Pathfinder Is Still Bad

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Jan 08, 2016 11:08 pm

We seem to be talking about 3.5 changelings instead of Pathfinder changelings:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-rac ... changeling

If they change form it's the same way as anything else. Basically a race of creatures that are all females (except for one notable exception in an Adventure path) that, and I can't repeat this enough ARE NOT SHAPECHANGERS IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, are said to be by one of the writers to be 100% transgendered and transsexual. Both, at the same time. All day, every day. It was supposed to be in Inner Sea Race Guide, but the editors nixed that. They threw her a bone though and said that kobold sorcerers tend to be genderfluid (again, not the entire race. Except for a few /pol/acks, no one really cared on 4chan).

There are transgendered people on 4chan and they say that transgendered and transsexual are two different things and you can't be both. If someone who knows more than I do wants to correct that I'll accept their explanation.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 12:09 am

Wait, all changelings are supposed to be transgender? Or just one of them? Because I can see the second one being an interesting plot point, the first seems both incredibly stupid and completely unsupported by the SRD writeup.

Also, Transexual vs Transgender: This is a case of the terminology being incredibly muddled due to half the world treating them as synonyms and the other half taking them as either exceptionally narrow (MtF or FtM only!) or uselessly vague (literally any gender other than cisbinary!), so you really can't know what someone who says "transgender and transsexual" means without asking them in detail.

But in terms of useful definitions, we have:
Sex, your based on your physical, genetic and hormonal status, aka maleness or femaleness.
Gender, your social role that ordinarily depends on your sex, aka masculinity or femininity.
Transgender, someone who views themself as belonging to the gender which is associated with a sex other than the sex they were assigned to at birth.
Transsexual, someone who wishes to change which sex they are or who has already done so.
Transvestite, someone who wears (or would like to wear) the clothing associated with the gender associated with a sex other than their sex at birth.
Cis-, a prefix that denotes the opposite of trans. For example, cisgender means a gender which matches assigned sex, cissexual means someone who wishes to remain their current sex, etc.

Someone being transsexual and transgender at the same time is not impossible. It's actually fairly typical. But whoever you were talking to on 4chan could be using some other definition of those terms, or just trolling. Such is life on 4chan.

Lurky Lurkpants · Post by **Lurky Lurkpants** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 12:10 am

I think this might have gotten garbled at some point. All I could find is Crystal Frasier saying this:

I, er… I actually touched on this in the upcoming Inner Sea Races hardcover, but I don’t know what has or hasn’t survived the editing process (either at Paizo, or in my own office before final turnover). The basics are that male-appearing changelings can’t exist at birth, but changelings have a higher-than-normal-for-their-parent-race incidence of intersex conditions, basically playing into old superstitions and traditions about intersex and gender nonconforming people historically. And there’s certainly nothing stopping a changeling from being gender nonconforming or transgender, or being especially butch.

Which is not even close to "100% transgendered and transsexual."

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Jan 09, 2016 12:46 am

You mean 4Chan overreacted to an off-hand comment one of the writers made? I should have known better, my apologies for wasting everyone's time.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 12:50 am

Transgendered means identifying as a gender other than that which the person was designated at birth. A transexual is a transgendered person who has undergone some extent of the process of making their physical body match their identified gender.

It is possible to be transexual and not transgendere, though unlikely (the only example I can think of is fictional from a moderately terrible musical). Being transgendered without being transexual is fairly common, as we are not generally in the best financial circumstances, and doctors tend to be utter assholes to us. But most transexuals are transgendered.

I think a better way to characterize changelings is either agender (not identifying as male or female) or genderfluid (where the gender identity is fluid along the male-female spectrum). Or Intersex, but that gets dicey in an rpg, since intersex is both a medical diagnosis and an identity. It'd be sort of like making a race that is deaf and trying to bring deaf culture politics in--probably not a great idea if you yourself are not deaf.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 1:18 am

Honestly, no. Changelings resemble the female sex offspring of their father's species and are raised as females of that species. Most are probably just cis females. Not intersex (they're explicitly born with the female phenotype), not agender (at least, not by default), not genderfluid (again: raised by their father's species as a female orphan of the species in question) and definitely not "transgendered" because there is no such thing, there's just transgender, there's no -ed suffix involved.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 1:57 am

Oh fuck off with that "transgendered/transgender" thing. I get enough of that from other transgenders.

Anyway, I'm sure you're right about how Changelings are in PF. Mostly because a mainstream company actually using something with no reason to have intrinsic gender identities (such as changelings or magic robot people) to do something interesting and explore gender politics and identity is pretty much a sign of the apocalypse. I meant more hypothetically than specifically to Pathfinder.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 2:46 am

Grek wrote:definitely not "transgendered" because there is no such thing, there's just transgender, there's no -ed suffix involved.

I have no idea what the hell political issue this apparently involves, but wholly fuck as someone who has no idea what this issue is about, but understands English and the way words work, saying this makes you look like a fucking idiot.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 3:08 am

Kaelik wrote:I have no idea what the hell political issue this apparently involves, but wholly fuck as someone who has no idea what this issue is about, but understands English and the way words work, saying this makes you look like a fucking idiot.

Transgendered, if it were a word, would be the past tense of the verb transgender. As in, someone who has been transgendered. That's not how transgender anything works, you can't transgender someone because transgender is an adjective and not a verb. It's not a political issue at all, its just a basic question of grammar.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 3:12 am

And no one cares....

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 3:19 am

Grek wrote:
Kaelik wrote:I have no idea what the hell political issue this apparently involves, but wholly fuck as someone who has no idea what this issue is about, but understands English and the way words work, saying this makes you look like a fucking idiot.
Transgendered, if it were a word, would be the past tense of the verb transgender. As in, someone who has been transgendered. That's not how transgender anything works, you can't transgender someone because transgender is an adjective and not a verb. It's not a political issue at all, its just a basic question of grammar.

Except that it can also be a noun and probably a verb with some work, because lots of words change become other parts of speech, especially unique distinctive ones that refer to a specific concept with few or no corollary words meaning the same thing.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Sat Jan 09, 2016 3:29 am

Holy crap - what the hell did I just click on?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 4:29 am

Prak, Changelings in PF are based on the old Changeling legends of fae children left for humans to raise. For some reason in PF this is Hag children and they're all born female. These ones aren't shapeshifters.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 7:16 am

So.. wait, I assume the writer wanted to be progressive, so she (?) created an all female race that all want to be male, no exception? Is this the new "all the negroes wish to be white"? God, I really think this idea was cut out because the editor saw the inherent problem with this and not because he grew up in a good katholic home for child diddlers.

anywho, I guess ther name makes more sense now that they all want to "change their gender". badum-tsh.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 7:54 am

Rawbeard wrote:So.. wait, I assume the writer wanted to be progressive, so she (?) created an all female race that all want to be male, no exception? Is this the new "all the negroes wish to be white"? God, I really think this idea was cut out because the editor saw the inherent problem with this and not because he grew up in a good katholic home for child diddlers.

No, what happened is Changelings were initially introduced in the Advanced Race Guide as a "playable hag" option. They're the daughters of hags by mortal men who feel a spiritual call around puberty to seek out their haggish mothers and be trained as evil witches who eventually transform into hags themselves, but who have the option to refuse their monster parent and remain as they are and continue to be a PC. They're all female because the idea is "playable hag" and not for progressive/"SJW"/gender rights reasons.

Then Crystal Frasier (one of the Pathfinder writers) mentioned on her tumblr that she did the Changeling writeup in Inner Sea Races and that in it she noted that while Changelings are all born female in appearance, some Changelings are transgender or butch or intersex and that if you want to run a male presenting Changeling that can happen.

And then 4chan took it out of context by claiming that in Pathfinder, all Changelings are Female to Male Transsexuals. Or something.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:54 am

urgh, slightly less horrid then. Never had an issue with them being all female, as said, playable hags, whatever. I wonder if Crystal (hippy parents?) thought through that she was basically making them into dick girls. which is fun in it's own way... Pathfinder needs more futa anyway. She definitely does not seem to have a grasp on what those terms mean, though. Was she the one that made the iconic shaman a dwarven female, born female, but raised male because Discworld logic, identifying as female now, so it's a transgender/sexual character? I know they had this kind of missguided non sense before. Wouldn't be surprising if it came from the same person.

btw, I knew two openly gay guys in my life, so it's ok for me to talk about this topic like an ignorant prick.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:58 am

No, that was born male, raised male identified as female. Very "classic" transgender story, with muddled writing that made some people go "wait, was this character born male or female"? when it was first posted.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 9:01 am

I never read past the shitfit the author threw when people wanted this clarified, this makes more sense, but the hubbub around it confused the hell out of me. But then again I was a kid who was surprised two same sex people could not legally marry, so my privilige has been pretty unchecked, I guess.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 11:05 am

name_here wrote:Prak, Changelings in PF are based on the old Changeling legends of fae children left for humans to raise. For some reason in PF this is Hag children and they're all born female. These ones aren't shapeshifters.

Yeah, I kind of caught the broad of that.

I'm basically just disappointed since Eberron that neither Changelings nor Warforged were set up as "gender binary need not apply." And that there still isn't a good race with that as the canon fluff.

That I'm aware of.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 1:06 pm

Grek wrote:Honestly, no. Changelings resemble the female sex offspring of their father's species and are raised as females of that species. Most are probably just cis females. Not intersex (they're explicitly born with the female phenotype), not agender (at least, not by default), not genderfluid (again: raised by their father's species as a female orphan of the species in question) and definitely not "transgendered" because there is no such thing, there's just transgender, there's no -ed suffix involved.

This is linguistic horse shit. Transgendered is an adjective. It's a product of the adjective "gendered" which means "has a gender" and "trans." Mostly we use the adjective "gendered" in respect to things which may or may not have gender, such as words. There are "gendered words" in English like "his" and "she," but most English words are ungendered. Spanish has a lot more gendered words, what with every fucking noun being el or la.

There are also "gender words" which are the words which actually are themselves a description of gender. Like, "masculinity" is a "gender word." And you never fucking see people use the adjective "gender" because it refers to a very obscure thing. The word "gender" alone as an adjective exists, but its a weird construction.

So if you refer to someone as a "Transgendered Man" that means that they are a man who has a gender that is trans. In the same way as when you refer to "La Biblioteca" as a "Feminine Gendered Noun" you are saying that it is a noun that has a gender which is feminine. If you refer to someone as a "Transgender Man" you are saying that they are a man who somehow sells or distributes transgender. In the same way as when you say someone is a "Milk Man" you are saying that they are a person who delivers milk.

TL;DR: You are totally wrong, and the correct English construction of the adjective to describe people who have a gender that is trans is "transgendered."

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 2:31 pm

Gendered (adjective: having a particular gender) is an analogue of sexed (adjective: having a particular sex), and not the past tense of any verb. Note that sexed (adjective: having a particular sex) does not mean the same thing as sexed (verb, past tense: to have determined the sex of), though there's an obvious relation there. Contrast this with gender and sex, which are nouns that directly describe the phenomenon of gender and sex.

People are gendered. People are not gender. Male is a specific gender.

People are sexed. People are not sex. If you sexed someone, I hope you at least bought them dinner first. Male is a specific sex.

There is linguistic precedent for "Alice is transgendered," while there is none for "Bob is transgender." Now, I don't care enough about the linguistics to tell people what labels they should be using. But if you want to have the linguistics argument (and only the linguistics argument), the correct adjective is 100% transgendered.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 2:56 pm

Prak wrote:
I'm basically just disappointed since Eberron that neither Changelings nor Warforged were set up as "gender binary need not apply." And that there still isn't a good race with that as the canon fluff.

That I'm aware of.

If I remember right a male changeling could turn into female and get knocked up, so I assumed gender fluidity was just a thing too obvious to mention past this point. Warforged having a gender identity at all bothered me a bit in the beginnig, but they learn from observation, so them identifying as one or the other as they preferred made somewhat sense.

Lurky Lurkpants · Post by **Lurky Lurkpants** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 4:08 pm

Prak wrote:I'm basically just disappointed since Eberron that neither Changelings nor Warforged were set up as "gender binary need not apply." And that there still isn't a good race with that as the canon fluff.

Pathfinder has the Ghoran, who are somewhat like that. Ones that interact with other groups might choose to appear male, female, or neither, but those who don't are confused by the whole idea of gender.

However they are also weird plant people who are all around 4,000 years old, so I wouldn't necessarily call them a good race.

Covent · Post by **Covent** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 5:55 pm

It seems the Weapon master's handbook has a few things which are not complete garbage. I did not even know that armed bravery existed until someone pointed it out. I am going to have to look through a copy of that book and see if paizo is going to get some money *sigh*. Not trying to claim it is great, it just appears to have made some small attempt to paper over the gaping hole in fighter.

I had made it a policy to never buy anything from them again after the abortion that was unchained, and the ACG butchery.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 6:46 pm

uh, fighters can use weapon finesse with weapons that are not finess eweapons. I can see amusing applications that will make people's heads spin "fighter's are supposed to wield an oversized greatsword as a finesse weapon!". not that it is worth the effort, but seing people gasp for air when figthers break physics without magic is fun.