Custom pronouns

[Graf Zahl]

The problem here is exactly that in many languages the concept of a "gender" is a lot stronger throughout the language (what Marisa or dpJudas said), while English is very neutral. It may seem like it's simple, but it's not.
And if in English it just equals to correct pronoun usage, in Russian you would even refer to yourself, in the 1st person, differently, depending if you are male or female.
Inserting a new gender here is not as simple as just adding a pronoun. This may need at least inventing new endings or in some cases inventing whole new structures.

In German it is similar. One particular issue is that many female nouns are created by appending 'in' to the male version, but there's no plural nouns that address both genders simultaneously. And guess what: This is where awful things are being done to the language to be more inclusive of females.

Aside from that, in the German language it would also be next to impossible to create new pronouns on the fly because at some point they have to contend with either make or female nouns and the only way to remain neutral to binary gendering would be to invent even more words to get the job done.

Of all the languages I know a bit of, English stands alone in being this gender neutral that new pronouns can even be considered a viable option.

[Marrub]

Or, if you mean expressing their gender in different languages, well they don't and/or I couldn't find; (please send URL if you can)
A lot of languages don't allow this at all due to their structure. For example, in something like French, Russian, Spanish there would be not just the pronouns but also word endings and "word gender" concept. Trying to change just the pronouns will be massively broken because you will see custom pronoun + whole next sentence gendered as "male" just because the words are constructed differently. It will be even worse. I'm not contradicting myself here because this is not an issue with GZDoom's translation system, this is an issue with the language which prevents easily adding new concepts. As in: not that we cannot translate, but there is nothing to translate to.

Grammatical gender is not inherently tied to human gender, but even when it is -- for instance in Romance languages -- there's always a way out: Spanish speakers have started using -e as a human-neuter grammatical gender. I don't think I could link every single instance of Latine people saying that you should start using the word Latine instead of Latinx or Latina/Latino; and many who are in English non-binary express this by calling themselves in the singular Latine. French's concept of grammatical gender is more divorced from human gender than one might think, so it doesn't *entirely* need a human-neuter, but there is still a push to codify gender-neutral language no less, and there are already many ways to express gender. Japanese does not have grammatical gender, but still there is a significant LGBT push as of the past decade to start introducing words like non-binary into the language. Many Nordic languages already have all of the necessities for expressing human gender outside of a binary, especially because their grammatical genders aren't tied to human genders.

So if something is so controversial and narrow, I just don't see why should it be an engine feature and not a modification.

It's only controversial because people keep trying to make an ideological stance on a technical feature. If we consider the facts, the only gripe one could have with this is that it's a feature exclusive to English. Most of the user base of GZDoom speaks English exclusively. For the rest of the supported languages there's already a gender quadnary that can be used to try and minimally express player gender, but more features akin to this one wouldn't logically be a bad idea to implement. This is just a step in the right direction for making people feel included, especially when playing in multi-player.

[Sytruan]

So if something is so controversial and narrow, I just don't see why should it be an engine feature and not a modification.

To show support, plain and simple.

Wanting nothing but to avoid controversy isn't a good way to moderate or present yourself, not to offend any who don't like drama - it's just resulted in Doom's community becoming fractured, as people take hard stances on things that actively hurt people (calling people offensive terms, slurs or otherwise - and yes, SJW counts, not as a slur, but as a sleight specifically intentioned to hurt others - or other behaviors like purposefully defaming or manipulating people.) and others end up doing nothing.

I'd say the fact that time and time again controversy has cropped up in this community repeatedly shows the flaws of that mentality. Over and over again, being passive or complacent has resulted in internal drama and controversy even at the highest level. Just look at BoA's 3.0 release and all that surrounds that, which in fact, did harm people emotionally, and Torm had shown himself to be at least somewhat of the mindset of complacency, since he was apparently informed of Marisa's transition (but earlier had claimed to not have been informed,) but decided not to change her name in the final release, simply because he thought it 'would be okay' despite its entire purpose being to reference somebody specifically, to show respect. Refusing to honor her personal choices defeats the purpose of that, along with the rest of her portrayal, and disrespects her. I hate to bring it up in detail, but it outlines my point fairly well.

There is no harm in adding this feature. It may indirectly *cause* people to harm one another, but most of the people that would have a negative reaction to this feature are people that we shouldn't want in our community anyway, because again, this feature does *nothing to harm anyone* and shows solidarity and support with a large portion of the community. Not every feature should be accepted, not everything like this should be added, but this feature will make a lot of people happy and more comfortable, at the very least from the dev team showing their support of this. Yes, you risk getting threatened, but those people will make that choice themselves.


As for most of the translation issues being brought up in this thread, it's already been established that this feature automatically turns itself off if the language isn't english. Yes, there are problems in other languages with pronouns and pronoun usage, but we aren't asking for that, and that's more of an issue with those languages themselves, and we can't account for all of them with every single feature. Again, even for other languages, with the current system, we should be able to just implement a simple "player gender" vs "character gender" as has already been discussed, meaning they can still be referred to how they want while still maintaining compatibility with mods that use the current gender system.

[mentha]

I think that it's kind of telling that aside from the kinds of arguments against it that result in the post getting removed and the poster getting (rightfully) punished, the primary argument I keep seeing is "I don't understand why this needs to be a feature."

The bottom line is, it's okay to not understand it, but if you read the thread first before asking the question, you'll see that question has already been answered multiple times. It's a feature that makes some people who can choose to use it more comfortable, while still allowing itself to be kept to the default by those who don't need it. I'm again voicing my support for adding this feature, as I still believe that it's a clear cut case of a feature with no technical or usability downsides. If you want custom pronouns, you can turn them on. If you don't want them, or your language can't support them, you can leave them off.

[vitriolicv]

It also looks like a transient cultural/political thing of this decade

The Public Universal Friend (November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) would like to have a word with you. The Public Universal Friend is one of many. Most historically gender variant people have been erased by the archaeologists who found them, though.

Overall, downvote for ideological reasons.

That doesn't sound like a valid technical debate.

Furthermore, the PR already only works for English, and the feature is disabled for other languages.

[Apeirogon]

I think what Apeirogon meant is that the word 'the' doesn't exist in many other languages.

That what I meant.
Or rather, applying language rules of one language to another directly will produce strange results. English have lot of function word, that specify meaning and context of a context words. In other languages corresponding in meaning functional words or dont exist at all, or becomes a part of a context word, to which it was used to.

This is not a very good example I believe because it's still possible to translate without losing significant information, especially if reworded (spoiler: for a good translation you always have to reword sentences).

No. For example in "Detroit human something something" big chunk of plot rotates around "correct" usage of pronouns. "Bad" pronoun for a robot here is "it", good is "he/she".
Like there are moment with phrase like "if we shot it (robot), she (girl) will fall". You cant translate it correctly (with all plot related meanings) on other languages, without making it sound dumb. Because correct type of pronoun for a "robot" in other languages is "he".

Most of the user base of GZDoom speaks English exclusively

What makes you think so? I know for sure that at least 10 of more or less active users of this forum are definitely not a native/exclusive english speakers. This without including me into this number.

[ZZYZX]

Most of the user base of GZDoom speaks English exclusively.

So not true. Doom is very international. I would rather say that almost everyone here has a second language, and a lot of people like to play in their native translation judging by the screenshots.

To show support, plain and simple.

So do I understand correctly that your main argument to get this feature in is to just arbitrarily display political stance of the development team (not necessarily being that), with the hopes of bending ignorant people opinions or expunging these people from the community if they become angered? I don't think that will work. If you really think there are strict and orthodox trans haters in the community, it's just going to cause another split.

(edit: part regarding Tormentor controversy has been removed due to me not reading the thing correctly first)
After me reading it correctly: I wouldn't get started on that but in my opinion editing existing products retroactively is always bad. Especially shaming developers for it.
The only bad part about Randy (from the Tormentor's mod) is that apparently that character had some dirty trans jokes in it.
The argument about changing the gender or renaming the character is just outright wild, she (Marisa) clearly doesn't have any issues with being called Randy considering the forum name is still the old one.
This is really off topic though.

Yes, I agree that there is no harm in adding this feature, but I don't see the value. It has very narrow use case, and it is incomplete.
Generally proposals in this state before have been rejected. Just check the [No.] history and realize that it takes less than one thread page to make a decision.

That doesn't sound like a valid technical debate.

Furthermore, the PR already only works for English, and the feature is disabled for other languages.

1. It isn't.
2. It's exactly why I keep saying that the feature is incomplete and is bare-bones suitable for a political statement, but not anything else.

[Graf Zahl]

To show support, plain and simple.

So do I understand correctly that your main argument to get this feature in is to just arbitrarily display political stance of the development team (not necessarily being that), with the hopes of bending ignorant people opinions or expunging these people from the community if they become angered? I don't think that will work. If you really think there are strict and orthodox trans haters in the community, it's just going to cause another split.

On purely ideological terms that's also the big issue for me. Please do not understand this wrongly, but this thing would really only 'support' the "Q" faction of LGBTQ, and while in general, society has definitely become more accepting of the 'LGB' part and to some extent even of the 'T' part, I cannot see the same with 'Q' - on the contrary, actually. Even from relatively balanced and reasonable individuals I get the impression of them being considered 'weirdos', and catering to their demands would be akin to 'selling out'. So while I surely have no issues with showing support, I also have to consider the inevitable backlash of such a decision.
So this is not 'just' adding a simple feature, it's really a political statement that may have consequences nobody can foresee yet.

That doesn't sound like a valid technical debate.

Furthermore, the PR already only works for English, and the feature is disabled for other languages.

1. It isn't.
2. It's exactly why I keep saying that the feature is incomplete and is bare-bones suitable for a political statement, but not anything else.

And that's why I am not willing to add this feature in its current form. The way it presents itself in the menu is plain and simply unacceptable as it virtually takes over the entire player setup menu with its multitude of new options. I am not against adding the ability to define custom pronouns, but I have severe doubts that it is right to make this a first-class menu option.
So, hereby I am putting the ball back into the field of those who want this: the choice right now is either you modify this as I had suggested earlier (i.e. separate character and user gender, plus less menu footprint) or this will just collect dust.

[Gez]

French's concept of grammatical gender is more divorced from human gender than one might think

Traditionally in French, gender (genre) is a purely grammatical notion. Words have a gender, people do not. People have a sex. Male and female are sexes, masculine and feminine are genders. In fact when "genre" was applied to people, it was never to mean masculine or feminine genders -- the translation to English would not use the word "gender" here but something like "type" or "sort". You can look the examples of compound forms here.

It's only within the last decade or so that the American theory of gender has been imported, and with it a lot of neologisms so as to articulate concepts that never applied to the language before.

but there is still a push to codify gender-neutral language no less

I have a strong dislike of the "inclusive writing" idea, which is to pile up both masculine and feminine word endings and separate them with a character that is absent from the keyboard. It's both ugly and impractical, and it's not even actually inclusive since by listing masculine and feminine, it does exclude non-binary people.

I'd have much preferred if they had actually invented new gender neutral endings instead. Note that they do also recommend preferring to use gender-invariant words ("épicène" in the text) whenever possible, a point that I do fully agree with.

(edit: part regarding Tormentor controversy has been removed due to me not reading the thing correctly first)
After me reading it correctly: I wouldn't get started on that but in my opinion editing existing products retroactively is always bad. Especially shaming developers for it.
The only bad part about Randy (from the Tormentor's mod) is that apparently that character had some dirty trans jokes in it.

No, it had dialogue that was unfortunate (one random line boasting about his manhood) but it was written before Randi came out, so there was never any intent of making it a "trans joke" or anything like that.

[Graf Zahl]

but there is still a push to codify gender-neutral language no less

I have a strong dislike of the "inclusive writing" idea, which is to pile up both masculine and feminine word endings and separate them with a character that is absent from the keyboard. It's both ugly and impractical, and it's not even actually inclusive since by listing masculine and feminine, it does exclude non-binary people.

I'd have much preferred if they had actually invented new gender neutral endings instead. Note that they do also recommend preferring to use gender-invariant words ("épicène" in the text) whenever possible, a point that I do fully agree with.

Agreed. Here's the real irony: In most cases it's the female form which gets some ending attached to the male form, especially in German. So the supposedly 'inclusive' form of a word is emphasizing the female part even more. So instead of pushing equality, they actually push feminism, and this really, really becomes a very grating issue that will surely have some ugly backlash sooner or later (no, I seriously doubt it will do good for the female part of the population.) And obviously it excludes non-binary people even more.

[Rachael]

So while I surely have no issues with showing support, I also have to consider the inevitable backlash of such a decision.
So this is not 'just' adding a simple feature, it's really a political statement that may have consequences nobody can foresee yet.

I just want to highlight this part because it is so true. I pretty much agree with the rest of that post as well, but especially this point. So many posts in this thread are about how "harmless" this is that it would "really not be an issue to just accept it." No - if you say it's "harmless", you're wrong - you're absolutely wrong - and history has proven you wrong over and over and over and over again. This is not a "harmless" issue.

Even rejecting this feature on technical merits would result in a pretty disastrous fallout, putting everyone on the GZDoom team (but Graf, especially) in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. And you dare to call us ignorant, we who have to deal with the fallout from either outcome of this? All for some stupid silly ideological debate that really only makes sense to not even a full percentage of the forum's total users?

"Harmless". It's not harmless. It's pulling us into your "fight" whether we want to or not. It's conscripting/drafting the GZDoom team into your fight forcefully, one way or the other. Remind me again who the evil "oppressive" ones in this debate are?

Just so we're clear: I am not against the feature, itself. My only objection is the way it attracts, honestly, unwanted attention that had this never been brought up in the first place, we would have been perfectly fine without.

[SanyaWaffles]

I have to agree with what Rachael and Graf said.

[Marrub]

the translation to English would not use the word "gender" here but something like "type" or "sort".

No, gender is the correct linguistic term. Its association with human gender is simply a misnomer that has carried on throughout the centuries.

It's only within the last decade or so that the American theory of gender has been imported, and with it a lot of neologisms so as to articulate concepts that never applied to the language before.

Yes, as it is in many languages. People need to express extant concepts with nonexistent words, so they import words that exist in other languages. In Japanese this has gone through two phases: Sinification (mass import of Chinese words for a few hundred years) and Westernization (a process that's been happening for the past few decades.) I should also note that neither of these were bad and the "purity" of a language is meaningless.

I have a strong dislike of the "inclusive writing" idea, which is to pile up both masculine and feminine word endings and separate them with a character that is absent from the keyboard. It's both ugly and impractical, and it's not even actually inclusive since by listing masculine and feminine, it does exclude non-binary people.

Yeah, I agree. If anything it is a win for "traditional feminism" (read: terfs) at the expense of ... enforcing a gender binary even stronger, counter-productively.

I'd have much preferred if they had actually invented new gender neutral endings instead. Note that they do also recommend preferring to use gender-invariant words ("épicène" in the text) whenever possible, a point that I do fully agree with.

Yeah, like I said, people are doing this in Spanish and I much prefer that approach.

And that's why I am not willing to add this feature in its current form. The way it presents itself in the menu is plain and simply unacceptable as it virtually takes over the entire player setup menu with its multitude of new options. I am not against adding the ability to define custom pronouns, but I have severe doubts that it is right to make this a first-class menu option.

I agree that this is an issue.

"Harmless". It's not harmless. It's pulling us into your "fight" whether we want to or not. It's conscripting/drafting the GZDoom team into your fight forcefully, one way or the other. Remind me again who the evil "oppressive" ones in this debate are?

I'm sorry, but please spare the melodrama. This isn't necessary here. :/
Again, I wish people would stop trying to make an ideological stand on a technical issue. It's distressing just how heated this has gotten.

Even from relatively balanced and reasonable individuals I get the impression of them being considered 'weirdos', and catering to their demands would be akin to 'selling out'. So while I surely have no issues with showing support, I also have to consider the inevitable backlash of such a decision.

Yes, but I would argue that this is an interpersonal issue and not the issue of one's political views. Discrimination is usually not tied to politics unless you are a fascist, since it's an ideology requiring the belief in biological "realism." Counter-examples to your point include TERFs, racist liberals, etc. I do still agree with the point that it will inevitably cause backlash whether this gets implemented or not, I just somewhat dislike when someone conflates these two things. (I also hope this doesn't come off as inflammatory!)

[Caligari87]

And that's why I am not willing to add this feature in its current form. The way it presents itself in the menu is plain and simply unacceptable as it virtually takes over the entire player setup menu with its multitude of new options. I am not against adding the ability to define custom pronouns, but I have severe doubts that it is right to make this a first-class menu option.

So, hereby I am putting the ball back into the field of those who want this: the choice right now is either you modify this as I had suggested earlier (i.e. separate character and user gender, plus less menu footprint) or this will just collect dust.

All the ideological and political stuff aside, from what I can tell this is pretty much the final development-side statement on the issue. I'm locking the thread for now as everything's been pretty clearly stated multiple times and there's no sense continuing to debate on ideological merits when it's primarily being denied on technical ones.

If the PR is updated with the requested changes we can continue the discussion.