Trans characters in Mass Effect Andromeda

I thought Krem only mentioned that the Tevinter military just had sex-segregated units, and nothing about women not being able to only go so far in the military.

About Jien, why would her being trans(if she even is) be the only thing she talks about? Wouldn't exploration, finding and making a new home in Andromeda, why she even had the idea for the Andromeda Initiative, and putting out her opinions on the Andromeda natives and the outcasts be her things to speak about? Besides, if Jien is trans, it'd probably be a throwaway thing like it seemed to be with Krem.

There is no reason for trans people to exist in Mass Effect, for the simple fact that medicine in the Mass Effect universe has advanced so significantly that a complete gender reassignment is possible. People in Mass Effect can change their eye-color, skin-color and even gender with simple gene therapy in the Mass Effect universe. I believe this was mentioned in the first novel.

So a transgender person wouldn't be any different from a normal person. Someone born in the "wrong" body could simply change his/her body to the opposite sex through gene therapy, at which point a trans person would be indistinguishable from a natural-born male or female.

LOL that's what I was trying to get at with my first post here.  This thread turned into a land mine field

Can someone explain to me the "medicine would be so advanced that there wouldn't be trans people anymore" argument? Because the thing that makes a trans person trans is the fact that s/he doesn't identify with his/her biological sex. So unless you are suggesting that medicine would be so advanced that they could somehow identify in utero if a person didn't identify with his/her biological sex and then transition them prior to birth, wouldn't there still be trans people in the future? They would just have a more advanced surgery. I'm just not understanding this argument at all.

With regard to the whole "identity" concern that keeps rising up in these threads, does anyone else find it amusingly ironic that the people who are complaining about how identity keeps being prevalent use their own identity (often straight male) as part of the rationale against it? Like, "I just don't understand why people are obsessed with gender and sexuality. As a straight male, I just don't use those as part of my identity." Uh.......okay. Tell me more about your gender and sexuality while you tell me that I shouldn't talk about mine.

About the thread topic in general, I'm totally fine with trans characters showing up in ME. The only species where it wouldn't make sense would be the asari. Other than that, sure, why not. I didn't have an issue with Krem because, despite what people say about him, he only brings up his trans status twice and both of those conversations are totally optional and last no longer than one minute each. It was FAR from his only trait and definitely not his only purpose in the game.

Also, I loved Jamie Clayton in Sens8, so I'm kinda stoked that she's in ME: A.  Good for her.

<puts on mod hat>

Take it down a notch guys. This is a heated topic and is a controversial subject. It's a tricky topic to keep open due to the emotions that can spring up. Let's drop the personal insults and get back on track please. Thanks.

<takes off mod hat>

If my sentences aren't bolded, then I'm speaking as a poster and a player. If you see bolded text with <puts on mod hat> in my post, I'm speaking as a mod.

I forgot to ask this before, but are the any other reason to believe that jien is trans beyond the fact that her VA is it? That seems a bit thin. That would be the same as assume that a homosexual person only do gay/lesbian VA/roles or that a straight only do heterosexual.

Okej, I will try to find a corner that is relatively clean.  
And isn't Romance topic and Baseless speculation (aka. BS) usually in the same thread?

This is why I don't look up actors and VA. I still remember when I found out that Barney in HIMYM was gay in real life. I was all: "That is good acting".

I think, and I'll admit that I'm speaking out of turn because I'm not trans, that much of the trans identity stems from growing up with the feeling of disconnect between body and self-identity.   A childhood of not having words to express your confusion about who you are.  So that's ultimately why I'm not seeing why better surgery when would make a difference unless the surgery happened early on in life.  Sure, maybe there would be less of a stigma (although with the recent....political climate change, I'm not sure how much progress we're actually making), but I'm not sure I'm buying that. 

I guess my point is that, from what I've learned from trans friends, it's so much more than just "good surgery", so medical advances wouldn't actually make THAT much of a difference. 

I just wanted to mention that being transgendered is not a sexuality. It's about gender identity.  I had a good friend of mine that was going M to F.  He felt he was a straight woman in a man's body and didn't see himself as gay.  I use the male pronoun because that was what he was using at the time.  He had just gone through the process of decreasing testosterone and increasing estorgen.  He was also getting voice coaching as well.

The reason why you see LGBT+ is because the gay community is mostly more open minded about those that are gender queer and/or transgendered. I say mostly because there is some prejudice in the gay community towards folks that are transgendered. Sadly.  

Oh I know.  I've been out as bisexual since I was 15. I was pointing out transgender prejudice as part of the thread topic.  The internal prejudice of the LGBT+ community is a big kettle of fish on its own.  It probably should have it's own thread in off-topic though if you want to go into that further.  I don't want this one to derail into that conversation.

This is why I knew I shouldn't have entered the thread; I'd end up disagreeing with people I usually agree with and that's no fun

Star Trek has stuff like that all the time. For instance, an amorphous black glob made up of the negative feelings of a species, which they collectively shed to ascent to a higher plane of existence. A mind-controlling sentient plant actually seems a bit tame comparatively, in my opinion. It's worth noting that you can take practically anything that isn't super-realistic and spin it to sound like either of our examples above.

Actually (much as the asari annoy me for other reasons), they are based off hard science. You might recognize the word "parthenogenetic" from "parthenogenesis" in the asari codex entry. The only way the asari differ is that (for dumb meta reasons) they need a partner to "randomize half of their DNA" for reproduction rather than do what these lizards do (there's really no reason they couldn't trigger that themselves, since they apparently have great control over their internal bodily functions).

Since we're only talking about the first game (which is good, because I was really only thinking of it when writing - the series has indeed gotten softer as it goes on), the Reapers aren't even pseudoscience. As of the first game, they appear to be either advanced VIs or advanced AIs.

As for element zero, yeah, that doesn't exist (though some other means of understanding/manipulating mass is being researched). However, that's practically the only fake thing you need to add to the universe to make all of the other things possible. The One Big Lie on the Mohs scale. It was a great "one thing" to add, since manipulating mass lets you do so much. It makes the FTL make sense, it makes the scifi weapons make sense, etc. That would make ME a 4 or 4.5 on the scale, which is in the middle. Of course, that's just one scale, these things are subjective.

Also worth noting is that when I'm talking about "hardness", I'm mostly thinking of physics, not biology, since biology's both absolutely crazy - you'll probably find many more things you never knew existed or even could exist than the all-female lizards on Earth - and because it's not bound by universal laws in the same way physics is (really, everything is physics when it comes down to it, but whatever). So instead of thinking about the Thorian, I'm thinking about FTL and how ships work, how weapons work, whether they pay attention to astronomy, that sort of thing. Hence the "One Big Lie" above. Add just one thing, eezo, and suddenly all of those things are within the realm of plausibility.

The other thing to consider when grading scifi is how internally consistent it is; whether it follows its own rules. Star Trek and ME tried to do this. Star Wars does not for the most part have rules to follow, at least in the movies. It's just "Here's some tech, it works because". That doesn't make it bad, it's just its style. But that alone wouldn't make it sci-fantasy, it would just make it soft scifi. What makes it sci-fantasy is the fact that it's, well, fantasy in space, complete with mystical powers and stuff.

TL;DR: What I was really trying to say was that ME1 is harder than Star Trek because its science is generally more plausible, and that neither are sci-fantasy because that's not the same thing as scifi "hardness", it's a different genre. And that none of that makes something better or worse, though I personally lament the fact that ME is getting softer.

Sorry, I'm not 100% sure what you mean. If you mean that you don't think being transgender would matter in the future/ME verse, I agree completely. However, I still think it's not going to be something people necessarily want others to know, so I just thought listing Jien as "née John" would still be slightly annoying for her, even if 99% of people might just react with "ah, interesting" and move on. If that makes sense.

It's no big deal anyway, since it was just an idea you had and we'll just have to see what Bioware does, if anything.

"Cisplaining"? Ha, never heard that one before

1. I didn't mean everyone in Tevinter was evil, but it certainly paints their culture/society in an even more negative light than before, which is impressive. Dorian and Krem were certainly there to show that there are good Tevinters, but it's like a drop in the pond. I'd totally support the Lucerni, because they need some serious reform

I'd argue it doesn't make much sense, because I'm comparing Tevinter to other nations/organizations in Thedas, rather than on Earth. What we do here in our militaries is academic. Tevinter is the only (modern) place in Thedas I can think of where women are limited in what they can do in service, so that is indeed pretty odd. To me, it just seemed like they added that solely for Krem's story. Because it's different everywhere else in Thedas, I agree it's cultural, but that culture is still sexist, since dictating what people are allowed to do or not do is (one of) the definition(s) of sexist. (Also, Krem was doing fine, so clearly those rules are bollocks.)

2. Yeah, it's rather inconsistent, isn't it? It's the one and only instance where I understand the "feels forced" mentality when it comes to Krem, since it does seem like Bioware intentionally worded Quizzy's question badly just so they could have Bull defend Krem. Or maybe it's just inconsistent because they screwed up, I don't know. Either way, it was bad and they need to do better.

That's why I said "sort of homophobic". I agree about Dorian, actually, but on the surface, it looks like that, which makes Tevinter seem even more eeeeevil

It's not so much that trans people won't exist, so much as the fact that in the ME future it could well not matter. Just like, hopefully in our future being gay or bi won't matter, because it's universally accepted as just, you know, something that exists. And all that moral judgement and political debate regarding the topic will have vanished because no one will care. LGBTQ people will naturally have equal rights and representation in the media, in politics, and so on, and at that point we can all stop talking about it already. (Note: I would love to see such a future, but we're not there yet. Not even close. Hell, I can't even say any of this for women right now, and we're, like, half the population. So we should keep talking about it.)

So, in a perfect future, being trans looks like this: Billy is born a boy, but at some point during childhood realizes he doesn't quite feel right about the fact that he's a boy. So he tells his parents and they go, 'okay, cool,' and start her on gene therapy as soon as she's old enough (and encourage her to dress/act like a girl until then). By the time she's an adult, she's female down to her very DNA. Yay for science! No questioning, no doubts. Well, maybe a few, but it wouldn't be any worse than the usual identity stuff kids go through as they grow up. (And yes, I realized I've way oversimplified the issue. Please know that no disrespect was intended - just trying to keep my 'ideal future' scenario brief). Assuming this is accepted culturally - a possibility in a progressive culture that has, like, actual aliens which makes race/gender differences trivial in comparison, there would be very little reason for the topic to come up. Unless we have a really close relationship with that character to where they'd feel like they'd want to share that with us.

That said though, Mass Effect has been rather inconsistent in this regard, even within the game. In ME1 a female Shepard that Liara shows interest in had a 'but you're woman!' dialogue option. Which tells me the utopian 'so what if you're gay' attitude isn't necessarily a universal thing in the Mass Effect world (unless I'm mistaking the intent and it's just bad paraphrasing - it's not a dialogue option I ever actually chose). And I agree that the asari were a missed opportunity for what could have been a really cool portrayal of women. So I don't think it's out of line to assume prejudice against trans people might still exist, and trans people will still suffer as a result, even if it's a lot rarer than it is now.