Female KSC Staff.

[moronwrocket]

The tracking station could be run by Margaret Kerman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%29

Since she was lead Apollo flight software designer, kinda appropriate she helps with maneuvers.

[syfyguy64]

Or we could, you know, just call them asexual, and add female names to show that it doesn't matter.

[regex]

Or we could, you know, just call them asexual, and add female names to show that it doesn't matter.

Too late, females Kerbals already have an in-game model.

[stibbons]

Not strictly space program related, but a Rosie Kerman as an engineer would be fantastic.

[RainDreamer]

We kind of lack current staff position for new female members. Though, maybe ground crews in VAB/SPH could be dotted with a few more female kerbals.

[Deathsoul097]

We could have Katherine Johnson for delivering the engineers report to give your your craft trajectories/stats/dV etc?

An expert so respected they would only believe the computers if Katherine's maths agreed.

I agree with you and Regex on this one. While we dont need to replace anyone, it would be nice to see a Kerbelle join the staff of KSC, and the engineer's report seems like the perfect spot.

[sumghai]

I'm definitely keen on having a Katherine Johnson analogue appear as part of the Engineer's Report feature (Kathee Kerman?), as well as having females amongst the Kerbals wandering in the VAB/SPH.

tl;dr: No to changing existing Kerbals to females, yes to adding new female Kerbals in new technical/scientific roles

[Tw1]

There also should be at least one female kerbal administrator. If being pealised for crashing nuclear materials into the ground, etc, ever becomes a thing, there could be room for a legal advisor.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'd also nominate Margaret Hamilton, who, among other things, developed software for the flight computers used on Apollo.

[Harry Rhodan]

Sorry, but the point is much more complicated. It's about the natural interaction between men and women. the rest is the range of those things. And a very interesting thing to do with the concept of introducing a female character. It's also realistic potentially to the circumstances. It's the basic reality between men and women and what can happen. Your grossly oversimplifying it. Seductress does not mean overbearing sexual content. It's also the subtleties. All of them.....! And in fact that rarely properly means anything you would think of as sexual! Nice of you to bash my idea with so little understanding of it. I think the word I'm thinking of is glibly...

And how would you tell the difference between them. Do they even have differentiating features? I haven't paid enough attention to the material they have shown.

No you have mad male astronauts, pragmatic male engineers, stuck up male scientists and your only option for a woman is mainly as a romance option and not as another mad astronaut, brooding administrator, frustrated secretary or anything else. All the males are characterized by or around their profession and the female is characterized by being female. That is not interesting, that is what generations of male authors did with their token females that were shoehorned in on an established cast were every other charakter archetype was already filled with males. That's the epitome of bad storytelling and latent sexist BS that made you think that this is a good idea in the first place.

Characterising the female one of two apparently same looking individuals as mainly seductive (and evil) is a sexualized male fantasy of what he wants a woman to be and nothing else.

A mad Margaret or Katherine Kerman who gives you delta v readouts she calculated manually at lower building levels and who works with the computers at higher levels sounds like a nice and sane option.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Harry Rhodan

[Arugela]

No you have mad male astronauts, pragmatic male engineers, stuck up male scientists and your only option for a woman is mainly as a romance option and not as another mad astronaut, brooding administrator, frustrated secretary or anything else. All the males are characterized by or around their profession and the female is characterized by being female. That is not interesting, that is what generations of male authors did with their token females that were shoehorned in on an established cast were every other charakter archetype was already filled with males. That's the epitome of bad storytelling and latent sexist BS that made you think that this is a good idea in the first place.

Characterising the female one of two apparently same looking individuals as mainly seductive (and evil) is a sexualized male fantasy of what he wants a woman to be and nothing else.

A mad Margaret or Katherine Kerman who gives you delta v readouts she calculated manually at lower building levels and who works with the computers at higher levels sounds like a nice and sane option.

One, you still have no idea what I'm referring too. And you won't. What you are saying I'm referring to is not even remotely close. You need to gain a broader education. Have the dignity to at least consider there could he things beyond what you think and be done with it(especially when someone tells you you are mistaken about the meaning of their own words.). Your views on everything you run into are quite simple also. You are the one making other peoples ideas into something simpler than they are. Then complaining about it and accusing others of doing what you are actually fabricating. So, sorry, but there is a broader world out there and it is much more complex.

Two, what you are proposing is the original thing that feminism was fighting. Your proposal is to make them a secretary and the very thing you propose to escape. You have things quite backwords.... What I was proposing would have no specific roles(neutral) and was about the most complex potential character interaction. Especially funny ones. But keep simplifying what I think and telling me I'm wrong. Works great. Shows the ignorance. You shouldn't try to force and tell someone what they mean by something. It's very stupid.

And don't worry. You will simplify and add in whatever drivel comes to mind in place of my words and think you are still arguing with me. So have fun. BTW, maybe it would help you to think of ying and yang instead of good and evil. It's about forces that interact if you need a (very simplified) descriptor. Not what you are proposing.

Edit: It's funny. Twenty years ago I could get into an argument on this or anything similar and nobody would have a problem understanding what I meant.... Boy things have changed.

But, yea I guess if it is specific to period. Though I think I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of it was better to generalize the game. 8) Oh, well.

I'm assuming that the differentiating between male and female is going to be rather odd though(not that that is a bad thing). And that the females had lipstick and housewife hairstyles... I'm surprised with half of the complaints that it's not going to bring about the feminism problem since the period could have encompassed this. What did females at NASA dress in for work back then? I wouldn't assume the range since it was an engineering environment. So It might be interesting to see what that was or how that changed.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Arugela

[smjjames]

Eh? Valentina Kerman doesn't have a 60's, 70's hairstyle, though that could just be the work hairdo. Nor does she wear lipstick.

As for the job positions, having one of the engineer positions would be cool. Maybe for the admin building, they could make female alternatives (actual alternatives, not just the same ones with a female appearance and female names.) and have it randomly choose between male or female for each one for every new game.

[Vanamonde]

This discussion has wandered from the subject into personal accusations. If you want to keep the thread open, please stay away from personal attacks.

[smjjames]

I didn't mean to make it a personal accusation, was just stating a fact. But yes it's wandering into landmine territory, metaphorically speaking.

One solution could be to have a female counterpart to each one and have it be random each game. Only thing though, who would be the female counterpart to Gene Kerman? Werhner von Kerman? Though Werhner Von Braun is considered the father of modern rocketry, who's considered the mother of modern rocketry? It's one thing to have a female counterpart, but it's another to pull it off without it looking cliche or stereotypical or whatever.

Squad will have to look outside the US and Russia and outside the Apollo era. I wouldn't mind some non-english names popping up, it would give a feeling of international inclusion in KSP.

[pincushionman]

After reading the article posted on the pages previous, I'd like to second the motion of the Katherine Johnson analogue and point her toward the Tracking Station. Sure, Gene is already used to introduce that scene, but he's already being used in both the main KSC scene introduction and he's the face for Mission Control. He can give up the Tracking Station.

[Arugela]

I didn't mean Velentina. I think I saw the stuff for the other generic females and they all had lipstick and 50's house hair... I thought it was kind of odd and funny considering certain things. lol

But still, what did women let alone other people wear at NASA during the periods this game might be hinting at. I know some of the higher ups and guys on camera wear suits. but I wonder about the rest. There have to be a lot of crew. I can imagine the 60's.

I'll have to find a pic.

Or is this a mod. I saw other pics that had lots of females and they looked similar. I thought some of them were official for some reason. Maybe I was mistaken. I think there was a better pic than this. It was much more 50's.

I think this one is a mod. I thought one of the pics I saw was from an official posting though. Could be mistaken.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Arugela

[smjjames]

Given the blue suit, that is definetly a mod. I've seen screenshots around with kerbals that have different hairstyles, facial hair, and different colored suits. Not sure which mod though.

Plus those heads are definetly male.

[Red Iron Crown]

There is exactly one official picture of a female kerbal so far, all others are mods or fanwork:

[Arugela]

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oce/pmchallenge/faq/DressCode_prt.htm 8\ <- so helpful... I wonder what the full story is... 8) There must have been odd stories. No engineering environment goes without those... No matter how much they try to dress it up. Not to mention there must be variation for different position to differentiate people... Edited March 10, 2015 by Arugela

[Little Katie]

Here we go, problem solved!

As for the whole "kerbals are genderless until we had to be PC" I just want to cordially add that it seemed they were genderless until they all looked like dudes and had dude names

I swear it doesn't offend me that they are boys. But denying that kind of bugs me a little bit because even though I'm not mad there was no girls, there obviously aren't any and it's a little off-putting to deny that. Also it's exciting to me that they're adding them. Like when they add ponytails to legos. I like it, it's cute, and it makes me a little bit excited to play a girl character. You could say why bother coloring the planets or adding trees or making the distant stars different from each other?

Little details in game mechanics and in the art add an asthetic that matters more or less to different people. Aerodynamics are features that are very important to some but others don't even notice until it's pointed out. It's like if people said "there is nothing at all wrong about the [aero or other misc. mechanic] and if you change it I am going to be mad because it's not important and I don't want that to change the game I love!" You probably find that annoying if it matters to you and what you love about the game. There are also many people who wouldn't play at all if the planets looked like beach balls and the stars were identical polka dots.

When people say things like [they're only adding girls because the fun police will invade otherwise] it can come off as brash and hurtful to people who look forward to that addition. Like to say it adds nothing...I hate to admit but the first time I read that months ago, for a moment I felt like "but it adds a girl, not berries on bushes or leaves on trees or birds in the sky, but a girl. Like a person/kerbal girl. I'm a girl and it's more than nothing to me :(" But after seeing that so so many times I think 'okay that's just part of the discussion and I could see how it would feel like a small silly detail to people who get more enrichment from other aspects of the game'.

Sometimes it seems like people are flat out offended by the idea, but I feel the honest reason is that they don't want something they love to change in a bad way or draw in a weird crowd or take focus away from what they see as being a beautiful/awesome/complex thing. And I get that but I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just don't post bait to those types and they won't have any interest.

But another point is that it's not just to please people who whine or have hurt feeelings. It adds a good marketing point for the developers. How many times have I paid for the game and how many versions have I been able to play? Like we only pay once and the code is available so they can support modders and budding programmers. If nothing else I think that's a fair reason to support it because it supports the developers. It gives people a reason to get excited, popular KSP youtubers do let's plays again after doing everything else in the game, etc. and that brings in new customers.

But anyway I've seen this discussion a lot and finally am dipping my toe into the water. I just hope to see eased tension on the issue. It's not worth being angry with each other about. It's easy to get under people's skin about what's important or not because it boils down to what different people love about the game, and there is a lot to love.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Little Katie
I derped

[smjjames]

You still have to give props to Squad for at least getting off to a good start with Valentina and not sexualizing her or anything.

[Arugela]

She's technically really goofy and overly bright. I don't think they were avoiding it. They technically made here the bright young girl which is by definition sexualizing her! 8)

By the proper definition, not sexualizing here would make her(and all kerbals) asexual. And void the point. It's actually not possible to not sexualize here and have female kerban. Even cross dressing or some other stereotype or logical alternative would need enough differentiation that it would count as sexualizing. Or you couldn't tell it was originally female. Again, voiding the point of a female kerbal.

This goes to some of the silly nature of modern arguments. They often, if not mostly, misuse the real definition to a quite funny, and often opposite, result.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Arugela

[smjjames]

She's technically really goofy and overly bright. I don't think they were avoiding it. They technically made here the bright young girl which is by definition sexualizing her! 8)

By the proper definition, not sexualizing here would make her(and all kerbals) asexual. And void the point. It's actually not possible to not sexualize here and have female kerban. Even cross dressing or some other stereotype or logical alternative would need enough differentiation that it would count as sexualizing. Or you couldn't tell it was originally female. Again, voiding the point of a female kerbal.

*facepalm*

I suspect that you know what I meant. I meant OVERsexualizing her, you know, stereotypical big breasts and all those stereotypes that are all too common in video games sometimes.

[sal_vager]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop you and this thread there, before this thread goes any further off-topic than it already has.

People need to understand there is a difference between sexuality and gender.

We already know there will be at least one named female crew member, there will likely be female randomly named crew and ground crew as well