This may not pertain here but I think the poll is about whether you have a Y chromosome or not rather than sexual preference.

There may be five biological sexes, but let's face it, male and female make up the rather vast majority of that. The poll makes no mention to whether it refers to psychological or biological gender, so why not just make the assumption that it refers to biological gender instead of making a fuss over a perfectly innocent poll.

Do forum trolls have a gender?

Well at lest the poll will make sure very few whining women called "buttercup" or some such nonsense will be asking for more females in the game.

Course their will all ways be the annoying political correctness brigade like above ^ "oh knowz! 0.5% of the population arent represented by the poll!!!111" god i long for the good old days when people like that where rightly ignored

if i'm a troll, at least i'm not an insecure, ignorant hypocrite.

it's easy to say 'how hard is it to pick male or female' when you never have to question your place in the world.

it's easy to attack people trying to stand up for themselves when they might remove some of your centricism in the world. frankly, i could care less about political correctness in general. i've got a plenty colorful vocabulary when it comes to describing homophobes. but while you might be sitting alone in your room doing whatever it is you do when you're alone, this forum is a public setting. i was defending someone else who'd made a simple request and for it was called psychologically problematic. so who's the troll now?

you use the term 'troll' to describe anyone you disagree with, not any objective behavior. real nice. lots of integrity. yes, forum trolls have genders. and sexual orientations. i myself am a gay man. if you have a problem with that, with transgender persons, or with showing respect to various kinds of people in public, then you should go back to the 18th century where your mindset came from, and stay there. this modern world obviously isn't for you.

I can't believe I'm feeding the troll, but:

actually there are at least 5 biological sexes, and no limit to psychological genders.

cannot be allowed to stand.

This false belief has gained widspread acceptance since the publication of biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling's essay published in the early 90's: "The five sexes: Why male and female are not enough". This essay is also responsible for the myth that between 1-2% of babies are born "intersex".

An article by Leonard Sax :

h t t p://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_3_39/ai_94130313/print

takes down these myths and provides an accurate summation of the science of this matter. Two quotes
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This figure of 0.018% suggests that there are currently about 50,000 true intersexuals living in the United States. These individuals are of course entitled to the same expert care and consideration that all patients deserve. Nothing is gained, however, by pretending that there are 5,000,000 such individuals.
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CONCLUSIONS
The available data support the conclusion that human sexuality is a dichotomy, not a continuum. More than 99.98% of humans are either male or female. If the term intersex is to retain any clinical meaning, the use of this term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female.

The birth of an intersex child, far from being "a fairly common phenomenon," is actually a rare event, occurring in fewer than 2 out of every 10,000 births.
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I make no value judgments here; other then the obvious: Each and every human life deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Spreading falsehoods is no way to achieve that.


Mr. Lucky

I make no value judgments here; other then the obvious: Each and every human life deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Spreading falsehoods is no way to achieve that.

while i appricate your diplomacy greatly, it isn't a statistical issue i'm concerned about. i appriciate the article you quoted; i had similar, low statistics quoted for chomosonal abnormalities in a bio class. and i believe them.

it's not a statistical issue. it's a social issue. i appriciate that you're not making a value judgement, but scientific conclusion isn't itself free of value judgement (see work by Steven Shapin, off the top of my head).

i think what burns me is how quickly the truly ignorant escalate issues like this. Dyna specified a request for "not sure". I specified a request for "at least an 'other' option', and defended Dyna's dignity for being indirectly accused of 'psychological problems.' i defended him with a big of general info about sex and gender. for it i've been labeled as a troll, which appears to be a catchall for anyone that doesn't fit the norms of a given internet board. i could care less about that.

as i said in my opening, i'll defend this issue until i'm kicked off the boards, if need be. i could care less about educating a bunch of backwater adolescents. but i'd expect StarDock to be a bit different, especially given (what is in my mind) its previous pattern of quite upstanding support for all its decent fans and customers.

ask yourself this before you counter-troll on (not you, Mr. Lucky, just everyone else):
would it actually hurt you, StarDock or GalCiv if that poll had at least one more option, to respect the slim minority?

I don't consider you a troll, dystopic. And I was rather out of line generalizing it as "psychological problems".
As you have pointed out, some are not psychological problems, but physiological differences.

you use the term 'troll' to describe anyone you disagree with

Well, well dystopic, we meet again. It sure is funny that you do the same thing in other threads.

ahem, i think this is the first time i've used this word here, and i'm coming into this dicussuions late, but still... TROLL

this is ridiculous there’s no real reason to have a third option unless you are a member of the ppc [political correctness police] however if people want to make a big deal about it stardock might as well put up a third fourth or fifth option however I bet that people would only select it as a joke

my education is in sociology. that a big part of where my 'political correctness police' behavior comes from, since it requires you study all sorts of people. i could care less what you think about how other people live. but whether you like it or not, consumer-driven businesses typically hold themselves to certain standards of political correctness because all things being equal its typically more profitable not to risk offended or alienating any potential customer.

it's true that people like you would probably use it as a joke. what's stopping some people from not joking it now?

it's a valid point that the percentage of consumers that fall into another category is, from the standpoint of a business in this industry, negligable. however, if your argument is going to be based on their perogatives as a business, then gender itself is really a minor issue. unless they really thought there was a chance that enough women were playing this game to consider taking out ads in magazines like Cosmo. i'd wager they're typically connected to the same subcultural milieux as the men who play video games, and thus are exposed to them through the same means.

in other words, know what percentage of women are playing this game isn't going to help them make any more money, not unless the can correllate that infomration to something else (such as how women are learning about the game). an optional survey would be the most useful. a standalone poll is a bit of a lame duck from a business point of view, unless they were just curious about their consumers for the sake of curiousity. in which case you're right, none of it really matters except for that fact that half a dozen individuals have just collectively endorsed bigotry. sure, that doesn't matter.

you're right about those theories, lucky. postcolonial theory is excplictly purveyed by oppressed people who have no rights. i never said social science is apart from political movement, either. marxism is a perfect example. what i'm implying is that science attempts to appear as if its statements and discourse is somehow apart from the rest of human life, produced in a vacuum, and has no implication. okay, that only a tiny percentage of humans aren't XX or XY. that is a statistical fact. to say that human beings are a dichomous species is a much more significant interpretation of fact, as much so as saying it's a continuum. humans don't do well with just-facts, so even scientists are expects to interpret their results. even that scientific interpretation is subject to questions, as variance is a well-accepted part of the thoery of evolution. which is and will remain, despite how well-proven and accepted, just a thoery.

however, i feel your statements about social science are based on a narrow understanding of empiricism and science itself. reproducibility is not the end-all measure of a scientific method, but falsifyability. moreover, social science trades in hypotheses that aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, as in the physical and biological sciences. i'm not really interested in arguing over the differences. in science, the subject of inquiry determines the proper methodology. if you understand the empiricist pricipals of science, you have to admit that science never conclusively proves anything, only establishes very strongly-held theories.

but in human life, it's only about how many people agree with you that determines truth and fact. the point isn't to say science is worthless. the point is to examine how sceince is used. when you talk about science, after all, you're talking about a method of find out if something is true or not. a very simple place to start questioning the system is in who decides what will be scientifically investigated, not to mention what properly counts as 'science'.

though i have to say, it's really satsifying despite the circumstances to have an intelligent discussion in such an unexpected context.