Forum Discussion

NiaraTiara's avatar
NiaraTiara
5 years ago

We should have an option to choose a sim's pronouns.

Now I'm not sure how this would work with other languages, but I really think there should be an option under "gender preferences" to include which pronouns our sims use. And another option to include which bathroom they use.

I personally don't create trans sims very often, but when I do, I'll usually pick the gender they were assigned as at birth, and then change their physical frames and their clothing preferences in order to fit whichever gender they identify with now. The problem is, the UI will constantly misgender them, and it's very jarring to look at.

For example, I once created a trans woman named Alexia. She has two twin brothers. Though on the gallery and in the relationships tab, she doesn't appear as their sister; when you hover over her, she'll show up as their 'brother'. In game, you'll constantly get notifications like, "Alexia just came home from work. He did a pretty good job too." And whenever there's one of those bathroom stalls placed on a community lot, Alexia will walk into the mens room. Not very realistic :|

The Sims Team overall has done a pretty good job with LGBT representation so far, so I hope they could fix this one issue.
  • crocobaura's avatar
    crocobaura
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago
    Wouldn't it be easier to just change their gender in CAS? Without a gender change, they are just cross-dressers.
  • Teh_Cheshire's avatar
    Teh_Cheshire
    5 years ago
    > @crocobaura said:
    > Wouldn't it be easier to just change their gender in CAS? Without a gender change, they are just cross-dressers.

    Thats.. thats not how that works. The cross-dressing thing = trans without gender change I mean.

    Trans people should be considered seen, valid and accepted without it being a requirment to go through a gender change. Which is what I believe the OP is trying to get at with the lack of option on being able to pick a pronoun.

    It makes sense given the options on "can get others pregnant" " can become pregnant" - why not just also "goes by he/him, her/she, them/they"?
  • DoloresGrey's avatar
    DoloresGrey
    Seasoned Newcomer
    5 years ago
    Actually this might happen. A couple of days ago SimguruNinja popped up on aquarterghost's twitch stream, where aquarterghost suggested this and Ninja said it was a great idea and everyone should be included in the game.
  • GrumpyGlowfish's avatar
    GrumpyGlowfish
    Seasoned Newcomer
    5 years ago
    "NiaraTiara;d-977936" wrote:
    I personally don't create trans sims very often, but when I do, I'll usually pick the gender they were assigned as at birth, and then change their physical frames and their clothing preferences in order to fit whichever gender they identify with now. The problem is, the UI will constantly misgender them, and it's very jarring to look at.


    I do it exactly the other way around. When I create a trans woman, for example, I make her a female sim so the game uses the correct labels and pronouns, change her physical frame to male, but work on it to make it as feminine-looking as possible, and depending on how far into her transition she is, she may still be able to impregnate others, or be completely infertile. With trans men, it's the other way around.

    So in a way, the game does already let you choose pronouns (at least male and female ones) by setting the basic gender of the sim, and then you can work with the custom gender options to adjust the rest as you see fit. Though I admit that it can be very difficult to make a masculine-frame face look convincingly feminine, and even more difficult to make a feminine-frame face look masculine.
  • icemanfresh's avatar
    icemanfresh
    Seasoned Newcomer
    5 years ago
    I think adding the option to choose your sim's pronoun can be done with a few UI changes and some changes to the part of the engine that selects which text to display based on your sim's pronoun (instead of basing it on gender, it's based on the selected pronoun.) I suppose they can also hide that part of the UI for users who play TS4 in a language that's already gender-neutral to begin with.

    Adding custom pronouns (such as they/them) might be more difficult depending on how the text is stored. If each text just uses a template and the game inserts the appropriate pronouns based on your sim's gender, it might be easier. If each text has two versions depending on your sim's gender, they would have to go and rewrite everything to add a third version that uses they/them pronouns, which would be more time-consuming. I haven't really looked into the game's text files so I'm not sure how it works.
  • NiaraTiara's avatar
    NiaraTiara
    5 years ago
    "GrumpyGlowfish;c-17556623" wrote:

    I do it exactly the other way around. When I create a trans woman, for example, I make her a female sim so the game uses the correct labels and pronouns, change her physical frame to male, but work on it to make it as feminine-looking as possible, and depending on how far into her transition she is, she may still be able to impregnate others, or be completely infertile. With trans men, it's the other way around.

    So in a way, the game does already let you choose pronouns (at least male and female ones) by setting the basic gender of the sim, and then you can work with the custom gender options to adjust the rest as you see fit. Though I admit that it can be very difficult to make a masculine-frame face look convincingly feminine, and even more difficult to make a feminine-frame face look masculine.


    You know, I was starting to think that's the way you're supposed to do it. But the problem is just as you said; it's difficult to make a very feminine looking sim with the male frame they have. I wish they just added a pronouns option, so that you can choose which way you wanna make your sims.

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