If the misinformation is unintentional, it's not a lie; it's a mistake. And you're lumping Buttercheese together with a lot of other people. I get that it's frustrating to see bigotry and abuse being posted or half-posted, but in this case I think you may have jumped to a conclusion that was incorrect.
Baldur’s Gate is an old game. Baldur’s Gate is a traditional game. In fact, it prides itself on how traditional it is and the fact that it’s so traditional is the main selling point for most players today.
Wizards of the Coast and Ed Greenwood themselves have come out saying that D&D and the Forgotten Realms have always included transgender characters. Let me call out bullshit on that statement.
Yes, some of the Mizhena haters most certainly are transphobic, however, I would like to believe that those are just a small - alas vocal - minority. [fast-forward noises] A lot of us non-left-extremists had our fair share of not so pleasant run-ins with self-proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors”, most of which ended badly.
But sure, she's being mischaracterized. Let's go with that.
We should discuss something that really matters instead of whasting our time like this.
I'll start:
If you look a little bit up and to the left, you'll see the New Discussions button. A little further up and to the right you'll see a big red X. Either of those will get you where you want to go.
A lot of people have been going on about how disliking Mizhena automatically makes you a transphobe, but honestly, assuming that makes you ignorant and short sighted. Yes, some of the Mizhena haters most certainly are transphobic, however, I would like to believe that those are just a small - alas vocal - minority.
So instead of you taking actual transphobes to task - and believe me, they're not so subtle about it that you can misread what they mean when they say they want to delete the character from the game, or be allowed to kill her without losing Reputation - you're claiming people who defend the character are ignorant and short-sighted? Are you serious?
Why should I rip on the transphobes in detail, everyone knows why and how they are wrong. That's like explaining why any form of bigorty is wrong. My point is that a lot of people are being wrongly acused of being transphobes, simply because they don't like Mizhena. Check the Tumblr tag for Siege of Dragonspear, if you don't believe me.
but I can tell you this: it wasn't "some" Mizhena haters who were transphobic. Not by a long shot. The vast majority of people who made her the center of their case against SoD, Amber Scott and Beamdog weren't ambiguous about where they were coming from, and it was a place of hate and exclusion. Not sure why you're here trying to ameliorate that when their comments are still up here, on GOG and on Steam.
I am very sure that a good chunk of those people where trolls, aparently most of them from 8chan. They saw an oportunity to rustle jimmies, they took it and they obviously succeeded.
Wizards of the Coast and Ed Greenwood themselves have come out saying that D&D and the Forgotten Realms have always included transgender characters. Let me call out bullshit on that statement.
I'm sorry, who are you again? Did you create the Forgotten Realms? Are you part of the company that produces D&D content? Do you have any actual credentials here besides "player" and "creator of excellent fanart"? Because if you don't, I'm not sure why you think we should substitute your judgement for Ed Greenwood's or Nathan Stewart's.
Yeah, so? They don't enforce the rules by which anyone plays. Saying that their word on the matter is the be all - end all would also mean that Tolkien, Moorcook and Howard are above theirs, simply because D&D is majorly influenced by their works. Pen and paper gaming is only partially defined by the people who created it. The last word always had the players. And the players include all sorts of people. Yes also trandgendered and transphobic people.
Sure, we had Corellon Larethian and co. for the longest time, but the beauty of Dungeons and Dragons is, that it’s what the players want it to be. For some players it’s orthodox dragon hunting and dungeon crawling. For some it’s a Game of Thrones inspired hellhole. For some it’s a world of rainbows, bunnies and sunshine. For some it’s the place where they can be who and whatever they want. The list goes on and on.
And this? Right here? Is where your whole argument falls apart. Because when you say "the players", it's abundantly clear you don't actually mean all players - because 1) all other things being equal, one can assume there are transgender D&D players; and 2) there may very well be heterosexual players who enjoy playing transgender characters. You are making the self-serving argument that these players who can shape D&D into whatever they want it to be all want it to be the way you want it to be.
Following your logic? Amber Scott and Andrew Foley were the Dungeon Masters who wanted their D&D to have transgender characters. Do they not have the same right you claim "the players" have?
You say this is against my argument, but everything in this paragraph just supports it. Yes, Amber, Andrew, Phil, Liam and everyone else who designed this game are the dungeon masters for this adventure. So in this case, their word is law. BTW, I am sorry if this wasn't clear, but the DMs are also players.
I am dead sure that for a good chunk - if not the vast majority - of players, transgender characters never made an appearance in their games and even if, just as fuels for jokes. Until the very recent years and months, most players didn’t even know what modern, “american” transgenderism is after all (myself included).
Citation needed. People have been talking about transgender characters in video games since freaking Birdo. The fact that you know nothing about it is entirely your problem, no?
You can citade me. I never played a P&P session that included an outed transgender character. Now count in all the other players who until recently didn't know what transgenderism is. You think they included them? I kinda doubt it.
A lot of us non-left-extremists had our fair share of not so pleasant run-ins with self-proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors”, most of which ended badly. I myself became target of a witch hunt on Tumblr a few years back, where I openly called out a bunch of people who said that all non-trans people should die. Literally and repeatedly. A few years ago, Tumblr was FULL of posts like these and they usually were widely celebrated.
Oh, you poor thing! You took a position against a bunch of people spouting nonsense and got yelled at for it on the Internet? Cry me a river.
This right there is why we can't have nice things. You are being unbelievably rude right here. Stuff like this is why this entire controversy happened in the fist place.
See, the larger problem here is that you're using codewords that don't actually mean what you think they mean. "Social Justice Warriors" is a label that is almost always applied to people who take positions in favor of inclusion and diversity
I was doing exactly the oposite by explaining how and why people start categorizing and labelizing in the first place. My example pointed out exactly how meaningless those labels are.
in other words, generally being okay with the idea that other types of people are allowed to exist both in real life and in fiction. "Non-left-extremists" basically means "Yeah, but they don't have to be all in my face about it, y'know? Isn't there a box we can put them in so I don't have to see it? Why do they have to be in my games/movies/TV shows/comics?"
Yes, that is stupid and wrong. I know that. I never said it wasn't. One of the main points of this thread is trying to point out how someone can come to a mindset like this.
So you should be able to understand why I am a tiny bit squeamish about social justice as a whole.
The hilarity here is that you're arguing the transphobic Mizhena-haters were just a vocal minority and don't actually represent what most people were thinking, while at the same time claiming your experience is somehow representative of "SJWs" as a whole. Double standard much?
It doesn't. Pretty sure the majority of people doesn't give a crap because the majority of gamers are not involved in the drama or the social media that sorrounds SoD. Nothing that I said is about "SJWs" as a whole because there is no SJWs as a whole. I pointed that out multiple times.
Cases like these are not the exception. They happen all the bloody time. Remember Feminist Frequency and Anita Sarkeesian? Yeah.
Do I remember the death threats, the abuse, the neckbeards going on a jihad because a woman said video games weren't perfect? Sure do. Not sure how that helps you, though.
It's an argument for social justice horribly backfirering and that we all should have an idea of how pointless and harmful drama like this can be. And because her work was lackluster, one can't even use her well done work as a defense. She was the ultimate victim for internet trolls.
Of course people are gonna have a negative reaction towards a character like Mizhena, especially in a game series that previously treated transgenderism as a joke. Edwin’s Nether Scroll quest, anyone? And the girdle of masculinity-femininity is a tool for literally punishing players for not identifying magical items. Baldur’s Gate is a game that treats sexchange as a punishment.
Again, look at how you're basically giving people a pass for their so-called "negative reaction", which included death threats sent to Amber. Instead of dealing with that, instead of asking yourself where that exaggerated hatred comes from and why you're justifying it, you're doubling down on that. Please.
I am not and never have been justifying it. Part of the point of this thread is to point out the actually valid arguments that where drowned in the drama.
Alright, to my next point. This is not a black and white issue. It’s not “SJWs vs. GamerGaters”.
Except, of course, that's exactly how you're framing it. But please, continue.
How you got that impression is beyond my understanding.
I will leave it at that for now, because I actually got a life to take care of, believe it or not. If you wish, I can get into the rest you said later.
Though I really don't see the point of it, given that you are obviously not willing and/ or capable to have a calm and informative discussion. Which is part of the point of this thread, just to remind you
So unless you calm down I am gonna have to assume you are little more than a troll and trolling is against the forum rules.
Hey @shawne , relax mate. I'm just trying to light the mood around here.
This community is awesome and it really hurts to see topics full of sparks like this one. Specially for something that is so little compared to the full extension of the saga.
I know it was off-topic, but that was exactly my intention
Now feel free to jump in each others throats. It's kind of getting funny.
Slightly off topic, so I'm going to put this in a spoiler:
I'd like to point out that it's totally fair to interrogate Ed Greenwood's claim that his world has always included transgender characters--the only two examples that come immediately to mind are Corellon Larethian and Elminster. And neither of them are actually trans.
Corellon is androgynous or gender non-binary. The god is not a woman in a man's body or a man in a woman's body; they are a being of both genders, with no clear preference for either one. (And for the record, that's pretty darn cool.)
Elminster is a man who was magically transformed into a woman by a god. This may be a reasonable metaphor for what it's like to be trans, but Elminster wasn't born that way; the condition was thrust upon him in the middle of his life. Gender-swapping magic also falls into this category. An adult who suddenly changes gender is not the same experience as growing up in the wrong body.
To the best of my knowledge, Ed hasn't chosen to include any characters in his many books who are actually transgender--or at least, he has not chosen to make that trait visible to his readers. If trans characters have always existed in his world, the question becomes: Why hasn't he chosen to tell their stories?
I'm not saying he's lying, or that he's wrong. But in critical analysis, his claim is at least somewhat problematic; because if his claim is true, if that's a part of his world that he created intentionally, then it means he also intentionally omitted that part of his world from every story he's chosen to tell.
It's sort of like if Tolkien said "There are definitely black people in Middle Earth" and then never included any black people in any of his stories. It doesn't matter if the author knows they're there; if they never appear in the story, they essentially don't exist.
Why should I rip on the transphobes in detail, everyone knows why and how they are wrong.
Do they? Because here you are, arguing that Beamdog courted negative backlash (claiming it might have been an "elaborate marketing stunt") by including Mizhena - that they were, to use the distasteful parlance, "asking for it". Understand that when you do that, you're shifting the responsibility of that backlash from the bigots who actually perpetrated it to their victims. You say Beamdog should've been more "delicate" and "professional" as if they were the ones who caused the controversy, and not the people who metabombed the game for pages and pages based on nothing more than a single dialogue exchange. That's the position you have taken here. So how exactly does everyone know how and why the transphobes are wrong? You've got people on this thread arguing Mizhena shouldn't be in the game at all.
That's like explaining why any form of bigorty is wrong. My point is that a lot of people are being wrongly acused of being transphobes, simply because they don't like Mizhena.
If the crux of your argument against Mizhena is that trans people don't belong in Baldur's Gate, then you're making a transphobic argument. If you make a transphobic argument, people are going to accuse you of being a transphobe. If you don't want to be accused of being a transphobe, maybe be less concerned about who has the right to exist where.
I am very sure that a good chunk of those people where trolls, aparently most of them from 8chan. They saw an oportunity to rustle jimmies, they took it and they obviously succeeded.
And that distinction matters because...? Were they transphobic? Did they metabomb the game on GOG and Steam? Did they write long-winded lies about Amber Scott for Breitbart? Again, as before, the way you handwave these people as just a bunch of 8chan trolls makes it sound like they're somehow absolved of responsibility because haters gonna hate. That's really not how it works.
Yeah, so? They don't enforce the rules by which anyone plays. Saying that their word on the matter is the be all - end all would also mean that Tolkien, Moorcook and Howard are above theirs, simply because D&D is majorly influenced by their works. Pen and paper gaming is only partially defined by the people who created it. The last word always had the players. And the players include all sorts of people. Yes also trandgendered and transphobic people.
They don't enforce the rules? D&D literally has rulebooks. Now, you may choose not to follow those rules in your own personal gaming, that's all well and good and fair - that doesn't give you a leg to stand on when you argue that Greenwood, Salvatore or Stewart are any less of an authority on what Faerun is and how it works, especially when it comes to licensed products like, say, Siege of Dragonspear. If Greenwood says Faerun's sky is purple, and WotC backs him up, you can say it's any color you want in your own personal game, but have a guess what color it'll be in the next D&D game or in Salvatore's next novel.
Yes, Amber, Andrew, Phil, Liam and everyone else who designed this game are the dungeon masters for this adventure. So in this case, their word is law. BTW, I am sorry if this wasn't clear, but the DMs are also players.
Then what on earth is the point of you bringing up the character again in the first place? If the DM has the final word and that word is law, and SoD's DMs are in agreement with Greenwood and WotC, you've got even less room for arguing Mizhena doesn't belong in BG (but, like, in a non-transphobic way)?
You can citade me. I never played a P&P session that included an outed transgender character. Now count in all the other players who until recently didn't know what transgenderism is. You think they included them? I kinda doubt it.
This is going to sound a lot colder and dismissive than I mean it to sound: I don't care. You're literally here talking to me about your P&P games like that has anything to do with the video game Baldur's Gate, which you didn't write and you don't own. If you don't want transgender characters in your own personal games, that's your right. If you don't want black people in your personal games, that's your right too. But understand that that's exactly where it stays: on your table, in your house. What you will not do is then come over to my table, where I'm playing somebody else's game, so you can tell them their character isn't supposed to be there.
This right there is why we can't have nice things. You are being unbelievably rude right here. Stuff like this is why this entire controversy happened in the fist place.
There you go again trying to pin the blame on literally anyone other than the people responsible. This controversy happened because a bunch of omniphobic neckbeards flew into a hysterical rage because a woman (and, y'know, the three other guys she was working with that nobody ever talks about) put a transgender character into "their" game. That's all it was. Don't get it twisted.
Yes, that is stupid and wrong. I know that. I never said it wasn't. One of the main points of this thread is trying to point out how someone can come to a mindset like this.
Are you kidding me? You literally made the argument that transgender people just weren't around when BG was, like they all magically teleported to Earth ten years ago and so Mizhena isn't supposed to be in a "traditional" game. You made that point, and you weren't claiming that was how some hypothetical person could reach that conclusion. That one's yours, so own it.
Nothing that I said is about "SJWs" as a whole because there is no SJWs as a whole. I pointed that out multiple times.
"I am a tiny bit squeamish about social justice as a whole." Again, your own words. That's you, talking about SJWs as a whole. Like, you're not even bothering to retroactively change your OP so I don't even know who you think you're fooling here. Now you're just plain BSing me, and that, I don't have time for.
@shawne You are a hypocrit and you put false words in my mouth.
Sorry @Dee and everyone else, I honestly thought this was worth a try but right here we have the perfect example of someone incapable of having a logic driven argument.
The problem with that argument is that it's not the discussion Greenwood was actually involved in to begin with, though. The question wasn't whether trans people do exist in the Realms, it's whether they could or should. WotC hasn't sacked up to actually make use of that possibility, but the key to Greenwood's position is that if writers wanted to do so, the Realms could accommodate that. Hell, to the best of my knowledge there were never any goblinoid adventurers before Deekin and M'Khiin; that doesn't mean they had no place in their respective stories. Greenwood was asked that question in terms of what the basic rules of D&D would and wouldn't allow, not whether Salvatore or Gross or Kemp had ever done so.
@shawne You are a hypocrit and you put false words in my mouth.
Fun fact about that little quote button at the bottom of each post: all it does is haul your own bullcrap back up at you again. I don't have to put false words in your mouth when your foot's doing the work for me. Vaya con demonios.
I don't disagree--but that's not the phrasing he used, and the phrasing is what I'm referring to. If you say that trans characters have always existed in your world, but you don't ever include any trans characters in your own writing, that undercuts your claim.
It would have been more appropriate for him to say that there's nothing in his world that prohibits the existence of trans characters, and that he encourages writers to include such characters in their games and their writing because, like all people, trans characters have stories that are worth telling, and those stories don't have to be about their gender.
The reason the phrasing is important is that it was the phrasing that his critics latched onto. It doesn't make Ed wrong, but it does make his statement less compelling.
In any other work of fiction or franchise helmed by a single author, I'd agree. I don't necessarily know that JK Rowling deserves the kudos she got for making Dumbledore gay after the fact, at a point where she didn't need to "deal" with that. But D&D sits on the boundary between authorial canon and player creation, and always has; Minsc came from PnP, not a Salvatore novel. Sure, it'd be nice if Greenwood's hypothetical scenario were put into practice for the sake of having a canonical example, but seeing as how so many people have argued - and continue to argue - that these things aren't supposed to exist in the Realms in the first place, it matters that Greenwood and Stewart say otherwise, that WotC's official position is that it's allowed. As far as I know, you can't encoutner futuristic cyborgs in D&D, but you can encounter transgendered characters. That's the extent of why their statements matter.
@shawne I'm jumping up several posts here, so bear with me:
I think you may be inferring a lot about what Buttercheese was saying. And that's fine, but I think it's important to point out: she never said that there shouldn't be trans characters in Baldur's Gate. As near as I can tell, her argument was that Mizhena failed to handle the subject of being trans in an effective and compelling way, which meant that on the whole, her revelation only served to stoke the fires of people who might be looking for a reason to lash out--such that, on balance, it might have been better to not include that revelation at all.
I don't agree with that conclusion, but I can see where it comes from; and it's a very different conclusion from the one you inferred, which is that trans people in general shouldn't be represented in the game. I'm drawing on a bit of personal experience with Buttercheese here, but I would be very surprised if that were something she would actually believe.
Her anecdote about dealing with self-titled Social Justice Warriors also didn't strike me as being anti-SJW; it read to me as an acknowledgement that she's not coming to this topic entirely clean of bias. She's had personal experiences with some SJWs who have colored her perceptions of that term.
And I can totally empathize with that. My family doesn't go to Denny's, any Denny's, because when I was very little we went to one of their restaurants and they refused to seat us because my brother was black. That was one Denny's. And it's colored my perception of that entire franchise. I'm sure that most Denny's restaurants aren't run by a racist manager. But I'll still never eat there; and if a friend suggests Denny's for dinner or lunch, I usually have to explain why I won't go there, and they usually don't understand.
Prejudice--all prejudice--comes from somewhere. Buttercheese is doing everyone the courtesy of explaining where hers comes from. Her phrasing maybe could have been more explicit (see below), but I don't think she deserves half the conclusions you drew about her based on that one post.
And now the fun bits:
I totally agree that it's important for them to speak up. And on the merits, I think their statements are important and effective and compelling.
But if we're interrogating those statements, I do think there's value in clarifying their meaning, if for no other reason than it helps us to better articulate our own positions later on.
To wit: Buttercheese was so thrown off by Ed's statement that she called BS on it. And because of Ed's phrasing, she was correct. The Forgotten Realms, as envisioned by Ed Greenwood, has never included any trans characters that his readers could see or interact with. He's giving players and DMs free reign to imagine those characters and include them in their own stories--and that's incredibly valuable, and shouldn't be discounted--but if we want to follow the idiom of "practice what you preach", Ed Greenwood is preaching something that he hasn't practiced.
And while that shouldn't eliminate the crux of his statement--"Transgender people can be characters in my world, stop being dumb about it"--it does make that statement less effective as ammunition.
In a lot of ways it's important that D&D hasn't always explicitly acknowledged the possibility of trans or non-binary characters. It's important that the Forgotten Realms has never had a trans character included in its canon lore. It shines a spotlight on where we still have to go, and it demonstrates a willingness to go there.
Look, @Dee, I'm not going to debate with Buttercheese-by-proxy here. She said what she said, and if you want to be charitable about what she maybe-kinda-sorta meant, that's fine, you do you.
I think you may have lost your audience, though, because of how you chose to present your argument. I'm hoping to convince you that you maybe-kinda-sorta made some errors of judgment. You have a tendency to throw bombs at people (animated or otherwise), which in turn has a tendency to scare people off. I think there's some common ground to be found here, and I'd hate for it to be lost because you were just a wee bit too mean.
Nope. @subtledoctor has it: this discussion is about finding fault in the reaction to systematic abuse and lies, started by someone who knows she's being hurtful and admits as much, and goes ahead with her BS anyway. I was nice when we had this conversation about Dorn, I was polite-through-gritted-teeth when we had it about Hexxat, and four years in we are still stuck on the exact same goddamn talking points. So I'm officially not interested in any common ground you think you're seeing here, and I'm pretty sure I'm exactly as irritated as one could expect given that we're doing all this again.
Slightly off topic, so I'm going to put this in a spoiler:
It's sort of like if Tolkien said "There are definitely black people in Middle Earth" and then never included any black people in any of his stories. It doesn't matter if the author knows they're there; if they never appear in the story, they essentially don't exist.
He didn't give a color to anyone. Anyone from Grima to Gandalf could have been black. It's not Tolkein's fault. The movie was as white as The Last Airbender.
He didn't give a color to anyone. Anyone from Grima to Gandalf could have been black. It's not Tolkein's fault. The movie was as white as The Last Airbender.
Well, not exactly - he does go out of his way to describe the Haradrim (the humans who side with Sauron) as "swarthy", but that's a whole other Pandora's Box we don't need to open right now.
@Shandyr As much as I hope she doesn't leave the discussion, that's a harsh ultimatum. When a person feels uncomfortable or cornered (and I realize I'm making assumptions here), they should be able to excuse themselves from the situation without having further accusations levied against them.
Comments
We should discuss something that really matters instead of wasting our time like this.
I'll start:
I mean, look at that Wisdom! There are plenty of points there to spare!
One step by at a time. I warn you though, it's gonna be repetitive and boring.
Why should I rip on the transphobes in detail, everyone knows why and how they are wrong. That's like explaining why any form of bigorty is wrong. My point is that a lot of people are being wrongly acused of being transphobes, simply because they don't like Mizhena. Check the Tumblr tag for Siege of Dragonspear, if you don't believe me.
Here, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube.
I am very sure that a good chunk of those people where trolls, aparently most of them from 8chan.
They saw an oportunity to rustle jimmies, they took it and they obviously succeeded.
Yeah, so? They don't enforce the rules by which anyone plays. Saying that their word on the matter is the be all - end all would also mean that Tolkien, Moorcook and Howard are above theirs, simply because D&D is majorly influenced by their works.
Pen and paper gaming is only partially defined by the people who created it. The last word always had the players. And the players include all sorts of people. Yes also trandgendered and transphobic people.
You say this is against my argument, but everything in this paragraph just supports it.
Yes, Amber, Andrew, Phil, Liam and everyone else who designed this game are the dungeon masters for this adventure. So in this case, their word is law. BTW, I am sorry if this wasn't clear, but the DMs are also players.
You can citade me. I never played a P&P session that included an outed transgender character. Now count in all the other players who until recently didn't know what transgenderism is. You think they included them? I kinda doubt it.
This right there is why we can't have nice things. You are being unbelievably rude right here. Stuff like this is why this entire controversy happened in the fist place.
I was doing exactly the oposite by explaining how and why people start categorizing and labelizing in the first place. My example pointed out exactly how meaningless those labels are.
Yes, that is stupid and wrong. I know that. I never said it wasn't.
One of the main points of this thread is trying to point out how someone can come to a mindset like this.
It doesn't. Pretty sure the majority of people doesn't give a crap because the majority of gamers are not involved in the drama or the social media that sorrounds SoD.
Nothing that I said is about "SJWs" as a whole because there is no SJWs as a whole. I pointed that out multiple times.
It's an argument for social justice horribly backfirering and that we all should have an idea of how pointless and harmful drama like this can be. And because her work was lackluster, one can't even use her well done work as a defense. She was the ultimate victim for internet trolls. Yes, and as I pointed out, a lot of people want to keep things like they where back then.
Wether or not that is justified, is a different question.
I am not and never have been justifying it. Part of the point of this thread is to point out the actually valid arguments that where drowned in the drama.
How you got that impression is beyond my understanding.
I will leave it at that for now, because I actually got a life to take care of, believe it or not.
If you wish, I can get into the rest you said later.
Though I really don't see the point of it, given that you are obviously not willing and/ or capable to have a calm and informative discussion. Which is part of the point of this thread, just to remind you
So unless you calm down I am gonna have to assume you are little more than a troll and trolling is against the forum rules.
This community is awesome and it really hurts to see topics full of sparks like this one. Specially for something that is so little compared to the full extension of the saga.
I know it was off-topic, but that was exactly my intention
Now feel free to jump in each others throats. It's kind of getting funny.
Corellon is androgynous or gender non-binary. The god is not a woman in a man's body or a man in a woman's body; they are a being of both genders, with no clear preference for either one. (And for the record, that's pretty darn cool.)
Elminster is a man who was magically transformed into a woman by a god. This may be a reasonable metaphor for what it's like to be trans, but Elminster wasn't born that way; the condition was thrust upon him in the middle of his life. Gender-swapping magic also falls into this category. An adult who suddenly changes gender is not the same experience as growing up in the wrong body.
To the best of my knowledge, Ed hasn't chosen to include any characters in his many books who are actually transgender--or at least, he has not chosen to make that trait visible to his readers. If trans characters have always existed in his world, the question becomes: Why hasn't he chosen to tell their stories?
I'm not saying he's lying, or that he's wrong. But in critical analysis, his claim is at least somewhat problematic; because if his claim is true, if that's a part of his world that he created intentionally, then it means he also intentionally omitted that part of his world from every story he's chosen to tell.
It's sort of like if Tolkien said "There are definitely black people in Middle Earth" and then never included any black people in any of his stories. It doesn't matter if the author knows they're there; if they never appear in the story, they essentially don't exist.
No one is above making mistakes, is what I'm saying. That's an important thing to remember, as this conversation continues.
Sorry
Sorry @Dee and everyone else, I honestly thought this was worth a try but right here we have the perfect example of someone incapable of having a logic driven argument.
Have fun with the thread.
Toodles ~
It would have been more appropriate for him to say that there's nothing in his world that prohibits the existence of trans characters, and that he encourages writers to include such characters in their games and their writing because, like all people, trans characters have stories that are worth telling, and those stories don't have to be about their gender.
The reason the phrasing is important is that it was the phrasing that his critics latched onto. It doesn't make Ed wrong, but it does make his statement less compelling.
I think you may be inferring a lot about what Buttercheese was saying. And that's fine, but I think it's important to point out: she never said that there shouldn't be trans characters in Baldur's Gate. As near as I can tell, her argument was that Mizhena failed to handle the subject of being trans in an effective and compelling way, which meant that on the whole, her revelation only served to stoke the fires of people who might be looking for a reason to lash out--such that, on balance, it might have been better to not include that revelation at all.
I don't agree with that conclusion, but I can see where it comes from; and it's a very different conclusion from the one you inferred, which is that trans people in general shouldn't be represented in the game. I'm drawing on a bit of personal experience with Buttercheese here, but I would be very surprised if that were something she would actually believe.
Her anecdote about dealing with self-titled Social Justice Warriors also didn't strike me as being anti-SJW; it read to me as an acknowledgement that she's not coming to this topic entirely clean of bias. She's had personal experiences with some SJWs who have colored her perceptions of that term.
And I can totally empathize with that. My family doesn't go to Denny's, any Denny's, because when I was very little we went to one of their restaurants and they refused to seat us because my brother was black. That was one Denny's. And it's colored my perception of that entire franchise. I'm sure that most Denny's restaurants aren't run by a racist manager. But I'll still never eat there; and if a friend suggests Denny's for dinner or lunch, I usually have to explain why I won't go there, and they usually don't understand.
Prejudice--all prejudice--comes from somewhere. Buttercheese is doing everyone the courtesy of explaining where hers comes from. Her phrasing maybe could have been more explicit (see below), but I don't think she deserves half the conclusions you drew about her based on that one post.
And now the fun bits:
But if we're interrogating those statements, I do think there's value in clarifying their meaning, if for no other reason than it helps us to better articulate our own positions later on.
To wit: Buttercheese was so thrown off by Ed's statement that she called BS on it. And because of Ed's phrasing, she was correct. The Forgotten Realms, as envisioned by Ed Greenwood, has never included any trans characters that his readers could see or interact with. He's giving players and DMs free reign to imagine those characters and include them in their own stories--and that's incredibly valuable, and shouldn't be discounted--but if we want to follow the idiom of "practice what you preach", Ed Greenwood is preaching something that he hasn't practiced.
And while that shouldn't eliminate the crux of his statement--"Transgender people can be characters in my world, stop being dumb about it"--it does make that statement less effective as ammunition.
In a lot of ways it's important that D&D hasn't always explicitly acknowledged the possibility of trans or non-binary characters. It's important that the Forgotten Realms has never had a trans character included in its canon lore. It shines a spotlight on where we still have to go, and it demonstrates a willingness to go there.
I think you may have lost your audience, though, because of how you chose to present your argument. I'm hoping to convince you that you maybe-kinda-sorta made some errors of judgment. You have a tendency to throw bombs at people (animated or otherwise), which in turn has a tendency to scare people off. I think there's some common ground to be found here, and I'd hate for it to be lost because you were just a wee bit too mean.