I would like to point out to the OP that the reason the KDF can have a Joined Trill is a side effect of Cryptic not being specific during pre-launch about the reward you originally got them from.
Joined Trill were originally only for people who bought the game as digital download pre-order. Because they were not specific on who could use the Trill, they made it so both sides could. It's not about "equality", it's covering up a TRIBBLE up in the fine print.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
" What do females get to look at in the same amount? Again, count the number of swimwear they released for Risa. Only 3 for men and none of them were even close to sexy, which the plethora of female swimsuits were."
I have noticed that women universally seem to have better looking options. They're usually sexier, more bad***, and look better with the weapons, in virtually every game I've played where they can be used as well as men. Other games, like Second Life, favor clothing choices massively towards women.
While this is a male issue, not a female one... I don't really care, and I think you will find your energy better spent on issues besides "girls get to look better than guys" if you want to focus on equality.
And your posts are doing what exactly? Trying to shove an agenda down everyone's throat, that's what. Let me guess, anyone who disagrees with you is a bigot too?
When TOS was on the air, were there any episodes forcing the "African-American agenda" down people's throats with Uhura? Or Asian-American agendas for Sulu? Or Russians for Chekov? No, there were not. Uhura, Sulu and Chekov were all there and were respected members of the crew. No one needed to make a big deal out of their ethnic backgrounds because no one cared about it and it didn't make a difference what race they were.
They kind of did care, that was why it was so courageous to show a black woman on the bridge. I think you're seeing it out of context here. Uhura was seen by some as forcing an agenda down people's throats. Claiming representation for a minority poorly represented is not forcing it down everyone's throats. It just seems like it to the majority because they are far less used to seeing that representation in comparison to its absence for the remaining 99% of their day.
Kind of the point-and what a lot of the Activist Culture doesn't get-in a true inclusive culture, you don't NEED special episodes centered on "Special Interest Lib" (thanks to Larry Niven for the term).
In the episode on racial strife from TOS they made a strong point of saying "We don't do this anymore" and used non-real-world examples, because in the "reality" of Kirk and Uhura and Spock, real-world racism WAS a thing of the past for the Federation.
rewatching the show, you see the main characters actually have some difficulty understanding how ANYBODY could think like that.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was a great episode that was both focused on race, yet also showing the post-racial society you describe. Star Trek has done a fantastic job at both showing a society where it is a non-issue while discussing 20th century issues via metaphor. I don't think anyone is suggesting anything other than one of these two things here. Mentioning LGBT characters is merely the same representation that Star Trek has had a proud tradition of - likewise mentioning themes through metaphor. Who is suggesting we have a TRIBBLE lib mission in STO? We all know we're past that.
" What do females get to look at in the same amount? Again, count the number of swimwear they released for Risa. Only 3 for men and none of them were even close to sexy, which the plethora of female swimsuits were."
I have noticed that women universally seem to have better looking options. They're usually sexier, more bad***, and look better with the weapons, in virtually every game I've played where they can be used as well as men. Other games, like Second Life, favor clothing choices massively towards women.
While this is a male issue, not a female one... I don't really care, and I think you will find your energy better spent on issues besides "girls get to look better than guys" if you want to focus on equality.
Meh, that's life though. I try to find a decent outfit - 3 floors of women's clothes and half a floor of mens. If that's the situation on the high street, I don't expect much better online.
The problem is you are comparing race, which is a physical subject and with gender and sexuality which are psychological. and therefor not something you can see. Walk up to Nichelle Nichols, It's quite obvious she's a black woman. Walk up to George Takei, and all that's obvious is he's an male and Asian.
And that's what some of us have a hard time with the suggestion, is having to be told over and over and over "I'm this" or "I'm that"
It's just not nessisasry.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
The problems humans have--pollution, overexploitation, abuse of other humans--is because our power has increased faster than we've been able to shed our animal natures. Not surprising, considering we've gone from eating lions' leftovers to landing on the moon in the time it's taken the lions to go from predators to... well... predators. We're like toddlers who came up with rocket science and the United Nations. Mistakes and shortfalls are expected, especially since the things we're doing have never been done before.
Consider what human power was right before the adoption of gunpowder weapons. The most powerful way to kill someone was to go up to them and stick a knife in them, or to throw the blade at them from a distance with the aid of some wood and string (a bow). You could scale up the wood-and-string approach to throw a giant arrow (a ballista) or a big rock or some burning fuel in the hopes of setting the enemy on fire, but that was about the limit.
Now consider modern weapons. A device that you hold in your own hands is capable of killing anyone within your line-of-sight out to more than a kilometer, with enough reloads to do it dozens of times, and the greatest obstacle to its efficiency is your own inability to point it precisely enough to get a hit. Larger versions of the same device can carry enough explosive charge to pulverize everything within a couple dozen meters of where it strikes, and we can air-drop versions weighing a couple of tonnes with an even bigger radius-of-effect that can completely destroy a large building and everyone and everything within it. Our ultimate weapon extends this radius-of-annihilation to several KILOMETERS, capable of destroying entire cities in a single use.
But our instincts have not caught up. With barely thirty generations in between the adoption of gunpowder and the present day, our instincts are still set up for the "kill one enemy at a time" scenario, so we can't properly wrap our subconscious minds around the fact that we can pretty much annihilate a whole society with the push of a button.
Kind of the point-and what a lot of the Activist Culture doesn't get-in a true inclusive culture, you don't NEED special episodes centered on "Special Interest Lib" (thanks to Larry Niven for the term).
In the episode on racial strife from TOS they made a strong point of saying "We don't do this anymore" and used non-real-world examples, because in the "reality" of Kirk and Uhura and Spock, real-world racism WAS a thing of the past for the Federation.
rewatching the show, you see the main characters actually have some difficulty understanding how ANYBODY could think like that.
and had difficulty seeing the difference between the two aliens-because materially there WAS no difference beyond shading side. It worked, because it started with the assumption that those issues were no longer important-they were done with and over.
If you're really interested in using science fiction (and Star Trek) to push your agenda, you don't highlight what's wrong today, you show how much better things are in your proposed tomorrow-i.e. you only show the discrimination in a context of contrast. Unity as opposed to divisiveness.
The problem with Activist Culture, is that they obsess as much, if not more, over the differences, than their opponents do. This happens in Politics (Political alignment), Religion, and the current fooferaw about gender and sexuality on this very thread.
The proof of "Equality" isn't "Celebration" or "Endorsement", it's apathy-the issues aren't an issue, nobody cares or even understands why or how someone could MAKE an issue of it.
That is when you know equality is reached-you treat people according to their accomplishments and personality, or put into simple terms...
Treat people as "WHO" they are, not "What" they were born as.
Yes, in a true inclusive culture we do not need it. But with people like I've seen commenting in this thread (as well as the lack of equality in the game and the world), it should be pretty obvious that we are far from there yet. So the same way we had Russians, Japanese, Afro-Americans and Females in charge in TOS we need to think of how far ahead of the times that was from the way things were back then and imagine just as far ahead from where we are now to add today's minorities that are marginalized in this game.
But until we have reached a point where we do have true equality to design the character you want to play and meet role models for all walks of life in the game, until that time the need to bring up the question of equality is still a valid one. Even if some privileged people think it's showing things down their throats. Just like Uhura was back in TOS. You just have to ask Whoopie about what kind of impact having Uhura in TOS made to her.
PS Gender is both a physical & psychological trait :P
No, you're seeing it out of context and didn't understand what I posted. Uhura never made a huge deal out of being African American nor were there entire episodes devoted to how her ancestors were sold as slaves and overcame oppression etc. It didn't need to be said on screen. Her being there was example enough to show how human nature had changed in the future. No one on the crew saw her as a black woman. They saw and treated her as what she was ... a highly capable officer and respected member of the command team.
In fact, the sole notation on that was in the episode "The Savage Curtain", when "Abraham Lincoln" remarked on the beauty of the "Negress" on the bridge, and then immediately apologized if he had offended. Uhura asked why she should be offended by a name.
Beyond that, no one on the show ever even mentioned the matter. And let's face it, when your ship's first officer isn't even from Earth, the question of your comms officer's skin tone gets pretty trivial. (Even more so in STO, where it seems like half the captains are from a species with blue skin and antennae, and depending on the source either four genders or just from a society where a stable family has to have four parents.)
That's why I keep pointing to the number of characters whose personal lives have gone totally unexamined. If the differences are no longer worth mentioning, why would anyone mention them?
PS Gender is both a physical & psychological trait :P [/B][/COLOR]
Gender isn't a physical trait at all, that's sex. Gender is a mix of psychological and social constructs.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Gender isn't a physical trait at all, that's sex. Gender is a mix of psychological and social constructs.
Have you looked at the human body before? When it is without any clothes on.
In most cases it is pretty easy to spot which gender someone is without having to ask. But then as I also said, it can be psychological too. That means we're speaking of a biological and psychological gender. It is possible to look female but have a male biological gender. It is possible to look male but have a female biological gender. You can identify as neither gender while still sporting one of the biological/physical genders. Or you look like one gender physically but psychologically you identify as the opposite gender.
The one who get to decide how they look and what gender they are should be the player.
Caitians and Ferasans should be able to use digitigrade legs/paws and get a wider range of mane like hair styles like seen in Star Trek. If the Undine can have 3 digitigrade legs the Caitians/Ferasans can get 2.
You're getting into technology matters rather than equality matters. It's one thing for the animators to rig prefab Undine - it's another if that had to be covered for players with their customization options. It's along the lines of all the various costumes available to NPCs that are not available to players.
It is easy to blame other things then what is the core problem. They are not wearing their equality goggles when they design stuff for the game.
This exchange has me convinced this account is nothing but parody. There isn't enough facepalm on the internet to describe my reaction to reading this.
In most cases it is pretty easy to spot which gender someone is without having to ask
No. Sex is male or female that tends to line up with the genders masculine and feminine. Just because they almost always line up, it doesn't mean they are synonymous.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
According to this one novel I have been reading that has Cryptic and Atari logos on it that I am guessing according to the content of it the undine were always meant to have deep story within this Crypticverse.
Not to ruin it for any who plan to read it but they speak of an undine war before this one which they claim it never ended. I don't know if they threw any of it away when making the maco stuff but apparently the maco organization was brought back in light of the undine. Makes me wonder why they didn't just make this gear a maco set or if the counter command is just a cross faction maco get up. Where it pertains to this where most ppl think of genders as male and female where in this novel it says undine are made up of 5 different genders which none of them relate to how we see a male and female lol.
No. Sex is male or female that tends to line up with the genders masculine and feminine. Just because they almost always line up, it doesn't mean they are synonymous.
No, sex is something you have to feel pleasure or procreate.
No. Sex is male or female that tends to line up with the genders masculine and feminine. Just because they almost always line up, it doesn't mean they are synonymous.
Wait, do you include biological aspects into your definition of gender? If not, then the only way gender lines up with sex is because people decide for them to line up.
Wait, do you include biological aspects into your definition of gender? If not, then the only way gender lines up with sex is because people decide for them to line up.
Eh? Most people are lined up as male - masculine or female - feminine. They are psychological particulars, such as spatial awareness or maths that, are present at different levels in males and females, they give an indication of how gender and sex line up, but it's mostly psychological constructs that can change.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
The clear distinctions between male and female are not always apparent. The Olympics have a very thorough process to verify whether an athlete is male or female, and there are cases where it's rarely (if ever) as simple as what kind of plumbing they came installed with.
According to this one novel I have been reading that has Cryptic and Atari logos on it that I am guessing according to the content of it the undine were always meant to have deep story within this Crypticverse.
Not to ruin it for any who plan to read it but they speak of an undine war before this one which they claim it never ended. I don't know if they threw any of it away when making the maco stuff but apparently the maco organization was brought back in light of the undine. Makes me wonder why they didn't just make this gear a maco set or if the counter command is just a cross faction maco get up. Where it pertains to this where most ppl think of genders as male and female where in this novel it says undine are made up of 5 different genders which none of them relate to how we see a male and female lol.
The author of this book had no knowledge the Iconians would be the primary antagonists of the game, probably due to the fact that this book was written well before the developers ever considered the Iconians as the antagonists.
The 5 genders thing was brought up in an episode of Voyager "Someone to Watch Over Me." Just something that was added to the episode, seemingly out of nowhere with no explanation as to how Voyager acquired this information. It's been suggested that during "In the Flesh" Voyager acquired more biological information about the Undine from those running the Terradome that they found that contained a simulation of Starfleet Headquarters.
The author of this book had no knowledge the Iconians would be the primary antagonists of the game, probably due to the fact that this book was written well before the developers ever considered the Iconians as the antagonists.
The 5 genders thing was brought up in an episode of Voyager "Someone to Watch Over Me." Just something that was added to the episode, seemingly out of nowhere with no explanation as to how Voyager acquired this information. It's been suggested that during "In the Flesh" Voyager acquired more biological information about the Undine from those running the Terradome that they found that contained a simulation of Starfleet Headquarters.
I'm thinking someone felt inspired by Diane Duane's Sulamid, a species with twelve genders, all of which insist on being referred to as "she".
"Gender" is social and mental, a construct of the mind
"Sex" is based on physical make up.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
Eh? Most people are lined up as male - masculine or female - feminine.
Because people decided that. Hair length/style doesn't come natural(unless you count never-cut/styled hair), makeup isn't formed naturally on anyone, and people put dresses and pants on.
They are psychological particulars, such as spatial awareness or maths that, are present at different levels in males and females, they give an indication of how gender and sex line up, but it's mostly psychological constructs that can change.
So you consider natural mental differences an aspect of "gender" rather than sex? Why group it in with social constructs even then? They're different concepts, despite the possibility that mental differences may had a hand in some aspects of it.
Because people decided that. Hair length/style doesn't come natural(unless you count never-cut/styled hair), makeup isn't formed naturally on anyone, and people put dresses and pants on.
Behaviour, appearance, etc. is another kettle of fish entirely.
So you consider natural mental differences an aspect of "gender" rather than sex? Why group it in with social constructs even then? They're different concepts, despite the possibility that mental differences may had a hand in some aspects of it.
Because of the cross over, what psychological traits are an inherent part of biology and which are a construct from being raised or choosing to act a certain way?
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Because of the cross over, what psychological traits are an inherent part of biology and which are a construct from being raised or choosing to act a certain way?
I'm... not even sure which of them you were referring to. :<
Most of these "mental differences" cannot be attributed to "male" or "female", but in tests show up as showing up in both. That they are attributed is more of a social construct than anything else. Partially you will get differences that are caused by "conditioning", i.e. early learning. If you promote a behavior in somebody, chances are that it will be practiced. With practice comes skill.
Sex is a classification attributed by Biologists upon observing physical appearance/organs. The XX/XY makeup is an attribution made by Genetics people (and even that does not necessarily need to correspond).
Gender on the other hand is a construct with two sides:
1 - Identification: A collection of stereotypes that center around a "whole" you tend to identify with. A means of creating your self. Be that masculine or feminine, anywhere in between, none, both, none and both at the same time, or whatever. There's no black and white.
2 - Interaction(Presentation): An image you put on yourself to interact with others or society as a whole (as in how do you want to be perceived) as an onset of further acts of interaction or communication. The role you play. 1 and 2 do not always necessarily go along well together, since presentation also requires physique.
As valoreah said: David Mack's work is soft-canon, his words carry no true value in the overall TrekVerse. Reading the article, I agreed with much of what he said, until he came to his opinion of the T'Prynn arc. What he thinks of his own work is irrelevant. What readers think of it, is what matters. I find it sad that someone would have such a bigoted reaction to reading about homosexual relationships, but they have the right to their opinion, and if you disagree with that (their right to hold their own opinion, wether you agree with it or not, then you are just as closed minded and intolerant)
I almost accept your premise about equality within the game, but ultimately, several factors prevent that.
- The issues you are talking about, are not seen as issues from the 23rd century onwards. They are not raised in Trek canon, so they do not need to be raised in this game.
- The most frequently heard complaint about the production of Doctor Who while it was under the aegis of Russell T Davis, was the frequent and unnecessary inclusion of homosexual references. When something is done like that, it comes across as not only forced (in terms of literary insertion) but also forcing the audience to endure the writer's personal opinions. To put such references into Trek, where none have been necessary or relevant before now, would not come across as a 'nice touch towards diversity', but as obvious and forced, because it is not relevant to the TrekVerse.
- The game is clearly designed to appeal to a particular demographic. If you are not part of that demographic, well, the game was not being designed to appeal to your demographic... Sorry if that's not touch-feely-PC enough for you, but rather than demanding (and this is what you are doing -- Demanding like a child) that your demographic be accommodated, you should accept that the content is not going to cater exactly to your lifestyle, and play it as able. Or don't. Demanding acceptance tends to have the reverse effect and alienates people to your cause, no matter how accurate or valid it may be.
- I'm not sure if the legislation is still relevant, it may have been repealed, but there has been legislation which forbade the teaching/promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as an alternative to a heterosexual lifestyle. I'm not sure which countries round the world may have similar statutes, but, given this game is not restricted to 18+ players, then from a legal point of view, the devs simply may not be allowed to include such content, in order to comply with various local laws (such as how lock boxes are not online gambling etc...)
I don't know the sexual proclivites of any of the STO NPCs, with the (possible) exception of Tuvok. Is Quinn married? If so, to how many people? Is Eric Cooper into S&M? Sub or dom? Is D'Tan completely asexual? What of Koren? Is she straight, TRIBBLE, bi, perhaps a postop transsexual?
Who knows? More importantly, who cares? How will any of this impact my gameplay? If Capt. Taggart is TRIBBLE, does that somehow invalidate his sacrifice in the tutorial? Does Elisa Flores lose her Purple status because she's straight and that offends you? How does any of this matter?
Your character can have any orientation you like. My main is straight because he's my avatar, except my particular hair isn't available in-game (so I've assumed Starfleet Medical came up with a cure for partial baldness at some point); my most popular character in the local fanfic has never defined his sexuality, if any - it simply hasn't come up. It has nothing to do with the game. At all. In any way.
Your monomania is becoming irksome. Perhaps your time would be better spent agitating for better representation for differing kinds of people here in the real world? I mean, don't actually go to Uganda - that could get ugly - but maybe try influencing opinions in this world, rather than spending your time fretting about what collections of pixels get up to when no one's looking.
I don't know the sexual proclivites of any of the STO NPCs, with the (possible) exception of Tuvok. Is Quinn married? If so, to how many people? Is Eric Cooper into S&M? Sub or dom? Is D'Tan completely asexual? What of Koren? Is she straight, TRIBBLE, bi, perhaps a postop transsexual?
Who knows? More importantly, who cares? How will any of this impact my gameplay? If Capt. Taggart is TRIBBLE, does that somehow invalidate his sacrifice in the tutorial? Does Elisa Flores lose her Purple status because she's straight and that offends you? How does any of this matter?
Your character can have any orientation you like. My main is straight because he's my avatar, except my particular hair isn't available in-game (so I've assumed Starfleet Medical came up with a cure for partial baldness at some point); my most popular character in the local fanfic has never defined his sexuality, if any - it simply hasn't come up. It has nothing to do with the game. At all. In any way.
Your monomania is becoming irksome. Perhaps your time would be better spent agitating for better representation for differing kinds of people here in the real world? I mean, don't actually go to Uganda - that could get ugly - but maybe try influencing opinions in this world, rather than spending your time fretting about what collections of pixels get up to when no one's looking.
Word round the campus, is that for the price of a drink with an umbrella in the glass, she's anyone's
Comments
Joined Trill were originally only for people who bought the game as digital download pre-order. Because they were not specific on who could use the Trill, they made it so both sides could. It's not about "equality", it's covering up a TRIBBLE up in the fine print.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
I have noticed that women universally seem to have better looking options. They're usually sexier, more bad***, and look better with the weapons, in virtually every game I've played where they can be used as well as men. Other games, like Second Life, favor clothing choices massively towards women.
While this is a male issue, not a female one... I don't really care, and I think you will find your energy better spent on issues besides "girls get to look better than guys" if you want to focus on equality.
They kind of did care, that was why it was so courageous to show a black woman on the bridge. I think you're seeing it out of context here. Uhura was seen by some as forcing an agenda down people's throats. Claiming representation for a minority poorly represented is not forcing it down everyone's throats. It just seems like it to the majority because they are far less used to seeing that representation in comparison to its absence for the remaining 99% of their day.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was a great episode that was both focused on race, yet also showing the post-racial society you describe. Star Trek has done a fantastic job at both showing a society where it is a non-issue while discussing 20th century issues via metaphor. I don't think anyone is suggesting anything other than one of these two things here. Mentioning LGBT characters is merely the same representation that Star Trek has had a proud tradition of - likewise mentioning themes through metaphor. Who is suggesting we have a TRIBBLE lib mission in STO? We all know we're past that.
Meh, that's life though. I try to find a decent outfit - 3 floors of women's clothes and half a floor of mens. If that's the situation on the high street, I don't expect much better online.
And that's what some of us have a hard time with the suggestion, is having to be told over and over and over "I'm this" or "I'm that"
It's just not nessisasry.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
To quote a well-known authority on the topic, " . . . not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Consider what human power was right before the adoption of gunpowder weapons. The most powerful way to kill someone was to go up to them and stick a knife in them, or to throw the blade at them from a distance with the aid of some wood and string (a bow). You could scale up the wood-and-string approach to throw a giant arrow (a ballista) or a big rock or some burning fuel in the hopes of setting the enemy on fire, but that was about the limit.
Now consider modern weapons. A device that you hold in your own hands is capable of killing anyone within your line-of-sight out to more than a kilometer, with enough reloads to do it dozens of times, and the greatest obstacle to its efficiency is your own inability to point it precisely enough to get a hit. Larger versions of the same device can carry enough explosive charge to pulverize everything within a couple dozen meters of where it strikes, and we can air-drop versions weighing a couple of tonnes with an even bigger radius-of-effect that can completely destroy a large building and everyone and everything within it. Our ultimate weapon extends this radius-of-annihilation to several KILOMETERS, capable of destroying entire cities in a single use.
But our instincts have not caught up. With barely thirty generations in between the adoption of gunpowder and the present day, our instincts are still set up for the "kill one enemy at a time" scenario, so we can't properly wrap our subconscious minds around the fact that we can pretty much annihilate a whole society with the push of a button.
Yes, in a true inclusive culture we do not need it. But with people like I've seen commenting in this thread (as well as the lack of equality in the game and the world), it should be pretty obvious that we are far from there yet. So the same way we had Russians, Japanese, Afro-Americans and Females in charge in TOS we need to think of how far ahead of the times that was from the way things were back then and imagine just as far ahead from where we are now to add today's minorities that are marginalized in this game.
Anything is possible. Transporter accidents can happen, like in this bit of video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIfNv9qLvy4
But until we have reached a point where we do have true equality to design the character you want to play and meet role models for all walks of life in the game, until that time the need to bring up the question of equality is still a valid one. Even if some privileged people think it's showing things down their throats. Just like Uhura was back in TOS. You just have to ask Whoopie about what kind of impact having Uhura in TOS made to her.
PS Gender is both a physical & psychological trait :P
Beyond that, no one on the show ever even mentioned the matter. And let's face it, when your ship's first officer isn't even from Earth, the question of your comms officer's skin tone gets pretty trivial. (Even more so in STO, where it seems like half the captains are from a species with blue skin and antennae, and depending on the source either four genders or just from a society where a stable family has to have four parents.)
That's why I keep pointing to the number of characters whose personal lives have gone totally unexamined. If the differences are no longer worth mentioning, why would anyone mention them?
Gender isn't a physical trait at all, that's sex. Gender is a mix of psychological and social constructs.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Have you looked at the human body before? When it is without any clothes on.
In most cases it is pretty easy to spot which gender someone is without having to ask. But then as I also said, it can be psychological too. That means we're speaking of a biological and psychological gender. It is possible to look female but have a male biological gender. It is possible to look male but have a female biological gender. You can identify as neither gender while still sporting one of the biological/physical genders. Or you look like one gender physically but psychologically you identify as the opposite gender.
The one who get to decide how they look and what gender they are should be the player.
This exchange has me convinced this account is nothing but parody. There isn't enough facepalm on the internet to describe my reaction to reading this.
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No. Sex is male or female that tends to line up with the genders masculine and feminine. Just because they almost always line up, it doesn't mean they are synonymous.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Not to ruin it for any who plan to read it but they speak of an undine war before this one which they claim it never ended. I don't know if they threw any of it away when making the maco stuff but apparently the maco organization was brought back in light of the undine. Makes me wonder why they didn't just make this gear a maco set or if the counter command is just a cross faction maco get up. Where it pertains to this where most ppl think of genders as male and female where in this novel it says undine are made up of 5 different genders which none of them relate to how we see a male and female lol.
No, sex is something you have to feel pleasure or procreate.
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Oh, you never heard of synonyms then, okay :rolleyes:.
Eh? Most people are lined up as male - masculine or female - feminine. They are psychological particulars, such as spatial awareness or maths that, are present at different levels in males and females, they give an indication of how gender and sex line up, but it's mostly psychological constructs that can change.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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The author of this book had no knowledge the Iconians would be the primary antagonists of the game, probably due to the fact that this book was written well before the developers ever considered the Iconians as the antagonists.
The 5 genders thing was brought up in an episode of Voyager "Someone to Watch Over Me." Just something that was added to the episode, seemingly out of nowhere with no explanation as to how Voyager acquired this information. It's been suggested that during "In the Flesh" Voyager acquired more biological information about the Undine from those running the Terradome that they found that contained a simulation of Starfleet Headquarters.
This is incorrect.
"Gender" is social and mental, a construct of the mind
"Sex" is based on physical make up.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
So you consider natural mental differences an aspect of "gender" rather than sex? Why group it in with social constructs even then? They're different concepts, despite the possibility that mental differences may had a hand in some aspects of it.
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Behaviour, appearance, etc. is another kettle of fish entirely.
Because of the cross over, what psychological traits are an inherent part of biology and which are a construct from being raised or choosing to act a certain way?
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
Sex is a classification attributed by Biologists upon observing physical appearance/organs. The XX/XY makeup is an attribution made by Genetics people (and even that does not necessarily need to correspond).
Gender on the other hand is a construct with two sides:
1 - Identification: A collection of stereotypes that center around a "whole" you tend to identify with. A means of creating your self. Be that masculine or feminine, anywhere in between, none, both, none and both at the same time, or whatever. There's no black and white.
2 - Interaction(Presentation): An image you put on yourself to interact with others or society as a whole (as in how do you want to be perceived) as an onset of further acts of interaction or communication. The role you play. 1 and 2 do not always necessarily go along well together, since presentation also requires physique.
Ask your rommie scientist ;-)
Something we, The Committee for Equality in Star Trek Online, feels is seriously lacking in STO and needs rectifying. This in spite of the arguments against it by various people in this thread.
Okay, I'll bite...
As valoreah said: David Mack's work is soft-canon, his words carry no true value in the overall TrekVerse. Reading the article, I agreed with much of what he said, until he came to his opinion of the T'Prynn arc. What he thinks of his own work is irrelevant. What readers think of it, is what matters. I find it sad that someone would have such a bigoted reaction to reading about homosexual relationships, but they have the right to their opinion, and if you disagree with that (their right to hold their own opinion, wether you agree with it or not, then you are just as closed minded and intolerant)
I almost accept your premise about equality within the game, but ultimately, several factors prevent that.
- The issues you are talking about, are not seen as issues from the 23rd century onwards. They are not raised in Trek canon, so they do not need to be raised in this game.
- The most frequently heard complaint about the production of Doctor Who while it was under the aegis of Russell T Davis, was the frequent and unnecessary inclusion of homosexual references. When something is done like that, it comes across as not only forced (in terms of literary insertion) but also forcing the audience to endure the writer's personal opinions. To put such references into Trek, where none have been necessary or relevant before now, would not come across as a 'nice touch towards diversity', but as obvious and forced, because it is not relevant to the TrekVerse.
- The game is clearly designed to appeal to a particular demographic. If you are not part of that demographic, well, the game was not being designed to appeal to your demographic... Sorry if that's not touch-feely-PC enough for you, but rather than demanding (and this is what you are doing -- Demanding like a child) that your demographic be accommodated, you should accept that the content is not going to cater exactly to your lifestyle, and play it as able. Or don't. Demanding acceptance tends to have the reverse effect and alienates people to your cause, no matter how accurate or valid it may be.
- I'm not sure if the legislation is still relevant, it may have been repealed, but there has been legislation which forbade the teaching/promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as an alternative to a heterosexual lifestyle. I'm not sure which countries round the world may have similar statutes, but, given this game is not restricted to 18+ players, then from a legal point of view, the devs simply may not be allowed to include such content, in order to comply with various local laws (such as how lock boxes are not online gambling etc...)
Who knows? More importantly, who cares? How will any of this impact my gameplay? If Capt. Taggart is TRIBBLE, does that somehow invalidate his sacrifice in the tutorial? Does Elisa Flores lose her Purple status because she's straight and that offends you? How does any of this matter?
Your character can have any orientation you like. My main is straight because he's my avatar, except my particular hair isn't available in-game (so I've assumed Starfleet Medical came up with a cure for partial baldness at some point); my most popular character in the local fanfic has never defined his sexuality, if any - it simply hasn't come up. It has nothing to do with the game. At all. In any way.
Your monomania is becoming irksome. Perhaps your time would be better spent agitating for better representation for differing kinds of people here in the real world? I mean, don't actually go to Uganda - that could get ugly - but maybe try influencing opinions in this world, rather than spending your time fretting about what collections of pixels get up to when no one's looking.
Word round the campus, is that for the price of a drink with an umbrella in the glass, she's anyone's