cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Sufficiently Advanced and gender ratios · 8:35pm Apr 15th, 2015
So I got this rather interesting (and polite, so please play nice) PM about SA today.
(Re-posted with permission from earthrise.)
Hey there, I'm enjoying sufficiently advanced, but there is one thing that bothers me a bit- it seems a bit sexist with regards to women and their attitude towards transhumans. Unless I've misunderstood, none of the transhumans we've met aside from Hanna have been previously female, and a great many of the anti-transhumanists in the memories of the transhumans are female. It feels really awkward getting a feeling of subtle discrimination from a story that at its heart is supposed to have such an anti-discriminatory message. The reason I'm sending this in a PM instead of a comment is because I don't want to risk setting up a bunch of comment flame wars. But aside from this, I'm really enjoying your story!
~earthrise
If anybody else has noticed these unfortunate implications and felt uncomfortable by them, I profoundly apologize. 
For the record, I'm an equalist. Man, woman, child... As far as I'm concerned there are one thing per gender only that can do... and siring and birthing are hardly everyday activities.
And something I fully expect science and technology to solve one day at that, but I digress.
Anyway, the reason for the above problem is rather stupidly simple, and I really should have pointed it out sooner.
This story is MLP: FIM fan-fiction. 
Yeah, I know. I'll give you a moment to put your socks back on and raise your chairs back up.
Still...
There are a LOT of positive female characters in FIM, and that is a good thing.
It is however, something of a bug-bear if you're writing anything that touches upon sex and/or gender issues. There's just so few canonical males —let alone ones that have actually resonated with people, in FIM, that it forces you as a writer to make some otherwise odd choices.
And no, I'm not just talking about shipping/clop, but that too. You have a rather hard choice: Do I stay true to how female heavy slash empowering FIM is, or do I 'tweak' those gender ratios in/for my own story?
For those wonder, here's the breakdown so far as I see it in SA. From memory so might be a few missing, but should still make my point.
Feel free to disagree with me if you want. Death of the author, and all that. 
Protagonists, male: Blake Gregory.
Antagonists, male: Mr. X, Arun Gregory.
Protagonists, female: #13, #431, Sweetiebot.
Antagonists, female: RD's wife, Hanna's mother.
Protagonists, other: Pinkie Prime, Rainbow Dash, Trixie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Lyra.
So yeah, I don't think the characters genders actually matter at all, but I think I've still managed a decent mix. It's going to be rather weighted towards the two 'female' groupings once this story reaches Equestria and those characters gets thrown into the mix as well...
But I've already mentioned that bit.
So, about that 'other' group I believe quite a few of you are confused by right now...
I genuinely don't see any of the Mane Eight as outright male or female. It varies a bit from 'pony' to 'pony,' but they all have that; just different shades and variants on that trait.
They're simply all such old and heavily modified cyborgs, that being, say, Rarity the mare is utterly secondary and almost unimportant to following the example of and being Rarity the mare.
I fully intent to keep to that Teen rating so some of this stuff might be slightly 'hid' by that, but when you can have a closet full of actual bodies your sex and to a lesser extent gender is just another aesthetic option.
Again, I'm trying to up the 'otherness' factor a bit, and explore what I think technologies like those depicted in SA may mean for society.
They are highly moral, and in their own way rather spiritual people, yes.
They are utter nerds about a certain show all about friendship, yes.
They care deeply and passionately about both other people and how they may make the world(s) a better place, yes...
But as transhumans, none of the Mane Six are... well, what we'd recognizance as normal humans.
I strongly hate the 'Cybernetics Eat Your Soul' trope, and in fact, one of the central ideas/beliefs wish to express with SA is that just because one has tried to move beyond the limitations of the species Homo Sapience, the result doesn't need to be inhuman.
For good and ill, of course. We've got saints and sinners as is, and I severely doubt having a bionic arm would have made Billy the Kid any less notorious.
It's a sappy, sappy little argument, but I genuinely believe that things like Mercy, Compassion, Love, Curiosity and Hope are among humanities great strengths, and that even those may be enhanced through science and technology just like Intelligence, Strength and Endurance; as long as we as a species keep our priorities straight.
But yeah, I expect quite a few protest about this whole blog, but I hope that clarified a few things. 
Oh, and since it will be asked: I don't consider #13, #431 and Sweetie in the 'other' category since they're still the same sex/gender they were 'born' as, and have so far stuck to them. Debatable, I know, but that's how I see it.
Still, I think that it is debatable serves as a point for my central argument. 
I think what they were getting at is that a large portion of the transhumanists used to be male.
2987829
That's exactly what I was getting at- it made it seem as if more biological women than biological men lacked something be it "guts", intelligence, or rationality.
2987829 2987885
Oh right, forgot to address that. Sorry.
Might just be my personal experience slash confirmation bias, but for every fan on the 'near obsessed' level I've met I've heard six-eight 'I'm a brony' for every two-four 'I'm a pega-sister.'
So Trixie and Fluttershy being the only two originally female of the Mane Eight is also intentional.
I would have preferred to base that more on actual numbers, but when I started writing SA I couldn't find those type of statistics, and I just had to eyeball it in the end.
I've since found the Herd Consensus as it's called, and the 2014 consensus seems to actually be backing up my gut.
(80,6% Male, 17,7% Female, 0,4% Neither, 0,7% Both and 0,6% that didn't want to answer.)
But yeah, that's why 6 out of the Mane Eight were born male, because I wanted them both to reflect the MLP community in that regard, and again up the 'otherness' factor in just how far they've gone to live up to their idols.
2987885
I try to give all my characters both flaws and strengths, even the minor ones, but it's no good if it's somehow more noticeable in the females.
Troubling...
But thanks for clarifying, I'll think it over and try to keep it in mind going forward.
2987896
That's understandable. WithTrixie it was never quite clear to me that she was originally female- though I might have missed something somewhere. What bothered me was how it all came together to give an unfortunate impression ("as former men, we will be better women than biological women because we aren't being stupid about things")
I think the big problem is that we've met no incidental transhumans aside from possibly the disabler, who appeared male. Everyone has been specifically plot related with no real throwaways except possibly Dash's crew. Hanna felt very damsel-like, which diminished the impact she would have had on establishing that strong females who were born female existed in the story. I think you need someone, even if it's a brief contact in an elevator or on a bus. Maybe have a former biological woman as a transhuman man come over and chew 431 out for her antics on the transport making average Janes and Joes uncomfortable with men like himself
2987954
That was NOT intentional.
I guess I was thinking far more from the perspective of what they've become, rather than what they started at, and didn't pay that interpretation nearly as much attention as I should have.
Again, I sadly can't do much more than say sorry, and promise to try to keep this in mind going forward.
This I can outright promise will be coming, though.
It was mentioned rather briefly in the first codex, but transhumans are quite a bit rarer on Earth compared to the rest of Sol, so there's going to be fare more transhumans once the story gets to show of Mars, Venus and The Farm.
The Farm especially is near a straight reversal on Earth in terms of those numbers, so I'm quite looking forward to writing that.
I'm so used the the massive gender imbalance within the show that it barely registered.
I still think there's a couple spots where you could worm something in, but I understand the desire to keep moving forward- after all, we're at 80k and still in what is probably the introduction, lol. The emoticon response was great though. Thanks for addressing the concerns!
I'm still behind, but in regards to the protagonists being reflective of the overall Brony community - I think one thing not considered there is that, well, -most- people are attached to their birth genders. So, while it may be 80-20, for the 20 it's a smaller leap, so to speak. On the other hand, I do not a ton of people in-community in the trans* category (Genderwise), and the counterpoint to the 80-20, where I could be wrong since I'm only in C2 or C3 right now, is that if they were working together as a group from the getgo, then yes, an initial imbalance would make some sense.
It's kinda a 'could go either way' and I'm glad to see you thinking so much on it, Dorkness!
So... I'm not sure entirely where the whole five times as many women/mares as men/stallions in equestria comes from
In that picture I count 31 male characters vs 42 female characters... Only slightly skewed one way.
That said I'm currently a little hammered and may have miscounted by a few in all directions, but still.
More screen time does not equal gender imbalance.
Heh. I entirely fail to notice gender ratios, or genders at all unless it gets specifically pointed out. Which only occurs in various romance stories.
I have trouble in real life treating genders differently. I don't see it as important in any situation aside from reproduction. Society however has a lot of constructs on how to treat genders differently.
Please don't let this kind of attitude influence you. There are two kinds of people who say this kind of thing. The first is the young and inexperienced (typically in college,) well intentioned know it all. Most of them outgrow this and are appropriately embarrassed by the things they thought were worth getting offended about (I sure did!)
The second is the more destructive variety. The people who cry their flavor of bigotry to elevate themselves by tearing down others. They also work to fan the flames of resentment to keep the hate going. Al Sharpton here in the US has made his career out of this quite successfully.
While Earthrise is clearly the former variety, and therefore doesn't deserve any scorn, reading his PM reminded me of a feminist blog review I read once of My Little Pony's first episode by a self proclaimed feminist (of the second variety,) who declared the 'clear racist intent' the show had because the Guards who served Celestia were black and therefore the show was clearly showing that blacks were meant to serve whites and nothing with such bigotry in it should be watched by anyone...
My point is, don't ever bow to this kind of stupidity. Don't change your stories to better showcase whatever agenda the people who get offended for a living want. You will always find someone willing to pretend to be offended for some stupid reason, and there is no more absurd reason to be offended than 'from a certain point of view there are more male lead characters than female lead characters in your trans human My Little Pony Fanfiction, depending on how you define male and female.'
And to Earthrise, the 'I'm offended' sword cuts both ways. Someone could just as easily say that your PM had a feeling of 'subtle discrimination' against transexuals since acknowledging the cyborgs as male instead of female, even before they transitioned, runs counter to their expressed gender identity...
But two dumbs do not make a smart.
Huh, I just read over what I wrote and it came out quite a bit grumpier than I had intended. I'm just annoyed that poor Lordy felt he had to 'apologize for the unfortunate implications' in his work even though he immediately proved those implications didn't even exist just by counting up the gender ratio of the characters.
2988878 I have to agree with you in pretty much every way, as you said exactly what I wanted to say, but in a far more eloquent way.
There seems to be this new culture popping up, where one MUST find things to be offensive in order to fit in. Note that it doesn't have to be offensive to them, but just potentially offensive to a particular group. Something I've noticed is that oftentimes, the person finding something offensive is not part of the particular group. They act in the stead of the group, and decide that something is offensive for everyone in the entire group, which is more than a bit presumptuous. The individual members of the group should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they find something offensive to them.
There is a difference between "That's offensive" and "I'm offended". It may be a fine line, but it's there. If a Christian hangs up Christmas lights, and an Atheist is offended by it, then the Atheist can say "I'm offended". However, saying "That's offensive" is simply not true. Sure, the Atheist was offended by it, but "That's offensive" is a phrase that is so hard to define that it's practically meaningless. If we were to use "That's offensive" on every single thing that ever offended someone, then literally everything in existence would be offensive.
But anyways, my point is, this kind of thinking can be quite toxic, as it encourages one to scrutinize everything in order to find something offensive. When all someone sees is offense after offense, they start to believe the entire world hates certain groups, and act accordingly. This effectively poisons their mind against the world, and prevents any rational discourse from happening with them. You should not apologize to them, as it just encourages them, and makes it more likely they will claim offensiveness in things that are ever more non-offensive.
Sorry for the rambling incoherent mess, but I had to get my points out there.
2988793 How convenient, when someone express your opinion, only in better english. Thank you.
2988878
Thanks for calling me a stupid know-it-all.
i PM'd LoD because of a feeling I got, and yanno, maybe it was oversensitive. That's a big part of why it was a PM in the first place. But LoD thought there was some sort of merit, and asked for permission to post it.
If the heart of the story wasn't about equality of humanity, I would have said nothing, and just let it be. It's obvious that he believes in equality from what I know of him, and that the story is not meant to offend. But I wanted to help LoD make the story share that message of equality that he values- and I thought he would want to know if someone felt there was something unintentionally counter to the major theme.
I will concede though that I did not put enough "maybes" and "feels" in the PM.
Good night.
2988878
2988958
2989155
Please, keep it civil. I know this is a sensitive topic, but that's exactly why I wanted to bring this public.
Even if you don't agree with my logic, I just wanted people to know I've actually put quite a bit of thought into things like making sure there's a good mix of traits on all sides; and I'm not just talking about sex/gender stuff.
Like the Custodians and Mr. X in the new chapter, for example. The later was down-right courteous (if insensitive) but still clearly in the wrong, while the former are rather arrogant jerks but still good guys.
So yeah, basically I wanted to reaffirm I'm actually going somewhere with this story; that I'm not just writing soft-core cyborg porn, or whatever.
2988643
Equestrian society is indeed quite decently equal numbers along the sexes when counting all characters, but when it comes to the 'power players' of the setting it is heavily weighted towards mares. The Mane Six. The Princesses. Mayor Mare. Daring Do. Chrysalis.
And frankly, I could keep going on. Loads and loads of females with actual drive and power in FIM, and again, that's a good thing.
I might be forgetting somepony, but the only three stallions with actual power/influence I can think of are Shining Armor, Braeburn, and Hoity-Toity. Heck, the most powerful slash famed stallion in the whole setting has been dead for centuries, at least according to what has so far been implied. (Starswirl The Bearded.)
Again, I don't consider that a negative at all given how many more settings there are were the same happens with males and near nobody bats an eye, but it does softly force my hand in what characters I need to go with; at least if I want to keep that 'mirror world were science replaced magic' feel.
Same reason I didn't go for r63 characters, it would have ruined a bit of that mirror world angle unless I went and made near all of them male, and well... Back at the same problem again.
Truth be told? If I ever file the serial number off Sufficiently Advanced and redo it without the pony angle, I'll quite probably have a closer to 40-40-20 split from the word go on both sides... But again, the whole trying to stay true to the feel of MLP: FIM thing.
2989303
Fancy Pants, Filthy Rich, Trenderhoof are definite power/influence that quickly leap to mind. Big Mac is definite influence at least locally, and total power in the can pull an entire house behind him!
But yes, even with that, the core cast is definitely mono-gendered with Spike the one exception!
This.
So here's the thing: I also consider myself an equalist: gender really only makes a difference in romantic relationships, which obviously doesn't apply to fictional characters, and I myself have no intention of getting into a relationship with another user or a fictional character. this is the internet, your body does not matter here.
However, I don't equate gender imbalance to sexism, for two reasons: the first, of course, is the fact that this is MLP, the gender ratio is absurdly unbalanced. The second is this: if something is truly neutral, then the genders of the characters don't matter.
I'm thinking back to when I was a kid, reading adventure and fantasy novels: some characters were male, others female, but it didn't matter. Gender does not affect one's personality; there are effeminate men and masculine women.
that said, however, I'd like to expand upon a detail I mentioned: "if something is truly neutral." If a story is clearly forcing it's characters into existing stereotypes or gender roles, then it becomes a problem, simply because it's saying: "women can only be this, men can only be this, americans can only be this, british people can only be this."
This, however, should be an integral part of every story: all it requires is depth and uniqueness to a character, something that is already required for a high-quality story. if your story fails this measure, then it can be judged as sexist or otherwise bigoted.
EDIT: sorry for that doozy of a non-sequitur. I had things to say and didn't feel like bothering with a proper segue.
In all honesty, I personally agree with the notion that something you can barely even call alive in the proper sense really isn't adequately described anymore by words like "male" or "female." When you can technically change between the bodies you inhabit like they were sweatshirts, something like that loses any real meaning except for the most basic and purely descriptive usage. You're really just so much mobile self-propelled scrap metal anyway.
2989892
Ah, thanks. Was fairly certain I'd forgotten a few. And can't believe I actually passed over Spike.
2990083
I actually totally agree with this...
For the real world. When you're dealing with real people, that have at least a theoretical choice in how they look and act.
When you're dealing with writing fiction however, at the end of the day a character is something you've designed. With that comes some rather steep implications.
If you keep saying you respect woman, and see them as equal to men... but all your stories features female characters that are at best eye candy, and everything done to move the plot forward is done by the manliest man that ever flexed his bicep?
Well, people are rightfully going to call shenanigans on that.
So yeah, the main reason I made this blog at all was that I wanted to tell people this is something I've put some thought into the topic.
2991502
Personally, I'm a big believer in 'cogito ergo sum' as something of an Occam's Razor about stuff like that.
Still, that's more a question of 'is this a person?' something that technically doesn't have anything to do with if somebody is alive.
Again though, if somebody can actually hold a two-way conversation I'd personally argue that's alive enough to matter.
2991578
And again, this goes back to what I said about if something is really neutral. If your characters fall into typical archetypes, then yes, chances are you're being biased and bigoted and people will rightfully judge you for that.
For example; MLP vs. Sword Art Online. One is a harem anime, and the other is not. both have a heavy gender imbalance among the primary characters. The difference? in SAO, the majority of the female characters are forced into a romantic role of some kind with the male lead. Even though several of the characters are strong and not at all girly, they have some kind of weakness or deference that makes them play a second fiddle to the male lead.
In MLP, however, that is obviously not the case. As for the males; yes, for the most part, they play minor roles, but look at the ones that do exist: Soarin, member of the wonderbolts. Shining armor, captain of the royal guard and capable of shielding an entire city. Fancypants, rich but not a snob. I will grant you that Big Mac is kind of a stereotypical "strong and silent" type, and that whatsisname the travel writer is just an arbitrary love interest, and spike is comic relief for the most part. (Spike does get some times to shine though.)
*anyways* my point is that the best way to judge if a piece is wrongfully biased is whether or not it's characters fall into typical roles or characteristics, which I'm assuming is not the case for your story. (I have yet to read this particular one, however, so I can do no more than lay out my rules for judging if a piece is biased and leave it to others to determine that.)