More Female Defaults?

[Canopus]

1 minute ago, Cassel said:

Of course you can disagree and go wear your titles with pride elsewhere.

It is annoying that one side can push theirs propaganda into anything tv, press, video games and say it is "equality", well it is not if you force other people to agree with you. If you want game with your view of equality go and create one, not everybody wants this stupidity in here.

Dude it’s not propaganda just because it doesn’t fit into your  outdated worldview.

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, WolfCoAerospace said:

At the start of a new game I always hire 2 female kerbonauts, a Scientist as well as an Engineer to fly along with Val. Having them there by default would be nice.

I agree. I always do this as well, for a slightly different reason: I feel like a proper space program needs to always have a backup team. Contingencies, people! A single extra pilot does not make a backup team, you need a scientist and engineer as well. And since the 'first' team is all boys, it feels fitting to have an all girls team as well.

I regularly find myself swapping between them for alternate launches, so if I start with the boys for the first launch, girls get the second, and so on, even for test launches or craft iteration tests.

Additionally, in my mind anyway, there's a bit of an ongoing competition/challenge between those two first teams, giving the game another little fun dimension. When either one of them get back from a success, I picture them strutting by the 'other team' in the break room with a large grin and taunting each other amicably, and the 'losers' have to buy the snacks or drinks that day.

I never seem to give it importance after filling out the second team - any further teams just get filled with whatever the rescue contracts or roster offer. But the two first teams... yes, always need the all-girl team to start the competition.

So I'm all for making it default, two more orange suit female kerbals to complete the second team. As for names: I like the suggestions of Sally and Mae.

[Cassel]

9 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Dude it’s not propaganda just because it doesn’t fit into your  outdated worldview.

My world view is not outdated it is just different, am I not allowed to have different views than you have?

You use propaganda if you think that your views are better only because they are newer :-)
Just because something is newer doesn't mean it is better and that everyone has to use it.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Cassel

[Canopus]

8 minutes ago, Cassel said:

My world view is not outdated it is just different, am I not allowed to have different views than you have?

Oh you are allowed to have a different view, but if it goes that much against the mainstream you shouldn‘t wonder why no one agrees with you.

:-)

Edited December 8, 2017 by Canopus

[Deddly]

Hi everyone,

It's fine to have a healthy debate about this subject, and the fact that there are widely-varying views shows that everyone is different. There's no problem with that - please continue debating the topic politely. But there is one thing we would like you all to please keep in mind: you are discussing the subject, not the persons. You can express disagreement, but, on this forum, please never attack the person or call them or their ideas stupid.

[Mrcarrot]

1 minute ago, Deddly said:

Hi everyone,

It's fine to have a healthy debate about this subject, and the fact that there are widely-varying views shows that everyone is different. There's no problem with that - please continue debating the topic politely. But there is one thing we would like you all to please keep in mind: you are discussing the subject, not the persons. You can express disagreement, but, on this forum, please never attack the person or call them or their ideas stupid.

I couldn't agree more.

[FoxtrotUniform]

8 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Hi everyone,

It's fine to have a healthy debate about this subject, and the fact that there are widely-varying views shows that everyone is different. There's no problem with that - please continue debating the topic politely. But there is one thing we would like you all to please keep in mind: you are discussing the subject, not the persons. You can express disagreement, but, on this forum, please never attack the person or call them or their ideas stupid.

 

6 minutes ago, Mrcarrot said:

I couldn't agree more.

Same here.

[Cassel]

59 minutes ago, Canopus said:

Oh you are allowed to have a different view, but if it goes that much against the mainstream you shouldn‘t wonder why no one agrees with you.

:-)

You don't have to agree with me, just don't force me to have same views as you have.

[Gaarst]

Besides the question not meaning anything, the poll is missing a "I couldn't care less" option.

[Just Jim]

31 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

Besides the question not meaning anything, the poll is missing a "I couldn't care less" option.

That's why I did it as a write in... 

[adsii1970]

I agree with @Just Jim and @Gaarst; I really couldn't care less about more "stock female Kerbals" starting a new game. After all, this is only meant to be a game that happens to involve space exploration. And to be honest, I do not understand why we even had to have "gendered" Kerbals anyway. I'm not trying to be disrespectful of the whole "battle of the sexes" here in this thread, but to me, what gender Kerbals are really doesn't matter when the goal is about getting them into space without killing them.

Over the years, this forum has been led astray and into "moderator target practice" because folks got bent out of shape over the gender of... a computer generated character. I could understand it, to a point, if this were some weird version of the Sims, but again, since Kerbals cannot sexually reproduce for game purposes, cannot produce offspring, and there's no discernible physical distinction between male and female Kerbals except the hair and eye brows, why do we need to argue over it? Is it just because we have nothing else to do? And why do the problems of this world need to infect a game that is truly meant to be an escape from the grind of real life?

 

[Geonovast]

5 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

and there's no discernible physical distinction between male and female Kerbals except the hair and eye brows

Not true!  I've had ladders attached to crafts the females were able to climb down after exiting the vehicle, but males wouldn't go anywhere and had to jump down.

[MiffedStarfish]

I agree with pretty much everything @adsii1970 said. 

[pandaman]

I like the 'logic' of the OPs suggestion, mainly because i like the idea of two of each profession.  I would prefer a more random selection though, maybe from a pool of 'first intake' recruits with the rest being first on the list for selection later. 

I personally am pleased that female kerbals were introduced, because until then all kerbals were seen as male, and think its appropriate to the modern world that female characters are also represented properly and equally.

[Red Shirt]

I almost can't believe I'm taking the time to respond.... My personal view is I couldn't care less, but if adding two default female characters attracts even one young girl to have an interest in science, then I change my position. A nice compromise would be a starting game setup where you choose your three default characters to fill the positions. 

In my own game I use Star Trek TOS uniform colors. Jeb gets Kirk gold, while Val gets Kirk green. Bob gets science blue and Bill is a fellow Red Shirt. After these 4 I leave all others as orange. The last is for no reason other than keeping track of the 4. 

Full disclosure - once I get a game rolling and flights are routine (little chance of killing a character), my favorite pilot is a female named Trauki. Why? No idea. I just like the name.  

[FoxtrotUniform]

Polls are looking about 50/35/15 (Yes/No/Yes but blah blah)

[Just Jim]

OK, how about we add one more female and name her:

@Darth Badie

[tater]

The roster could start empty, and you have to hire your first astronauts.

Perhaps they could have various skill levels before being hired (randomly assigned), and you pick accordingly. Higher skill costs more. In a perfect world, they would cost a certain annual salary (paid in advance, given their life expectancy for many players here).

So the original 4 might all have a skill level at the start that is not random, and they might even always be in the starting roster of possible hires, but they might be a female kerbal pilot of skill 4, and a male scientist of skill 3 in the starting kerbals available for hire (as an example).

 

[KSK]

4 hours ago, Cassel said:

Of course you can disagree and go wear your titles with pride elsewhere.

It is annoying that one side can push theirs propaganda into anything tv, press, video games and say it is "equality", well it is not if you force other people to agree with you. If you want game with your view of equality go and create one, not everybody wants this stupidity in here.

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.

Edited December 8, 2017 by KSK

[FoxtrotUniform]

2 minutes ago, KSK said:

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.

Wow. I want to quote this in the OP

[KSK]

10 minutes ago, FoxtrotUniform said:

Wow. I want to quote this in the OP

I would be honoured. I can't claim any of those thoughts are particularly original mind - others have expressed them far more eloquently than me - but they're ones that I strongly agree with.

[FoxtrotUniform]

Just now, KSK said:

I would be honoured. I can't claim any of those thoughts are particularly original mind - others have expressed them far more eloquently than me - but they're ones that I strongly agree with.

It was an excellent reason. I think this should have to be the OP.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

7 hours ago, KSK said:

Sorry but saying that you're not against gender inequality but you are against changing the status quo to make it more equal - is just lame.

And the 'we don't know know if Kerbals have gender' argument is equally lame. The short answer is 'no we don't because there's almost no official lore about the kerbals.'

The long answer is 'despite this lack of lore, kerbals are presented in-game as having a clearly human-male or human-female facial characteristics and given either clearly human-male and human-female names, or names drawn from two different pools of syllables to reflect the fact that there are two types of Kerbal. Therefore they are perceived as male and female.'

Not aiming this last comment at you specifically but every time this kind of thread crops up, I'm left wondering what would have happened if Squad had named the Original Three, Josephine, Barbara and Belinda?

We'll never know, but I'm prepared to bet a substantial amount of money that:

a) There would have been a large number of threads complaining about the lack of male named kerbals because real world astronauts are mostly men so KSP wasn't being 'realistic'.

b) That there would have very few to no protests about including more male named kerbals, or spurious appeals to the status quo (kerbals have always had female names - giving them male names too would be wrong), or appeals to non-human biology. (Hey maybe these kerbals just choose to wear short hair.) OK, that last one was aimed at you a bit - sorry.

I'm not sure what you are accusing me of, but Val is my favorite Kerbal hands-down.

My point was that the "team" is already bloated. 6 is too many for a cohesive and memorable team.

I'd honestly rather they change Bob or Bill to a girl to make it 2 and 2. Not that I think that's needed. This is a video game, let's leave gender politics out of it, plenty of female Kerbals to rescue and hire; I don't see any indication that game is sexist or misogynistic in any way. Also as far as the "do Kerbals have gender" thing; we all refer to our cars as female despite lacking a gender. Just because the game infers she's female; doesn't actually make her as such. As a true "SJW" might say; don't assume it's gender! She could be a post-op male Kerbal for all you know.

Btw; I just got a new computer and a 4k TV. This is my current background. <3

Spoiler

 

Edited December 8, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Corona688]

Once again, I think this heated argument is completely deflated just by pointing out that THIS GAME HAS NO CHARACTERS.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.

There is no plot to clumsily rewrite around a new female Kerbal.

There is no lore to throw away and disrespect by adding a new female Kerbal.

And the worst has already happened:  Female Kerbals already exist in-game.  The wailing and gnashing of teeth in this thread cannot compare to what happened then, but the world failed to end.  It was probably a good marketing decision.

In the end they're just game pegs.  If people want different colors of game pegs, I don't really care why, it's no skin off my nose.

13 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

My point was that the "team" is already bloated. 6 is too many for a cohesive and memorable team.

You may have a point.  Two pilots are useful when starting a game.  Two scientists and two engineers, not so much.  I'm not sure you can even deploy six entire Kerbals with the L1 buildings.

[Just Jim]

9 hours ago, XLjedi said:

We should add her then!  ...and her evil twin. 

@SQUAD and @Darth Badie already know how bad I want Emiko added to the random name maker...  

But her twin isn't evil... that's a different character, Carlenna, who is already in the game... mwaahahaha