Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
What is Bubbles' sexual orientation?
Thrillho:
While voiced by a mod, none of the following is said in mod voice, it is simply informed by being one of the mods here.
--- Quote from: snufflebottoms on 20 May 2018, 07:56 ---I feel like this is pretty much true of the entire forum. You make ANY opinion comment and you are violating someone's ideals or a fictional character's boundaries or idk the laws of grammar or some shit.
--- End quote ---
When I originally joined this forum, it was a very different place. It had moderators, but extremely permissive ones and things got bad enough that jeph considered closing it.
I returned to this forum after a lengthy absence in 2012 or so and found the forum to be a changed place.
Around when Claire was introduced to the comic, there was a huge upswing in troll joinees. I eventually joined the mod team to help pitch in to maintaining this forum's aim to be a safe space for as many people as possible.
So between your post, and this one:
--- Quote from: Mad Cat on 19 May 2018, 20:22 ---In a similar way, if I tell someone they are trying to police my language, which I will not permit, they really are trying to police my language, especially despite their claims of not trying to police my language. The naked term "transgender" has, for me, been coopted by the transphobes as an epithet. I will not use it. Case closed. Move on.
--- End quote ---
I feel like I have to point a thing or two out to both of you. First of all, your language is being policed. We police language on this forum. We do not police for content. We police for victimisation, for words that cause damage, for prejudice.
Each of you is saying different things, but they are similar criticisms of the forum. Removing the trans element from the discussion entirely, if having your language policed is a problem for you, then this forum is going to be a problem for you. If your viewpoint is that any opinion is somehow unacceptable enough to be challenged, then I feel you have a severe misunderstanding of what this forum is like, and can't possibly be speaking in anything less than hyperbole.
Opinions and language use are challenged on this forum to make it a safer space, which is a never-ending quest. If that's something that you find irritating, then you will find this forum a very irritating place to be.
Bringing the trans element back into the discussion, I have never before encountered a non-binary person who has the language preferences expressed by Mad Cat here. The rules on respectful language here are based on consensus, and there is a thread in Discuss about whether the mods are handling the forum right. I don't really know how to approach having such diametrically opposed viewpoints on words like 'transgender' present on the forum simultaneously but discussion with people on both sides of that debate is the only way we'll be able to find a way to do it.
Mad Cat:
--- Quote from: awgiedawgie on 20 May 2018, 14:09 ---Equating someone's gender with their physical appearance and capabilities is no different from equating one's gender with their biological sex.
Bubbles is a combat android. That is her physical appearance. Her gender is female.
May wants to be a fighter jet. That is a physical body. Her gender is female. If she ever gets her wish, she would be a female fighter jet.
Emily wants to be a toaster. If she ever gets her wish, she would be a female toaster.
Physical appearance, personality, or even societal role, are not the same thing as gender.
--- End quote ---
Clearly, subtlety is not your forté. You also appear to have foregone knowledge of the principle Form follows function. The function, in the case of human sex/gender that a person wishes to fulfill informs the form of the person they become through growth. However, sometimes, a person's desired function (read: gender) is at odds with their form (read: sex). This is when a person is said to be transgendered or transsexual.
Machines have both form and function, but the question is whether the software which drives a given machine is a good match for both. However, unless the machine specificly has a form for interfacing with human genitals, of whatever description, then that machine cannot be said to have a sex, in human terms. Olde English had a gender system for nouns. Modern English does not. A bulldozer is neither masculine, feminine, nor both. The robo-psychology of an AI that inhabits the bulldozer may, but does not have to, possess within it a human-like gender of being masculine or feminine. Bubbles is a combat medic and android. Her function does not inherently require either human sex nor a human gender. She has, however adopted one. Good for her. But she is not human. I therefore went into TL;DR detail about what it would mean to machines themselves to have machine sex and machine gender completely divorced from, but parallel to, human sex and human gender, which I will not further belabour here, as at least one person has evinced that what I have already written is entirely sufficient at conveying that meaning.
Thrillho:
--- Quote from: Mad Cat on 20 May 2018, 15:39 ---Clearly, subtlety is not your forté.
--- End quote ---
Moderator Comment The discussion is fine, but no more of this.
Mad Cat:
--- Quote from: Thrillho on 20 May 2018, 15:23 ---I have never before encountered a non-binary person who has the language preferences expressed by Mad Cat here.
--- End quote ---
I am not non-binary. I am MtF. I am transitioning from one of two options to the other of two options. My gender is feminine. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I don't know where you got the idea that I am NB. Transgendered is not synonymous with non-binary.
I am also Asperger's, so I may sometimes be interpretted to have an idiosyncratic use of langauge, but it makes sense to me.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Mad Cat on 20 May 2018, 15:39 ---The robo-psychology of an AI that inhabits the bulldozer may, but does not have to, possess within it a human-like gender of being masculine or feminine. Bubbles is a combat medic and android. Her function does not inherently require either human sex nor a human gender. She has, however adopted one. Good for her. But she is not human.
--- End quote ---
While none of that is clearly wrong, I would suggest that it is taking a simplistically mechanistic view of AIs. In Jeph's world of QC, AIs are not now manufactured, they are an emergent development, and we do not know what might or might not be characteristic of such AIs other than what Jeph has shown us.
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