ZDoom

Playing around with things this evening, I noticed that obituaries for players that have their gender assigned as 'other' in their player settings will get obituaries along the lines of 'Player killed itself', which is a rather unfortunate and dehumanizing choice of words. I suggest changing these strings to use the pronoun 'them' instead of 'it'.

This is most likely a holdover from when "other" was labeled "cyborg," which itself is a holdover from Quake 2's implementation of gendered pronouns. I do agree, though, by a modern lens it is kind of unfortunate, but the way gendered pronouns are implemented at the language level means the grammar will not be clean - for example, in the "killed itself" string, that's actually written as "killed %hself", where %h fills in "he/she/it" based on player gender. Oxford says "themself" is not yet widely accepted, so to many readers it will just look wrong. Changing the implementation of gendered pronouns in itself would not be a trivial change, either, because of how many existing mods use the current implementation of it, so the choice is either to let it look "wrong" or to leave it completely unchanged. I have a feeling the former is preferable, if not for the potential breakage.

wildweasel wrote:the way gendered pronouns are implemented at the language level means the grammar will not be clean - for example, in the "killed itself" string, that's actually written as "killed %hself", where %h fills in "he/she/it" based on player gender. Oxford says "themself" is not yet widely accepted, so to many readers it will just look wrong.

I don't see a problem with this as, while it's not in wider usage, it still has a history of use dating as far back as the 1380s (you may need a subscription to the OED to see this - sorry!). Likewise, its more common usage in recent years is - according to the first Oxford Dictionary link - tied to the increased awareness of 'they'/'them' as a singular pronoun, so it would also be nice to follow that lead.

FWiW, I don't agree with this writer's per/pers/perse shortened versions but the earlier part of this page makes good sense about the difficulties of they/them etc.

https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

As I stated in the channel where this was first brought up, I don't feel quite comfortable just changing this ham-fisted.

The player menu itself has a history of being rooted in and inspired by Quake 2, and in that game there was indeed a 3rd gender that was referred to as an "it" pronoun but it was robotic. The main difference was, the gender was activated simply by selecting the appropriate model rather than by a separate option such as ZDoom and its descendants.

There is a lot of resistance to PC culture in the Doom community as well, and in online communities in general. And thus the biggest question becomes - if we change this, it will result in backlash. Is this a big enough of an issue to die on a hill for? Who is being hurt if there is no change, and by how much?

Well, personally, I have male, female and cyborg voices set up in one of my gzdoom folders. So "it" works for my setup.

I remember asking about this menu choice many, many years ago. For me, the biggest problem is the linking of voices and genders. I'd like to see those separated. Why can't a cyborg be a he or a she and why can't a male have a female sounding voice (etc).

Presumably separating them could also open the door for allowing voice mods that give many voice choices (female 1, female 2, male 537, etc).

I think the best idea is to have it moddable with defaults. But the trouble with this is - then it only becomes compatible with English, or any language that is closely related or inspired by it or whatever shaped its gender structures. (Honestly, I don't know the history of gender structures in English - I've always been a proponent of getting rid of them completely anyhow) Other languages use pronouns differently, other languages change your name based on gender, etc, and all that can get complicated very quickly.

Rachael wrote:There is a lot of resistance to PC culture in the Doom community as well

i don't think the hateful cretins that get banned everywhere but dumbworld and reddit are really worth considering, and especially not as part of the "doom community" outside of the broadest scope definition

i mean if they do enough digging at zdoom's history they'd be certain to find something they'd use to justify it as "an utter abomination that proves that degenerates can't create anything good ever," having zdoom appeal to them is cause that was probably lost before it was even conceived

So, you cannot please everyone. If this really is such a hot topic, I guess the only solution is doing BOTH: A Cyborg gender and a neutral gender. But I have to admit, I really do not care enough to bother, not to mention that this should be done by a native English speaker.

Y'know, it just hit me: shouldn't it be robot? Like, cyborgs flat-out are humans, so calling them an "it" is pretty inappropriate in the first place. I kinda get the idea that Quake 2 meant android, but I don't think calling humanoid robots "it" would really fly too well, either, especially considering they're usually portrayed as outwardly gendered.

Sounds like the root issue here is that people who identify as "other" might be offended at being called "it."

Was just gonna say, why not change it back to cyborg (or robot makes sense too, or "construct")?

Or get rid of it altogether. There's no reason player character's gender needs to reflect actual player's gender. I mean, you probably don't identify as a space marine either.

gramps wrote:I mean, you probably don't identify as a space marine either.

Touché. I think far too many people get too worked up about such issues these days and it is mainly caused by American politics having become too polarized, so that even the most inconsequential issues can no longer be dealt with anymore without letting one's agenda come into play.

I don't think many people will even notice if it is changed.

But do we have to? This has historic origins. Do we change every piece of art just because what it displays does not match current social standards anymore? Even though this is just a game - and even there just a very minor thing - the entire attitude at display here is setting a dangerous precedent.

To make this clear: Recently I have seen some reprints of older novels where the language was changed so that a few things that were perfectly fine in the 60's, 70's or 80's are altered to match to what is deemed acceptable nowadays and each and every time it really angers me that people are doing this shit.

Graf Zahl wrote:This has historic origins.

It plainly doesn't, considering that Doom doesn't have anything of the sort and the Quake 2 thing it was based off of didn't use "other," but rather displayed id had as much of any idea of what various robot-related terms meant as Akira Toriyama.

Hell, ZDoom hardly has concerns for keeping things just for the sake of historic origins in the first place - it's not like wallrunning, Doom 2 projectiles triggering "monster passes" lines, or the intercepts overflow have been kept in even has compat options, despite actually being from Doom itself. In fact, if I'm remember correctly, you yourself have publicly very strong opinions on all of those, so what's the issue with modernizing this when it's a ZDoom-added feature that doesn't have have direct gameplay consequences?