February 2010

Gender in Star Wars

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Now that we have identified the only gay Star Wars character, I think it's time to move on to a broader discussion of gender in Star Wars.  According to the Wookiepedia, sentient life developed on approximately 20 million planets.  Let's be stingy, and say that each planet developed only one sentient biological life form.  (Earth, after all, has humans, chimpanzees, and dolphins.)  This means that the Star Wars universe consists of 20 million sentient species of biological life form.  

Naturally, only a small fraction of these have been explored in the Star Wars universe to date.  Many more will be explored and catalogued, as the reading public's appetite for endless spin-off trilogy novels shows no sign of being slaked.  

Mass Effect 2: Lesbians OK, Gay Men Not OK

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Much has been made of the fact that you can customize the gender of your character Commander Shepard in the new game Mass Effect 2.  And if your Commander Shepard is female, then you have two choices: you can have a relationship with a male character, or a relationship with a female character.  However, male Commander Shepards can ONLY have relationships with female characters.  

Why would Bioware allow players to customize everything about their character except allowing for male homosexual relationships?  In a recent IGN review, creator Ray Muzyka explained that "it's not a wide-open choice matrix. It's more choice on a tactical level with a pre-defined character. So they're different types of narratives, and that's intentional."  

In other words, "because we said so, and we know best, that's why."