Proposal: Make monster mer* more gender-equitable

[psyshvl]

It seems like the best solution might be to rename mermaids to lesser sirens. That way they are no longer incorrectly associated with merfolk, and there is a more direct connection to the higher-tier sirens. Their descriptions could mention how they're less experienced/competent sirens and thus aren't as effective at mesmerizing or something along those lines.

[Leafsnail]

If the element of female sexuality isn't important, then surely they needn't be maids, right? Presumably either gender could equally represent the dangerous allures of the sea and ocean madness.

They could, but the mythological link wouldn't be as clear.

* Mesmerist

Same problem as mesmerizer, only it's also not a word.

* Drowner (playing up the interaction between mesmerism and water)

Bad, they can't drown you and don't only sirens do the stupid maintain range thing.

* Hunter (playing up the way that the song draws in the prey, e.g. you)

Bad, "hunter" already has a well-understood meaning in crawl due to the class (ranged-fighter) and they don't fit that at all.

* Trapper (ditto)

I'd associate traps with nets, so I don't think this works.

* Intoner (singing theme, but less "ally buffing" implication)

For me "intone" suggests reading in a monotone, and therefore spells. Apparently this word can mean "singer" but I don't think that meaning is too well known.

* Crooner (ditto, with a seductive theme)

I kindof like this one on some level, but it conjures up really weird mental images considering the more modern use of the word. To be honest I think I prefer "singer" to any of these.

Alternately, I'd be happy to take the suggestion to make mermaids into sirens, and sirens into professional sirens of some sort (greater siren?).

I guess that kindof works if they're not meant to be the same species at all.

Here's another way of looking at the problem I have with keeping them as mermaids:
* The only merfolk who can mesmerize are mermaids.
* Mermaids are female merfolk.
* Player merfolk can't mesmerize.
* Thus, player merfolk aren't mermaids.
* Thus, the player is male.

There are ways to get around that (change mermaid description to make it clear that only these specific mermaids get mesmerize).

That seems like an odd line of reasoning. To me it goes:
* If "merfolk" were male-only they'd be called "mermen" (or some other gendered term), rather than the explicitly gender-neutral "merfolk"
* Therefore merfolk are not male-only

[twelwe]

I identify as gender-mistaken (mistaken for another, specific person's gender) and find it offensive that everything. it stands to reason that I should take my frustration and confusion out on an unsuspecting video game community that is otherwise ignorant to these very, very, very important issues: my issues. I will not stop until my needs are statistically met. My posting fingers are ready. My thread submission clicking style has been perfected. To craft the ultimate argument for the ignorant, blind, malicious crawl devs who programmed this game without consideration of my needs is my final goal before I am satisfied enough to leave this pathetic fleshy form once and for all and assume my true identity. It will blow you all away, asexually.

[Arrhythmia]

Otherwise, I think it'd be swell if we could go back to pretending that Crawl is apolitical

Every work of art is political, c'mon. Pretending otherwise is just silly.

e: also everyone who has tried to use deductive logic thus far (both camps) has done a really piss-poor job of it

[wizzzargh]

Every work of art is political, c'mon. Pretending otherwise is just silly.

Behold!

Sigmund billcosby jiyva dcss.jpg (83.97 KiB) Viewed 4874 times

A transjelly Naga and the acceptance-laden Deity Jiyva, an oppressed deity of an oppressed species, are having their multicultural and ethnically diverse union disrupted by the kyriarchal attention of the white, male, oligarch/patriarch Sigmund, who has come to repress them with his giant Phallus-Scythe of Objectification(+6/+9)

I'm gonna blow this up into a poster and march down the street with it next protest, I tell you what. I don't need to call attention to, say, systemic female infanticide, no, it's DCSS fanart that really puts a finger to the heartbeat of injustice endemic in society.

Also, given the suffering of Bile Bears, I think it is insensitive to portray bears in DCSS as enemies to be indiscriminately slain.
Trigger Warning: Humanity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear

[Arrhythmia]

That piece is pretty political, its thesis being "Crawl's difficulty curve is really poor"; not the satirical histrionics you've made, nor the implicit assertion that it (and other, unshown works) are somehow meaningless.

[wizzzargh]

I disagree that the thesis "crawls difficulty curve is really poor" is a "Political" statement, my basis of reasoning being that the working definition of political as I understand it is "of or relating to the government or the public affairs of a country."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Political?s=t

[Arrhythmia]

Your definition is pretty shitty as it leaves out a lot of things that fit the word "political" in a naive sense, e.g., town councils (not a country), businesses (not a country), school boards (not a country), etc.

A better definition would probably involve some mention of "the state" (in the Max Weber sense), but unfortunately thinking these things through is very hard.

[wizzzargh]

"Foucauldian Discourse of Power" is the definition this conversation deserves

But not the one this forum needs

[and into]

Please don't lock this thread. I want to see how long this can keep going.

[tedric]

Um, tedric, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin are both classic anti-slavery books (albeit in very different ways).

Yeah, they're anti-slavery -- I'd have used a pro-slavery book as an example instead, if I'd ever read one -- but my point was that there is still a lot in their depictions of slavery and race that would totally not fly in a book written today, because cultural norms have changed and our values are not entirely the same as Samuel Clemens'.

As for the organization of Crawl merfolk/mermaid society, different players will imagine different things. I think there are opportunities for the dev team to make some interesting choices here, flavor-wise, and part of that could be to make it clearer within the context of the game exactly how/why mer-whatevers are the way they are. I started this thread to try to encourage them to think about breaking out of the narrow and (in my opinion) not particularly interesting theme of mermaid=feminine=sexualized. It was meant as a lighthearted discussion that touched on bigger social issues, and I thought the change I was proposing was pretty innocuous and wouldn't have much impact on gameplay. The fact that the discussion was immediately peppered with so much "wftlulz" and outright hostility is...interesting. As is the total volume of comments it generated. I honestly did not expect it to be this controversial, but I guess that's what I get for using the "other" f-bomb on the internet.

Anyway, I appreciate that you -- and others -- have been able to politely and eloquently disagree about the importance or impact of the proposal. You give the best advice in the Tavern, too, by the way.

[tedric]

I have a question for lasty and those people who notice these gender things in games in general. ... i dont ask myself "why is this a woman and this one a man?" thats not a question that even enters my head. there is nothing here looking me in the face saying "Look at me, i have woman parts" so i dont understand why this is even a thing.

I'm glad the gender thing doesn't bother you. It bothers me some. I think I've made my reasons clear in other posts.

in the end this game is about murder

This might be my favorite comment this thread has generated. Thanks for the reminder that we should all take a deep breath and KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES

(I just happen to like my bloodbath with a side of social justice)

[Siegurt]

Little known fact, merfolk actually have 8 genders. Sex is complicated, don't ask. The similarity to humans is purely superficial and was evolved over the years to take advantage of sailors (Merfolk's favorite prey) they can appear to be female or male humans, whatever will lure their prey to a quick drowning death and thereby into Merfolk's waiting gullet.

[savageorange]

@ Siegurt: You're probably joking, but that actually sounds kind of cool, good world building. Making each element of the game more distinct is a definite positive.

@Leafsnail

If the element of female sexuality isn't important, then surely they needn't be maids, right? Presumably either gender could equally represent the dangerous allures of the sea and ocean madness.

They could, but the mythological link wouldn't be as clear.

* Mesmerist

Same problem as mesmerizer, only it's also not a word.

You're incorrect. It is a word, which essentially is a synonym for 'hypnotist'. Hypnotist is the version which -isn't- named after Franz Mesmer .
Oddly, we also have 'mesmerism', but that -doesn't- (primarily) mean the same as 'hypnotism'. English..

...

Honestly, reading all these candidates makes me wonder, why not singer or bard? We already have bardic allusions in the form of Skalds.

Alternately, I'd be happy to take the suggestion to make mermaids into sirens, and sirens into professional sirens of some sort (greater siren?).

I guess that kindof works if they're not meant to be the same species at all.

That proposition also seems fine to me.

Two issues are mixed up here, clarity and social respect. It's true that you can find plenty of insanely reactive social-justice types (and the OP somewhat echoed the more excessive behaviours of these, so that really didn't help much).
But I hope that we have established by now that clarity is a concern because 'mermaid' does not communicate 'will mesmerize you' to all players; we have some culture in common but not all of it (even within this small domain).

Here's another way of looking at the problem I have with keeping them as mermaids:
* The only merfolk who can mesmerize are mermaids.
* Mermaids are female merfolk.
* Player merfolk can't mesmerize.
* Thus, player merfolk aren't mermaids.
* Thus, the player is male.

The errors in that chain of reasoning are:
* it hasn't been established that merfolk are, in fact, male. Their current descriptions seem like they are intended to be gender neutral (compare merfolk/merfolk aquamancer descriptions). If 'man' is not intended to be used in the classical sense that basically equates to 'human', then I would expect to see some evidence of that. (I'd prefer 'human' in any case, since 'man' used in that sense is somewhat anachronistic feeling)
* it HAS been established that merfolk and mermaids are considered separate species. I have no idea why this is the case, but it is. So player merfolk already, by definition, are not mermaids, and there is no basis for deducing the player's sex from that.

@wizzargh:
Honestly, that's a nice bit of art. Especially with the bottom half hidden under the scroller. I kept trying to find Sigmund and thought.. 'surely this jelly-girl is not supposed to be Sigmund??' (It's cause of the hair, btw.. that is very jelly-looking hair)

@ApsychicRat:
First off Crawl is remarkably gender neutral. So naturally non-gender-neutrality is noticable.
But particularly if gender has been a problem in your life -- people attacking you for doing things that don't match their ideas of 'proper behaviour for X gender', dysmorphia.... -- then you are liable to be hyper aware of these issues, because you are in the position of frequently defending against attacks on your sense of self via this type of idea. I know that is true for me. Generally Crawl is the only game I can play without much eyerolling.
(which is not to say that I haven't/don't play other games. It's just that I feel unable to fully engage with those games -- a part of me is busy managing toleration of the offensive parts.)

[Kismet]

Surely if you want to morally sanitize crawl there are many other places to start. Why the half measure? Why not write a sweeping proposal that would remove the violence, the cannibalism, the human sacrifice, the capitalism, etc.

[savageorange]

^ Please refrain from strawmen. This topic is addressed at Mer* and preserving Crawl's preexisting general gender neutrality, that's all it covers. OP could have been less preachy about it, but did not go beyond these parameters.

[amethystdeceivers]

This discussion is terrible but the original proprosal seems reasonable to my mind.

[Lacuenta]

I wonder why no-one has come up with the argument that gender based un-equality is quite prevelant in our world especially in marine life, maybe merman just don't have the skills/glands to lure sailors with their singing....... They sit at home on the couch drinking beer, playing crawl!

[red_kangaroo]

Actually, shouldn't we also have Afroamerican Mefolk, Caucasian type Merfolk etc. for true correctness?