Gender Fluidity in Avaria, and Other Sex- and Gender-Based Themes

Hello!

So, as most of you know, Avaria is thematically a historically-flavored world with many kinds of prejudices. Most cultures are sexist in some way or other, heritages come with bigotries most of the time, and there is widespread homophobia (albeit relatively mild, insofar as no one is going to be imprisoned, exposed to serious physical harm, or executed for it). Transphobia is less of an issue due to the dearth of trans people as an existing cultural phenomena, and to the fact that the majority of people who would disguise themselves as another gender do so quietly without notice. (Edit: I didn't want to delete this paragraph because it seems deceitful to do so, but I apologize that this came across like trans erasure. As noted below in the original post, trans people do exist in this world. There aren't medical procedures to support medical transitions, and it's not a well-established social undertaking for personal identity reasons as much as it is a temporary career choice like in the case of kuchak dancers. That doesn't mean that trans people can't exist in this world -- they can, and they already do. We have mechanics precisely to support representation like this. This sentence meant that while the background populace of the Caliphate completely recognizes that homosexuality exists as a cultural phenomena, people might be more confused about transexuality -- they recognize that people cross-dress sometimes, but the idea of choosing personal gender identity is more remote from the most common mindsets. Still, we're working on subsocieties where it's more understood.)

Most of this bigotry is somewhat toned down from what it might have been in the real world, but it does exist as material for telling stories of realistic strife and struggle. The majority of Avarians are not what we would consider a socially enlightened bunch, even where they mean well, and prejudices of varying kinds do tend to color people's perceptions and behaviors. We've addressed some of these prejudices elsewhere, but here are some pointers specifically about gender fluidity, which we haven't touched on fully yet in alpha.

Points:

• In the world of Avaria, most NPCs will assume that you are either a man or a woman, and address you according to those assumptions. 
  • You might be a man dressed as a woman, and the NPC will call you 'aunt' or something similar.
  • You might be intersex, dressed in a completely gender-neutral style, and the NPC will randomly choose to call you either 'aunt' or 'uncle'.
• Most PCs will have no concept of being 'non-binary', and even if they were intersex at birth, would choose one gender to typically present themselves as.
  • Some PCs may find this norm to be stifling, and deeply wish to be seen as neither male or female, but it would certainly be an odd idea both to themselves and anyone else. They might hear rumors of other peoples among whom something else is possible, and find such a notion strange but enticing.
  • When encountering a PC of ambiguous gender, the thematic thing to do is for your character to assume that they are either male or female and address them accordingly. Feel free to roleplay surprise about finding out the opposite, or confusion about whatever ideas the PC has! The whole point is being able to roleplay these struggles.
• There are some cultures in Avaria where notions of third genders exist, but these genders often still have their own specific cultural roles, or may be considered vaguely reprehensible by so-called "ordinary" people.

Thematic gender fluidity might look like:

• Not having any identification with either gender particularly, and often switching back and forth in terms of presenting as either a man or a woman.
• Being assigned a gender at birth, but tending to present as the other gender just due to feeling more comfortable that way. (It's not gender fluidity exactly if the character is presenting in a certain way in order to achieve a goal, such as a woman disguising herself as a man in order to join a males-only warrior society.)
• Feeling an internal rejection of traditional gender roles and having the sense of not fitting in with them in a really fundamental way.
• Having any sort of internal feelings or ideas that challenge or question standard gender roles and identity, but knowing that the world is largely hostile to such thoughts and feelings.
• Regardless of those feelings, behaving in a socially-sanctioned way if attempting to avoid thematic consequences -- or refusing to do that, and embracing the consequences.
• Possessing backstory to explain why the gender fluid character thinks and acts the way they do, and outlining what struggles they have faced so far and might expect to face in the future.

Other Sexuality/Gender Themes:

• Most characters will not tend to look too kindly upon relations outside of marriage. Among 'decent' sorts, the ideal is that you'd get married, and sex outside of marriage would be considered bad for many reasons. Because of this, a bastard -- even a common bastard -- might be ashamed of themselves, a single mom is going through some serious thematic struggles, and if people get wind of unmarried men and women being close, even if there is nothing intimate involved, those people may start to suspect and gossip.
• In general, people in the caliphate especially tend to be publicly discreet in their relationships with others -- even among same-sex married couples, really ostentatious physical affection in public would tend to be considered eccentric if not distasteful.
• Homosexuality would be considered something to keep private, and people might be disgusted by the idea of it and insult each other with homophobic insults. Somewhat less conservative attitudes can be found among some people in large cities, but discretion is still generally advised and practiced.
• The fact that couples in general tend to be discreet and unostentatious, and friends often show more public affection than couples, can be helpful in muddying the waters around all kinds of relationships. A homosexual couple would also not necessarily consider it all that oppressive to not be able to be physically affectionate with one another in public.
• Crossdressing and gender fluidity do exist in certain marginally socially approved roles, especially (in the caliphate) in the case of kuchek dancers (male bellydancers) and related acting/performing roles. While such persons have some degree of acceptance as performers and may be celebrated among certain circles, they are considered generally disreputable and dissolute among wider "respectable" society.
• It would be considered a possible invitation for trouble (and certainly odd) for someone to be presenting themselves regularly as the opposite gender, especially with no goal-oriented reason for doing so.

As always, please recognize that when your character is pushing back against another PC's non-cis/binary expression of sexuality or gender, this is fully thematic -- but your character may eventually hope to evolve past such closeminded perspectives! This sort of antagonism must be handled with maturity, and always with the OOC understanding that treating another person in a bigoted manner is a real character flaw. Conflict is fine, but no PC should be persistently harassing another over thematic prejudices. Likewise, players who design characters that express themselves in a manner that flouts thematic norms should be doing so because they want to roleplay the struggle, and are capable of handling these conflicts with maturity. They shouldn't be flouting norms with the expectation that they can simply ignore them and that their behavior will be overlooked.

So when you come across a PC whose pronouns are showing up as 'they/them' -- imagine how your character would react, in the setting, and how they might classify that PC. Does your PC automatically assume that default humans are 'he'? Is the behavior of the nonbinary PC feminine to the degree that your character assumes they're a woman? Are they just unsettling, to the degree that your PC avoids them, or demands to know their gender outright? Misgendering someone in this situation is not considered to be harassment -- it's just thematic to assume -- but bullying them verbally or physically over some expression of themselves would be considered harassment, though, so undertake that antagonistic roleplay with maturity and willingness to back away if someone issues an X-Card.

(Note: Do not ask a player their gender, or their PC's gender, OOCly please. It's fine to refer to players OOCly as 'them' or 'they' if you're not sure.)

We love to see players roleplaying through struggle and conflict; we have themes that may be difficult, for the sake of being able to tell these stories. Avaria isn't meant as a refuge where people can avoid all the discomforts and cruelties of the real/historical world. It's more of a place to explore them in a space that is, relatively speaking, still safe -- and, sometimes, to push back against them. Mindfully playing out resistance to bigotry in a thematic way -- whether that bigotry revolves around sexuality and gender identity, class prejudice, ethnic animosity, or anything else -- is something we're actually happy to see. Such efforts have the potential to make small but real differences in the game world! But at the same time, it's good to keep in mind that PCs may start with a lot of their own prejudices simply due to the cultural milieu they exist in, and this is realistic for the setting. 

Of course, we'd like to have characters largely behave in thematic ways, unless they have substantial story background that would explain their having developed a more modern perspective on a particular issue.

Thank you for posting this. Its interesting to think about thematic responses to some of this. One question I had though was, what about asexuality. Not being attracted to anyone? Would it be seen as strange? Thinking of this piece. 

This is really good to see! I'm definitely curious to see how the cultures that have less conventional gender identities portray them, at a guess I'd assume there's some Irulao and Jalanit cultures with some.

On the note of appropriate ways to respond; I'm reminded of Fallen London for a moment, where one of the optional styles of address is "Si-, er, Mad-, er, yes" when playing a character who might not be obviously male or female. Do you think that kind of approach would be reasonable for Avaria?

What about asexuality?

It would seem pretty obvious to just about everyone in Avaria that people's natural proclivity for sex varies along a wide spectrum, from the extremely lustful to those largely uninterested in sex. Individuals on the very lustful end of the spectrum would tend (in the caliphate) to be viewed with some disfavor as people unable to control their animal passions, but the passions themselves would be viewed as natural for all people to have in moderation, and to indulge in a socially approved manner. There aren't any negative attitudes towards sex per se (i.e., it isn't "sinful"), only towards immoderate behavior. Most people would consider it more odd to have almost no sexual feeling rather than an excess of it, but it's still understood that individuals differ. However, individuals with a general lack of sex drive or physical attraction to others wouldn't consider themselves "asexual," as there just isn't any concept of this as a discrete personal identity. They would just be generally aware of the fact that they don't feel much desire or attraction towards others.

I think an important thing to note is that while people have all these feelings and natural inclinations, they wouldn't tend to experience them as an identity with a corresponding label. What is different is not necessarily how people feel, but how they articulate and understand those feelings, even internally.

Optional gender-neutral styles of address

These wouldn't really fit into the cultural milieu of (most of) Avaria. Again, the vast majority of people operate according to the understanding that there are males on one hand and females on the other, and the idea of a gender identity outside that binary would (aside from societies where a third sex is a part of the culture) just baffle them. They would consider "woman" and "man" as natural a distinction as "ewe" and "ram" or "goose" and "gander" -- or even "cat" and "dog" -- and the idea of trying to address certain people in some different way according to a non-traditional gender identity would be totally foreign to them. Male and female aren't so much gender identities to most people as just matter-of-fact words. Their culture just is not there yet!

Thank you for clearing this up for me. Glad to know that there is at least understanding in Avarian cultures of the spectrum of feelings and attractions even if there isn't an IDENTITy label on them. Just knowing that there is a case  for that spectrum even if its not named is enough. Its interesting to note how our modern sense of identity is so different from these cultures. We forget that our sense of identity is new compared to the thousands of years of not having such labels. 

I was curious if "shotgun weddings" and the old practice of marrying after a month would be prevelant due to the stigmas around sex in general? This was a fun read, love to learn more about the general culture of the game. Really helps to inform my character's thoughts/actions in a wide variety of matters.

Another thank-you from me for this thread, really good stuff to think about :)

I was a bit worried about these things when designing my character before the game began, honestly, in terms of my personal responsibility as an alpha player and what that means. Because this is alpha, and because I am very invested in supporting the lore and world of Avaria to be as real as it can be, I want to be a team player and make a character who's very much in line with that world (because I think Avaria is cool as hell). And the fact of the matter is that PCs will always sort of by definition have more of an impact on the reality of the game world and its culture than v/NPCs, and sometimes can effectively wield even more influence than written documentation/lore. If a group of PCs rolls in and they're all playing out "counter-culture" stories, so to speak (meaning they're all supposedly minority opinion or behaviour holders, by the documentation of the game world), and if they're all active in the game world, it can be easy for the de facto game culture to follow their norms, which are counter to the lore. A newbie might roll in and see everyone they meet behaving in X way, despite the fact that the documentation says people behave in Y manner - and newbie will just assume that X is correct, because everyone is doing it. And then they behave in X way as well, and the cycle continues.

I've seen this happen a couple of times in other games, and I absolutely do not want to be an agent of chaos, in that regard. But at the same time, some of the stories that compel me most run counter to some of Avaria's norms. So I have a bit of a conflict, in that I really want to help to support and establish the gameworld as it has been written... but I also want to play out some stories that involve behaviour that's supposedly minority and not accepted. And I absolutely am on board with playing it AS minority and unacceptable! But if I play it, I make it more accepted - by virtue of playing it, being a PC in a small alpha. It's very circular, and tough for me to reckon with sometimes.

I hope that I can strike a reasonable balance, because in the end I decided that this is a game and I'm here to have fun more than I'm here to make myself a servant to conformity to norms (as are we all! And not that norms can't be very fun to play, either - but for this paricular character concept it really lost something without some of these aspects, to me). I am very aware every time my character says something that's not "normal," and I always sort of hope that I'm not warping reality by doing so. If anybody has suggestions for navigating this particular dilemma, I'd dearly love to hear them!

This is something I put a lot of thought into, actually! I think the core, key crux of how I handle it is to be counterculture in one or two respects (such as being not straight and relatively open about it) and contrasting that with more conformist attitude in other matters (strictly sticking to your culture, abiding by the rule of law, supporting the Caliphate, being a pious Azadi) so that you're still clearly taking the world into consideration. It helps make for a well balanced character IMO, and for me it's made it easier to make a character who isn't just capital g "Good" by my own morals.

Respecting ambient population, and acknowledging abnormalities in your emotes, are also ways I've found that help reinforce the setting while not restricting your character unnecessarily. 

I really appreciate and respect that our considerate alpha players are having these kinds of thoughts.. it's definitely something I've seen before in games, where a setting is, in-effect, changed due to PC representation alone. And honestly our PC representation is like... I mean, I don't have statistics for it because these aren't really chargen options (how much do you accept pagans on a range of 1-10?), but a lot of things are 'abnormal'.
 

• pagan to Azadi ratio, and paganism-acceptance among Azadis
• homo ratio to bi/hetero and acceptance
• gender-fluidity to gender-conforming ratio and acceptance
• very obviously in St Loomis, all the PCs are actually from the Sirdabi Caliphate, while the wider population of background vNPCs and NPCs are from Ensor
• female warriors, other sorts of femme fatales, and men with non-misogynist approaches to women 

But.... I think this is actually 100% okay. Yeah, it does change the "PC-veneer" where if you roll a character with the intention of solely playing with PCs, you might not want to play someone who is mean to the local beloved pagan, or a homophobe, or a racist Ensorian, or whatever -- because PCs will probably overwhelmingly discriminate against you for that. But also, like Kinsa said, a character is multifaceted. I'm pretty confident that if there was a carpenter PC right now who was kind and fun to play with and just didn't like pagans, they would still be a part of plots and having fun and maybe even able to have some engaging and thoughtful conflict with some of the pagan PCs.

My suggestion to mitigate the feeling of changing the setting due to PC population ratios are these:

• If you play an 'abnormal' character, play out how you know that this is 'abnormal'. There's a source of character struggle there. If you're in a public place, you're free to emit about passers-by giving you dirty looks, or even further.
  • Example #1: You're playing a dark-skinned character in a racist town. You're strolling the streets late at night, and go into a disreputable neighborhood. Feel free to use INFLICT to make a bruise on your head and say that someone threw a stone at you!
  • Example #2: You engage in some public snogging.  Feel free to go: EMIT Several locals give /me and /snogger some chagrined looks, and then purposefully avert their eyes to ignore the crassly-public display of affection.
• If you're playing acceptance of an 'abnormal' character, play out the conflict there too. I actually saw an amazing example of this last night; y'all know who you are. <3
  • Example #1: Your character is faced with an 'abnormal' situation, and accepts it, but is vaguely unsettled by it nonetheless and has tells and such showing so.
  • Example #2: Your character is in complete radical acceptance of an 'abnormal' situation, but verbally acknowledges needing to be hush-hush about it, or at least acknowledges the tension and surreptitiousness in their body language.
  • Note: We'd like for people to have reasons for their acceptance -- but we're not really going to be hardcore policing this, unless it gets to a point of making other players uncertain about whether they're playing according to theme.
    • Maybe you're a very fringe member of society to start with, and actively rebel against social norms all the time, eating the consequences of that yourself on occassions.
    • Maybe the person you're accepting is a beloved friend, regardless of whatever makes you culturally-uncomfortable.
    • Maybe you have an event in your background, or ongoing stories, that has enlightened you somewhat.
• Generally just don't forget the existence of the vNPC population and existing culture when you're playing, and have stories about the effect that these norms have on your character.

Another point is that as staff, we're actively trying to maintain the general vibe of the setting -- either through posts like this, where we try to make sure players understand what they're getting into by playing an 'abnormal' character or other such scenario (we would never want for someone to be triggered and upset IRL due to facing conflict IC over these themes) -- or by having NPCs react ICly in ways that reinforce the setting. We're sometimes wary of this because there is a tricky balance to strike between 'this is a game, and players want to roleplay in ways that they want to roleplay' and 'this is an established setting that we have intended with great thought, and don't want it to be thoughtlessly re-adapted into something blander'. So, we mostly try to refrain from granting serious IC consequences over this kind of thing, at least not without multiple smaller events showing the potential future trajectory of a situation. However, we do want the setting to feel impactful enough so that even if someone does make a 'thematic' character, they will not feel ostracized, and will be able to continue pursuing plots and fitting into the world happily while providing the thoughtful storied conflicts that we're aiming to see. 

I do this too.
 

Playing an "abnormal" character is sort of non-negotiable for me, but I also take my responsibility to respect and support the setting very seriously, which is challenging to reconcile, as has been mentioned. Of course one takes into consideration the "struggle" internally but it can sometimes be difficult to express this to others - to show people that my character is aware that he is unusual, without him needing to be obsessed with his own persecution, or what have you. Not mentioning it might how he deals with it. 
 

So I like making that same PC insistently traditional about other, unrelated features of setting. It gives me the chance to be the foil for someone else's exceptionality, too, which is something I really value when someone else does it for whatever my PC is being unusual about. 
 

Often people are reluctant to cause conflict or be the ignorant prude, which I think is a shame. These points of conflict are where characters are defined and real relational bonds are founded. 
 

Edited to add: I come from an extremely old school tradition where players were strongly discouraged from attributing opinions to virtual persons, and tbh I still kind of lean toward this way of thinking because all too often I don't agree with someone's claims about the regard of the populace for their character, etc >.>. That said, I am considering now, following this thread, that there are reasons to try and stretch myself away from that total prohibition in order to get in some more of the theme confrontation I wish were a little more present in the player to player dynamics.