baby if you want but you don't have to' position and the 'women are good for nothing but keeping house and making babies and belong barefoot and pregnant' position.

You know, when you tell it like it is all sides sound like total asshats. I think I'll take the position that leads to the total annihilation of the species in a single generation since no one else is.


But this has nothing to do with pronoun choice, which is purely factual (the actual gender of the noun being replaced) and grammatical (particularly in the case of genderless living nouns). One big issue would be genderless spirits, particularly genderless free spirits. I imagine that some purist spirits see animus and anima as perverts and find all gendered pronouns to be insulting.

totally correct. they are _characters_ in a _syllabary_, which are different things than letters in an alphabet; alphabet is a collection of letters, and a letter is a grapheme that represents a single phoneme. since katakana and hiragana represent (roughly) two phonemes (usually), they are not "letters," and therefore can't be part of an alphabet.

this thread has proven quite instructive... this goes for my former girlfriend who used to say I would never take anything out of my RPG hobby.

Cheers,

max

I believe this stems from an incident in Eire where a player of the computer SR got a bit confoozled about his (referring to his biological physical sex) identity, and, evincing the persona of his female, elf character from the computer adventure game, committed armed robbery in a RL lingerie store. From what I recall, the player was not a cross-dresser or transsexual of any classification, but was simply identifying too strongly with his in-game avatar.

Real life, eh? Can be stranger than fiction.

I (UK subject, privately educated, cheerfully colloquial abuser of the tongue), reckon you should use "they/their" or their name. Best of all in a rulebook is to invoke a "character" and use their name or relevant pronoun. Language *is* a statement of politics, even if it's subconscious and inferred. I appreciate the need to modify though by use of language, and the power of language use to do so, but I do think "political correctness" has gone mad in some areas. Most of those are not language based, but references to race and handicap (and artificial constructs like "hir" and "shehe") just get it wrong, by going too far. Specific example: acceptable reference to those who are physically impaired, for example lacking the effective use of their legs, is "disabled". It used to be "handicapped", but now "disabled" folk throw a hissy fit if you call them "handicapped". To my mind, using "disabled" does these people a disservice, since it means "un able", whereas "handicapped" implies that they can still "do" but have a disadvantage, which is nearer to reality and doesn't belittle them. Maybe it's that "handicapped" has associations with racehorses... Still, I reckon it's abuse of the language for no good reason.

And you call Lofwyr "My Liege". Or "Great One". Maybe "Chief", or "Boss". You might get away with "Skipper" if you had a naval or sporting background that Mighty Lofwyr was aware of.

If you call Lofwyr 'Skipper' will he call you 'Little Buddy'? And, more importantly, will Ginger and Marry Ann be there?

You might want to take a look at the Japanese language again. The reason why I say this is Katakana and Hiragana are both represented with a single letter in written Japanese form. What we see in the English form is how to pronounce the letter. Take for example the letters "KA" "KI" "KU" "KE" "KO" while in the English form represent two letters here, each form is actually represented as a single letter when drawn in Japanese (sorry, I don't think this site supports the Japanese written language ). It would be the same as if you were to spell out the pronunciation of an English letter, such as "A" would be "aye" or "B" would be "Bee." Now Kanji is a different story where the complex drawing represents an entire word, and I think sometimes even a phrase.

Little trivia on Japanese, Katakana is used to write any language that does not orginate from the Japanese language while Hiragana is used to write words that are traditionaly Japanese.

If I am not understanding what you are saying Shuya let me know.

That is what I have heard, but I was referring to the context (time frame) that Frank was using. Honestly though I don't want to turn this into an abortion debate or even discuss politics. I did enjoy the conversation when it was just talking about the use of "she" in place of "he." To me it was an argument of proper use of the English language, but it is starting to diverge into other topics. By the way, I answered the pairing of a constant and vowel above.

So you're saying that nobody would ever say something along the lines of, "You're being a total dick about this, Marie!"?

Ginger has ta be there. Marry Ann if you want only.

Probably not. I doubt the medium would be all that happy

That's actually exactly what I was talking about, Wolf. The individual character represents a syllable, either a vowel or vowel and consonant combination, rather than a letter, which can be either a vowel, which can stand on its own as a syllable, or a consonant, which cannot.

Sigh, I was going to read the whole thread before replying. However, this guy (at least to me) obviously did not so here goes one post.
Hocus, 2 women other than me have already joined in this discussion. There are many female, and yes I mean honest to goodness women, players in the shadows. I have personally been running since second addition and loving it. I am a gamer geek and proclaim it loudly. I know many female gamers as well. There are more of us out there than many male gamers realize.
As to what I perceive the meat of this post to be about. . .
I personally enjoy them switching between genders as they are writing. It does make me feel like the writers know I am out here loving the game as much as anyone else. It is one of the reasons I have played this game more than others. Other than of course the basis of the game just rocks. I am sorry you are uncomfortable around women. If you are ever at dragon con just avoid the gaming table I am at. As there will be at least 2 of us women there! LOL Sometimes more. And remember we are out there, gaming and having a blast at the tables.

Hm. I polled my female friends, and we all agreed that none of us would, or ever has, used that phrase to insult/describe any woman. Perhaps in other areas of the USA or elsewhere in the English speaking world, a person could say to a woman, "You're such a dick, Lucy!" but here, at least, a woman would probably say "What?!?" and burst out laughing, or immediately run home and see if she'd started to grow a beard or something.




Some of the writers are even female...

Well calling some one a dick any one a dick works in the UK (at least South Yorkshire). So its not that odd but there are better insults as well dick was so over used its just not in much use any more here.

What area of the US is this, just out of curiosity?

The one thing I can think of that most people wouldn't say to a woman (although I have for humor) is "you've got balls".

Here in France, we say that something "me casse les couilles" ("breaks my balls") when something irritates us. It's not uncommon for girls to use it too. But I don't think we'd say to a girl that she's got balls.

Language is indeed a weird thing.

I've always found the exact opposite, actually. I hear people tell women that they've "got balls" all the time, and rarely hear women described as dicks. Granted, saying they have balls usually gets followed by some remark like "not that kind" or something. Also, probably the reason nobody says "Sanghee, you're a dick" is because it's more common to say "Sanghee, you're a bitch." And guys get called "bitch" all the time, but I think that's more a case of intentionally using a supposedly feminine insult to demean a man's masculinity.

Pacific Northwest. And telling a woman "you've got balls" happens here, although I'd say you hear it more in the movies or on TV. I'm more apt to say something like, "that took balls," to a girlfriend who did something particularly daring and/or foolhardy.

And I agree with Circuit's statement, too.

At my college women were referred to as 'dicks' or their actions as 'dicking all over [X]' just about as freely as men were, but I think that was atypical. We had some odd, inbred customs and tended to get strange looks when we spoke to people outside of school.

I will have to admit I didnt read all the post, maybe someone else already mention it.

I think the use of he or she (his/her) refers to the arquetype characters, example the adept arquetype is a female so all adept related stuff will use female pronouns.