As a number of people have been saying, we have no proper terminology for the asari because we never encountered anything like them before. This is science fiction.
Liara herself says, "mono-gendered--male and female have no real meaning for us" and "I am not precisely a woman." They are
referred to as female because they
look female, but they are not
technically female because there is no gender-division. Call shenanigans if you like, but what Liara says goes because it's her motherfrakking species. I think she knows better than we do what her body is like; it resembles a human woman's but clearly is not the same, unless some of us are sitting here typing with head tentacles and can psychically reproduce instead of physically doing so.
Granted, it's a fine difference. Granted, for all intents and purposes, to us they ARE female. But science fiction is a chance for people to set their inhibitions aside simply because they are dealing with something new and different which requires an open mind to be enjoyed. Science fiction is a chance for people to accept something they wouldn't normally accept, simply because it's set slightly outside the cultural norms. There is no verse in a holy book which says, "and you shall not have sex with hot blue aliens of female appearance who are not actually technically female." In such an environment, it's much harder to hate and fear what you don't understand. It becomes something that you make an exception for, even if you didn't expect to. You feel like your guard should be up, but for once, it's not. There's a window open in your mind that normally would be closed.
You let in new thoughts. The kind of thoughts which are perfectly logical and rational, but that maybe don't fit what was drummed into your head growing up.
Some people grow up brainwashed. Some people need time to heal from that, and they won't do so if you frighten them away from the truth. Rip the burka off a Middle-Eastern woman's head and all you'll have is a scared human being who feels humiliated and ashamed. If someone knows nothing of a concept such as personal empowerment, the last thing that will help is to make them feel powerless in yet another way. It has to be their choice, their decision to reject the cultural norms they grew up with. People have to learn on their own to reject what they've been taught. You don't help them by shoving things in their face that they're not ready for and shouting them down when they react as they've been taught. You have to start small, encourage them to think for themselves. You don't start by studying calculus, you start with simple addition. Going straight from the womb to calculus is simply not possible. Neither is transcending the consequences of your personal history. No one is born enlightened.
Everybody has the right to think what they want. To be angry as hell at Bioware, even, and I can't really blame you if you are mad. They didn't stick up for what they promote. They dodged the issue. They got political and Clintoned it up.
But my recommendation is... save your anger until you play the game and you are SURE that there is not even a shadow of a homosexual romance, or that it's lacking for males. And even then, even if you're disgusted and outraged that they weren't braver and they didn't push the envelope any further than they did in the first game, please compare them with developers who do absolutely NOTHING for gay people, and be happy that they're at least opening minds by doing something outside the box. Getting a foot in the door can be a pretty big deal, when it comes to people who have never been forced to deal with their own ignorance--and who might never do so without that example lingering in their head. Dragon Age already featured fully-fledged homosexual romances for both genders. Mass Effect is doing something else... something just as valuable... reaching people who are on the fence and maybe a bit homophobic to look at love and sex in a new way instead of treading the same old paths in their heads.
The church I went to growing up was highly intolerant. Their teachings damaged my personality and my view of the world, and my early experiences with lesbians were solely in fiction, never in life. I still feel that the lesbian romance on BtVS was pretty poorly executed. I believe it was actually Bioware that gave me my first positive literary experience with a homosexual relationship between the main character and Juhani. Sure, Juhani was... well, a major butterface... but she was a well-written and nicely voiced alien character.
For what it's worth... that helped me. I preferred Carth, and it wasn't a fraction as much fun as romancing the princess in Jade Empire a few years later, but it helped to open my mind a little. They snatched all my old rules out from under me and forced me to think from a new perspective about what I, personally, accepted as being okay for human beings. And I realized that applying old testament laws to modern day society in a literal fashion was something that seemed... nonsensical. What I'm saying is, my experience in a game was an instrumental step in coming to that realization.
Subtle and careful subversion of established cultural norms may not be as impressive as bold statements of acceptance, but it's pretty damned effective if you're looking to get people to reevaluate their beliefs and possibly come to a new realization, instead of simply flipping the off switch as they've always done.
Modifié par Wynne, 20 janvier 2010 - 04:19 .
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