[General Battuta]

Fiction rarely supplies hard numbers. The only information available points to Battuta's conclusion, so what's the alternative?

To answer the original question: most of those 33 male roles are minor, and those are being cast using templates. Gender for those parts isn't set in stone. The ratio of women to men will be roughly proportional to that of the auditions we receive. I do agree that the weighting is poor as it stands.

That's awesome. So long as they're open to individuals of either sex I think it's perfectly fair.

That's still very circumstantial - there's no hard numbers to go by.

I'm not saying it's not a good assesment, but there's not enough evidence to validate it as canon. I personally can "roll with it," but declaring it as fact is a little shady. Put it into your own fiction and no one will argue with it. 

Again: representative sample. The alternative to taking these ratios as canon is to suggest that all the squadrons the player is in are somehow gender skewed.

[Thaeris]

Meh. These are petty arguments. Everyone has said what they've needed to say.

I see I've been considered for the Silent Eye, Ransom. That's good to hear. I might be in the market for a decent mic soon, so I should be able to make some better recordings if I get the part. 

[General Battuta]

Graceless concession, but all right.

I appreciate the handling of the issue on Ransom's part. I suspect there were actors whose decision on whether to apply was contingent on the response to the gender ratio problem.

[JMN]

Reading this, I guess someone has a "gender ratio" problem 

[Colonol Dekker]

I've re-read the first page, where does it say who's considered for which roles?
 
 
 
Edit- lets leave the gender/problems out of this k?

[General Battuta]

It's been handled. While most of the roles will probably still end up male assuming casting on HLP, so long as they're open to women it's fine by me.

[Mongoose]

If I had been around to see this discussion in-progress, it would have been split and moved/locked in short order, but seeing as how it seems to have been settled, I happily won't have to do that.

I have to say, though, looking back on this, I'm not even sure why this line of discussion was perpetuated in the first place.  The purpose of this thread is to round up Transcend auditions from the HLP forum population.  I don't know about anyone else, but last time I looked around, the vast majority of the HLP members of the male persuasion; likewise, the vast majority of auditions received will likely be of the same persuasion.  Unless one were to undertake the not-insignificant effort of reaching out to a number of voice-acting forums and specifically asking for more female auditions, the expectation would be that most of the roles will be going to males just based on what's submitted.  This isn't a social/storyline/what-have-you issue in the least; as Ransom alluded to in that last post of his, the default roles reflect the expectations of getting everything finished some time before three years have passed.

Seriously, guys.  Let's try to confine the PC srs bzns to GD as much as possible, so that the rest of the folders can be reserved for far more enjoyable pursuits, like discussing nerds speaking in funny voices to provide content for more nerds to create mods that can be played by even more nerds.

[General Battuta]

Cut it out.

This was not 'PC srs bzns'. This was a genuine concern about a large number of the roles being closed to females when they didn't need to be. Ransom completely assuaged that concern by clarifying that many of the roles were open to both genders.

I know for a fact that there were actors planning not to audition if this issue was not handled correctly. It was therefore germane.

Additionally, it will be faster, higher-quality, and significantly easier to recruit voice actors from other sources - many of which are female, probably more than half - than to conduct this effort within HLP.

If you'd read the post immediately before yours that should have been clear.

[General Battuta]

Topic split.

[Colonol Dekker]

Double post-
Why's my last one in this split? Also motion to move this to general freespace or similar.

[Black Wolf]

Conversation may be over, but you were cherry picking a bit there weren't you Battuta? There're 5 CM head anis, 4 of which are male (it's 5 from 6 if you count Bosch). The pilot head anis seem skewed towards males as well - it's hard to tell in those helmets, but it looks to me like only TP2 and TP5 are female, out of the 8 head anis we're given. Only 2 of the 9 pilot images you can choose from is female (although I'll grant, this may have been [V] anticipating their audience somewhat). There are no female pilots at all in the Command Briefing cutscene from FS1. There are no identifiably female figures walking around the mainhalls. Only one of the squadron leaders in FS2 was female. And from what I can tell, only one of the terran pilot vocal personas is female (Check Stu_fs2.vp - Only the wavs starting with 2 are female (and 7, but they're Vasudan). In fact, running through the VP there seems to be a distinct and vlear bias towards male voices throughout, which tallies neatly with what I remember from playing through the game. There's clearly a gender disparity.

Now, the likelihood, in [V]s case, is that they were trying to depict a militaristic feeling, and one of the things you get in both the reality of the military and (perhaps to a greater degree) public perception of the military is a gender disparity, skewed towards men. Nonetheless, I think the idea of a 50/50 split just isn't suggested by the majority of canon material.

Also, just for the record, I always strongly skew the ratio in my missions towards males for the very practical reason that it's historically been a damned sight easier to find a male voice actor than a female one. No point ignoring practicality for the sake of appearing PC.

[FoxtrotTango]

Goodness gracious, I never knew that a matter of semantics can snowball so quickly into some hostile situation.

I don't recall saying concretely that "only nine of these forty-two roles will be available for female voiceactors." My statement was that I was sure that we'll find a place for everyone who auditions, assuming that nine of them are women. My intention was not to shutter out female voiceactors after all of the female roles had been filled. My apologies that this concerned you so, but in directing voiceacting efforts, my ideal was that there would be an exceptional voiceactor for every available role, without having to make any of them play multiple characters. We had nine intended female roles, and I hoped to point this out so as to allow the female voice talent to see that we still had plenty of spots available that would be ideal for them. My motive was never to shut out women auditioning for roles once those spots were taken. There are many cases where women have played male-intended roles and have proven to be so good that male actors have seemed substandard by comparison. This knowledge is not and was never lost on me.

When I typed the statement in question, I never meant to make anyone think that we were going to set a gender-based quota. But I know that the implications of this unintentional message were dangerous. I apologize again for not recognizing that this seemingly innocent statement could be interpreted as sexual discrimination. This argument could have been avoided had I made things clearer.

I hope we can come to an understanding and move on with this said. I don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouths because of this.

[General Battuta]

No, that's all in line with my claims. I didn't suggest a 50/50 split at any point. I was however under the impression that two of the five Terran wingman personas were female (thus the 'about one-third claim', apparently it's more like 20-25%), not one. Of the eight Terran head ANIs two are female, and of the pilot selects I believe your numbers are correct - all of which are in line with what I cited. I'd always assumed that higher officer ranks were more gender-skewed since the Terrans 'share many of the prejudices we have today.'

Female voice actors are in my experience a lot easier to find.
 
I don't give a **** about appearing PC (whatever that means), but appearing realistic is nice. Opening the minor roles to both genders is what I was after, and what is being done.

[General Battuta]

Goodness gracious, I never knew that a matter of semantics can snowball so quickly into some hostile situation.

I don't recall saying concretely that "only nine of these forty-two roles will be available for female voiceactors." My statement was that I was sure that we'll find a place for everyone who auditions, assuming that nine of them are women. My intention was not to shutter out female voiceactors after all of the female roles had been filled. My apologies that this concerned you so, but in directing voiceacting efforts, my ideal was that there would be an exceptional voiceactor for every available role, without having to make any of them play multiple characters. We had nine intended female roles, and I hoped to point this out so as to allow the female voice talent to see that we still had plenty of spots available that would be ideal for them. My motive was never to shut out women auditioning for roles once those spots were taken. There are many cases where women have played male-intended roles and have proven to be so good that male actors have seemed substandard by comparison. This knowledge is not and was never lost on me.

When I typed the statement in question, I never meant to make anyone think that we were going to set a gender-based quota. But I know that the implications of this unintentional message were dangerous. I apologize again for not recognizing that this seemingly innocent statement could be interpreted as sexual discrimination. This argument could have been avoided had I made things clearer.

I hope we can come to an understanding and move on with this said. I don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouths because of this.

It's already been resolved, as a quick review of the thread should show you.

A single post from Ransom took care of it.

[Mongoose]

If you'd read the post immediately before yours that should have been clear.

I did read that post, along with every other in the thread, and I called the situation as I saw it.  I didn't see FoxtrotTango's original post in any way carrying negative undertones, especially not to the extent that you originally suggested, and the idea that he felt it necessary to apologize for said post (albeit after the issue had been resolved to your satisfaction) is a bit disheartening.  You say you don't recognize the definition of "PC," but I think this example provides a decent one: the need to always be hyper-sensitive about every single statement one makes, lest one single person out there take personal offense at a misconception of it and respond with ire.  There are significant issues in this area today that do need to be addressed, but maybe I'm alone in thinking that a comment about the expected numerical returns of a VA audition effort, or a single blonde joke in a thread that's explicitly about "stupid jokes,"are not among them.

You say that female actors have been easier to find "in your experience," but I would forward that the Blue Planet experience wasn't exactly typical of fan-voiced campaigns in this community, which have primarily relied mostly on HLP members to fill their roles.  This specific thread posting was on HLP itself, not on the other sites that Foxtrot and Ransom may be looking at, which would further suggest the expected results of this particular aspect of the effort.  Regardless of that, I hope you recognize that it's completely the campaign-maker's prerogative to determine how many (if any) specific roles should be allotted to each gender, just as it is your own prerogative to disagree with this and not participate in the effort if it isn't to your liking.

At this point, I feel that this thread is definitely better off either being moved to GD or locked entirely, depending on whether or not you think it's worth continuing.  I'll leave it to you to decide.

[Goober5000]

Hmm.  This thread seems to have diverged from what my post was about (or my post was an outlier in the overall thread).  Nevertheless, to respond to Battuta's and Rian's points...

Frankly? I’d prefer extinction.

I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post.  Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families?  Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?

Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is.  Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.

The re-subjugation of females would do more political, economic, military and cultural damage than the loss of half the planets in the Alliance.

Umm... no.  Seriously, think about what you're saying.  The loss of half the planets in the Alliance -- let's be conservative and say one planet per system, for a total of 30, half of which is 15 -- fifteen planets, with all their colonies, populations, economies, militaries, and cultures?

Compare that to the necessity of war causing women to be ordered to remain at home and raise their families.  I really think you're skewing the damage forecast here.

If the Shivans are coming it doesn't matter if you have ten million or ten trillion people on your worlds: they'll all burn real nicely. You need the infrastructure to build a military, the science to keep it going, and a citizenry that'll stand for the war. All of which require the best and the brightest, not a bunch of wombs on legs.

All of that requires people.  The more people you have, the higher the probability that someone will come up with a new technology or a research breakthrough.  Also, the more people you have, the more colonies you can create in the event of one (or more) being devastated like Vasuda Prime.

Depopulation is not the concern here. (Hell, overpopulation probably is.)

So, in this situation? Any society with an ounce of self-preservation would be doing its level best to prevent that scenario, because it means the loss of half the skilled workforce and an unsustainable, reckless population boom.

Actually, depopulation is very much a concern, since a) it had been happening for 14 years prior to FS1; b) happened galaxy-wide in the Great War; c) happened on an enormous scale in Vasuda Prime.  The concern is not overpopulation; the concern is that you've lost a ton of good officers and citizens and you're severely short on manpower.  (Not just military manpower, but economic and social manpower as well.)  You need to rebuild the population in order to get back to your previous strength.  And you'd better do it fast, before the Shivans show up again.

This is not merely a theoretical concern.  Germany temporarily authorized polygamy following the Thirty Years' War because so much of its male population had been killed.  Likewise, Chechnya lobbied to recognize polygamy in 2006 because the rebellion against Russia has led to a significant imbalance in the male:female ratio.

[Rian]

Frankly? I’d prefer extinction.

I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post.  Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families?  Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?

Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is.  Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.

You think that raising a family is the best job there is. Are you a stay-at home parent? Have you abandoned your own career, your own ambitions to raise a couple dozen kids? If not, you have no authority on which to make this claim, which I find paternalistic, condescending, and offensive. If you are, what makes you think your experience is universal?

Consider also that a single woman is not going to give birth to more than ten or twenty children in her lifetime, even if she does nothing else for the entire fertile period of her life. The limitations of the human body might draw the line long before that. Now suppose that woman instead joins the military and makes a decent showing for herself. No, she’s not going to turn back the tide all by herself, but as has already been pointed out, this is a war in which whole planets are at stake. She’s a member of an enormous military force, but that force is dwarfed by the populations of the planets they’re defending. If they prevent the Shivans from destroying even one planet, her share of the lives saved is hundreds or thousands. And you want her to spend her life enslaved by her womb?

Think about what you’re saying. You’re saying that even if I was the kind of pilot who could disarm a Sathanas and save a fleet, humanity would be better served if I stayed home to mind the younglings. What kind of logic is that?

Besides all that, this is a war. You don’t need people twenty years in the future when all those babies grow up, you need them to hold the Shivans off now. And if you restrict yourself to half your able-bodied population, then odds are those babies are going to be space dust long before they get big enough to fly a ship. If you win, your pilots can all settle down and breed afterward. If you don’t, then it won’t make a damn bit of difference. This is the future, ffs. If population was that much of an issue they’d find a way to grow their babies in vats or something.

Your position is regressive in the extreme, it completely dismisses the contributions of millions of women that have nothing to do with their reproductive capacities, and I find it repellent. I stand by my earlier claim. Survival alone is worth nothing if we become no better than the enemy we fight, and a society that would entertain enslaving half its population in this way does not deserve to survive.

[General Battuta]

Rian is correct.

Ban all women from combat roles and you must, by extent, fill those roles with lesser-qualified men. Instead of taking the top 20% of the men and the top 20% of the women, you take the top 40% of the men. Assuming equal skill distributions, your people are now on average less talented.

You lose more people that way than you gain by having those women reproducing.

Not only is your position misogynistic, it is misandristic. Why should under-qualified men be forced to serve in the military when there are women who could do their jobs with a better chance of survival? Why are men expendable and women not? Expanding the population does not require the use of every available fertile female - you'd end up with an underclass of undereducated starving runts. Fewer, higher-quality families are a better bet.

And yes, I firmly believe that losing fifteen colonies would be better for the human race. That blow could be recovered from in time (as it was when Sol was lost, along with the bulk of the human population and industrial base.)

...regardless of that, I hope you recognize that it's completely the campaign-maker's prerogative to determine how many (if any) specific roles should be allotted to each gender...

I requested a clarification: were there roles outside the nine specified open to women? The campaign creator told me that there were. I am satisfied.
 
My complaint was a practical one. It had nothing to do with expected returns, and everything to do with barring women from roles they didn't need to be barred from.

I have no idea what direction you're coming at this from. The fact that ambiguous roles should be open to both genders appears to me to be the most fundamental common sense.

As for this remark:

or a single blonde joke in a thread that's explicitly about "stupid jokes,"are not among them.

It took a great many years and a great deal of scientific evidence to bring me to my position on such matters. I stand by it.

I find it particularly odd that this debate is continuing. The question was resolved with Ransom's very first response on the topic.

[Goober5000]

I was going to reply only to Battuta but I just had to ask you about this post.  Are you honestly saying that you would prefer the extinction of your entire species, given the choice between that and having the women stay safely out of the war to raise families?  Don't you think that's rather... well, selfish?

Especially considering that raising a family is just about the best job there is.  Furthermore, it's the only job that's absolutely essential to society.

You think that raising a family is the best job there is. Are you a stay-at home parent? Have you abandoned your own career, your own ambitions to raise a couple dozen kids? If not, you have no authority on which to make this claim, which I find paternalistic, condescending, and offensive. If you are, what makes you think your experience is universal?

Let me first note that you seized on the one sentence of mine that expressed an opinion, that being "raising a family is the best job there is".  You ignored the sentence in the same paragraph that was a fact.  You also ignored my response to the opinion you expressed in your previous post, that being "frankly, I’d prefer extinction".

If you will elaborate on the reasons for your opinion (or retract it), I will also elaborate on the reasons for my opinion.

Consider also that a single woman is not going to give birth to more than ten or twenty children in her lifetime, even if she does nothing else for the entire fertile period of her life. The limitations of the human body might draw the line long before that. Now suppose that woman instead joins the military and makes a decent showing for herself. No, she’s not going to turn back the tide all by herself, but as has already been pointed out, this is a war in which whole planets are at stake. She’s a member of an enormous military force, but that force is dwarfed by the populations of the planets they’re defending. If they prevent the Shivans from destroying even one planet, her share of the lives saved is hundreds or thousands.

You refute your own argument here.  You're talking about the potential performance of one soldier.  However, if that soldier instead stays home and raises a family, she can raise "ten or twenty" soldiers.  And the potential performance of ten or twenty soldiers will always be greater than the potential performance of one soldier.

Besides all that, this is a war. You don’t need people twenty years in the future when all those babies grow up, you need them to hold the Shivans off now. And if you restrict yourself to half your able-bodied population, then odds are those babies are going to be space dust long before they get big enough to fly a ship. If you win, your pilots can all settle down and breed afterward. If you don’t, then it won’t make a damn bit of difference.

You don't fight a war by committing 100% of your forces right off the bat.  You send them in by waves.  This is so that fresh soldiers are continually rotate into the front lines, and new recruits are always being trained.

The Terran-Vasudan war lasted fourteen years.  Suppose that Terran Command had followed the strategy you advocate; by the time FS1 rolls around, you'd win the Great War but sacrifice your best people in the process.  (Remember that the ideal age of a soldier is also the ideal age for a woman to bear children.)  You may win the Great War, but what happens when FS2 rolls around 32 years later?  Oops... you forgot to raise the next generation of people, and you have no military to stand up to the Shivans.

This is the future, ffs. If population was that much of an issue they’d find a way to grow their babies in vats or something.

Nice hypothetical there.  We can't grow fully-grown soldiers in vats now, we won't be able to for the foreseeable future, and there's no indication that the GTVA can do that in the FreeSpace universe.

Ban all women from combat roles and you must, by extent, fill those roles with lesser-qualified men. Instead of taking the top 20% of the men and the top 20% of the women, you take the top 40% of the men. Assuming equal skill distributions, your people are now on average less talented.

You lose more people that way than you gain by having those women reproducing.

If we accept for the sake of argument that men and women have equal skill distributions in combat, you're still ignoring the other side of the equation: men and women do not have equal skill distributions in giving birth.

Incidentally, a 20% increase in the number of child bearers will add a huge number of children, more than offsetting the conjectured 20% change in skill from "best-qualified" to "lesser-qualified" in your pool of soldiers.

And yes, I firmly believe that losing fifteen colonies would be better for the human race. That blow could be recovered from in time (as it was when Sol was lost, along with the bulk of the human population and industrial base.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the man who would sacrifice fifteen worlds on the altar of political correctness.

[General Battuta]

After that last remark I do not feel that I am able to safely continue with this debate. Nor will I continue any discourse with a party so ignorant of modern society, one who believes that numbers are somehow relevant in a world predicated on education, development, and skilled labor. A man who actually advocates that a skilled, elite woman is more valuable for her ability to produce ten children than her ability to save ten thousand or ten billion lives. (Honestly. If Alpha 1 had been a woman...and found herself at home caring for the kids instead of in the cockpit...)

I'm tempted again and again to edit this post to gut your argument on the factual level, to point out how minor the casualties in these wars are compared to the size of the human population. But I simply will not be drawn into a debate on that level when I know that your attitudes here are not grounded in a factual analysis.

The willfull, rationalized retrogressive ignorance it takes to justify this position - and the thought put into rationalizing it - disturbs me deeply. You can shout that I'm unable to respond and therefore quitting with drama, but the fact is that I'm not going to waste my time breaking my head against this kind of attitude.

It would have been one thing if you had advocated economic and political incentives for large families. Instead, you argued for a cultural-level sanction against women in combat roles, regardless of their qualifications.

I prefer to wait for such attitudes to die out. I cannot maintain a professional relationship with anyone who advocates the resubjugation of half the human race.

I cannot in good conscience participate in a community under this leadership. I will consider my positions and whether to relinquish my current responsibilities as Global Moderator.