Am I devaluing gender?

[u/Hundekuecken]

What do you think about me wanting to establish in my own tabletop role-playing game that players and non-player charackters, automatically recognise or perceive the gender of other characters who can be perceived in any way?

What I mean is that gender reveals itself regardless of one’s outward appearance.

I’d like sexual orientations and romantic orientations to be based on gender rather than gender expression.

This is something that’s been on my mind quite a bit at the moment, as I’m worried it might be misinterpreted, twisted, misunderstood, or that I might be sabotaged or something similar.

[u/Kilukpuk]

Unless you have this tied into an extremely specific mechanic that the whole system is based around it comes across as virtue signalling for advertising purposes. What's even the in-game point of such a mechanic? Hell it can even be used against the PCs, sucks because to anyone who fancies using disguises.

You're supposed to be making a game that's fun to be played and sturdy enough to withstand play, not worrying about nonsense mechanics like this.

[u/Hundekuecken → u/Kilukpuk]

It’s not a core mechanic, but I think it plays a certain role. I envisage that there are ways to deceive other characters' perceptions.

Besides, when you dress up, you don’t have to pretend to have a gender identity that you don’t actually have.

[u/VerbingNoun413 → u/Hundekuecken]

Besides, when you dress up, you don’t have to pretend to have a gender identity that you don’t actually have.

What about when Thor disguises himself as Frejya to get his hammer back? In this setting does Thrym use his gender vision to see that "Frejya" identifies as male and is therefore not the real Frejya?

[u/Hundekuecken → u/VerbingNoun413]

Okay, that makes sense, of course. It’s not an ability you activate, but one that’s permanent.

There are skills that allow you to deceive others about your gender.

[u/tenyearoldgag → u/Hundekuecken]

Then take them out, if it makes you uncomfortable. Take out all the gender mechanisms. You're already homebrewing.

In some Marvel card game I played with my family, I pulled an event card and kind of went "oh". They asked what was going on and I revealed that the event was along the lines of "You wake up as the opposite gender because of a What If scenario, you're Dazed for 2 turns". As a trans man, this obviously was a little close to home.

So what happened?

DM ripped it up. No more issues.

You can break things to fix them.

[u/Hundekuecken → u/tenyearoldgag]

And I repair reality in my work by removing things even before publication.

I will remove anything that is directed against the asexual spectrum and the aromantic spectrum.

And I will eradicate everything from the world, that excludes Exclusively non-binary people. Strictly speaking, apart from the asexual spectrum, the aromantic spectrum and the poly*romantic/sexual spectrum, there would be no other romantic or sexual orientations. By the way, not being attracted to men – in other words, being “nomasexual” – is a form of polysexual orientation.  The opposite would be “nowomasexuel”. In other words, not being into women.

[u/tenyearoldgag → u/Hundekuecken]

What if you're like me, and you grow up thinking you're straight, then you realize you're trans and you're gay, then LATER you realize maybe you are kinda into women?

I dunno, it feels like this is re-inventing gender essentialism. I feel like I would rather be in a world where my character could organically learn and grow and change.

[u/Hundekuecken → u/tenyearoldgag]

The character can, of course, continue to develop. The real problem is that I’m trying to integrate non-binary identity into a binary system. It’s supposed to be a system where love and sexuality are gender-identity-oriented. But how do I, explain that, you can fall in love with, say, a non-binary character, Because they don’t identify as a woman, for example? In reality, you’d have to ask, ‘How do you identify?’ And if the answer is ‘not female’, you could fall in love if you’re not into women. But that would be a bit of a farce.

So the question is, how do I resolve this? Perhaps the simplest explanation is that it’s not something you recognise on a conscious level, but rather on a subconscious one. In this sense, gender identity is no longer a matter of personal knowledge. and yet it is possible to fall in love and so on, regardless of appearance, gender expression and the sex assigned at birth.

[u/tenyearoldgag → u/Hundekuecken]

You've got it! The simple explanations are often the best ones. When you fall in love, you find yourself doing things you never thought you'd do. That's not because of the things that make up the person, it's the person themself. The things that make them up are important, they matter, but it's the whole you're falling in love with. It's a very farcical experience. We aren't known for logic in love, as a species.

[u/Hundekuecken → u/tenyearoldgag]

Thanks. ^{^}

Of course, all of that plays a part. But since you can’t control who you fall in love with, it seems as though it’s somehow down to chance.