Alexandrina

If you can't understand why a trans person might be upset when others wilfully ignore their name/gender - and more than that, if you'll insist on calling it weakness and implying that I have serious emotional issues - then I can't see how this is ever going to be a productive discussion. And more than that, it's not a case of allowing somebody's words to affect me. No human being can choose what affects them and what doesn't. Honestly, it's staggering that you've managed to twist my words into this - something which neither makes sense nor is what I initially said - and then act like you've trumped us all with solid logic. I haven't ever said that I have ownership of gender as a concept. Nobody in this thread has, to my knowledge. What I do have ownership of is my gender. I am a woman. That is not something which anybody else gets to define, and it's concerning that you seem convinced that it is. Equally, I do not get a say in anybody else's gender. You're using the idea that gender is fluid as a gotcha - but aside from the fact that I've never seen anybody state that gender is inherently fluid (I'd love a link if you have one, but all I've heard is that gender is not binary and can be fluid) there's the simple fact that an individual's gender is often not fluid. My gender is not fluid, not changeable, not open to interpretation - my gender is female. All the time. As for your other point, you've missed the point of what I've said so thoroughly that I almost wonder if it's deliberate, to discredit what I'm saying - a very common tactic used to silence LGBTQ+ people online. Anybody has a right to any religious belief they choose, or none at all. What they don't have the right to do is define somebody else's religion. You suggest in your comment that you do not believe in a god, which is fair enough. What if I were to insist that you do believe in a god, and when you called me out on it I resorted to the claim that I had a right to interpret your religious identity because nobody owns religion? That's essentially what you've done regarding gender - taken the fact that nobody has ownership of the concept to deny me ownership of my own identity. And if they take those belongings, they are guilty of theft. If they're caught, they might face a fine or even a prison sentence, depending on the value of what they took. Certainly they won't be praised by society at large for taking your belongings. Yes, it is. We're on page fifteen of this thread, and so far almost every page has been the same - with the same tired arguments being trotted out over and over. Always polite, I add, but often the content within those arguments is concerning. And we're forced to defend ourselves time and time again, ever patiently - because at the slightest hint of anger or frustration we are discredited. If we try to bow out of the debate gracefully, as @Lira_Bricks just did, we get accused of having ulterior motives. If we don't respond at all, the transphobes get to claim that we have no answer and that they've won - believe me, I've seen it happen too often in the past. You say that, yet in this thread you've already said that trans people have psychosis and continue to insist - despite multiple reasoned comments to the contrary - that other people have the right to define a trans person's gender. Half of my comment now is responding to a comment of yours where you misrepresented what I had previously said to a point which makes me appear unreasonable. This part of your comment comes across as incredibly patronising. "It is great, it really is" - except we're not trying to do anything great, we're trying to get people to understand that our identities are our identities. And honestly, I think it's appalling that you feel the need to say we need a backbone. For many cis people, they get to leave this thread and not have to worry about gender. As a trans woman I don't get that luxury. If I go onto Reddit, or Twitter, or anywhere else, there's a risk of getting these comments or worse from people who don't respect who I am. I've had some pretty horrible DMs in my time - and from what I've heard from other trans people, I've been fortunate in my experiences so far, comparatively speaking. We have plenty of backbone. I could abandon my accounts, create new ones where I pretend I'm not trans at all, and the horrid comments would stop. But I don't. And I don't because I am trans, I am a woman, and nobody gets to take either of those things away from me. Being openly trans online is saying "yes, the trolls might target me, but I'm still going to be me". That is an incredibly brave thing to do. You are going to find that you get increasingly less engagement from trans people as this thread goes on. And the reason why isn't because you have stumbled upon some logic that we cannot contend with. The reason why is because you continue to repeat the same arguments we have to hear from transphobic people on a daily basis. It wears us down. I won't make assumptions about you because I always try to see the best in people, but your arguments are arguments often used by transphobic people to get the edge in online discourse, the reason being that what they say seems reasonable to the outside observer, those who haven't yet picked a side, and so when a trans person inevitably gets angry and responds as such (and not on EB, but there are plenty of young trans people who aren't prepared for the sheer level of intolerance they'll face for being trans, and will thus get very easily upset) the transphobes get to say "look, what we said was completely reasonable and logical and they got all upset. Clearly trans people are in the wrong here." Like @Lira_Bricks, I don't have any desire to continue on this discourse. I've had plenty of great interactions with people in this thread, and I thank Lego for producing set 40516 to open this discourse - but given how you continue to twist what I say, and force me to state it again while also disavowing points that you imply that I've made, it seems clear to me that you've already made up your mind on this issue. It does none of us any good to continue this circular discussion. I do find it a bit sad, I have to say, that the thread has devolved into a debate about affording trans people the basic respect of acknowledging their identity. The set is called Everyone Is Awesome, after all, and it does represent the whole of the LGBTQ+ community - and more besides. As for the set itself, just looking up pictures I notice from the cross-section that there's tan bricks at the heart of the mid-section. That's actually another selling point for me - I need tan bricks in great plenty, for a film set with a foolishly large scope, and the more the merrier. I'm glad that the pink's on the end, too - I grew up in the era when pink bricks were basically not a thing - bright pink didn't come out until I was six, and aside from a handful of Belville sets when I was two, the old pink wasn't released in standard bricks during my lifetime - so I have a severe shortage of pinks, even after a year of hoovering them up with every Bricklink order.

There are two things at play here. First off, my gender is a core part of my identity - I know some people don't see their gender as fundamental to who they are, but for me it is. If someone calls me a man that directly interferes with my own right to my beliefs and to my identity - and as my gender is my identity and not the person who wishes to misgeender me, my right to be treated as me takes precedent. This would apply in reverse too - if I had a strongly held belief that a certain religion was bunk, and someone else truly believed it, I would not go up to them and tell them its a pack of lies. That wouldn't be respectful, and it's a respect thing. Secondly, my being a woman is not up for interpretation at all. Maybe some people don't like the fact. There are lots of facts I don't like, but I can't go around pretending they're not facts. Moreover, especially online, I have not ever presented myself as male (except on disused accounts, before I knew I was trans). Anybody I interact with online knows me as a woman from the first instance, so there's no mental adjustment required on their part - to then turn around and call me a man because they learn I'm trans requires a conscious effort to assert their beliefs over the top of my identity. As for your first question: a trans person is always identified by their gender - the trans qualification is just a description in the same manner as "tall" or "scary" or "blue". I am a trans woman because I am a woman, and I happen to be trans. A trans man is a man who happens to be trans.

Honestly, I only intended it as an offhand remark to show the difficulties of good representation as an argument as to why showing the flag in a set is not inherently wrong - I only expanded the comment to what I meant when it became clear that others had read my statement in a damaging way. Plus of course the fact that my head is a whirl every time I read this thread, so sometimes I don't get my thoughts down properly!

And that's at the core of what makes Lego so great, imo. Like you I personally see Robin as trans, but it's perfectly okay for any other viewpoint too. That said, I would like to see a few explicitly canonically trans characters in future sets, and I fully expect that to happen in time - especially as more and more in house minifigures are given names and backgrounds. 40516 is imo the heralding of an era of greater diversity in the Legoverse, which I cannot wait for.

The thing is, though, a D2C of that size won't exactly be cheap. I would personally rather buy the figures on the secondary market and save a bit of money, as opposed to paying full price for a D2C that doesn't appeal to me. Of course, there's plenty of Lego for me to buy, so I won't be too down on it - but I do wish the latter day sets were more like the June wave.

Well, I know a guy who's really not into Lego. Guess it would be an unappreciated gift for him. I'll have to keep his copy for myself!

Oh stop it, or you're gonna talk me into buying four or five!

That's true. And there's nothing stopping me from buying online and in store for that sweet sweet double rainbow!

How quickly are we expecting this set to sell? Obviously it's not a limited-run set, so anybody who wants it will have the opportunity to buy it eventually, but I confess I do want to get my hands on a copy as soon as I possibly can. That brings me to a dilemma. Obviously, the set comes out on June 1st, which is a Tuesday. The earliest I could place an order via Lego.com is just after 10am, assuming it's still in stock, because cruel work shifts mean I can't stay up until it goes live the night before. Based on past experiences with Lego.com, I'd expect to have a delivery some time in the latter half of the following week - and I can definitely wait that long, not a problem. However, I'm scheduled to go to Bristol for the day on June 4th - and as Bristol has a Lego store, I will undoubtedly call in. Certainly there's no chance I can place an order online and have delivery before then. And thus my dilemma: do I order 40516 as soon as I can, or do I try and grab it from the physical store a few days later? I'm worried that if it's one of those that's gonna sell super quick, waiting those extra few days might mean I miss out on the chance to get one early doors. And while I can wait for as long as it takes, I'd rather not wait.

This thread has turned into the de facto thread on whether Lego should engage in LGBTQ+ issues, and at times strayed into issues not strictly bound to Lego. Topics deviate, and insisting that a topic stays rigidly on a narrow track just makes it feel like treading on egg shells making a comment. Not good for discussion. But more than that: what is to be gained by shutting down the thread dedicated to discussion of a big deal set that hasn't even come put yet? Even if there's currently more chat about the issues than the bricks, is that not bound to change next week when the set is out and people can actually discuss the physical product?

I'd love to see Indy return. I was unfortunate enough to be working on a very limited Lego budget during the last range, so I never got many sets. I do have hope that they're able to fill the gaps but also revisit their key moments. The Venice Canal Chase, which I had, is a great little set and shows Lego taking care to match the film costumes (like they have done on a greater scale with Harry Potter) but Elsa's face print is APPALLING and imo doesn't look anything like her.

More than that, since Captain Redbeard is in both the Black Seas Barracuda and the Cross Bone Clipper, there's a good reason to think that the woman in red on the Cross Bone Clipper is none other than Lady Anchor, who I believe is canonically the Captain's daughter and who is based off the minifigure in the Black Seas Barracuda that is identical to the Clipper except for differently coloured legs/bandana. Given that every minifigure in the Barracuda has an equivalent in PoBB (the identical minifigures are condensed down) and both those minifigures and Tattooga (based off minifigure pi012 I believe) maintain continuity in the form of their torso clothing, it seems a fair assumption that Robin Loot is meant to be the figure from the Cross Bone Clipper that wears the same colour waistcoat and undershirt, and also wears a brown tricorne. Since that minifigure is male-presenting, and Robin Loot is female-presenting, there are two possibilities. Option 1) is that she is trans; option 2) is that she disguised her gender á la Anne Bonny during her Cross Bone Clipper days, but has subsequently stopped hiding. My personal opinion is that the latter is unlikely because of the presence of Lady Anchor on the Clipper - so there's definitely no prohibition of women in the crew.

At least for me, this is all I ask for. I don't really mind what views someone holds in private, so long as when I interact with them they give me the respect to acknowledge my identity. That does mean calling me "she" - I am not a man, and nor will I respond kindly to someone insisting on calling me a man (after I have explicitly told them otherwise - I don't expect people, especially online, to necessarily know that I am a woman without prompt). If someone wants to leave the interaction thinking I am a man, that's their prerogative, so long as they don't feel the need to force that view upon me. I won't force you into further debate - as you say, our views are fundamentally different, and I don't think continuing to debate would help anyone, nor would it be relevant to Lego. That said, I would like to add - for the benefit of anyone who happens to read - why being told I'm not a woman, having my gender denied, is hurtful. First off, I didn't choose to be this way. Being trans is not my fault. As a trans woman, I ask only one thing: that I be allowed to live my life in peace, with basic human respect afforded me. When someone aggressively misgenders me, that falls short of basic respect. Have you ever met a friend's pet for the first time? If you guess its gender wrong, you usually will be subtly corrected - and it's no big deal, the world keeps turning. But if your friend said "my dog is female, actually" and you continued to call it "he" while being aware of that, it would be a bit of a social faux pas. It doesn't happen. People respect a dog's pronouns. So when someone calls me "he" and I tell them that actually I am a woman, if they still insist on calling me "he" to deny my gender, they're treating me with less respect than they would a dog. As a trans woman, every time I post something online or go out in the street, there's a chance that'll happen. Or worse. And you know what? It really wears a person down. That Lego have done this set is such a brilliant thing in my eyes. It says to me that, now and in the future, Lego won't deny my gender. I can build this set and know that they see me.

I'm not saying it would be poor representation on its own per se. The issue would be more that alternative representation is harder to pull off visually without the use of symbology cues (that was the original point I was making on the first comment). If the entirety of trans representation was restricted to typically male facial features paired with typically female clothing and hair, it paints a picture that leaves an unbalanced view of trans women. My gut instinct based on my time in the community is that trans women who regularly present with facial hair as a conscious aspect of their presentation (rather than those who are struggling to remove it and thus have visible stubble, especially at the end of a long day) are a minority - I could be wrong here, I've never done a full survey. Again, as part of a balanced representation it would be fine - but the crux of the matter is that it's harder to show trans women without obvious facial hair. There are other risks too. Off the top of my head, it would reinforce in certain circles stereotypes against trans women in the UK particularly that are currently doing us damage. For instance, there's a growing voice against self-identification - based on dodgy reporting in the media on what self-ID actually is and reinforced by certain personalities online (not here, I add). There's a perception that self-ID would allow any man to declare himself a woman and immediately be allowed into women's spaces, and I have seen propaganda that plays on this fear which leans hard on the image of a "man in a dress" with very clumsy presentation. Self-identification is actually making a statutory declaration regarding gender - a legal document signed in the presence of a solicitor - rather than the current system of following arbitrary standards of presentation for a period of several years in order to be eligible to legally change gender marker. I will respond to the rest of your comment later - as I have to rush off to work now! I'm not ignoring the rest of it.

I was specifically thinking of representing trans women in the form of minifigures with female-coded torsos/hair and full beards - and yes, there are people who fit this description and of course they deserve respect, but the concern I have is that since this is both the only way I can think of to code a minifigure as trans without using the flags or a backstory, and also fits into some pretty ugly preconceptions of what trans people are, it would be at best poor representation of the trans community. We aren't far removed from the period in time when society's accepted perception of all the trans women was "men in dresses" and that's something I really don't ever want to return to. This also has undertones rooted in the deeply harmful autogynephilia propagated in the 20th century, which put forth the notion that a trans woman was really a heterosexual man who got off on making himself into a woman. You mentioned overt flamboyancy - that never crossed my mind as a possible interpretation of my comment, because I don't see it as being crass or offensive. I specifically referred to the stereotypes which have harmed and still harm trans people to this day (including the albeit-unlikely in a toy stereotype of trans women as sex-maniac serial killers who dress up as women to fulfil a fantasy). I was dismissing as bigotry the notion that being LGBTQ+ is sexual immorality - a point which I would argue is the definition of bigotry, since it posits that someone is immoral, or at least behaves immorally, as a result of immutable characteristics. Honestly, it rankles a bit that you have decided to take a very harsh interpretation of my comments (I have never once said a single word against religion or those who are religious on these boards or anywhere else) in order to defend a comment that - albeit indirectly - denied the gender of multiple people here and questioned the morality of multiple others. I'm also a bit confused about the part of your comment referring to having to remember all the letters to avoid offending people. Maybe I missed it, but I have seen no such comment here to draw this remark. I don't speak for all LGBTQ+ people, but I know for a fact that I only get offended when somebody explicitly denies that I am a woman or excludes me from a social situation entirely on the basis of my being trans (where I would have been included were I a cis woman, or had I not transitioned). I apologise if I've misinterpreted anything you've said - if so let me know and I will retract the relevant parts of my comment .

That said, this isn't a licensed set - it's possible you'll be able to pick some parts up via Bricks & Pieces!

Is that the same as saying someone is delusional for asserting that they are a woman? Because if not its a false equivalence. I hope it leads to a spate of colourful hairstyles! I want all of these pieces in the gamut of colours.

No bother then

This might be the (janky) best way of doing it - and not entirely without precedent either. I know as recently as the mid-90s Paradisa sets (possibly more recently - I don't profess to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Lego minifigures) there was a print with no overt gender coding used frequently for female minifigures. (This one). The selfsame print was used for male-coded figures too. Without knowing too much about the options - I wonder if something like 3636cpb1429, with the right hair/torso combo, might do the job?

I have no intention of derailing the thread and I don't think this is particularly about Lego, but if you're willing I would quite like to have a chat on some of these points in DMs? No worries if not.

The counter to that is that Lego have happily released national flags in sets over a period of decades, without a word of complaint from any party

I can envisage Lego incorporating the LGBTQ community into the subtle stories it does over several sets - such as family that's grown up and had children of their own over three different City sets. How wholesome would it be if the current child of that lil family has a male partner in the next set?

It might be fun to start saying "mrrrr" though!

And this, I think, is the crux of the matter. Thanks for being a voice on the side of reason!

Oh yeah, I didn't mean the reply to be to you - sorry if that was unclear! I responded to the quote with the intention of showing that my comment was informed by the context that you'd given, not under the impression you were offering commentary. Apologies - I should have been more clear.