Gender-ambiguity in Games

[Nester the Lark]

This thread is a continuation of the discussion on gender-ambiguity in games from the Nintendo All-Stars thread.

Aug 5, 2013 3:50:33 GMT -5 Fryguy64 said:

It's easy to forget that gender roles are as much a by-product of language and culture as they are physiological. That's why there's such a huge uproar about transgendered people at the moment. For decades it's been understood that the biological fact of sex determined at birth does not correlate directly with the gender roles each society doles out.

It is likely that the stark gender distinctions present in many western languages simply do not exist in many Eastern languages, and this has a knock-on effect when it comes to how gender is more widely perceived by society. Japan and several other Asian countries are notable for their more relaxed attitudes to gender roles. Think Taiwan.

I'm sure there's a load of research out there on this.

I'm more curious as to how Mach Rider's massive pectoral muscles transform into boobs. Is it a padded muscle shirt?

So, you're saying that since Japan (and other Asian languages) doesn't necessarily use different pronouns to refer to males and females, it creates an attitude that naturally extends to deliberate gender-ambiguity as a trope? I guess I can see that. In Western cultures, it's definitely considered offensive to refer to someone as "it."

I don't really see it as a matter of gender roles, though. A woman could be masculine or a man could be feminine (although the latter seems to be more frowned upon in American society), but that doesn't necessarily mean you can't physically tell the difference between them. I'm still curious as to why a character would be created specifically without an identifiable gender.

I was wondering if it was a joke because I honestly don't know if it's meant to provoke an uncomfortable reaction or not. It certainly seems to in Western society, hence why such instances are usually downplayed or censored in localization.

Just check out Steven Tyler's reaction at the beginning of Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" video. (Is there some subtext in that he seems to be wearing a Japanese kimono in the rest of the video?)

[nocturnal YL]

Aug 5, 2013 14:07:24 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

I was wondering if it was a joke because I honestly don't know if it's meant to provoke an uncomfortable reaction or not. It certainly seems to in Western society, hence why such instances are usually downplayed or censored in localization.

To this I answer "sometimes" - some of the time it's meant to make a character feel eerie, other times it's used as a surprise.

We easterners won't think of a fully-helmeted person revealing to be a woman as being too unusual, since while we too default such a character to be a male, we don't think of it as something that always holds true. It's a surprise to see the Mach Rider turning out to be female, but we won't feel disgusted or annoyed or anything. Just surprised. Males that look neutral-to-the-feminine-side aren't meant to be uncomfortable, either.

To make a character feel uncomfortable gender-wise, eastern media would either mix masculine and feminine traits into one single character, or give one a look that's obviously unfitting. The Mach Rider's outfit, Samus's suit, Lucius's look, masked Marth's outfit or even Lubba's appearance (yes, that SMG2 Luma is female in the Japanese, Taiwanese and some European versions) aren't really masculine or feminine (you have your Power Ranger too, America), and won't really feel disturbing or anything when revealed to be opposite of what the viewer assumes. On the other hand, if you take this trait to an extreme, say, Birdo, Vivian or Valtome, then yes, they are supposed to make you feel uncomfortable.

So, to conclude... Is that meant to provoke an uncomfortable reaction? It depends on the character's design, and easterners have a wider "acceptable neutral range", so to speak.

[Nester the Lark]

Actually, I just remembered that back in the '90s, there were a series of skits on Saturday Night Live (a US sketch-comedy show) featuring a character named "Pat" whose gender was completely unidentifiable. All of the humor revolved around other characters being uncomfortable by not knowing what Pat's gender was, and trying to subtly figure it out through casual conversation. (Supposedly, everyone was too polite to ask outright.) In that case, it was a joke, and I guess that sums up Americans' attitudes towards androgyny. (Make fun of what makes you feel uncomfortable.)

But again, I think it's a slightly different case when a character's gender simply defies expectation verses it never being revealed at all. Having a character that is presumed to be male turn out to be female is fairly common in fiction, from Hua Mulan to Return of the Jedi, whereas true androgyny is very uncommon in Western media.

Let me go back to some examples. I mentioned Red in Gunstar Super Heroes being gender-ambiguous in the Japanese version, but canonically female in the international version. Now, I'm not sure if there are any particular story differences between the English and Japanese versions, but I don't think there's any narrative purpose. It's just simply and deliberately not specified, and I don't understand why. (Actually, here you can see some unused sprites that depict a more masculine version of Red, as well as some artwork that's pretty specifically female.)

I also mentioned Nights, and I guess Sonic Team has said that the character is gender-ambiguous so that the player can imagine whatever they want it to be. I suppose this is similar to the idea of Link as a character being a "blank" so that the player can fill in the details. This, I can understand.

Another example I thought of was a character from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, in which a Yuke named "Amidatalion" is deliberately not given a gender. (Listed as "unknown" in the manual.) It's never brought up in-game, and there's no real story purpose for it, but I can understand it being used to make the character seem more mysterious. Whether the character is even good or evil is left in question for a significant portion of the game, and Yukes are pretty mysterious characters in general. (The voice actor is a woman, however, so that's how I tend to think of the character.)

tl:dr
Sorry for the wall of text. I guess as an American, this is a fairly foreign concept to me, and I'm having trouble understanding its purpose and context. But, it's an absolutely fascinating conversation.

[nocturnal YL]

I think for characters being marked as genderless with this subject not being brought up otherwise, they're either meant to be mysterious or they just don't matter. Yes, this is different from revealing their gender to be opposite from what the audience might expect.

In, say, English, you just can't use a third person pronoun without raising suspiction. Examples:
she/he - "So this character is female/male?"
it - "Is this character evil or inhuman?"
they/it/(name) - "So the writers are deliberately avoiding this character's gender?"

This is not a problem with Japanese (with many ways to point to a third person), various forms of Chinese (same pronoun for he/she/it) and French (noun gender != subject gender), but German faces the same problem as English. Don't know about other languages.

So yeah, it's hard to bring up a genderless character without making it over-noticed thanks to the way Western European languages work. They're therefore likely to be assigned one in the localization process. Personally, I find calling those genderless ones "it" weird, as is the case with Pokémon (even though they aren't humans).

[Nester the Lark]

It seems odd that a character wouldn't be assigned a gender simply because it doesn't matter. When only one character is gender-ambiguous, it's fairly conspicuous.

It can be tricky to keep a character's gender a secret with the English language. Either you outright lie about it, or avoid mentioning it altogether. For example, in the original manual for Metroid on the NES, it specifically refers to Samus as "he." And the manuals for Metroid II and Super Metroid are very carefully worded to avoid referring to her gender at all. (A lot of people forget that Nintendo was still trying keep Samus's identity a secret for those games.)

I'm glad you brought up Pokemon, because I always found the use of "it" kind of awkward as well. It's not really offensive due to the context, but it kind of makes you wonder if they reproduced asexually or something.

I don't really play Pokemon, though. Didn't they introduce genders and breeding in some of the later games?

[nocturnal YL]

"It doesn't matter" is just some of the cases for no gender assignment. This doesn't usually happen to individuals in groups of people with known gender (because, yes, this will make them stand out), but would be the case when the ambiguous gender is of no relevance (you don't really care about who are the riders in Excitebike, for example), or people with secret identites (to add to the mystery and not necessarily used as a joke, and whether it has anything to do with the story is another question).

I'm not much of a Pokémon player myself either. From what I know, the Pokémon are referred as "it" even after gender was introduced in Gen 2, perhaps to maintain consistency since some Pokémon (like the lengendaries) remain genderless.

[Johans Nidorino]

I never felt that the use of "it" was awkward in Pokémon. They're supposed to be treated like "living beings other than humans", so I think it is grammatically correct.

*looks at the English Wikipedia article for lion for confirmation*

Yeah.

Edit: in other canons, such as in the Mystery Dungeon fable-like series, they are typically "he" or "she", precisely because they are treated like humans.

[Nester the Lark]

I think that's the difference between how you refer to a wild animal and a pet. A pet is like a personal friend or family member. "It" is kind of impersonal, like you're referring to an inanimate object. So, when Ash refers to Pikachu (in the anime) as "it," it still sounds a little funny.