darkpatriot

It wasn't a quest. People who donated lots of money through kickstarter got to write their own personal message in the game. You can see them by clicking tombstones. One such backer wrote a short limerick about a lady's man who kills himself after finding out he slept with a dude. It was a short, comedic thing. Someone on twitter (who incidentally believes that all men deserve to die - seriously) took it as an insult against transsexuals. He/she/it complained to Sawyer, and Sawyer said he'd look into it. It got changed in patch 1.03 And why are backers upset by the notion of game dev's removing offensive content they missed? This wasn't content they created or endorsed correct? Because it wasn't offensive. Certainly not the kind of offensive that requires something to be censored. It is only considered offensive by people with a radical agenda that can't tolerate any dissent or disagreement and regularly use the tactic of labeling any opposing opinion as offensive, transphobic, hateful, or some variation of that. Basically either agree with them or you are a bad horrible person. Many backers are upset that people with that radical and intolerant viewpoint are able to influence the games and developers they like. They are upset that someone with an obvious agenda is able to push issues like this and force them into the game, despite the fact that the vast majorities of backers do not agree with them and do not want to see that kind of change. They are upset for how this will influence future games by causing developers to censor content to avoid having a twitter/tumblr crusade launched against them. Do you really have trouble understanding that?

If you are attacking another person, whether they are on the forum or not, through any words like bigot, ****, crazy, or tranny you should probably step back for a second and consider what you are doing. For one, you guys are about to get this topic locked. Secondly you weaken your position when you can't discuss ideas without attacking people who disagree with you. You can disagree with someone without attacking them. Try and focus on concepts and ideas and not individuals. This conversation was going along pretty well for a while, dozens of pages discussing ideas and concepts without the quantity of vitriolic attacks that have been in the last half dozen pages. Calling someone an intolerant bigot is also a personal attack by the way. For all the people who seem to not understand that is just as much a personal attack as tranny or **** is.

It’s not a discussion anymore. The author consented. If anyone should be outraged it was him and nobody else. He isn’t. You are going beyond reason and you will get nowhere because you don’t want to “discuss”, you want people agree with what you feel and nothing else. People are upset that the he was even asked to change it in the first place.

Not at all. The only person allowed to decide a persons opinion's is themselves. Anyone else's opinion what it ought to be does not enter into it. A transperson can have the opinion that they are a woman. What anyone else thinks is not required to have that opinion. But if another person has the opinion that they are a man then that is also ok. What anyone else thinks is not required to have that opinion. Both those individuals are free to have whatever opinion they want. Neither one is somehow infringing on the rights of the other by having that opinion. You can identify yourself however you want to but no one is obligated to agree with you. You're not obligated to refer to a person by their preferred gender, no. You're just kind of a jerk if you don't. It comes down to a matter of courtesy. To call someone by their preferred gender is a courtesy. It is somewhat presumptuous to assume that people will always be ok with setting aside their own beliefs in order to accommodate you or be polite. Sometimes a person doesn't want to be polite or sometimes a person feels strongly about their own beliefs that they wish to make a point about it and emphasize their beliefs. Just because someone doesn't extend a courtesy does not make them a jerk. It may be kind of jerky depending on the situation but to always expect that courtesy to be extended is somewhat presumptuous and entitled. Also keep in mind that courtesy is generally a two way street. So when someone is implying, or outright declaring, that you are bigoted or hateful then I don't think it is rude at all for that you to decide not to extend that courtesy.

Not at all. The only person allowed to decide a persons opinion's is themselves. Anyone else's opinion what it ought to be does not enter into it. A transperson can have the opinion that they are a woman. What anyone else thinks is not required to have that opinion. But if another person has the opinion that they are a man then that is also ok. What anyone else thinks is not required to have that opinion. Both those individuals are free to have whatever opinion they want. Neither one is somehow infringing on the rights of the other by having that opinion. You can identify yourself however you want to but no one is obligated to agree with you.

It is. You can proclaim that it isn't but that doesn't make it so. It isn't a good faith tactic to just pronounce someone else's position in a debate as evil or immoral. In this case the debate over gender and sex. You should try being tolerant of other people's opinions instead of denouncing them if they disagree with you. At the very least you should give some reasoning for why you feel that position is immoral or unacceptable if you are going to denounce it.

While tranny is generally, but not always, used as a slur misgendering someone (especially since from their point of view they are not misgendering someone but correctly identifying their gender) is not a hateful bigoted act. Not everyone agrees with transpeople about what gender they are. Many feel they are in fact their biological sex and not the one they transitioned to. This is not intolerant or hateful. People will often extend the courtesy of referring to a transexual as the gender they would prefer even if they do not agree that they are their transitioned sex, but it is a courtesy. They are under no obligation to alter how they feel about it and they are not being insulting if they choose not to extend that courtesy. A transexual person if free to take offense if this happens, and many will, but they have no reasonable expectation to be able to dictate another person's opinion on this matter. Being offended is not some trump card that means you get to win an argument or force someone else to change what they believe. I think some people may be confusing a lighthearted joke with, y'know, actual serious hatred and oppression of transsexual people, hmm?

No it wasn't. Assuming you even interpret the epitaph that way there is nothing transphobic or homophobic about not wanting to sleep with a transsexual or homosexual and feeling shamed if you did so unknowingly. People keep repeating this so many times as if it were true. Something about repeating a lie enough times and people will believe it. That is why it is important that someone challenge you and tell you: "No, that is not true."

Whether it is ****ty or not is a matter of opinion. Whatever your feelings might be toward it, it doesn't give you the right to demand it removed. And people are getting so butthurt because there's a group of people on the internet right now, which thinks that their feelings are a perfectly fine excuse to go and bully everyone to remove everything they don't agree with. Surely, you can see why not a lot of people appreciate this? It's interesting to note that as soon as Josh saw it he referred to it as something at least he didn't want in the game. So who is making unreasonable demands of the developers creative freedom? My personal feelings is that this is just such a small thing that I really don't see the fuss either way but it's easy for me to say that I guess. I've read that 1 in 12 transexual women (using the term to disinguish) are murdered, 1 in 8 if you are a woman of colour. Imagine if someone came and told you those odds. So I don't know, I'm torn. Maybe we shouldn't let small things slide, maybe this is a fuss over nothing. Frankly I'd rather Obsidian just continue to make great games. I've defended the game everywhere I've seen this written about, maybe that's what we all should be focusing on, helping the game do well. Those statistics are bogus. Nowhere near the actual numbers. Just like many other shocking bogus statistics people use to try and support their position. Transsexual individuals do have a higher murder rate than the general population but transsexuals individuals are also more likely to be involved in prostitution, and prostitutes have a higher murder rate than the general population. That isn't even relevant, because this limerick in no way encourages people to go murder transsexuals. It is only one possible interpretation that the original epitaph was even talking about a transsexual. Besides a person has every right to be offended if they have found that a transsexual has slept with them without disclosing the fact that they were transsexual. The majority of the male population would have a problem with that. To claim that it is a transphobic or bigoted position to feel that way is not correct. This epitaph was not getting anybody killed. It was not hateful, intolerant, bigoted, advocating for discrimination, or otherwise abusive or demeaning. I could see how a transperson might be annoyed or mildly offended at seeing that joke yet again (it is one of the more common representations of transsexual people in media) but at the same time you have a segment of the transsexual community who feel that it is perfectly acceptable to sleep with someone or have a romantic relationship with them without disclosing that they are transsexuals. It is a thing that happens and it is entirely acceptable to make jokes about it or comment about it. People being mildly offended over a joke, especially when most of the people being offended are being offended for ideological reasons instead of genuinely feeling hurt by it, is not a good enough reason to exclude it. If you excluded every joke that caused some offense you had better be prepared to take a whole lot of those backer epitaphs out of the game and not just this one. I wouldn't be surprised if some people started putting together a list of backer content that could be found objectionable or offensive to someone just to show the irrationality of it all.

She identifies as woman and she is legally considered to be woman, claiming otherwise is just plain attacking another forum user, which is against rules of this forum. No it isn't. Considering MtF transsexuals to still be male is a valid opinion and is neither hateful nor intolerant. It is in no way an attack on someone. Attacking another users person is against forum rules regardless of what you think about world. Every opinion is valid even if it's utterly wrong and absolute idiotic and don't match with real world. The debate on gender is far from settled. The position that gender is intrinsically tied to sex and biology is a perfectly valid opinion that is held by a great many people. Quite possibly the majority. I haven't looked at any studies on views over the subject recently (if there have been any recent ones) so I couldn't tell you any exact figures. To act like a person having that opinion is attacking a transperson is ridiculous. Someone disagreeing with someone else is not an attack.

She identifies as woman and she is legally considered to be woman, claiming otherwise is just plain attacking another forum user, which is against rules of this forum. No it isn't. Considering MtF transsexuals to still be male is a valid opinion and is neither hateful nor intolerant. It is in no way an attack on someone. However, Calling someone a basement dweller is an attack.

The fire needs to burn. The fire needs to burn hot enough that people don't get away with this again.

This is what it was changed to according to people who have checked the XML file. <memorial> <Name>Firedorn Lightbringer</Name> <Note>"Here lies Firedorn, a bard, a poet He was also a card, but most didn't know it A poem he wrote in jest was misread They asked for blood, so now he's just dead"</Note> </memorial> Apparently it is either no longer at the same location or has actually been removed though since twitter users are posting screenshots of it not being where it was pre-patch. I won't lie. I am pretty disappointed with Obsidian over this. Apparently the backer was good natured enough to be willing to change it, but he should never have been asked to change it. It is ridiculous to classify the original limerick as offensive or transphobic.

That is what I am personally hoping the end result of all this is. A toggle to turn off the yellow backer NPCs and backer epitaphs. The epitaphs aren't as big a deal for me because they are much less obtrusive but all the weird looking people with weird names standing around detract from the game IMO.

This issue started when an activists with an agenda created this issue to try and use it to support their ideology. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. People should try and create the change they want, although I think many techniques people use to do so are not very productive. But it should be recognized that this issue was started to support an ideologically driven agenda and to act like that this isn't the case is intellectually dishonest. It is not, and it never was, a simple case of people having their feelings hurt as you are trying to portray it. This was the original tweet that started this issue in case you have forgotten: "Hey @Obsidian you should have said no to this backer. Transmysogyny is not acceptable in 2015" This person also has a history of being a politcally active twitter user on this topic. While that person may have had some genuine hurt feelings, their purpose in creating this issue was to push a political agenda that they support. The vast majority of the offense over this is ideologically driven offense, not genuine "my feelings are hurt" offense.