Oh lord what a bunch of cringe. Who fucking cares? About any of this? There’s so much awful shit in the world and so many people spending their time worrying about the absolute nothing issues of the world.
I’m finding it very difficult to phrase this comment. I want to share my thoughts, but I know that if I am perceived as a bigot, everything I say will be seen as something to be defeated rather than understood. But tiptoeing around the subject doesn’t convey my meaning any better. So please, give me the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear me out.
I think what nexus is doing here is inappropriate. Mods, by their very existence, give players choice. Even this one: it means players can now choose he or she or to not be asked at all. Nexus, by removing this mod, is exerting what influence they have to eliminate that choice.
Nexus has considerable influence. For many games, particularly Bethesda games, they are seen as the default and complete source of mods. When looking for new mods to install, most people wouldn’t bother checking other sites since everything is on nexus. If players aren’t aware a mod exists, in other words they are unaware an option exists, that hinders them from making that choice. Also, their vortex mod manager makes installing mods from nexus super simple. By removing the mod from their site, they are making installing the mod at least a little bit more difficult.
I have seen multiple people posit here that removing the mod is fine because it does something so silly and pointless that no one should care about it. But we all care about silly, pointless things from time to time. I have spent days comparing all of the ways of getting unified GTK and QT themes on my desktop to try and get them just right. That was entirely pointless. But I wanted it that way, so I made it that way. I don’t have to justify it to anyone, and neither do the users of this mod. Installing the mod will only affect their game, no one else even has to know about it. Nexus’ decision does effect other people. They do have to justify themselves. Removing the mod is telling people they must select a pronoun. If it is really so pointless, nexus shouldn’t have bothered removing the mod.
People also claim that the political implications made by the mod are dangerous, and must be suppressed. I know you’ll roll your eyes at me, but yes: I’m making the free speech argument. It really is important though. If we, as a society and as individuals, accept suppressing speech for it’s ideological contents, then we are begging the question: which ideas are ok, and which aren’t? The ability to control public discourse is powerful, and highly coveted by anyone who wants to bend society to their will. It has been done before, and we know how horrible the consequences can be. It is incredibly dangerous. Answering that question at all is only justifiable in the face of a comparable danger. Is the idea of not being asked one’s pronouns really a comparable danger? Nexus seems to think so.
Of course, free speech also protects Nexus’ right to control what they put on their platform. I am not saying they shouldn’t have that right. But nexus is a platform, not a person. They position their site not as a place for them to share their own content, but for others to share theirs. Any modification to the contents of their site is a modification to other people’s speech, not just Nexus’s. They ought to use their capability in this regard responsibly and sparingly. Their actions here are neither.
I thought that others here on Lemmy believed in the same principles I do. That people should have total control over their own software and activities with it. That neither corporations nor governments should take any action to unduly control what they do with their own property. The belief in FOSS and decentralization seemed to go hand in hand with that. But if something like this can make you all turn on those principles, then maybe the resemblance wasn’t even skin deep.
“Free speech” means you will not be captured by the cops because of your opinion. Private entities are free to enforce any restrictions they want on their site. If you disagree with them, simply stop using the site, like we did with Reddit.
It wasn’t removed because of the pronouns though. It was removed because the mod description violated their community policies.
There are plenty of mods just like it that the site keeps up. Dozens of mods even remove black characters from games, which is way worse. The difference is, those mods don’t write long rants about how much they hate minorities and liberals in their descriptions.
To be entirely fair, if it’s not the mods content itself, but the description, that got it removed, that should probably be clarified front and center. That’s a pretty big shift from the mod being removed based on it’s simple existence.
This finally explains it. I was about to write something similar as the comment you are replying to, because it did felt like a totally unnecessary PR stunt of another corporation that only exploits the issue for publicity, and I really hate that.
But if the mod description was as bad as you say, then removing it was the right move.
It wasn’t removed because of the pronouns though. It was removed because the mod description violated their community policies.
There are plenty of mods just like it that the site keeps up. Dozens of mods even remove black characters from games, which is way worse. The difference is, those mods don’t write long rants about how much they hate minorities and liberals in their descriptions.
if that’s true then it makes sense
Edit: I just found out about the spider man pride flag removal mod debacle and read the official statement by Nexus Mods: www.nexusmods.com/news/14733
In regards to the replacement of Pride flags in this game, or any game, our policy is thus: we are for inclusivity, we are for diversity. If we think someone is uploading a mod on our site with the intent to deliberately be against inclusivity and/or diversity then we will take action against it. The same goes for people attempting to troll other users with mods deliberately to cause a rise. For our part, we will endeavour to do a better job of moderating our website to this ethos ourselves.
We aren’t the authority on what users can and cannot mod. Us removing a mod only means it cannot be found at Nexus Mods, nothing more, nothing less. We also note that we are not the only site that has removed this mod from their platform. As a private business, we have a right to choose what content we do and do not want to host on our platform. Respect this right the same way you want respect for your rights.
By Nexus Mods’ own words they will take action against anti diversity/inclusivity mods and actively take a stance on what kinds of mods are allowed on Nexus Mods.
So regardless of what the mod descriptions may or may not have said, it seems Nexus Mods would’ve deleted this pronoun removal mod as well.
These aren’t mods I would’ve bothered using (and I don’t even play these games either) but Nexus Mods trying to police what mods players are allowed to use is pretty shit.
The great thing about mods is they only affect the people who choose to get them and gives everyone more choices to change games to what they want, and I don’t think anyone should try to force what kinds of mods are allowed or not.
The whole point of modding is that you find something you don’t like or think could’ve been improved in some way, so you change it to your preference.
The fact that you wrote that wall of text just to not get attacked speaks volumes of the current state of progressivism in this place, you can’t say anything and you are walking on eggshells.
And are these “progressives” in the room now? No, they’re clearly not. Nobody is attacking him and he’s not even being downvoted.
He wrote the wall of text because he has the self awareness to know that the comment he is writing is functionally identical to what a far-right reactionary “hiding their power level” would write.
He wrote the wall of text because he has the self awareness to know that the comment he is writing is functionally identical to what a far-right reactionary “hiding their power level” would write
This paragraph is the funniest shit I have read today.
if you’re having trouble comprehending what he wrote in a few sentences, perhaps your bot needs more tokens to parse what he’s putting out, for humans it’s incredibly straight forward.
Did they edit your comment too where you quoted them?
In case you edit your comment, the quote was
He wrote the wall of text because he has the self awareness to know that the comment he is writing is functionally identical to what a far-right reactionary “hiding their power level” would write
This is not a place of acceptance. This is a left wing echo chamber. You either tow the narrative or GTFO.
I think of myself as very moderate. I’m neither supportive of right wing horse shit or the lefts batshit insanity. I’ll get downvoted into oblivion every time for pointing out this place being extreme left, or for making any comment that doesn’t align strictly with the narrative taking points.
what exactly is the left’s batshit insanity in this instance? literally that the game lets you pick your pronouns?
did you know that fallout: a post-nuclear role playing game (1997) also allowed you to do this? a few other games that have let you do this are fallout 2 (1998), mass effect (2007), fallout 3 (2008), mass effect 2 (2010), skate 3 (2010), the elder scrolls 5: skyrim (2011 and also every year since), mass effect 3 (2013), fallout 4 (2015), sonic forces (2017), mass effect andromeda (2017), cyberpunk 2077 (2020), trackmania 2020 (2020), and literally every other game ever to feature a character creator. if this is batshit insanity, then i can’t wait to find out what you think of unions.
Dude I thought reddit was leftist and then I came here. Funny thing is I’m a pansy lefty European (believe in social healthcare, UBI and all that good stuff) yet this place is a bit much for me.
What narrative talking points? Gay people exist, trans people exists. There’s nothing political about that. If you think otherwise you need to adjust thinking of yourself as a moderate.
I think what nexus is doing here is inappropriate. Mods, by their very existence, give players choice. Even this one: it means players can now choose he or she or to not be asked at all. Nexus, by removing this mod, is exerting what influence they have to eliminate that choice.
I don’t think you’re a bigot, but I also think you’re off the mark.
First off, the mod has quite literally zero value. Installing it is more work than ignoring an option during character creation. I constantly ignore options I don’t care about during character creation, it really isn’t hard. It’s hard to interpret the intent of the creator of the mod, as well as its users, as anything else but being out for blood.
That alone though isn’t a reason to remove the mod – Nexus is full of useless mods. But something neat happens when you do nuke the mod: Bigots come out of the woodwork, you can ban them in one fell stroke, and thereby lessen your moderation load in the long term.
I am now totally confused as to what is even going on. After reading multiple top level comments, many responses and then reading the article (gasp I know… blasphemy) I can’t tell if conservatives are mad about pronouns being an option or not being an option. Many of the comments made it sound like they added pronouns, the way the article is written makes it sound like they removed the ability to choose pronouns.
So which is it. Who is mad, and why exactly?
Edit: Okay, maybe I understand now. Someone created a mod that removed pronouns. The place that hosts mod downloads, removed that mod from their list of downloads. Now people are mad it was removed. Do I have that right? If so, my only remaining question is if one were to use the mod, does it mean others not using the mod can’t see their pronoun(s)?
I think this is the reply that prompted me to reply at the top of the post. Does your edit mean I was of some help? You appear to have the right of it, yes.
As to your second question: what mod loadout a player has will have zero bearing on another’s experience. If one were to use the mod, others would not be affected.
Apparently it defaults to the one matching your phenotype. The game gave you the option to change it if you felt like it. The mod removed that option and may have had a rant against the existence of LGBT+ people in its description and that description was the cause for removal (I can't verify since it was removed, but that's what others have said).
Selecting the sex of the PC has been a standard feature in practically every RPG with character creator ever, and definitely in Bethesda RPGs, what they added is an option to change pronouns the PC is referred to by NPCs from the default. If you want them to match you simply don’t touch that option, done.
From a developer’s perspective it’s dead simple, similar in triviality as allowing people to mix+match any voice to any body type. Cyberpunk’s free choice of genitals needs some implementation care but if you’re planning for it from the start it’s also easy.
Where things get more complicated is things like dresses for male bodies, especially if you don’t have any shape keys in place. But if you use one body mesh for everything and simply shape key it into male and female then it’s again no issue (you also need to lerp animations then, probably, male and female bodies walk differently because hips). Basically it’s hard if your asset pipeline is simple, if the pipeline is sophisticated it’s easy.
Removing the mod is telling people they must select a pronoun.
No, it defaults to body type.
This option is literally nothing to people who don’t care - and the people who care enough to dislike it, are assholes. They have their private reasons and their private reasons are bad. Bigotry is not an OK idea. We’ve had that discussion, it went very predictably, and it has a right answer. We don’t need to endlessly litigate whether we’ve been too harsh about demonstrable bigotry.
A website saying ‘no thank you’ to an act of petty bigotry is a non-event. There is no fucking danger in moderation excluding that. That’s what moderation… is. That’s why we have human beings reviewing stuff, instead of offering an unfiltered pile of everything all the time.
In this context of moderation: game modifications must successfully and safely do something useful. This fails on two out of three points. It successfully removes a feature. But that feature is easily ignored with no side effects or consequences, and the blindingly obvious motivation behind its removal is overt sexual prejudice. While safe in the sense that it won’t brick your computer, it’s plainly a threatening message to the people who use this feature - it is dehumanizing. It is treating the possibility of their existence as something intolerable, to be excised. To be physically removed.
You can still install this stupid mod. It hasn’t been erased from reality. It’s just not approved on one website with clear rules against exactly that sort of thing. Making bad things harder to do is not some betrayal of your right to make terrible decisions. A lot of things that are possible have barriers for good reasons.
And none of you grasping at freedom as an excuse to entertain bigotry seem remember - we all have a right to freedom of association. We don’t want to deal with that shit. You can’t make us, and still pretend you care about choice.
I’m pretty sure the vanilla game has the option to choose pronouns that conform to whatever your feelings about gender are. So choose that option and play the game.
Why should Nexus devote resources to a mod that removes options from a game? There’s no point to this mod for anyone that’s of sound mind. The only reason for it’s existence is some petty bullshit from people that hate trans people so much they will install a mod in a feeble attempt to feel like they hurt people in some small way.
If the mod just totally skipped character creation and the goal was to just save time, I could see the purpose. But its clearly not there to save anyone time; its just there as an excuse to tirade against certain demographics for existing.
I’m pretty sure the vanilla game has the option to choose pronouns that conform to whatever your feelings about gender are.
If you’re a hardcore heteronormie, congrats, the default behavior of the game conforms with your worldview. Simply choose a male or female body, and don’t even touch the pronouns. They’re automatically what they’re “supposed” to be.
I do not understand this debacle at all. 100% of people against the inclusion of pronouns—USE A PREFERRED PRONOUN. I guarantee if I called one these man children a “her” they’d lose their little minds.
I can tell you definitively that yes, this debate hurts people. Sending the statement that it’s a valid point of view to consider trans people mentally ill (or worse) harms people. If you look at how our existence is being debated and the consequences of that you would have to be very privileged to not see a problem.
This isn’t a court of law and I’m not arguing the statutes. I don’t like unilateral censorship in any form and I’d be equally butt hurt if they banned a mod to include pronouns.
Bear in mind we are both here because of the actions of a private corpo.
Imagine if they removed a mod that included pronouns.
A mod that makes other people feel included is NOT on the same level as a mod that deliberately excludes them. There’s a massive difference here.
The pronoun removing mod is a pretty blatant message of hate and deserves to be moderated as such. People can go on about freedom of speech blah blah blah, but no one is required to include you in their community if you’re being mean and hateful. That’s exactly what happened here.
If you don’t want to feel excluded then don’t install the mod.
I don’t understand why people argue for less options that don’t affect them.
No one is forcing the mod on you. Is it really that harmful that it exists?
I don’t give 2 shits if a mod exists that makes everyone in the game trans or gay or anything else. I’m just not going to install the mod unless it improves the game in some way or it sounds like it would make the game more interesting with alternative play styles or something.
I’m never going to argue that the mod I’m not interested in should be removed because it’s not reinforcing my beliefs.
Tolerance goes both ways. I tolerate your beliefs and you tolerate mine.
That tolerance doesn’t exist in this woke reality we are enduring at the moment. Anything that doesn’t repeat the correct narrative is subjected to cancel culture. It’s always my way or the highway.
No one is forcing the mod on you. Is it really that harmful that it exists?
Yes, in very much the same way that hate speech is moderated out of communities, and for good reason. Allowing this stuff to exist is basically saying that this is okay when it frankly isn’t. Imagine if there was a mod out there that removed your entire race and culture out of the game. How would that make you feel if you were just scrolling through the list of mods? It’s just a shitty statement to make.
We moderate things like the N-word and antisemitic Nazi bullshit out of forums all the time. This is the exact same thing and if you can’t see that, well frankly you’re probably in a position of privilege.
Tolerance goes both ways. I tolerate your beliefs and you tolerate mine.
This argument is frequently used by the intolerant to justify their actions. The one’s who identify as they aren’t the ones going around telling those who identify as he or she that they’re wrong. It’s the other way around. You’re completely misidentifying who’s being intolerant here.
I don’t know how to do the cool quote thing you did but I’ll answer in order.
I don’t care if you want to edit my race out of your game. It has zero effect on me. It’s your private game. Why would I care? If I don’t like the mod it I just won’t install it. I’m never going to intervene to stop you from enjoying your game the way you want just because I don’t agree or like it.
This argument is just trying to find reasons to be offended.
I’ll give you an example that will definitely trigger you. I play HOI4. That game is a historical WW2 game. The game does not have an accurate flag for Germany because it’s symbol is not allowed to be shown in Germany. I always use a mod to put the proper Nazi flag in the game because I want my historical game to be representitive of the period. Denying me the ability to use it doesn’t make the historical event suddenly not happen. It happened. Am I suddenly a Nazi supporter because I want my war game to reflect reality?
Im not out Heil Hitlering, or calling for the deaths of millions of Jews. I’m just playing was war game in the privacy of my own home.
I’m not American so the N word has very little meaning to me. I think it’s stupid that people can’t even write the word without being banned. How are you supposed to talk about it. It’s rediculous. If your skin colour is the right shade then you can go around saying the forbidden word at will?? Honestly I’m never going to say it because it’s not part of my cultural norm anyway.
In Australia the racist word people used for indigenous was ‘coon’. I’ve never used it and I never will. Ive not even heard anyone use it since maybe the 80s when a kid was trying to be an edgelord. Do I think the word should be banned internationally just because some wankers used it 30+ years ago? No. If you’re using it in a hateful way against someone or a people, then sure, that bastard should face some consequences.
I’m just never going to support blanket banning activities or words for everyone because of a few bad actors.
I think that’s a terrible idea.
Now we are onto the apparently oppressed rich western people that want to be called some idiotic pronouns like xi, or horse person or some other BS. I’m not doing it. It’s too stupid.
If someone wants to be called she instead of he, then whatever, I’ll call them it. It causes me no harm and I really don’t care. Live your best life.
Blocking a person from modifying their game because you don’t like the idea? That’s Nazi book burning philosophy right there. If you can’t see it irony then I don’t know what to say to you. You think your in the right, but your actually to oppressor, even if you think it’s with good intentions.
If you’re using it in a hateful way against someone or a people, then sure, that bastard should face some consequences.
That’s exactly what the creator of this mod intended and its hilarious that you don’t see that.
In Australia the racist word people used for indigenous was ‘coon’. I’ve never used it and I never will.
Think about it this way. There’s a reason why you don’t use it, right? There’s a reason why your friends don’t use it. If one of your friends uses it all the time to hate on others, would you be okay with that? If its as offensive as you say it is and I have no reason to doubt otherwise, would you want to be associated with that? Probably not. You’re making conscious decisions every day about who you want to hang out with, who you want to be associated with. You’ve cultivated your own community of people who you like and want to hang out with.
That’s exactly what Nexus Mods is doing. They want to cultivate a community that’s gender inclusive. They don’t want to deal with people who aren’t, nor give them a platform to do so. They’re within their right to do so.
Just because Nexus Mods is an online community doesn’t mean it’s different from real life. That’s what people fail to understand.
The reason some things get downvoted, is that they’re factually incorrect, morally intolerable, or just plain incoherent. Reasons matter. The fact it’s “your opinion” means nothing. Some opinions are bad, actually.
What you’re doing is a finger-curling argument. ‘Oh what, is curling your finger a crime?! I’m in trouble cuz I went like this?!’ Sir - you shot your wife.
How about names. Do you call Muhammad Ali still Cassius Clay? Just because that’s the name he was given at birth. Should people not have the right to change their name? Like it is here in Germany. And what exactly do you consider stupid about the pronouns them or they? I think they (!) are just normal pronouns, aren’t they? And for quite some time they are regularly used to replace single persons, if the gender of that person isn‘t known. I know that because when that started I was totally confused because I had learned different at school in the 70s.
My only take on the pronoun thing is please don’t get mad at me and go into lecture mode if I forget your preferred pronouns for a second. It’s essentially muscle memory, and I will already feel bad about it just by your facial expression from the mistake.
People generally shouldn’t get mad as long as you’re behaving in good faith. It’s like accidentally calling someone by the wrong name, you just apologise and correct your mistake.
Trans and non-binary people often get portrayed as if they’re monsters, but most are reasonable people who can understand mistakes and are capable of accepting apologies.
The more I think about all of this, the more rude I find even using pronouns instead of their name in general… are there certain sayings in English that generally require defaulting to pronouns? I am having a hard time coming up with many.
(Yes I am aware of the fact I used a pronoun to type this, but it’s not directed to a specific audience)
Generally speaking, it’s awkward in English (or even weird) to constantly use the Proper Noun every single time you refer to a person.
Simplest example is “Jim got into his car”. “Jim got into Jim’s car” is strange. And that’s within a single sentence. Properly in English, we use gendered pronouns for all unambiguous references to a person several sentences in a row. For example:
“Jim got into his car. He turned it on, and hit the gas. When he saw a red light, he stopped quickly. Jim got impatient, and honked on the horn”. That would be entirely proper, and virtually none of those pronouns should be replaced with Jim’s proper name.
Thank you. This explained how pronouns would be used, at first I always imagined you would be taking to “jim”, bur after reading I could see where you may be telling a story about “Jim” to others as a third party. I know that sounds dumb, but I never claimed to be smart.
I appreciate you taking the effort to comment instead of just downvoting like some others.
Not a problem. People don’t usually think about pronouns. We could circumvent a lot of confusion if there were an agreeable gender-neutral pronoun in English… But people have gone back and forth about the only one we have (“they”) enough that it rubs both sides wrong. Gendering a person in a sentence rarely disambiguates… it only maters if you have a conversation with exactly 1 male and female subject and ZERO genderable objects.
A man and a woman sitting in a boat, for example, and “her” still might be ambiguous.
Personally, it’s nbd when people slip up - especially people who’ve known me for a very long time pre-transition. Oftentimes they correct themselves, and I usually feel worse that they feel bad about it. It’s pretty easy to tell when it’s intentional or not, and I reserve my ire for people who clearly mean disrespect.
Though, I should say, that’s now - early on in transition, it was certainly a bit harder to take. It reminded me of very fresh family abandonment and abuse over my identity. That’s not on the people who accidentally called me by the wrong pronoun, but it certainly could put me in a pretty bad place and I’m sure I wasn’t the friendliest in those moments. The more that trans folks are supported by their friends and family, the more secure they feel and the less likely they are to react strongly to being accidentally misgendered, imo.
But what the anti-trans people tend to miss when making the “offended every mis-gender” is the wide gulf of difference between being hurt and being offended. I’ve known people in Emergency Services who had PTSD triggered by off-color comments that reminded them of something they lived through (things like “he’ll have your head for this”… you can imagine why).
They weren’t offended by those off-color comments. They were hurt. And those of us who care about them are careful not to say things that hurt those we love. But if we do slip up, we know and they know that it wasn’t out of malice, and nobody is offended.
…except the people who want to call you by your deadname because hurting you makes them feel good. They are offended, and they want to hurt you. And nobody should be making excuses for them. Dozens of people here are, and that’s a shame.
NexusMods is a private company with their own conditions for using their services.
You are not entitled to anything on others’ properties, including your ability to speak.
There is no freedom of speech here on lemmy.world either for you, they can restrict and block your posts from being seen by others, still their rights to do so.
People say Lemmy isn’t a hivemind but the reaction to your comment proves that this is not the case.
I’m pro choice either way. If people want to identify as they, them, it. It’s up to them. If people want the option to remove that from their game it’s also up to them. Who cares either way.
This is the wrong take tbh. It isn’t about censorship. The mod itself is a message of hate and deserves to be moderated as such, just like on any other platform.
Imagine if you were scrolling through NexusMods and you saw a mod that removed characters of your ethnicity or race from the game, or maybe a mod that added say Nazi symbols or something. How would that make you feel? Mods get removed over inappropriate content all the time, this is no different.
or maybe a mod that added say Nazi symbols or something.
You know there are WW2 games that have mods that do exactly this, right? Specifically because they don’t use Nazi imagery to refer to Nazi Germany because that imagery is illegal in Germany so they use substitute imagery that’s Germany-safe to represent Nazi Germany, because that’s cheaper than managing two editions where one is historically accurate and the other is Germany-friendly. For an example of this, see Hearts of Iron.
Then you get mods that restore the historically correct imagery.
Lol I feel like you’re just proving my point. The question isn’t whether these mods exist. Of course they do. But an entire country has made such symbolism illegal specifically because its a bad part of their past and they find it offensive. They’re within their right to do so and so is Nexus Mods. Nexus Mods are allowed to remove whatever content they find offensive to cultivate the community that they want.
It’s not censorship when private groups are doing it. Moreso, I think the entire world has figured out the right answer to the Paradox of Tolerance is intolerance (yes, even censorship).
There are two reasons said censorship is okay.
Those who hold to these extreme beliefs are happy to censor the opposing viewpoint whether we censor them or not. They see the idea of trans human rights as unworthy of protection.
So long as you allow a false belief to spread, there will always be adherents. When it is a harmful belief, that makes even innocent-seeming propagation of that belief genuinely harmful… which by every moral tradition (and most legal ones) is sufficient to override freedom of speech.
Remember, there is no free speech absolutism where all speech is protected. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying or ignorant. What we’re arguing about is whether to draw the line at malicious behavior that is already more harmful than speech many of us are already against.
And from your “don’t want stupid pronouns in my game”, you show you’ve fallen for bullet point #2.
I’m non-binary and I’m afraid to express my gender in public. It’s good to know I should also be afraid to express my gender in a VIDEO GAME (points for realism I guess).
This mod “impinge” on NexusMod’s rights, it’s their private service and they have the right to set conditions on it. One of which, mods cannot remove diversity.
It’s as simple as that. The people can go elsewhere to find the same mod or share it among themselves.
As for Iran statement, are you serious? There are people getting murdered in USA for even being non-binary. Even “binary” people are getting shot for being inclusive. Like this one www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/us/…/index.html
Let me guess, you don’t have any trans friends. Probably don’t have any gay friends, either.
I know no fewer than 5 people who have been physically assaulted over their sexuality or their gender identity. My local pro-LGBTQ church was vandalized by people who left messages about how god hates them.
You deserve all those downvotes you’re complaining about if you really believe that non-binary people in the Western world aren’t reasonably afraid to express their gender.
And as for “how it relates to…a game”. Can you imagine being Jewish and a bunch of pro-nazi mods made it to the frontpage of your favorite game? Can you imagine if then everyone started bitching because the site took those hateful mods down?
Games, as online communities, are used to “innocently” draw people towards extreme beliefs.
I swear to god, every time i hear about conservatives getting upset about gay and trans rights I’m more convinced it’s projection. They want to have the freedom to follow their own preferences but have been taught by someone in their family and/or society that certain preferences are completely unacceptable. Rather than go against the grain, they lean into the hate side of it. “If i can’t have that, you sure as hell can’t–and if you do, you’re gonna pay dearly” seems to be the philosophy. All this because they want to explore their sexuality but they decided the social price is too much. Not allowed to have what they crave, now they just scorn those that are brave enough to face the storm they themselves avoided…or they just hate people having freedom. Probably both.
It’s only anecdotal, but a lot of the people I know who were hateful like that while growing up actually did come out as LGBTQ+. Some were trans, some were gay, some were bi, etc.
Some of them are just a-holes though. One dude complained about a gay classmate. He never liked it when I asked him why he was thinking about what the other guy was doing with his bits so much. I’ve always thouht it was a fair question. I never did get an answer, though.
I think they want what trans, gay, lesbians, etc have. In terms of resources, jobs, money, social contacts and status. So, just like it happened with religion, they highlight the difference between you and them. Tribes created. Now it’s a Us against Them where them are different, so not human, inferior. If they are not human we can do whatever we want to them. And the rights start to be eroded. People arrested. We can go further down the line but you know what happens next. The Them get eliminated and the Us get the resources. We’ve seen this happen for ages.
Their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. All that has ever mattered is ingroup loyalty. Reality itself is defined by interpersonal trust. What’s true today is simply dictated by people above you in The Hierarchy, and your job is to make whatever mouth noises justify them. If they weren’t right and better and handsome then obviously they wouldn’t belong in that high position. It is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. That would require an objective means of evaluating claims. In their worldview, that is not what claims are for.
This constant quest for logical explanations is a category error. Logic is not what they’re doing. They think the whole world runs on who-says. Like if they get their guy to be the head scientist, he could make the sun go around the Earth.
I don’t think your idea precludes the idea conservatives are bitter about their own self-repression. The social cost of exploration being too high is flip side of the strict adherence to hierarchy for world view. If there wasn’t some emotion to tap into the narrative wouldn’t land nearly as well as it has
I did. This whole conservative theory-of-everything has been pinging around my brain for years, as many answers to ‘what the fuck are they doing’ became undeniably incomplete.
The hardest aspect to deal with is that this worldview is not fragile. There’s no ‘are we the baddies?’ moment where someone snaps out of it. If it was just a reverse cargo cult, there’d be more people who reject the invitation. So we can’t tell ourselves these people secretly know we’re right. This is not an act or a strategy. It has to be some internally consistent way of filtering events… and it has to look like what we’re doing, from the outside. Because in exactly the same way we tell ourselves everyone’s trying to be reasonable - they tell themselves we’re just performing loyalty.
It’s tribalism. Simple as that. It’s humanity’s default us-good-you-bad protect-the-village mindset, expanded from trusting your witch-doctor’s opinion on leeches to trusting your news anchor’s opinion on horse dewormer. I mean, he’s gotta be right. Look how much money he has. His penis must be enormous.
The thing is it’s only just tangentially related to trans rights. I mean they’re making a character creation screen and they do need to know what pronouns to refer to the character as in game dialog as the player is playing it. So they need to know that for the game to work.
These fools seem to want Bethesda to add logic to restrict the pronouns on the character creation screen. So it’s not that they’re angry that Bethesda made an effort to be inclusive. They’re angry that Bethesda didn’t put in an effort to explicitly exclude trans people.
That and I think they’re just generally triggered over the word “pronoun.” Triggered by words that describe words. There’s something very wrong with these people.
Have you read Terry Pratchetts book Thud? It touches on that briefly. For what its worth i agree with you. Nothing else makes sense. Especially when so many vocal homophobes get caught having same-sex fun.
People will eventually stop giving a fuck. This same shit happened in 1954 w/gay people. Gay people started suing and winning, and society moved forward.
We’ll likely see the same thing. Generally, it has to get worse before things get better. Back then, it started when scientists got fed up with getting their buttholes inspected by “security” to make sure they weren’t gay today (embellishing a bit here, but the gist is that they got fed up with the constant fear mongering and told the security teams to fuck off).
I’m sure we’ll reach a fever pitch and then someone will tell them to fuck off, as is usual. Then everyone will forget about it, save for some older folks.
Check out the Lavender Scare: the prosecution of gays and lesbians in the federal goverment by David K Johnson. It’s an uplifting book on how social movements get going and how it provides a sea change for society at large, even straight folks, in this case.
To be clear, there’s 50 years from 1954 to when gay marriage was first legalized. And 40 years ago, we even thought we were done with the whole abortion debate. Don’t even need to get into how long it took for people with Brown skin were legally treated anywhere near equal. BLM was how many years after the Emancipation? And still opposed by people who “want to leave it all well alone”. It’s a big deal that it takes that long to enact minimal change (considering we have a seated SCOTUS Justice who said we need to reconsider the constitutionality of gay marriage)
The real problem, perhaps, is everyone coming to the defense of the modder, even here. People saying “just let people do what they do” (see highly upvoted comment here). If the intolerant side “do what they do” and the rest of us get bored or sick of the human rights side, then it takes 50 years, or 100 years, or more to make meaningful change.
Rather than go against the grain, they lean into the hate side of it. “If i can’t have that, you sure as hell can’t–and if you do, you’re gonna pay dearly” seems to be the philosophy.
Making a game mod that only effects people who choose to install it seems like a poor strategy for achieving that.
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
I made a trans character in cyberpunk because haha look a penis and boobies, Apparently Diego is now in a gay relationship with Sam…something about Sam and Cora (i find them adoreable, i’m just sad i can’t give her all the books i steal) made me prefer them and…well i’m gay it seems lol.
Gender identity is only political because conservatives made it political. Choice of pronouns shouldn’t be political. What gender you are shouldn’t be political. These people make it political and then it has to be removed from apolitical discussions. Just like how climate change has been made political, it’s not, we’re all going to fucking die, that’s not political.
I, for one, am very upset at seeing politics in muh game that includes mercenaries, piracy, loan sharking, corporate espionage, religious extremism, terrorism, war crimes, gang warfare, drug addiction, poverty, shoplifting, mass shootings, genetic engineering, environmentalism, atheism, corruption, philanthropy, smuggling, …
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
If you’re playing games for escapism, play a simple puzzle game, or a racing game, or maybe Minecraft. Flight Simulator. Tetris. Rocket League.
Any game that attempts to build a believable world is going to get political occasionally, because a believable world has class politics, war, struggles between technology and the natural world, etc. etc. etc. Even a game like Ratchet & Clank doesn’t shy away from the politics inherent in its world-building. Truly incredible how “Gamers” have gone from an edgy subculture that reveled in right-wing panic to a seething mass of bloated man-babies who can’t even handle being confronted with ideas.
These people would prefer if you use random made up politics in line with the world it is set in.
Instead of real world politics dragged into a fantasy setting. That’s why i can understand their point just because i understand where they come from doesn’t mean i agree with it or support them.
Heck i made a transgender in cyberpunk because i can, a lot can be said about that too. I don’t give a damn about what people want, just do it but accept that not everyone is going to like it nor agree with it and if you can’t deal with that then do not do it…you are not strong enough to cope with the downsides.
I’m guessing your first language isn’t English, in fact judging by your comment history, I’d say you’re Dutch. Anyway, those words are adjectives in English, and using them as nouns is often perceived as impolite. You’d want to say “I made a transgender character” instead.
To confused people exploring from all Communities trying to understand what the hell is going on:
Bethesda is a game studio who does a decent job of giving people choice to do/be whatever they want in their games. Out of the box they included the option to choose your pronouns in a new game called “Starfield”.
They also make it possible to modify their games to make very drastic changes to the player experience.
Nexus is a site that hosts thousands of mods to all sorts of games. People make mods, upload them to Nexus and players download them.
Someone made a mod to remove the option to choose pronouns from Starfield.
Nexus decided they don’t want to host this mod. It’s hurtful to people and goes against their values of inclusivity.
That’s about it. Most of the people whinging about censorship don’t even play the game. They’re just here to whinge about how the world is moving on from old bigoted ways and they want to stay in the past and be jerks to people for merely existing. If they actually cared, they’d just download the mod from some other site. The mod itself is probably not much bigger than this reply.
In undue fairness, a mod to downgrade nudity or vulgarity would kinda make sense, if someone personally didn’t want to see that. (Or if they were concerned about it for streaming. Or they had kids in the room.) For example, there’s some racial slur graffiti in Bioshock Infinite that is used for highly effective shock value and characterization, and I could see someone wanting to tone it down.
The root issue is what’s being removed: the abstract possibility of characters being called “him” or “her” independent of their appearance. To people who won’t use the feature, it is literally nothing. It simply does not exist beyond a checkbox they’ll scroll clean past. The game part of the game will work exactly as they expect, from start to finish.
They’re whining about censorship because the real purpose of this mod is to signal that they’re against anyone else having that option.
They are performatively upset by this trivial separation of character model and branch condition. Because they hate trans people. There is no other possible motivation, because this pointless change is simple and direct.
This removal is a website telling those bigoted trolls: poop in someone else’s yard.
I’ll add that my understanding is that you aren’t even prompted to choose a pronoun in-game – it defaults to one or the other based on your character creation choices, and you can then change it if you want to. It’s literally a non-issue.
Happens all the time IRL to me. I use both he and she pronouns and ignorant people always ask why bother just pick one. Well, I did, they’re my PERSONAL pronouns and I chose both these.
The part that confuses me a bit is that it’s a mod that removes functionality from a single player game. Usually features get added, not removed. When something is removed it’s usually to improve stability or performance. Or to rebalance the gameplay. This change falls into none of these categories.
Well I guess if the mod author did it to garner attention or make a point he/she/they succeeded.
That really applies on both sides. This is such a nothing issue - it defaults to what you’d expect for a cis character, so you can literally ignore it if you aren’t going to play a character whose pronouns and body type do not align.
But, someone modding their game doesn’t effect anyone else playing it, whether that’s removing the pronoun selector in Starfield, adding a pronoun selector to Skyrim (even supporting multiple pronouns with different frequencies for each), turning every hold banner in Skyrim into a pride flag, removing pride flags from Spiderman, turning Skyrim dragons into Thomas the Tank Engine, or adding the ability to fuck Skyrim dragons. All of those are mods that exist, BTW.
And this only makes the claims that “this is not a political statement” more absurd. There may be room to argue that the original decision to let players select their pronouns is not political, but both the mod that removes it and the removal of that mod from Nexus are just pathetic attempts to get back at the other side. Can’t get more political than that.
Of course this is political - because bigots made trans people’s existence a target of their politics. Defending them against that hatred and abuse is not somehow equally wrong, compared to that hatred… and abuse.
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