Hey simmers, this is Skell assisting admin Holleyberry. There’s been Discourse going around about transgender sims and in light of our current challenge, Holley and I wanted to open it up to discussion.
Some players think of the AM & AF game codes as standing for AFAB & AMAB and like to depict sims transitioning. Some like the gender codes to match the sim’s gender (“Jenny is a trans woman.”) I didn’t want to be too restrictive in the rules on this since there are a variety of valid ways to play.
7. For trans sims, please create their transition with clothes/hair/makeup rather than flip their coding. If you need help finding CC, these boards are a good start.
I wrote this rule, and my thinking was about face meshes. To my eye, flipping
between ♂️/♀ makes the sim look like an unrecognizable different person rather than a masculine/feminine version of the same face. I didn’t mean that all trans sims need to be assigned the opposite gender code, I meant that if you were *transitioning* a well-known face for the challenge it could be confusing to have Pascals that looked like Mary-Sues (both face 8).However, a year later, my views have evolved. I’m now open to axing this rule and letting people depict sim transition any way they’d like.
Anyhow, it
can be difficult to communicate both sensitively and effectively about this stuff. (To some AM means Adult Male, to others it means AMAB or just shorthand for a mesh shape + code.) What are your thoughts on this, especially simmers who are trans?– @whattheskell
To clarify, it is not and has never been against the rules to depict an AF sim as a
trans woman or an AM sim as a trans man. (I did that for my own entry.)
It was just face swapping that, at the time, seemed too akin to plastic surgery, which
has never been allowed here. (but maybe it’s time to make an
exception?)We’re talking about changing a rule in the yearly Pride challenge at @totallymaxis . Please give us your input.
Hey hey~!
I’m a trans guy and wanted to give my input :3
So, anyone who knows me probs is aware my stance on a lot of things regarding handling sims, & trans sims particularly, but I might as well post here.
Personally, I don’t think this is a black/white tug of war of “right way” and “wrong way” to play trans sims, especially if you’re a storyteller like me who just likes to pose & take pictures 99% of the time. I’ve personally played trans sims in both sim gender=character gender and also sim sex=character’s sex at birth, mainly the former for sims I’d rather just play with, and the latter for premade/born-in-game sims who have transitioned over time.
For example of the former is my Dadsona sim, because he is basically me but on T and post-op (hashtag jelly), and playing him was more about him smooching hot dads than his transition.
But an example for the latter is Angela & Dustin’s son in my story. He is a trans man, but because he is young (still a teen), he can’t quite start HRT and the like (heck, I didn’t even acknowledge dysphoria until I was 18 and a total wreck from it), and when he does, the transition is gradual, like real life, and his transition roadmap is unique but still takes time.
So, in conclusion, I think so long as there is a genuine attempt to be respectful and represent trans ppl in a sims game from a decade ago, you should be fine. Besides, when it comes to modern day cc, it’s not terribly hard to have a sim transition purely in game, which I think is really cool and appreciate the thought put into that!
The Sims of San Myshuno 