More accurate gender options

Posted by Kim on June 5, 2015, 11:38am

I'm super pleased to announce that the RPR's gender options, for players and characters, have been expanded to better reflect the huge diversity of identities amongst our userbase. We've had amazing members who don't feel that they fit into a simple gender binary on the site since day 1, so it's sort of shocking we took this long to get around to adding more options!

For those of you scratching your heads and saying "Gender binary? What?", Tate has very kindly volunteered to provide us all with a more knowledgeable explanation than I ever could.

Tate wrote:

Changes abound, my fellow roleplayers! How exciting! But, in all honesty, this is a change in name only. See, Kim has heard our highly diverse community's requests, and answered, in the name of more gender options! HURRAY!

I phrase it like this because, honestly, this is nothing new. Alternative genders from Male and Female have existed throughout human history. However, I am sure this is news to some people, which is why I'm here right now! Below, I have written a brief explanation for the curious.

Let's talk about Gender Identity

Male and female - man and woman - are part of what we call a Gender Identity. But so are other terms such as agender, gender fluid, and many others. All gender identities are deserving of respect and are valid.

To quote GLAAD,

Quote:

Gender identity is someone's internal, personal sense of being a man, a woman, or as someone outside of that gender binary. For transgender people, the gender they were assigned at birth and their own internal gender identity do not match.

...So some transgender people seek to bring their bodies more into alignment with their gender identity.

People under the transgender umbrella may describe themselves using one (or more) of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, and nonbinary. Always use the descriptive term preferred by the individual.

For example, a cisgender person - be they man or woman - is someone who, at birth, was assigned as male or female, and who grew to continue to identify as male or female. A transgender person is someone who was assigned a gender at birth but grew to understand that that gender was incorrect. Some transgender people transition to binary genders - male and female - while some transition to nonbinary genders, such as agender or genderqueer.

There are multiple ways of referring to people, and you should always refer to them using the pronouns they themselves use. Some examples of pronouns are: She/her; They/their (singular); Zi/hir. If you are unsure what pronouns a person uses, ask politely. Never assume a person's pronouns or gender!

Further Information
For more information on gender identities, please visit the sites below!
Trans 101, as presented by GLAAD
For more information about nonbinary genders, as presented by nonbinary.org
To learn more about what intersex means, you can check ActuallyIntersex's FAQ and wikipedia.

Thanks Tate!

You can find the full list of possibilities either in your own settings, or in the settings for any of your characters, by selecting "More Options" from the gender selection dropdown.

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Comments

FreeJayFly

June 6, 2015
3:47am

Hurrah~ An update so that I can change my 'Other' status to 'Gender Fluid'. Awesome. B)

Pirate

June 6, 2015
2:35am

Wow, that is one huge list of gender identities! For the longest while I considered myself in the loop when it came to gender identity thanks to having a surprisingly large amount of friends who consider themselves transgendered, but wow, I don't even know about 75% of what is on this list. Google is my best friend in these situations.

Still, I'm happy this feature exists! If there's still any doubt RPR isn't inclusive, that just got shattered, I'm sure!

~~Tate~~

June 5, 2015
11:10pm

I can confirm that man/woman and female/male have been included side-by-side as a comfort thing. Some people find it dehumanizing to be called a '____ female/male', while some people are uncomfortable with being called a man/woman. Other people might, such as myself in regards to characters, use '___ man/woman' for human characters, and '___ female/male' for non-human characters (I do this for my elves and for my anthros, for instance, as socially, they'd not view themselves as men or women, due to the relationship the words have to 'human' in certain settings). For actual people, obviously, this is just a personal preference.

Believe you me did we cut down a LOT of redundant terms, such as using 'trans' and 'cis', and including only the full words.

@ Wizard: As for what defines male/female vs woman/man, I'd honestly point to the humanity of it. I'm really not going to jump into a debate of what defines man/woman vs female/male as I myself do not fit neatly in to any of these and do not feel it is up for me to define. I'd suggest seeking out actual discussions on this written by people with an acedemic investment in the matter. I'm simply a trans layperson.

Sorry if I make no sense in anything, I just got done moving houses and am suuuper tired.

~~Basalt~~

June 5, 2015
9:10pm

Thank you so much for this, it's an absolutely lovely thing to do to welcome the diversity of the community here.

Rigby

June 5, 2015
8:31pm

Lib, I'm guessing that one comes down to slightly different connotations between the pairs (one sounds more clinical, one more social), and is a comfort thing! Though I have not yet talked to anyone more knowledgeable in this respect.

I have also come across people in RP who frequently use "the male," etc, too, so it may also be that simple for some players.

I suppose it boils down to - whatever works and is comfortable and concise for you/your character is what works. It's nice to have options if some don't feel quite right!

~~MelTheObserver~~

June 5, 2015
8:30pm

SCREECHING

Finally, demigirl option!

I'm loving this update.

Libertine

June 5, 2015
6:58pm

I noticed that some terms sounded a mite redundant, such as
Cisgender Female
Cisgender Woman
Cisgender Male
Cisgender Man
The same was done with the transexual and transgender titles. I asked Kim about it, and she kindly explained "...the (more qualified than me) group of people I was working with to help me come up with the list said that some people felt they were importantly different, and to be truly inclusive we'd need to offer both." I did try to research the reason on my own to no avail. Does anyone here feel a preference between the words "male/man" and "female/woman", and if so, would you mind commenting here or PMing me an explanation? I'm very curious!

kashira

June 5, 2015
5:30pm

Thank you SO much for making this site another one of the few places (that I personally visit, anyway) to present more gender options. -Extremely- pleased, for lack of better words.

ARCHITECT

June 5, 2015
5:02pm

I'm curious about how the terms 'woman' and 'man' are defined in this context. Obviously, one can't define the binary gender identity of 'being a man/woman' as 'feeling like a man/woman', because this violates one of the basic rules of clarity for definitions (i.e. you can't use the word you're defining as a prominent part of its own definition.)

If the concepts of man/woman are not at all related to biological sex, and if we are going to present this theory as fact, I would be interested in hearing someone please explain what these terms actually and definitively encapsulate. I am confused by their simultaneously holding the value of distinct enough to feel oppressive but loose enough for people to freely switch between them at will.

Seven_of_Beasts