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More Female Defaults?

FoxtrotUniform
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Would two new female veteran Kerbals to be released?  

61 members have voted

  1. 1. Would two new female veteran Kerbals to be released?

    • Yes
      36
    • No
      19
    • Yes, but have them a the first in the astronaut complex hiring list
      6

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FoxtrotUniform

FoxtrotUniform

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Posted (edited)

READ THIS BEFORE CONTINUING. IT IS A RESPONSE TO A COMMENT AGAINST THIS SUGGESTION.

Spoiler

Written by @KSK, I would like to thank him for letting me use it.

No, I don't think I will thank you. I'll feel free to express my views here (politely I hope) in the same way that you obviously feel free to express yours. As for creating a game with my view of equality, in my own limited way, I am. I'm not much of a coder or an artist which does limit what I can do when it comes to creating video games, but I can write, so that's what my mod is about.

Personally, I get annoyed when people don't bother engaging with what I'm saying but jump straight into personal attacks and getting offended just by the fact I'm saying something they disagree with.

But "equality" - that's a good point. What is equality and (back on topic) why does having three female orange suits on KSP rather than one, actually matter? All I can give you here is my answer to that question which I'll warn you now, is a bit long-winded and one which folks on this thread - including the ones that voted 'yes' in the poll - may well disagree with. So here goes.

I would define equality as not letting a person's gender, orientation, colour, religious beliefs etc. affect the respect they're given, the dignity they're afforded or the opportunities made available to them. 

That doesn't necessarily mean treating everybody exactly the same. To use a slightly contrived example, if I'm advertising a job and one of the absolute 'can't-do-the-job-without-this' requirements is that the successful candidate must be able to benchpress 300lbs, then that's probably going to rule out most women from applying for the job - certainly more women than men. What equality means in this context does mean is that if I do get a female interviewee (or a candidate identifying in any other way for that matter) that can benchpress those 300lbs, then the fact that she's also female is irrelevant. Likewise, equality is not adding a bogus 'must be able to benchpress 300lb' requirement to my job advert, purely to discourage women from applying. 

To use a different example, if I feel that somebody is being an idiot, then I'm not obliged to give them any respect - but whether they're a male idiot or a female idiot shouldn't affect how little respect I give them. Likewise, I shouldn't be giving the female idiot any more respect just because she's female. Equality goes both ways.

I'm kinda hoping we can agree on this much, or at least not disagree too badly on this much, because otherwise we're really just talking past each other.

So yeah, going back to my definition. As I see it, there all sorts of ways in which people are not treated with equality according to that definition. There are the overt 'isms' - racism, sexism  and the like. Then there are the, much more insidious, social narratives. Those are a real problem -  you can be the most genuinely equal-opportunities employer ever but if the prevailing social narrative is that "girls don't do those jobs" then you're probably not going to see a whole of lot of women replying to your job advert. Even worse, it simply may not occur to women that applying for those jobs is even an option. That's a real thing by the way - go look up the "Draw a Scientist" test if you want an example.

Which brings us back to this thread and back to my earlier point. KSP matters when it comes to equality because to some extent KSP will be shaping that social narrative. KSP is also all about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), which are all fields where women tend to be poorly represented. Which, at face value, is strange because there's no good physical or mental reason why that should be the case. Doing maths doesn't require a mathematician to benchpress 300lb. Therefore the reasons for that poor representation are largely due to social narrative. Therefore shaping the narrative around STEM is especially important. Therefore KSP is more important to that than you'd perhaps give it credit for.

And actually, to be fair, KSP isn’t all bad at equality. It does have male and female astronauts, it does pay tribute to notable real-life female astronauts. But most of the females are faceless white suits and the tribute names are buried in amongst a heap of procedurally generated ones. The notable characters - the orange suits, the guys in the strategy building, Gene, Wernher - are, apart from Val, all male. At which point, Val does start to look just a little bit like the token female. Which isn’t a helpful narrative - ‘space and science are mainly for guys but hey we’ve got this one woman here too, so that’s OK.’

Which is why I’m all in favour of at least making the orange suits gender balanced. 

TL:DR.  I can’t force you to agree with me but yes, I believe that better gender representation in KSP is important. And I vigorously disagree with folks that want to hand-wave it away or dismiss it because ‘KSP is only a game’ or ‘you’re just being a crazy-wing propagandist about this.’ 

Here endeth the lecture.

 

Would it be a good idea to add a Female default scientist and engineer to make the game slightly more sexually equal?

Edited by FoxtrotUniform
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FoxtrotUniform

FoxtrotUniform

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4 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Yeah i don't see anything wrong with that. A small change that will only do good.

But what shall their names be? I was thinking Sally (Sally Ride, first american woman in space) for Scientist and Helen (Helen Sharman, first Briton in space) for Engineer.

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XLjedi

XLjedi

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Posted (edited)

Just to catch me up on the history here...  were there 2 or 3 originally?  ...and then 1 or 2 orange suits got added?

I like the idea of adding orange suits, but maybe just one at a time, over an extended period?  I like the idea of drawing it out, but have no problems with the next 2 or 5 being female.  Maybe add a female for the "Making History" release?

 

 

 

Edited by XLjedi
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FoxtrotUniform

FoxtrotUniform

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10 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Sally Kerman, Mae Kerman?

Valentina is named after a female pioneer so, why not two more female pioneers right?

As I said at the start, the two pioneers.

1 minute ago, XLjedi said:

Just to catch me up on the history here...  were there 2 or 3 originally?  ...and then 1 or 2 orange suits got added?

I like the idea of adding orange suits, but maybe just one at a time, over an extended period?  I like the idea of drawing it out, but have no problems with the next 2 or 5 being female.

So there will be 6.

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val and the two new ones.

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qzgy

qzgy

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Posted
Just now, XLjedi said:

Just to catch me up on the history here...  were there 2 or 3 originally?  ...and then 1 or 2 orange suits got added?

I like the idea of adding orange suits, but maybe just one at a time, over an extended period?  I like the idea of drawing it out, but have no problems with the next 2 or 5 being female.

3 Originally - Jeb, Bill, and Bob. Then Val was added

 

I like the idea as well. 2 more I don't think would affect things tooo much...

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Geonovast

Geonovast

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4 minutes ago, qzgy said:

3 Originally - Jeb, Bill, and Bob. Then Val was added

 

I like the idea as well. 2 more I don't think would affect things tooo much...

Wouldn't even need to give you 6 at the start.  Both pilots, and dish out the other two randomly.

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regex

regex

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This is all great and I have no objection to the idea, but I personally would prefer if I was able to choose from some default (E: which should include the original three, Val, and two other females to round that out) and random Kerbals who will comprise my "initial three". Maybe I want to start out without a pilot for a challenge, maybe I don't ever want to see Jeb's stupid, stupid face in my game, maybe I only want to start with a single Kerbal (or even no Kerbal, having to buy the first one), etc...

Edited by regex
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MiffedStarfish

MiffedStarfish

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Though I agree with the suggestions, I don’t think they should be “mass manufactured”. Veterans are well, veterans. They are the face of the game, and I don’t think adding in new ones every few uptdates would be a good thing. Maybe introduce them like Xcom does, and have the new 2 be guaranteed to appear in a rescue contract or some unique scenario, when you hit a certain tech level. (Also, if they were added, a 6 Kerbal capsule would be needed so you could see them all on a journey in space together!)

Edited by MiffedStarfish
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Corona688

Corona688

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You might have a point if the game had any real story, or they looked any different from each other.  The only unique thing about the starting three is their orange flight-suits and Jeb's unique "BADS" bit.

Edited by Corona688
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KSK

KSK

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Posted

I'd be all for this. I'd be up for making the ground crew roster a bit less lopsided too, although I appreciate that would be rather more work than adding a couple of new orange suits.

Margaret Kerman anyone?

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