Suggestion: gender policies in random names and gender macro

[Trotterdam]

There are various issues which allow people to ban either men or women from working (for example #173, #368), but for the most part the game will ignore this, as @@random_name()@@s used for characters who happen to be workers will continue to use random genders regardless of your national policies.

Some issue editors have been trying to deal with this by editing old issues to soften gender-role options into not actually banning anything, but that's boring because it removes player choices and leads to wishy-washy options that don't really do much. It's a futile cause anyway, because, for example, a male-only military (#426) is still a much more mainstream notion, and censoring that (or its amazonian reversal) would ruin the issue.

So what I'm suggesting is that the game can track gender roles for various categories, each of which may be set to "male only", "female only", or "both", and that macros be allowed to specify such a category and automatically produce a name of the appropiate gender. An issue editor could then type @@random_name(worker)@@, which would produce a male name in nations where women are banned from working, a female name in nations where men are banned from working, and a randomized name in nations where both genders are allowed to work (whether there is overt affirmative action or not).

Off the top of my head, useful categories for this feature would be:

• Workers.
• Soldiers.
• Clerics of @@FAITH@@ (but not necessarily other religions) - though the current issue on that subject only addresses whether it should be gender-restricted without saying which gender.
• Politicians.
• Heirs (for #596), separate from average politicians.

It wouldn't solve fixed names in issues that happen to contradict gender policies, or random names that need to have a predefined gender for another reason, but compromises have to be made somewhere. We could say these are Jean d'Arc figures who managed to defy gender roles as a rare exception

[Australian rePublic]

It needs to have opposite too, say for example a woman who wants to enter the work force

[Trotterdam]

It needs to have opposite too, say for example a woman who wants to enter the work force

Problem is that not every nation has an oppressed gender (at least officially, NationStates tends to assume you have a glass ceiling no matter how hard you try to promote equality - which is probably fair enough given what we see in real life). While realistically every nation should have at least one gender that's allowed to work (and if both are, then you just pick the gender at random), a "wrong gender" macro isn't guaranteed to have any valid results.

Though you could have a "housemaker" gender without assuming that people of this gender aren't allowed to do anything else. I don't think there are any issues about banning men from doing housework, though...

[Australian rePublic]

It needs to have opposite too, say for example a woman who wants to enter the work force

Problem is that not every nation has an oppressed gender (at least officially, NationStates tends to assume you have a glass ceiling no matter how hard you try to promote equality - which is probably fair enough given what we see in real life). While realistically every nation should have at least one gender that's allowed to work (and if both are, then you just pick the gender at random), a "wrong gender" macro isn't guaranteed to have any valid results.

Though you could have a "housemaker" gender without assuming that people of this gender aren't allowed to do anything else. I don't think there are any issues about banning men from doing housework, though...

But I want to work too! Shouts woman/man who wants to break the chains of patriarchy/matriarchy

[Eluvatar]

I don't think there are any issues about banning men from doing housework, though...

This oversight can be corrected.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

There are various issues which allow people to ban either men or women from working (for example #173, #368), but for the most part the game will ignore this, as @@random_name()@@s used for characters who happen to be workers will continue to use random genders regardless of your national policies.

Actually, there aren't any issues that allow you to ban men or women from the workplace.

That big policy review I did last year flagged "men only work" and "women only work" as two of the most problematic policies in terms of narratives respecting player decisions. While this was a tracked decision it was consciously and explicitly ignored by the editing team, with backstage directions to not try to work around these or to use them as validity checks.

I didn't like this, so we discussed half a dozen fix approaches, and in the end we agreed to remove that policy from the game, and to modify the issues so that the text no longer bans men and women from the workplace. According to my logs, it was 1 year and 23 days ago that the changes were made, though I'd note the linked spoiler thread hasn't caught up to this change..

Some issue editors have been trying to deal with this by editing old issues to soften gender-role options into not actually banning anything, but that's boring because it removes player choices and leads to wishy-washy options that don't really do much.

Oh right, you HAD noticed the change! Well, obviously I disagree. The softening doesn't remove player choices, it just changes the choice from a radical one that the game ignores to a slightly less radical one that actually has game effects.

It's a futile cause anyway, because, for example, a male-only military (#426) is still a much more mainstream notion, and censoring that (or its amazonian reversal) would ruin the issue.

The get out here is that we only use surnames when referring to members of the military and avoid gendering them at all. Well, in theory. It's one of the less consistently executed rules.

So what I'm suggesting is that the game can track gender roles for various categories, each of which may be set to "male only", "female only", or "both", and that macros be allowed to specify such a category and automatically produce a name of the appropiate gender. An issue editor could then type @@random_name(worker)@@, which would produce a male name in nations where women are banned from working, a female name in nations where men are banned from working, and a randomized name in nations where both genders are allowed to work (whether there is overt affirmative action or not).

I think it's not needed, personally, but if the tech teams wanted to implement this we could certainly find uses for it. However, the depth of issue editing that would be needed to implement this (a full review of every character name macro in the game) would suggest to me that you need strong support from at least one editor (who would essentially be volunteering to do that work) if this were to be implemented.

[Eluvatar]

Thank you CWA, that was very informative!

I'll not be doing this unless such a volunteer pursues my doing so.