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Gender on Profiles

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Amexim

Amexim

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1. Poison Kiss pissed me off. For one, it's absolutely unnecessary to list her status as trans, and then use "female", when female denotes something completely different than "gender". That type of framing is used to deligitimize the identities of real people— calling her a transgender female is basically trying to imply that she's not a real woman, or at least it is viewable that way. It's almost certain no one intended to be implicitly dehumanizing or transphobic, but when you refer to gender when you mean and use terms for "sex" as in birth sex, which is already irrelevant in a fictional fight so why is it on here, you already run into some issues. As a transperson, this always bothered me, and seeing this makes me worried that we're harboring extremely ignorant individuals who can be, at worse, intentionally bigoted, and I don't think any of the staff want that to be how people see this wiki, yeah?

2. Based on that and a lot of other issues this creates, I suggest we either try our best to stay away from "male" and "female", and change all of those things to "man" or "woman" or "boy" or "girl". Something conducive to the term "gender", which has the sociological and anthropological definition that refers to is social construct, rather than its "biological" (because even that is dubious in ways), counterpart. Or, we can get rid of the category all together because what does that matter? It's like having a personality portion of the character sheet. It doesn't seem to matter in a fight. On the off chance that there's one character in fiction who's got a power that exists to work on someone of a certain sex or gender, whatever the **** mechanism would be used to determine that, that's about as easy to answer with any other personality question. Just ask a knowledgeable member.

3. Before people start to react to me as an sj you know the rest, or say "what does it matter", allow me to say to those individuals that they're the part of reason why life is hard for transpeople. We're either erased or we're deligitimized and dehumanized, and I would really appreciate that to stop. Of course, I have faith in this place to be receptive to this problem and I wouldn't expect some disaster like the staff members being transphobic or try to close this thread to hide the problem or something. Because that would look really horrible.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Poison_Kiss#Street Fighter V

Basically, either change Poison (and all trans characters) to have their gender be exactly the same as every other characters— that is to say if they're "female" make them female without the transpart, because in the Gender context, they're real females too. Or, remove the "gender" part entirely, because putting "sex" or "biological sex" on a profile is needless and creepy.
 
For some reason, I can't write SJ double u in this. Huh. Least I know that fandom isn't with the far right nonsense.
 
Last thing. If we want to avoid controversial topics, let's stay away from doing and writing controversial shit in profiles, thanks.
 
Amexim said:
Last thing. If we want to avoid controversial topics, let's stay away from doing and writing controversial shit in profiles, thanks.
Click to expand...
Pretty much this. What do we even gain from going into detail about it?
 
Actually, there are rare instances where sex does matter to a vs debate. For example, Pokemon has a move called attract that makes the oppenent fall in love with you if the enemy is the opposite gender. As sych, gender does matter in those instances.

Also, your example is false in itself. Personality actually can matter to a versus debate. A cocky character vs a pragmatic one for instance.
 
1. We don't put "Personality" on profiles. Gender or Sex is just as easy to take off the profile and relegate in the same way as "personality". Or do you think every character should have "personality" as a stat like we do with "classification" and AP?

2. Well, in the case of Pokémon, sure, but in the case of "people characters" it's more nuanced. And in the case of Pokémon, most of it is either based on gender stereotypes that are simplistic for the sake of them being animals that don't have our nuances (I mean, homosexuality exists in many animals, and animals don't have the concept of gender norms. We more imprint those gender roles on them rather than them displaying it). Also, Pokémon using moves like "attract" on their heterosexual counterparts exists to avoid homosexuality in the meta sense, since, I might be wrong, but Japan is very anti-lgbt and want to avoid that. And, for people characters where sexuality and gender identity exists, it won't work that simply. And those same powers open up another can of worms that is "too controversial" for the wiki to handle.

If there's a gay character verses a succubus character that is a girl and/or "female", and she basically has "attract", what's the ruling? We invalidate their sexuality to make the gay character attracted to the succubus when that's neither reasonable nor logical because that's not how sexuality works. And what about characters that can have weird hax that targets "biological sex". There's not 100% complete uniformity on what that is, there are XY females, and XX males irrelevant to their gender identity, and we don't know the characters chromosomes or anything. I say we remove it and stay away from it.

Unless you're fine with casual transphobic ideology being used here. Yikes.
 
Rallying off of what Wright said, what if there were a battle where sexual preferences were called into the matter. Would Sanji from One Piece attack Poison if he was aware that she transitioned? It's something to keep in mind. I personally think that Lily Hoshikawa's profile does this right in saying, "Assigned male at birth with male genitalia, but possesses female behaviours and expressions."
 
Well, in the event that the profiles list gender instead of sex, then it'd probably make more sense to list them as "female". I'm honestly not sure how being referred to as a "trans woman" instead of just a "woman" would be a dehumanising expression though, and I'm 99.9% that was not even remotely anyone's intention when they made that profile. Nobody here seems to be badly intentioned, so let's not start any aggressive discussion here.
 
Amexim said:
1. We don't put "Personality" on profiles. Gender or Sex is just as easy to take off the profile and relegate in the same way as "personality". Or do you think every character should have "personality" as a stat like we do with "classification" and AP?

2. Well, in the case of Pokémon, sure, but in the case of "people characters" it's more nuanced. And in the case of Pokémon, most of it is either based on gender stereotypes that are simplistic for the sake of them being animals that don't have our nuances (I mean, homosexuality exists in many animals, and animals don't have the concept of gender norms. We more imprint those gender roles on them rather than them displaying it). Also, Pokémon using moves like "attract" on their heterosexual counterparts exists to avoid homosexuality in the meta sense, since, I might be wrong, but Japan is very anti-lgbt and want to avoid that. And, for people characters where sexuality and gender identity exists, it won't work that simply. And those same powers open up another can of worms that is "too controversial" for the wiki to handle.

If there's a gay character verses a succubus character that is a girl and/or "female", and she basically has "attract", what's the ruling? We invalidate their sexuality to make the gay character attracted to the succubus when that's neither reasonable nor logical because that's not how sexuality works. And what about characters that can have weird hax that targets "biological sex". There's not 100% complete uniformity on what that is, there are XY females, and XX males irrelevant to their gender identity, and we don't know the characters chromosomes or anything. I say we remove it and stay away from it.

Unless you're fine with casual transphobic ideology being used here. Yikes.
Click to expand...
Also I disagree with saying that Japan is a very anti-lgbt country. Same sex marriage is legal there, and the popularity of Yaoi and Yuri act as a way to shed light onto the LBGT in Japan. They're not as progressive as Canada or some European countries, but I don't think you have the right to just slap the "anti lgbt" label on them.
 
Or. Or. Here me out. We can remove it and not deal with such a "controversial matter"— since that description very obviously refuses to acknowledge the difference between gender and sex, and may get some of that wrong in regards to what Gender is. Gender isn't about your behaviors or expressions or observable things like that, it's an identity. Like your usernames. I can't say you guys exhibit traits of "Alex's". Or "Wright's". What the **** is a "female" behavior and expression? There's no such thing as a "female" behaviour. There's "feminine" though. If people can't be trusted to use the word "Gender" properly, and resort to essays just to explain something that isn't even needed on a profile, it should just be thanos snapped. Or are we gonna put their sexuality as a part of their profiles?

And. I already addressed a small variation of what Alex said. I think we should stay away from topics like that and powers like that, lest we start debates about what homosexuality and heterosexuality is. Not the place really.
 
@ChocomilkAlex

Thanks about that part. I didn't know if it was, was just something I heard. Thanks for correcting me on that. My apologies.

And DarkGrath, whether or not you can understand it being offensive or if it was intentional is irrelevant to it being problematic. I say we should remove it entirely at this point, since biological sex is already harder to define if you really look into it, and it is almost entirely irrelevant. On top of that, when was I being aggressive? I hope I didn't come off that way to anyone in particular.
 
I mean, accuracy on profiles is of course important. But so is consistency. If we're removing the gender section on profiles, we have to remove it on all profiles. And that's not something as simple as a bot command. There's almost certainly a simpler solution that doesn't require literally changing the format for character profiles across the wiki and selectively adjusting every single page.
 
Well as a trans female myself I can see where you are coming from, however as Dark says this isn't something that can be simply ammended. We would have to go through tons of different profiles to fix them.

I can agree Gender usually isn't relative to debates usually, unless specific circumstances (For example lets say theres a character who doesn't like to hit women.)
 
And for Midnight's power that's exactly the problem i'm talking about. Not only is that very concept rather upsetting for transpeople to even have to entertain, gender dysphoria and all that being a bitch, it's one of those things that doesn't need to be on the profile. It's about as relevant as your favorite color and about as known by all of the people who care about the character as their personalities.

To explain why it's insulting to differentiate, I already did in the OP. It sounds like you're not calling her a real woman. That's a dehumanizing tactic bigots use, and whether you meant to say it or not doesn't matter. If I say something bigoted without understanding it, like I did about japan just now, I should apologize and do better next time and not say such things. Like I did just earlier. We should just remove these problems and move on. I get that you might not understand why it's painful, but just because you don't know about why doesn't make it wrong. Nor does it make you a bad person. Again, I literally said that I didn't think the person was intentionally bigoted when they wrote it.
 
1. There's literally a thread that said "when applicable, make note of a character's personality and mindset on their profile". It just wasn't added to all the profiles because it'd take way to much time. Similar to how removing gender from all profiles is completely unfeasible.

2. That Pokemon deconstruction doesn't really make sense. Pokemon like Mewtwo aren't animalistic in the slightest. If he's capable of human level thought, I'd imagine he's capable if human level sexual exploration. The whole "would attract work on gay or trans Pokemon" issue isn't something I'm going to touch. I'd imagine that falls under wether or not attract takes actually sexuality into consideration or wether it just responds to sex. That's all I have to say on that. I'm not a gender expert.
 
@Dark

So, are we gonna give entire psychological bios on their profiles? That's just as relevant too, if not more relevant. It doesn't matter if it's simple or not. A running trend in this wiki is the refusal to make changes because of how hard it would be, rather than because it needs to be accurate. And if accuracy is important, remove it, because gender isn't something you can be scientifically accurate about— unless names and identities have some sort of scientific basis or something. And Sex isn't very easy to pin down all the time either with the extra specific details.
 
And for things like "doesn't like to hit women"— how would they know what character is a woman? This is all really needlessly controversial and protecting it like this doesn't make me feel confident about the ideals of this community.

@Wright?

Why not? You seem to be willing to talk on every other part of this, irrelevant to whether or not you could say some incorrect or hurtful things. Things being hard isn't an excuse not to do them especially as it pretains to doing the right thing as it relates to human rights and general respect man. No offense, but this seems like a reaaaaally defensive and hostile pushback against this post.
 
Unfortunately certain types of mind or empathic hax ignores sexual preference, and thats something we just have to live with... However we can rule out pretty blatant PIS or Outliers I feel. (Like Bond "seducing a Lesbian" even though that should be physically impossible without outside paranormal interference.)

As for shit attracting based on biology, its usually quite vague like "Oh this attracts men". It can just be assumed the description is heteronormative and just generalizes men as being typically attracted to women, not taking into account gays. A gay man would likely be able to resist that.
 
You're getting way too overworked over a single profile.

Poison from Street Fighter is canonically a Transgender Woman, so listing her as such isn't being demeaning or erasing or "transphobic". It's just being factual.

I'm sorry you took offense to the profile but you're honestly just making a river out of a puddle.
 
I'm inclined to agree with Matt.
 
Not just one profile, Matt. The entire inclusion of it. And I would appreciate you not trying to demean the issue when YOU don't think it's a big deal. If you were trans or something, i'd Get that, not everyone feels the same or has the same vulnerability to these things in the LGBT community, but if you're a cisperson, it's... A yikes to say "it's not a big deal" when it doesn't affect you in the first place.

Acting like "i'm Sorry you're offended" is really disrespectful also.
 
People who are trans might care. Like me. Or others like Ao have to live with this bullshit because no one cares...?
 
There's 20,792 character profiles on this wiki. It's a waste of time to go through every single profile and delete/change the gender information; We're currently moving threads to another site, going through tier revisions and wiki audits atm, we don't have the time and energy to do another large scale project on top of all this.
 
Bisexual, sure. I said trans though. And, I didn't know you were bi. I literally know nothing about you, so my mistake. And even being bisexual doesn't make you immune to feeling like "oh, this doesn't matter because I'm not affected by it". It's not dishonesty if I literally don't know you— which is why I bothered to ask before assuming your sexuality. My bad if I upset you.
 
Well Ame, i'm not as affected by it, but thats just me. I've learned to live with some of the more "Egh" stuff on the wiki (Seriously I hate Bond's Social Influencing description) but at the end of the day the wiki's not attempting to offend us. Sometimes things just are as they are...

Although I will say wasn't Poison being trans retconned? They basically left it up to interpretation...
 
We're not going to change every mention of male or female to boy and girl or man and woman; it's an inane amount of work for terms that a lot of people, trans or otherwise, use interchangeably. The association is not there for everyone. Sorry for any discomfort caused.

I don't care much for specifying that certain characters are trans on their gender sections but it's an argument that I've had several times over on here and it's never went anywhere, so whatever. Trans woman is at least better than some of the gender descriptions were before.
 
As for another example, take Vivec from The Elder Scrolls Universe, one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. In his profile, Vivec's gender is listed as being "Hermaphrodite / Genderfluid", because that's who Vivec is. It's a part of his character and who he is, but the profile isn't making any judgment on it. Neither does the story or whatever. There are other characters in Elder Scrolls who also have a fluid and non-traditional gender identity / presentation. Such as the Daedric Prince Boethiah who appears as either male or female on their whim, and the profile refers to them with strictly neutral (they) pronouns to account for that (Meanwhile Vivec, who refers to himself as "he" in his own dialogue and writings, doesn't require that).

I'm not sure why do you find it such a problem to even acknowledge that a character is transgender or otherwise in that minuscule section of the profile.
 
I know Aogi, and you're entitled to your opinion. You're valid, and strong for not being bothered and being secure enough in your identity to not be fazed. Maybe i'm Not, or maybe I just dislike the tone of that profile and the irrelevant use of it, on top of many people in the world being both ignorant (intentionally or not) and with no desire to actually try to not do such problematic things. I guess it just upsets me when I see stuff like this because it sounds like people avoiding trying to not be problematic instead of being receptive and accepting.

Again, why should gender or sex be listed on the profiles? Like, anything can be relevant, but not everything is on there.
 
Alright, that's enough. This is going in a far more aggressive direction then it needs to.

There is almost no chance that the person who made the Poison profile, or people who made other profiles for trans people for that matter, did so with ill intent. It it simply stating the actual, literal fact that they are trans. And trans people are often completely fine with referring to themselves as trans too. It's not degrading, it's not demeaning, it's not a sign of people being bigoted or just contributing to the problem. It's just stating a canonical, in-story fact on the profile.

If there's a problem with the gender on Poison's profile, make a CRT for it. If there's a problem with the gender on anyone else's profile, make a CRT for it. But as Matt put it, a river is being made out of a puddle here.
 
What the heck is this? Do they seriously expect us to go through 20,000 pages and delete something actually important to matches for completely no benefit at all, save for the satisfaction of a handful of people? Sorry if this sounds harsh but that's a whole lot of work for a whole lot of nothing.
 
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