EV-9D9 was female

Who the hell made that decision? That droid doesn't look, sound, act, speak or indicate female in any way.

What do you mean? She'd clearly an S&M dominatrix.

EV-9D9 was female

Who the hell made that decision? That droid doesn't look, sound, act, speak or indicate female in any way.

What do you mean? She'd clearly an S&M dominatrix.

Which I guess makes this less tangential to my point!

All I know is when life gives you lemons you Gonk. Gonk. Gonk ko kyenga see.

Yes.

Perfect! If I ever get IG-2000s, I'm totally going to make a sexy IG-88 card to go with them.

Did I ever say she wasn't? She's clearly a trope, but it's a trope for a reason, and I was merely stating what the trope was. Does that trope offend you somehow? Does the idea of someone using their appearance as a weapon offend you?

I'm offended by the notion that I'm an easily titillated 13 year old boy. Alternatively: I'm annoyed by the notion that only the things which titillate 13 year old boys are worth doing. Or terrified by the idea that the people who created a robotic assassin/sexbot didn't have the maturity to roll their eyes at the thought.

Eventually I become so used to seeing a trope that I'm bored with seeing yet another iteration of it. I'm glad to see that FF took a different rout with their own version of the character.

Or terrified by the idea that the people who created a robotic assassin/sexbot didn't have the maturity to roll their eyes at the thought.

Well, if I'm going to give a shape to something designed to kill people, it should be a shape that gives it an advantage at its job.

The best 3 are the Intimidation shape, the Distracting shape, and the Unassuming shape.

Guri is the latter two combined, 'cause if you're not distracted by the sexy, at least you're going to be a bit dismissive of it as a threat, if that's the tactic it's using.

Also, human women exist. Therefore, modeling after a human woman makes Guri stealthier, as she's less recognizable.

To return to a previous part of the conversation:

Except in the quoted view of things, the Empire doesn't make any efforts to sift out those likely to defect from those unlikely to defect. You look at those Middle Eastern countries and I promise you they have hard core secret police who are vetting every single academy applicant, particularly for flying fighter jets (which is what the TIE fighter is the equivalent of). You're not going to give a very expensive jet to someone whose loyalty is in question. You're also not going to sink all that money in training a pilot, which is even more expensive, if there is even a whiff of disloyalty about them.

That's why defections (which did occur in the cold war) were so rare and so high profile. Pilots are the only soldiers who can, quite easily, switch sides in a war, and governments are well aware of this. The Empire should be too.

If you think that the Empire doesn't keep an eye out for sedition, you have clearly never heard of the ISB.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Security_Bureau

As far as defection, you're drawing some pretty broad parallels that don't hold up to scrutiny. On the planet earth, fighter jets are capable of taking you deep into enemy territory before anyone knows you're gone, especially if you're dispatched on a routine patrol. In a Galaxy Far Far Away, TIE fighters are 'short range fighters'. No hyperdrive, no dedicated life-support. Trying to defect from the Imperial garrison in any Imperial star system is like trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat with a Snickers bar and a can of Mountain Dew.

I'm not sure I agree with that. What are men's eyes attracted to - a functional looking droid, a human male of average height and build, or a drop-dead gorgeous blonde. Guri is not going ANYWHERE unnoticed. She's also not crossing the street without land speeders honking at her and offering her a ride. And she's not going to a bar without six men offering her a drink. And she's not going to infiltrate an enemy hideout without every human male in the place (most of the thugs in the SW universe) giving her their complete and undivided attention. Terrible choice for stealth, truly terrible.

Good point, hence stealing the entire Rand Ecliptic to defect.

To return to a previous part of the conversation:

Except in the quoted view of things, the Empire doesn't make any efforts to sift out those likely to defect from those unlikely to defect. You look at those Middle Eastern countries and I promise you they have hard core secret police who are vetting every single academy applicant, particularly for flying fighter jets (which is what the TIE fighter is the equivalent of). You're not going to give a very expensive jet to someone whose loyalty is in question. You're also not going to sink all that money in training a pilot, which is even more expensive, if there is even a whiff of disloyalty about them.

That's why defections (which did occur in the cold war) were so rare and so high profile. Pilots are the only soldiers who can, quite easily, switch sides in a war, and governments are well aware of this. The Empire should be too.

If you think that the Empire doesn't keep an eye out for sedition, you have clearly never heard of the ISB.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Security_Bureau

As far as defection, you're drawing some pretty broad parallels that don't hold up to scrutiny. On the planet earth, fighter jets are capable of taking you deep into enemy territory before anyone knows you're gone, especially if you're dispatched on a routine patrol. In a Galaxy Far Far Away, TIE fighters are 'short range fighters'. No hyperdrive, no dedicated life-support. Trying to defect from the Imperial garrison in any Imperial star system is like trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat with a Snickers bar and a can of Mountain Dew.

I thought about that, but there are other kinds of pilots being trained in the academy - presumably shuttle pilots as well. And the ISB figures heavily in something I've been writing lately, so I'm quite familiar with it. I was just pointing out that it seems strange so many defectors coming out of the Imperial Academy. Here in the USA you have to have a recommendation from a congressman to get into a military academy, and we like to think of ourselves as an open and transparent democracy. I just find it shocking that the Empire would have such a blasé policy regarding who attends the academy if so many can attend and later defect.

I'm not sure I agree with that. What are men's eyes attracted to - a functional looking droid, a human male of average height and build, or a drop-dead gorgeous blonde. Guri is not going ANYWHERE unnoticed. She's also not crossing the street without land speeders honking at her and offering her a ride. And she's not going to a bar without six men offering her a drink. And she's not going to infiltrate an enemy hideout without every human male in the place (most of the thugs in the SW universe) giving her their complete and undivided attention. Terrible choice for stealth, truly terrible.

She's more of an enforcer/gofer than an assassin. Xizor didn't buy her for the primary purpose of removing threats to his rule from what I can gather from Shadows of the Empire. But as has been addressed previously, there's all sorts of problems with Guri's portrayal, and with SotE as a whole (Xizor's a creepy date rapist, Leia gets damseled yet again, etc...)

Just to skew the gender imbalance a little further.

Guri isnt really female, shes a droid, she doesnt have a gender. She can look feminine and act feminine but she doesnt actually have a gender.

Just splitting hairs!

Well, she doesn't have a Sex. We'd have to ask whether she identifies one way or another, thus becoming Gendered.

Wookieepedia typically assigns droids a gender (though not a biological sex) and most droids seem to be gendered male (C-3PO, R2-D2, etc). I found Guri kind of irritating because of course the first droid gendered female is what amounts to a sex toy. Granted, Guri is supposed to be a bodyguard and assassin, but it's quite clear that Xizor uses her for more than that, and her appearance is clearly designed more for titillating men than for passing undetected in society. But it's very interesting to contrast Guri as an assassin bot with our other bounty hunter assassin bot IG-88, listed in Wookieepedia as being male in programming. Their appearances are shockingly different.

EV-9D9 was female

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/EV-9D9

Woah, woah, woah! This is a family forum, pal. That lady hasn't even got a shirt on, like sexy IG-88DD. Easy with the topless robot pictures, buddy!

This thread has remained surprisingly civil.

I had never considered that EV-9D9 might be female (indeed, I'm not entirely sure it's appropriate to classify what it means to "look, sound, act, speak or indicate female in any way" in this day and age), but if I close my eyes and imagine Bea Arthur I can almost see it.

This thread has remained surprisingly civil.

I had never considered that EV-9D9 might be female (indeed, I'm not entirely sure it's appropriate to classify what it means to "look, sound, act, speak or indicate female in any way" in this day and age), but if I close my eyes and imagine Bea Arthur I can almost see it.

Have you any idea how it feels to be a Fembot living in a Manbot's Manputer's world?

But Whisper was AFAIK never referred to by a gendered pronoun.

Whisper has not, by FFG.

I think folks just want two lady assassins.

From the FAQ:

“Echo”

When declaring a decloak, the player controlling

“Echo” must declare both the side and direction

of the decloak. If “Echo” can perform the

decloak, she must do so. If “Echo” cannot

perform the decloak, the player controlling

“Echo” may declare a decloak in any other

direction, or he may choose not to decloak.

Echo is identified as female, in the same paragraph where FFG identifies players as male...

Yeah that has bugged me.

I agree that identifying players as male is particularly egregious, but I wonder if this particular paragraph isn't terrible. If "Echo" is gender neutral in FFG's eyes, then they are just alternating gendered pronouns. That's a pretty good thing.

They don't actually ever identify players as males. "He" also functions as a gender neutral pronoun where the sex of the subject is unknown.

They don't actually ever identify players as males. "He" also functions as a gender neutral pronoun where the sex of the subject is unknown.

If you're super sexist and/or hyper-conservative grammatically it does.

Actually, I feel compelled to add that we have long had a true gender neutral pronoun in English - they. They used in the singular has oftentimes been considered to be incorrect by 18th century grammarians who wanted to use Latin rules and impose them on English, but the use of they as a gender-neutral pronoun is attested since the 15th century. Moreover, when I studied Anglo-Saxon as an undergraduate, I found that much Anglo-Saxon prose used the pronoun hie, their equivalent for "they" when referring to an individual person of indeterminate gender. So, since that predates the introduction of French into our language, I think it's a pretty strong argument for the constancy of the use of "they" in the singular to get around this issue entirely.

I'm not sure you have to be "super sexist and/or hyper-conservative grammatically" to observe that there is no genderless, singular, third person pronoun in the English language. That's just a fact. Unless you'd prefer that all players be referred to as "it," which poses its own set of issues. There are supposedly what, 60+ genders now? We may only have "he" and "she" for all of them, but using the wrong one is still better than a term that deprives a person of their very humanity.

I'm not sure you have to be "super sexist and/or hyper-conservative grammatically" to observe that there is no genderless, singular, third person pronoun in the English language. That's just a fact. Unless you'd prefer that all players be referred to as "it," which poses its own set of issues. There are supposedly what, 60+ genders now? We may only have "he" and "she" for all of them, but using the wrong one is still better than a term that deprives a person of their very humanity.

Actually, using the wrong one deprives 50% of the population of their very humanity. There was a case in Canada about whether or not women could sit on the senate, and the supreme court of Canada ruled that women couldn't be appointed to the senate because the constitution specifically used the male pronoun for senators. You might say that's the "universal he," but clearly where laws are concerned this can become problematic. Moreover, psychological studies have shown that the use of the word "he" to mean either he or she doesn't actually mean that at all. Readers call to mind only men in those situations, which means that men become the default sex in most occupations and positions of power, and also the default sex when it comes to games like this one.

There is a great article, drawing on the Chicago Manual of Style, suggesting how to get rid of this problem in a way that doesn't seem sexist (which pisses me off) but doesn't seem like it's trying not to be sexist (which bizarrely pisses reactionary men off). Here is the article: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/01/14/the-long-overdue-death-of-the-universal-he

Had the game creators followed any of those simple steps, this conversation would have been avoided.

I'm not sure you have to be "super sexist and/or hyper-conservative grammatically" to observe that there is no genderless, singular, third person pronoun in the English language. That's just a fact. Unless you'd prefer that all players be referred to as "it," which poses its own set of issues. There are supposedly what, 60+ genders now? We may only have "he" and "she" for all of them, but using the wrong one is still better than a term that deprives a person of their very humanity.

Actually, using the wrong one deprives 50% of the population of their very humanity. There was a case in Canada about whether or not women could sit on the senate, and the supreme court of Canada ruled that women couldn't be appointed to the senate because the constitution specifically used the male pronoun for senators. You might say that's the "universal he," but clearly where laws are concerned this can become problematic. Moreover, psychological studies have shown that the use of the word "he" to mean either he or she doesn't actually mean that at all. Readers call to mind only men in those situations, which means that men become the default sex in most occupations and positions of power, and also the default sex when it comes to games like this one.

There is a great article, drawing on the Chicago Manual of Style, suggesting how to get rid of this problem in a way that doesn't seem sexist (which pisses me off) but doesn't seem like it's trying not to be sexist (which bizarrely pisses reactionary men off). Here is the article: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/01/14/the-long-overdue-death-of-the-universal-he

Had the game creators followed any of those simple steps, this conversation would have been avoided.

Wow, so the "case" you are referring to was from 1927. And 2 years later the higher court in England, ruled against that, and the first woman senator was sworn in, in 1930. There are currently 35 women senators in the Canadian Senate.

This thread has gotten so off topic, and I can't wait for it to be locked.

Actually, using the wrong one deprives 50% of the population of their very humanity.

what the actual subcutaneous nictating ****, is this seriously a thing that anyone outside of third-wavers believes?

Actually, using the wrong one deprives 50% of the population of their very humanity. There was a case in Canada about whether or not women could sit on the senate, and the supreme court of Canada ruled that women couldn't be appointed to the senate because the constitution specifically used the male pronoun for senators. You might say that's the "universal he," but clearly where laws are concerned this can become problematic. Moreover, psychological studies have shown that the use of the word "he" to mean either he or she doesn't actually mean that at all. Readers call to mind only men in those situations, which means that men become the default sex in most occupations and positions of power, and also the default sex when it comes to games like this one.

There is a great article, drawing on the Chicago Manual of Style, suggesting how to get rid of this problem in a way that doesn't seem sexist (which pisses me off) but doesn't seem like it's trying not to be sexist (which bizarrely pisses reactionary men off). Here is the article: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/01/14/the-long-overdue-death-of-the-universal-he

Had the game creators followed any of those simple steps, this conversation would have been avoided.

Uh... I'm not sure we can agree there, as far as depriving people of their humanity goes. One term is being used (or not being used, as the case may be) to add an element of mystery to a fictional character, the other doesn't even qualify them as a person. Nowhere in there did I hope to broach the topic of male privilege in the real world.

I'm not trying to engage you in a political debate here, not least of all because I've seen where these conversations go. There are problems with the English language, and there are problems with society. None of that is going to be solved by posters on an X-Wing forum. What we can do is acknowledge that such problems exist, and do our best to make everybody feel welcome with the tools we have available to us.