Diversity and Gender
We want to be sensitive to the rôle that the Diversity of gender plays on Earth, but Toots are essentially sexless creatures.
Background[edit]
A few vocabulary terms:
- Gender
- is the social perception and psychological condition of someone as being masculine, feminine, or otherwise.
- Sex
- is the physical characteristic that humans have. The vast majority of humans are biologically either male or female, but there is a range of physical expression within those binaries.
- Intersex
- is an expression for humans whose biological sex is not solidly either male or female
- Cisgender
- is the most common condition, in which gender and sex are aligned; ie, someone who is biologically female and also has a female gender
- Transgender
- is when someone's gender and sex are in opposition to one another, usually from birth
Conflated with this topic are persons' romantic orientations. Straight people are romantically attracted to people of the opposite gender or sex; gay people, to the same gender or sex; and romantic orientations have a broad variety of expressions beyond those two extremes.
No Gender Stereotypes[edit]
It has been a tradition since the earliest days that Tootsville does not enforce gender stereotypes in any case. (Boys can be sensitive, girls can be leaders.)
Gender conformity is the act of forcing people to behave in a certain way based on their gender. We don't do that. (✗“Boys don't cry,” ✗“Girls shouldn't act smart”)
That extends to:
- No gender-biased labeling of games or activities.
- ✗“Boys must like sports” or ✗“Girls must play with dolls.”
- No gender-biased labeling of clothes, wigs, or equipment.
- ✗“Only girls have long hair” or ✗“These are boy's clothes”
Players are welcome to experience characters of any gender, romantic orientation, or choose to conform or not to gender stereotypes at their own comfort level.
Needless to say (is it?), Tootsville certainly supports fully equal and inclusive play by both characters and players who are cisgender, transgender, gay, straight, “butch,” “femme,” and choose to conform or not to various gender stereotypes.
This is not to say that cisgender, gender-conforming characters should be made uncomfortable with their choices, either. The vast majority of our players will probably fall into that category, just as they do in the real world.
In Sport[edit]
Our sports have no need to be gender-segregated. (No “boys' soccer team” or so forth.)