A simple suggestion to have the provided or chosen pronouns be more prominent on a wolf's bio page than their assigned sex. While it's nice to be able to choose masculine, feminine, neutral, or customized pronouns per wolf, it displays only as small text beneath their name on the left. Their assigned sex however remains on the right very plainly. While I understand the intent in making breeding seem based in a sense of realism by pairing male and female sexes, it does ultimately undermine the feeling of being able to choose pronouns in my opinion.

My suggestion is to have the pronouns either be more “eye-catching” in some way, such as being larger or taking one of the site's accent colors (ie, green, white/black depending on theme) instead of being grey. Alternatively and/or at the same time, it would be nice to be able to make the wolf's assigned sex less boldly apparent especially when poses per sex already exist for breeding purposes- you see a thumbnail of the wolves in question rather than a male-female list. My other idea would be to simply title it “Assigned Sex” or even “Pose” to be even less strict about it and move chosen pronouns to the right infobox as “Gender” or “Pronouns” right above or below sex.

Maybe it's a non-issue for many players, but in the spirit of being inclusive it would definitely make me feel more comfortable making or including transgender characters if their birth sex wasn't stated so openly despite choosing pronouns for them. It also opens up the door for people who want to interpret a character or wolf of theirs as male or female, or even simply feel that one of the poses suits their character better, but their on-site wolf is the “wrong” sex. This would allow them to designate a character as a “lore male” or cisgender man using the alt pose without also having a big indicator on the right that says “Female”, which may be needlessly confusing when introducing the character to others for RP or story purposes.

I know I'm just a new player but it was something that stood out to me as a small thing that could be easily settled one way or the other while the site is still small. I appreciate all opinions on the matter : )

Support!! This has been bothering me for a quite a bit, especially since a lot of my characters are Trans, and the language used is kind of invalidating.

Unfortunately, I don't really know of a better solution while keeping things PG than the one suggested above, which is why I wholeheartedly endorse said solution!

EDIT: Literally just thought of something. Why not call the Poses “Sire Pose” and “Carrier Pose” instead of Male/Female? They're much less inherently gendered.

…Though if someone can come up with a better noun than “Carrier” for someone who gets pregnant, please tell me, and suggest that instead, LOL!

@Heemi

sire/dam would be the word pairing based on IRL breeding and likely the clearest for players coming from other sites/players who have not considered this detail before.

i think i am neutral on the suggestion overall since this could very easily confuse new players who don't understand the nuances of the site's setup and i think confusion surrounding a baseline feature of a game is ultimately worse for site health than confusion in RP/lore interactions, as someone who's been ignoring whatever indicator the site gives in favor of poses forever—but if it was done in a way that left the breeding mechanics clear for those players i'd be fine with it.

just please not “carrier” pose LMAO frankly that's about 100x worse for my dysphoria than seeing a little symbol on a pet page

Honestly I'd love a section for gender, separate from sex. Maybe replace the sex text with “can get pregnant/can get others pregnant”?

@Aenocyon

I'm so sorry if I caused you dysphoria!!

…I honestly thought Dam would be worse for Dysphoria since it's very. Uh. Feminine sounding?

For context, I'm Trans/Nonbinary, and I get icky feelings at the idea of being called “Dam” as an AFAB person IRL. I just wanted to avoid the word because of that, and I wasn't considering anyone else's experiences on the matter mostly because I'm still half asleep

I hope you can forgive my stupidity…

@Heemi

no, no worries! i was thinking more in terms of seeing it as a site feature (aka constantly) not just in your suggestion, so you're good :)

to me sire/dam are more neutral since that's an accepted standard term with animals, which these are… but our differing perspectives are also a good reason why its not as straightforward as it might seem to make an adjustment like this! i am also not western so my interpretation of english words can differ, for yet another fun obstacle…

another thing i realized while typing this is the sex indicator is far less prominent on dark mode since it's black on dark grey, so perhaps if it's possible to alter this based on site skin, a light grey version for light mode might help make pronouns stand out more as well?

@siltfern

i really like those mockups, actually! sticking to the male/female symbol in the details might be better if that's used elsewhere—it's not perfect re:inclusiveness i guess, but i think keeping that sort of thing unified in display will make it easiest for players to use.

This is something I thought of before that I think could work, but I'm not sure there's much a more elegant solution to this that doesn't run the risk of compromising gameplay elements or confusing other parts of the player base.

I had this in mind thinking on this issue as an agender person myself who doesn't generally deal with too much dysphoria on the day to day with issues like this, so apologies if I don't really grasp the issue as much as I should/come off as insensitive in any way, it's definitely not my intention ;;

Siltfern beat me to mockups, but I was also thinking of expanding that to profile displays and shrinking the symbols a bit entirely. While it's not a perfect solution, I feel like the symbols would be good to keep for gameplay elements, while transgender symbols could get very confusing and also be not inclusive of nonbinary people if only the mtf/ftm symbols were implemented.

Allowing players to pick a sex/symbol display or optionally displaying the neuter symbol both seem like they'd make a mess of mechanics and just create a lot of confusion for people who might not be aware of the symbols themselves. Allowing all wolves to breed together regardless of sex mechanics alternatively seems like it would end up very unbalancing as well.