Page 1 of 3

Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 18:58
by Sar
So recently a bunch of Crawl uniques got their gender changed: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... ae4bbe0639

There was a thread about it (perhaps not the best named one) that got deleted without a trace. That's not very nice, in my opinion, though it's obviously up to the moderators and forum owners to decide. It's a bit disappointing, though.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is that Ijyb change is particularly strange to me. Not just because he's one of the oldest monsters in the line (at least as far as I know), but also because another goblin/hobgoblin early game unique was added recently, Robin, who was female from the inception. So now we have two female goblin uniques. Maybe their society is matriarchal? Crawl has the deepest lore indeed. Oh, and I don't care for Cerebov's change either, he will always be a big fiery guy for me. Anyway, what do you think?

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:01
by Magipi
Sar wrote:Oh, and I don't care for Cerebov's change either, he will always be a big fiery guy for me.

Cerebov is obviously male, the female form of the family name is Cerebova :mrgreen:

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:06
by dynast
Well, this ruins my fanfics... OR DOES IT?????

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:08
by Sar
Sorry if I wasn't clear, Cerebov wasn't changed to a female, he's a "humanoid" instead of "human" now.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:08
by WalrusKing
Sar wrote:Anyway, all I wanted to say is that Ijyb change is particularly strange to me. Not just because he's one of the oldest monsters in the line (at least as far as I know), but also because another goblin/hobgoblin early game unique was added recently, Robin, who was female from the inception. So now we have two female goblin uniques. Maybe their society is matriarchal? Crawl has the deepest lore indeed. Oh, and I don't care for Cerebov's change either, he will always be a big fiery guy for me. Anyway, what do you think?


I agree that some of these changes feel weird. Though Grinder and Cerebov are the big weird feeling ones to me.

I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:09
by Magipi
Also, it seems like the devs missed the great chance: they should have made Dowan female and Duvessa male.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:10
by infinitevox
DOWN WITH CHANGE!!!
SUPPORT THE ESTABLISHMENT!!!

I'm curious as to the why of this more than anything else.
Cerebov, Grinder, and Ijyb being changed don't make any sense.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:12
by Sar
Eh, I think why it was made is actually pretty obvious, it's a "progressive" thing to do. That's why I don't question the change as a whole, seems pointless to.

Spoiler: show
Though we all know the real reason was to make more girls play Crawl.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:24
by Tiktacy
Based on most of my experiences, woman hate to lose, and if there is one thing crawl has a lot of its losing(especially for beginners).

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:26
by 4Hooves2Appendages
Tiktacy wrote:Based on most of my experiences, woman hate to lose, and if there is one thing crawl has a lot of its losing(especially for beginners).

Don't most people dislike losing? Seems to be pretty basic human nature.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:30
by Lasty
Sar wrote:There was a thread about it (perhaps not the best named one) that got deleted without a trace. That's not very nice, in my opinion, though it's obviously up to the moderators and forum owners to decide. It's a bit disappointing, though.

The thread in question was removed because there was 1) no content in the thread and 2) no way to make the thread acceptable without changing everything about it. I told the OP that he was welcome to start the thread back up without the sexist remarks, but he has thusfar declined to do so.

WalrusKing wrote:I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Nope, the opposite. Majority male both before and after the change. Studies have shown that many people, men and women, can perceive as little as 1:10 female-to-male ratio as being about gender equal, presumably because the women that are noticed are more noteworthy by virtue of being less expected.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:34
by 4Hooves2Appendages
I for one applaud crawls drive towards equality!

I actually really like that player characters are androgynous.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:36
by infinitevox
Does this mean all the Pandemonium Lords are now Pan-sexual?

Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 19:41
by ontoclasm
Somebody calculated the gender ratio and it was about 30% female before the commit and 44% female afterwards.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:07
by Tiktacy
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:
Tiktacy wrote:Based on most of my experiences, woman hate to lose, and if there is one thing crawl has a lot of its losing(especially for beginners).

Don't most people dislike losing? Seems to be pretty basic human nature.


Please no straw mans on the tavern. Hate and dislike are not the same thing.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:16
by duvessa
Tiktacy wrote:
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:
Tiktacy wrote:Based on most of my experiences, woman hate to lose, and if there is one thing crawl has a lot of its losing(especially for beginners).

Don't most people dislike losing? Seems to be pretty basic human nature.


Please no straw mans on the tavern. Hate and dislike are not the same thing.
I see you edited out your original post (which is adequately summarized by "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE") into a shorter but almost equally bad one

Anyway, you misunderstand the effects of MAOA variants and the "throwing out" and "labeling" you describe...never happened

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:20
by chequers
The why is pretty simple: more equitable distribution of unique's genders, which I consider self-evidently positive. I think it was poor design for a game so unfocused on gender to be overtly male skewed when gender did appear.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:27
by dpeg
Tiktacy wrote:Please no straw mans on the tavern.
Please make that straw persons or straw people in the future.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:28
by Rast
ontoclasm wrote:Somebody calculated the gender ratio and it was about 30% female before the commit and 44% female afterwards.


The playerbase is still holding steady at 2% female.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:36
by duvessa
while we're on the subject, it kind of bothers me that the game makes a point of picking on my physical appearance in my description. like, it doesn't matter how I look when I'm killing you. and the game doesn't insult any other elves or humans in that way

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:39
by tedric
lol @ the ppl saying "it doesn't make sense" to change the gender of mythical creatures in a video game about a magical dungeon

wish i could triple-like Lasty's post re: over-estimations of feminine representation

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:47
by infinitevox
Laugh all you want, its being done for arbitrary reasons, which don't make sense. But being arbitrary, they don't have to make sense.

I'm all for equality and everything, but I think it is PC nonsense to change things like this to fit the current political climate.
Keep your politics out of DCSS please, its bad enough they permeate just about every other facet of the internet.
You want more female uniques? Add more. There's no reason to gender-bend the existing ones when there is an obvious and easy solution.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:47
by dpeg
I am really happy that our gods have no genders. Ideally (to me), that'd also hold for uniques: I mean, as humans/kobolds/etc., they would have genders, but we wouldn't disclose them because it doesn't matter. That's a bit harder, though: you have to avoid names like Sigmund and Adolf and Jozef.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:50
by infinitevox
dpeg, that would be the best overall solution.
Leave the names as they are, let people make assumptions as they want.

Sigmund could easily be a retired-from-circus bearded lady...

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 20:56
by chequers
Most devs believe there are too many uniques already, so "add more" is not an option.

I don't think changing some genders is any more (or less) political than picking genders was in the first place. Or more pertinently, no more or less political than removing spell book descriptions including rape.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 21:00
by duvessa
infinitevox wrote:Laugh all you want, its being done for arbitrary reasons, which don't make sense. But being arbitrary, they don't have to make sense.

I'm all for equality and everything, but I think it is PC nonsense to change things like this to fit the current political climate.
Keep your politics out of DCSS please, its bad enough they permeate just about every other facet of the internet.
You want more female uniques? Add more. There's no reason to gender-bend the existing ones when there is an obvious and easy solution.
changing the gender of existing uniques is a far more obvious and easier solution than adding a bunch of new uniques solely because a few tavern users don't like the idea of women existing

chequers wrote:Most devs believe there are too many uniques already, so "add more" is not an option.
god I hope this is true

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 21:01
by dynast
If you can come up with anything funny to post you might aswell treat the this topic seriously, and thats what happened.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 21:02
by pumpyscump
No chequers, a surfeit of straight dudes is Normal, and anything else is Political. Keep your politics out!

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 21:16
by rchandra
I like the changes overall, though I'd prefer panlords keep genders and I think changing Sojobo is very inappropriate.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 21:39
by WalrusKing
Lasty wrote:
WalrusKing wrote:I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Nope, the opposite. Majority male both before and after the change. Studies have shown that many people, men and women, can perceive as little as 1:10 female-to-male ratio as being about gender equal, presumably because the women that are noticed are more noteworthy by virtue of being less expected.


Actually, I'd just assumed that the list on the learndb was complete and correct, which it apparently wasn't (By a lot too, as it turns out. I assume it was only made for humanoids or something? Not sure. Got what I deserved by not code diving I guess)

On the whole I'm close to ambivalent about this change, though I am still irked at the change to Cerebov and Grinder in particular.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:26
by infinitevox
duvessa wrote:changing the gender of existing uniques is a far more obvious and easier solution than adding a bunch of new uniques solely because a few tavern users don't like the idea of women existing


Come on now, there is no need to be hyperbolic here. It has absolutely nothing to do with "don't like the idea of women existing." And to be quite honest, that's a very tired and worn out sentiment.

It has more to do with: I never gave any thought whatsoever to the gender "balance" of the unique mobs until the commit and this thread. But because someone out there has a political agenda to make everything "PC", attention has been drawn to it.
Perhaps it's my own short-coming as a person, but I fail to see why this was a problem at all.
So now all I see is someone making something from nothing in some attempt to seem "progressive", which in addition to being both tedious and annoying, also violates the 1st law of thermodynamics.

In short:
I don't give two shits if you're a demi-sexual furry who identifies as a Cuisinart, let's just keep all the politics & agendas out of something that we all do for fun and to decompress from the rest of this crazy world please.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:36
by ydeve
If you don't care about the male/female ratio, then you shouldn't be that bothered by this change. In gameplay terms the change is cosmetic. The people who are making something out of it aren't those who made the change, which was done rather quietly, but rather those complaining about it.

If whatever the ratio is isn't a problem, then don't make the new ratio a problem.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:43
by Arrhythmia
if i can throw my hat into the gendersexual-bikeshed arena (the worst possible of all arenas) could we please be consistent and either genderize the demon lords again (what sexes? i don't care) or make all demons neuter? i prefer the latter but w/e i want consistency more than anything

e: adding back eresh's smoking hot rack would be a big plus IMO

e2: giving eresh a big floppy dong would also be pretty cool

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:46
by Sar
Anta could still be unique in having a gender because he's a fallen titan or whatever. Well, or a titan-ess, with a titanic... nevermind.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:47
by Arrhythmia
Sar wrote:Anta could still be unique in having a gender because he's a fallen titan or whatever. Well, or a titan-ess, with a titanic... nevermind.


tracts of land?

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:50
by HardboiledGargoyle
male->female involves more REMOVE than female->male so I don't mind.
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:
Tiktacy wrote:Based on most of my experiences, woman hate to lose, and if there is one thing crawl has a lot of its losing(especially for beginners).

Don't most people dislike losing? Seems to be pretty basic human nature.
It's about the willingness/eagerness to accept risk in pursuit of some reward, which is not basic human nature, and very unevenly spread among people.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:57
by wizzzargh
Arrhythmia wrote:e: adding back eresh's smoking hot rack would be a big plus IMO

e2: giving eresh a big floppy dong would also be pretty cool


why not both.jpg
why not both.jpg (14.34 KiB) Viewed 23234 times

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 22:59
by WalrusKing
Arrhythmia wrote:if i can throw my hat into the gendersexual-bikeshed arena (the worst possible of all arenas) could we please be consistent and either genderize the demon lords again (what sexes? i don't care) or make all demons neuter? i prefer the latter but w/e i want consistency more than anything

e: adding back eresh's smoking hot rack would be a big plus IMO

e2: giving eresh a big floppy dong would also be pretty cool


"YOU ARE HUGE. THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE DONG! RIP AND TEAR!"

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:10
by andreas
infinitevox wrote:Perhaps it's my own short-coming as a person, but I fail to see why this was a problem at all.

It's self-evident, did you forget already.
dpeg wrote:Please make that straw persons or straw people in the future.

Make it 'strawman' half the time, 'strawwoman' half the time, and alternate back and forth.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:14
by Tiktacy
While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).

Occasionally swaying from the norm like the way Dowan and Duvessa do is amusing and certainly very flavorful, but its a bad idea to delude that by flooding the game with female uniques that don't have any reason to be female outside of "just cuz."

Then again, this is a fantasy world where sandy beaches and oceans exist under ground and giant ant men can dig through rock walls as fast as they can run. So its not like extreme outliars existing often is that hard to swallow.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:30
by andreas
Empirical facts aside, biological simulationism should not be a design motivation anyway.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:37
by Sar
Tiktacy wrote:even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons

Eresh has the least HP out of all lords, she used to have dramatically less HP but now it's just "less" HP.

Edit: removed str vs dex because I probably don't understand it either.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:49
by Wahaha
There is a troubling lack of fat uniques, not even talking about normal monsters, and this is frankly quite problematic. The only fat unique is Snorg as seen by its tile. This adds insult to injury because Snorg is probably the ugliest unique and it implies that fat people are ugly. To better represent fat people in the game I propose that the tiles of Kirke, Margery and Norris are changed to be fatter. Their description could mention it too. "A big beautiful spellcaster in service to the powers of Hell..."

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:53
by Tiktacy
Wahaha wrote:There is a troubling lack of fat uniques, not even talking about normal monsters, and this is frankly quite problematic. The only fat unique is Snorg as seen by its tile. This adds insult to injury because Snorg is probably the ugliest unique and it implies that fat people are ugly. To better represent fat people in the game I propose that the tiles of Kirke, Margery and Norris are changed to be fatter. Their description could mention it too. "A big beautiful spellcaster in service to the powers of Hell..."


Blork is fat as crap too.

I sincerely hope this is satire though.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th June 2016, 23:55
by duvessa
Tiktacy wrote:While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).
So goblins and gigantic fire demons existing is fine, but you draw the line at goblins and gigantic fire demons that deviate from conservative gender roles?
And women live longer than men irl so surely women should be the ones with more HP, anyway

"Fat" is paired with "ugly" in two of the three monster descriptions it appears in, fwiw.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Friday, 10th June 2016, 00:05
by Wahaha
Tiktacy wrote:I sincerely hope this is satire though.

You made a post about how males are naturally stronger than females but you conveniently ignore that some people are naturally fat. Typical.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Friday, 10th June 2016, 00:05
by yesno
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I for one applaud crawls drive towards equality!

I actually really like that player characters are androgynous.


well offline tiles paperdoll editor has male and female tiles for most species, in webtiles all the characters use the male tile

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Friday, 10th June 2016, 00:06
by yesno
Tiktacy wrote:While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).

Occasionally swaying from the norm like the way Dowan and Duvessa do is amusing and certainly very flavorful, but its a bad idea to delude that by flooding the game with female uniques that don't have any reason to be female outside of "just cuz."

Then again, this is a fantasy world where sandy beaches and oceans exist under ground and giant ant men can dig through rock walls as fast as they can run. So its not like extreme outliars existing often is that hard to swallow.


whyd you type all these words

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Friday, 10th June 2016, 00:12
by ontoclasm
yesno wrote:in webtiles all the characters use the male tile

Not that it matters, but this isn't true. In WebTiles everyone uses the first doll tile on the list for their species, and those are intentionally ordered so that some "defaults" are male and some female. It'd be neat if we could pick a random one for each character or something, but that's outside my coding ability.

Re: Gender politics

PostPosted: Friday, 10th June 2016, 00:15
by yesno
o really?

i mean i guess tbh they are so similar that i cant really tell the difference anyway