Be inclusive by adding gender options and pronoun options

[cammuppetry]

This needs to be done. The easiest way is to use neutral pronouns, but a better solution would be to have the three or four options in the original post and default to neutral.

Sometimes it is even possible to avoid pronouns without being too clumsy.

This isn't politics it is politeness.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

It's not politeness. What we consider polite is based on what society recognises. What you are calling "politeness" is something being forced onto people by the social pressure of a small group of people shoting loudly. That's really not polite at all.

There are two genders in biology, occasionally you might get intersex people or people born in the wrong body but these are not genders. Two genders is what society and the law recognises. Gender dysphoria is a recognised medical condition these days and society has started to adapt to it.

What's happening now is a small group of people have decided to try to change what society considers polite. That's not always a bad thing but it can be. Non-binary gender is not a biological reality, it's not recognised in law, our system of medicine doesn't see it as a real thing and society doesn't accept it.

Language incorporates gender either in the way that we speak or that others speak of us. I have yet to come across a language that doesn't code it at all but I suppose they probably exist somewhere. But each language does it differently and the way that Romance languages such as Italian do it is odd to me as an Englishman. For instance they don't distinguish between his and her and the formal word for 'you' sounds exactly like the word for she. Does this give me the right as a man to insist that the Italians change their language to match my identity? I'd say not.

There have always been people who don't conform to gender stereotypes and that's fine in today's society. We tolerate atypical males and atypical females. But these people have never needed their own "gender" or "pronouns" before. A woman that likes boxing is still a woman even if she has some masculine traits.

I'd perhaps be more accepting if it wasn't for the high degree of narcissm and controlling behaviour involved. We have two pronouns for 99.9% of humanity but the 0.1% needs over 50. And they can take offence if you use the wrong one. And offence these days generally involves complaints and legal proceedings. For me this is like me deciding I'm a Duke because I feel that way and expecting everyone to address me as "Your grace" because I've decided that this is polite.

You might say that the policy only applies to how the game refers to players but of course people not versed in LGBT+ topics can't really be expected to read and understand the various different pronouns that would appear in the game log. And don't imagine that people won't use the report feature if someone "misgenders" them by using the wrong pronoun.

Each game seems to have its own way of refering to players. The ones I play all seem to use "they" to refer to me. I'm not a big fan because there is only one of me but it's not worth making a big fuss over. If things were to change and games got a uniform policy then I would suggest:-

male gender set - his
female gender set - her
no gender set - his / her (my preference) or their (some consider this ungrammatical)

Those who don't want to be either male or female for whatever reason can just leave the gender unset.

[N_Faker]

"they" & "their" do pose some issues in some strings as it isn't clear if it is meant to be the plural or gender-neutral singular form.
Displaying custom or non-standard pronouns may add confusions during play as people may not even recognize them as pronouns.

So long as the custom or non-standard pronouns are client-side only it shouldn't pose any issues though.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

"they" & "their" do pose some issues in some strings as it isn't clear if it is meant to be the plural or gender-neutral singular form.
Displaying custom or non-standard pronouns may add confusions during play as people may not even recognize them as pronouns.

So long as the custom or non-standard pronouns are client-side only it shouldn't pose any issues though.

Yes, that would be the best solution. Then the rest of us would not need to deal with them.

[dhnyny]

I'm not sure I see any reason why there should even be an option for players to indicate their gender. There's no option for players to indicate their race, their class, their sexual orientation, their politics, their religion, etc. So why have an option to indicate gender? What's the point?

One possible answer is that players should have a way of communicating their preferences for the pronouns that people use to address them. That's a strong argument in theory but it gets very complicated to implement in a meaningful way in a multilingual environment like BGA. If an English-speaking player indicates a preference for the pronoun "she," then it's easy to translate that for Spanish-speakers: ella. But if an English-speaking player has a preference for "they," which is currently the most-common nonbinary pronoun in English, how does that get translated into Spanish? There's no consensus in Spanish about how to do this that is comparable to the English-language consensus around "they." Which leads me back to wondering whether we shouldn't simply eliminate any gender references at all.

Then there's a separate but related issue, which is the use of pronouns not to refer to other players but in the rules and other places that don't refer to specific members of the BGA community. It's easy to write an English-language rule that says something like, "Player A must then take their turn." Some will object because there isn't universal acceptance among English speakers that this is correct. But there's now enough consensus to insist that it is perfectly proper. And it's better, in my opinion, to insult a small number of people who hold stubborn views of the English language than to insult a larger number of people who object to the supposed gender-neutrality of the pronoun "he." Native speakers of other languages in use on BGA should weigh in on how to deal with this in their languages but in English it seems like there's not a lot of remaining room for debate.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

I'm not sure I see any reason why there should even be an option for players to indicate their gender. There's no option for players to indicate their race, their class, their sexual orientation, their politics, their religion, etc. So why have an option to indicate gender? What's the point?

One possible answer is that players should have a way of communicating their preferences for the pronouns that people use to address them. That's a strong argument in theory but it gets very complicated to implement in a meaningful way in a multilingual environment like BGA. If an English-speaking player indicates a preference for the pronoun "she," then it's easy to translate that for Spanish-speakers: ella. But if an English-speaking player has a preference for "they," which is currently the most-common nonbinary pronoun in English, how does that get translated into Spanish? There's no consensus in Spanish about how to do this that is comparable to the English-language consensus around "they." Which leads me back to wondering whether we shouldn't simply eliminate any gender references at all.

Then there's a separate but related issue, which is the use of pronouns not to refer to other players but in the rules and other places that don't refer to specific members of the BGA community. It's easy to write an English-language rule that says something like, "Player A must then take their turn." Some will object because there isn't universal acceptance among English speakers that this is correct. But there's now enough consensus to insist that it is perfectly proper. And it's better, in my opinion, to insult a small number of people who hold stubborn views of the English language than to insult a larger number of people who object to the supposed gender-neutrality of the pronoun "he." Native speakers of other languages in use on BGA should weigh in on how to deal with this in their languages but in English it seems like there's not a lot of remaining room for debate.

I generally agree with you, the issue of how to translate non-binary pronouns into other languages is a very important consideration, especially as "custom pronouns" is one of the demands (and I use this word advisedly).

However, there is a slight difference in usage between "Player A must then take their turn" which I consider perfectly grammatical as it refers to players in general rather than to one specific player (I agree that 'his' here would now be almost archaic), it's more "Giordano Bruno 1974 plays a card from their hand" that I don't like. There is just the one of me and I'm certainly not claiming to be non-binary!

[merlin they them]

And the same for all languages?!!

Seems complicated. We are in a game website... Shouldn't be a subject here

If that's the case, then the gender options should be removed entirely and all games should only use the gender neutral "they/them/their"

[merlin they them]

But non-binary extremists insist on there being over 50 genders with pronouns as weird as zhir. There is no point trying to accomodate their demands, there will always be more.

Non-binary people are not extremists.

Also, as my solution states, the fill in the blank option would easily allow for accommodating any and all future pronouns.

[merlin they them]

I agree that gender could be dealt with better on BGA, e.g. by using they/them/their for general text, and for players when they have not explicitely set a male or female gender in their profile.

Add Pronoun Options
Furthermore, BGA should also add pronoun options because not everyone uses the pronouns typically associated with the gender they choose. As such, BGA should add at least these options:

• She/her/hers
• They/them/theirs
• He/him/his
• Custom
  • Subject pronoun (she/they/he equivalent):
  • Object pronoun (her/them/him equivalent):
  • Possessive pronoun (hers/theirs/his equivalent):

Are there really people who want to use different genders for subject / object / possessive? I'm intrigued, could you say a bit more or provide links? This would indeed be complicated (among others because the problem's different in each language), so it needs to be explained and well-argued.

Yes, this is a concept called neopronouns.

While there are a good number, having a fill in the blank would be the best option to cover all options.

As for multiple languages, this could be handled the same way new words get handled and just use them as they are. Many languages will just use the word as it was in the original language in the middle of a sentence of the other language.

The other option could be to remove genders altogether and just use the gender neutral they/them/their on the site. Or only use the user's username in place of pronouns

[merlin they them]

I'm not sure I see any reason why there should even be an option for players to indicate their gender. There's no option for players to indicate their race, their class, their sexual orientation, their politics, their religion, etc. So why have an option to indicate gender? What's the point?

BGA already has an option to indicate gender. So if they have an option for it, it needs to be more inclusive.