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I'm so glad we got top surgery scars, they should be available for both male & female sims

LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
edited February 2023 in The Sims 4 Game Feedback
I read the patch notes a little bit ago and was really excited for like a few minutes. I immediately noticed some issues. The binders being under tops meant you can't wear clothes over them.

But it wasn't until I opened tiktok and then saw an excited simmer posting about the top surgery scars that I realized I had misread what they had written. It wasn't for "Female and Male Sims (masculine and feminine frames) Teen and up" it was just for Male sims. Why? It's not just people who identify as men who don't want to have those parts up top.

Plenty of non-binary people don't want them, some cis-women, other cis-women get breast reductions in order to feel more comfortable with their bodies.

Plus there's literally anyone who's had a mastectomy. Perhaps they just didn't think through how to apply these to female sims. IDK.

Like on one hand this update is some of the first disability representation we've ever had in this game. We got hearing aids, and glucose monitors. And if they are willing to be representative of players like that, there's a chance they will go further. And that's great.

On the other hand it's like the 3rd of fourth time they've gotten it sorta, or partially right when it came to bringing more LGBTQIA2S+ representation into the game. I might be being overly sensitive in the eyes of some. But when I saw that update, one of my first thoughts was about one of my sims, who is a woman, a female sim, who could use those scars. I had seen the masculine or feminine frame and felt secure that I was good to use them. And didn't even realize that she couldn't. It's just really odd, to set it up like that.

I feel like this goes back to what was going on when they started announcing changes in representation, and adding pronouns and sexuality and romantic attraction under the binary system.

Like I've seen simmers say the reason things are harder to implement is because it's a game and they can't mess with the game binary, whatever that means. But that just makes me think:
1. Just treat the Female and Male as they are. Sex assigned at birth or in this case CAS. If possible add Intersex representation.
2. Add gender as an option under that. Pronouns stay customizable.
3. Instead of clicking which clothing preference you have, one or the other, make an option for both.
4. We have feminine and masculine frames, and they can be picked regardless or sex ,which does allow for some customization. Maybe adding a third frame would be too much, one that's in between I don't know.
5. Flushing out the sexuality portion, the romantic attraction portion, and also adding a portion for romantic style monoamorous, polyamrous, etc.

If the system itself could be tweaked to allow certain changes and certain fluidity, then there would likely be less issues when adding new things. And if things were added without fully paying attention to the factors involved, the fixing of that would be easy. As would accessing them in the meantime.

Like we're about to have infants as a life stage. You've introduced top scars. You already have pronouns. But if I for example had a trans man sim, this sim would be AFAB. And he was comfortable to carry a child. He and his wife got pregnant. Right now, you have the right pronouns for this sim. But that's all the gender options you have. It's good, but could be deepened. I can give him a masculine frame, but no top scars. I can give him a binder if he wears it as a shirt. Maybe the only dysphoria he has is his chest. And currently it's fine to nurse his child. But he would prefer bottle feeding, and the rest of his body is fine with him. The only sim in that household who could have the sign of that surgery would be his wife. Because they are T4T and she was AMAB. But that's obviously not a surgery she wants. There's some flaws in how this plays out.

If I had made a Sim and only I knew this sim was headcannoned as trans and they were a transman yeah this would work. Or if I had them as someone who had fully transitioned.

But confirming procedures come in many different configurations, and those who get them aren't all getting the same things.

Tldr: You should make it so the top surgery scars are available for all sims from Teen up regardless of sex, body frame, or gender/pronouns.
Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
Post edited by EA_Solaire on

Comments

  • mightyspritemightysprite Posts: 5,806 Member
    I'm very excited about this too!
    I agree with you about making it less limited for all those reasons.
    Is it possible that the skin detail is available for female frames if you just delete the filter? Maybe I'll check later.
    gen3-banner.png
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    I'm very excited about this too!
    I agree with you about making it less limited for all those reasons.
    Is it possible that the skin detail is available for female frames if you just delete the filter? Maybe I'll check later.

    It's possible I'm going to check too, but it honestly shouldn't even be something that you have to delete the filter for. It should have never been separated like that. They literally separated surgery scars for GENDER COFRIMING SURGERY by Sex Assigned At Birth.
    Even if you temporarily ignore the part about cancer survivors, non-binary people, and cis-women who don't want their breasts (as they obviously did); in an effort to bring representation for trans players they made it set so that your sim basically has to be cis, or headcannoned as fully transitioned, to use them.
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    LSM36 wrote: »
    I'm very excited about this too!
    I agree with you about making it less limited for all those reasons.
    Is it possible that the skin detail is available for female frames if you just delete the filter? Maybe I'll check later.

    It's possible I'm going to check too, but it honestly shouldn't even be something that you have to delete the filter for. It should have never been separated like that. They literally separated surgery scars for GENDER COFRIMING SURGERY by Sex Assigned At Birth.
    Even if you temporarily ignore the part about cancer survivors, non-binary people, and cis-women who don't want their breasts (as they obviously did); in an effort to bring representation for trans players they made it set so that your sim basically has to be cis, or headcannoned as fully transitioned, to use them.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but masculine and feminine frame do nothing except allow the clothes to fit a little differently on you. The parts are still the same on your sims. Or at least they have been on mine. And as an enby player, I do tend to make a lot of non-binary and trans sims.

    It just feels like if they're consulting anybody on these things before they do them, they aren't consulting the right people.
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • JustinB113JustinB113 Posts: 1,050 Member
    I’m disappointed. I would rather have had the infants patch today.

    I do like the hearing aids though.
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    I don't mind getting any of this stuff. Other than the issues I've already stated. And I've wanted disability rep forever and we're finally getting some. But yeah I also wanted infants.
    Personally I think it would've been good if they released infants today since they've had months to gauge our reactions, and then mentioned these updates in the stream instead. Then they could've gotten feedback from the communities they're trying to appeal to within the sims community.

    By this point they must already have an idea of infant desire. Ppl have asked for better babies since the game came out. For the past several months there have been videos on YouTube and tiktok, posts in the forums, people making builds in the gallery and making new sims over and over again. Everyone thinking that it's coming sooner than it was, and turning off aging, leaving beloved households alone because they don't want more kids until the update comes.
    But it's like they think they need to keep building the excitement. It's not going to get any higher at this point. Those who want them, want them.
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • mightyspritemightysprite Posts: 5,806 Member
    Oh certainly I agree with your larger point, that gender confirming surgery scars should not have been limited by gender.

    I was just wondering about a way to get around the limitation and make it work anyhow ;)
    "get around the limitation and make it work anyhow" is a valuable LGBTQ superpower
    gen3-banner.png
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    Very true 😊
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • SERVERFRASERVERFRA Posts: 7,108 Member
    Even Women can have a top surgery scar. Especially if they had to have their breasts removed or heart surgery.
  • crocobauracrocobaura Posts: 7,342 Member
    LSM36 wrote: »
    I read the patch notes a little bit ago and was really excited for like a few minutes. I immediately noticed some issues. The binders being under tops meant you can't wear clothes over them.

    But it wasn't until I opened tiktok and then saw an excited simmer posting about the top surgery scars that I realized I had misread what they had written. It wasn't for "Female and Male Sims (masculine and feminine frames) Teen and up" it was just for Male sims. Why? It's not just people who identify as men who don't want to have those parts up top.

    Plenty of non-binary people don't want them, some cis-women, other cis-women get breast reductions in order to feel more comfortable with their bodies.

    Plus there's literally anyone who's had a mastectomy. Perhaps they just didn't think through how to apply these to female sims. IDK.

    Like on one hand this update is some of the first disability representation we've ever had in this game. We got hearing aids, and glucose monitors. And if they are willing to be representative of players like that, there's a chance they will go further. And that's great.

    On the other hand it's like the 3rd of fourth time they've gotten it sorta, or partially right when it came to bringing more LGBTQIA2S+ representation into the game. I might be being overly sensitive in the eyes of some. But when I saw that update, one of my first thoughts was about one of my sims, who is a woman, a female sim, who could use those scars. I had seen the masculine or feminine frame and felt secure that I was good to use them. And didn't even realize that she couldn't. It's just really odd, to set it up like that.

    I feel like this goes back to what was going on when they started announcing changes in representation, and adding pronouns and sexuality and romantic attraction under the binary system.

    Like I've seen simmers say the reason things are harder to implement is because it's a game and they can't mess with the game binary, whatever that means. But that just makes me think:
    1. Just treat the Female and Male as they are. Sex assigned at birth or in this case CAS. If possible add Intersex representation.
    2. Add gender as an option under that. Pronouns stay customizable.
    3. Instead of clicking which clothing preference you have, one or the other, make an option for both.
    4. We have feminine and masculine frames, and they can be picked regardless or sex ,which does allow for some customization. Maybe adding a third frame would be too much, one that's in between I don't know.
    5. Flushing out the sexuality portion, the romantic attraction portion, and also adding a portion for romantic style monoamorous, polyamrous, etc.

    If the system itself could be tweaked to allow certain changes and certain fluidity, then there would likely be less issues when adding new things. And if things were added without fully paying attention to the factors involved, the fixing of that would be easy. As would accessing them in the meantime.

    Like we're about to have infants as a life stage. You've introduced top scars. You already have pronouns. But if I for example had a trans man sim, this sim would be AFAB. And he was comfortable to carry a child. He and his wife got pregnant. Right now, you have the right pronouns for this sim. But that's all the gender options you have. It's good, but could be deepened. I can give him a masculine frame, but no top scars. I can give him a binder if he wears it as a shirt. Maybe the only dysphoria he has is his chest. And currently it's fine to nurse his child. But he would prefer bottle feeding, and the rest of his body is fine with him. The only sim in that household who could have the sign of that surgery would be his wife. Because they are T4T and she was AMAB. But that's obviously not a surgery she wants. There's some flaws in how this plays out.

    If I had made a Sim and only I knew this sim was headcannoned as trans and they were a transman yeah this would work. Or if I had them as someone who had fully transitioned.

    But confirming procedures come in many different configurations, and those who get them aren't all getting the same things.

    Tldr: You should make it so the top surgery scars are available for all sims from Teen up regardless of sex, body frame, or gender/pronouns.

    It makes no sense that these are for males only as that is the kind of surgery females have. A natural born man would not have those, so I am not sure why they made them male only in the first place.
  • SimSoonSimSoon Posts: 55 Member
    LSM36 wrote: »
    1. Just treat the Female and Male as they are. Sex assigned at birth or in this case CAS. If possible add Intersex representation.

    Huh, that's not how I use the gender markers. (...i use them as gender markers)
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    SimSoon wrote: »
    LSM36 wrote: »
    1. Just treat the Female and Male as they are. Sex assigned at birth or in this case CAS. If possible add Intersex representation.

    Huh, that's not how I use the gender markers. (...i use them as gender markers)

    Well the symbols mean male♂️ and female ♀️ with this for intersex⚧️. They're biological sex symbols. To be fair though they get called gender symbols even if you Google it, but then they are defined as the symbols for biological sex. The issue there is conflating sex and gender. The terms for these were coined in a time when no one was acknowledging the difference. But it's literally talking about humans as species splitting them into a binary based on presentation of their primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

    Gender is a social construct, but also one that people have to decide for themselves regardless of what they are assigned at birth. It's about who you are inside, and how you want to interact in the world. A cis person wants to interact with the world in the way that people assume someone with their sex would. At least in presentation. Other than cis-people there are many other types of people out there, and gender can be an incredibly important tool to reflect what's already going on inside. It both is what you already are, and is a reflection/presentation of that for the world to be able to see and understand.

    I can't remember if they still refer to sims as man and woman in CAS, I don't think they do anymore. But from the beginning, seeing those symbols, I thought female and male, and then after that gender. (Even when I didn't fully have these terms to use, even for myself. )As if it was just determining the base parts the sim would have. Essentially what they were assigned at birth. And as we got more options it seemed like that was the intent all along.

    Except then there were all these issues when implementing representation that made me think that it was less forward thinking and more of an accident that could lead to better things.
    People reacted so harshly just to pronouns. We were told we were going to get a bunch of stuff back to back for Queer representation. And in the end we got a few flags months later. And then another update for pronouns announced like a year later. But I didn't notice any real difference, it seemed like a patch for bugs and that was it.
    Then people realized that all sims were technically pansexual and lost it.
    So it seems like the system now is like if you had started to do a thing, and stopped partway through, then started to do another thing and stopped. Like putting your shopping list in the sandwich you were in the middle of making, and then ordering a pizza instead.

    You can chose the basic build of your sim's body, their sex, you can let them wear whatever clothes they want, you can give them pronouns, and there's a few sexualites you can configure same with romantic orientations.
    But there's a lot you can't do even with the things you can do, and for each of those features we were promised more than we were given.

    And it was often rolled out in a way that seemed like they really understood their players and the players' communities and then didn't.

    It's like getting more skintones, and better hairs for black sims all over again. With them finally just getting help from CC creators in an attempt to appease everyone.
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • JokubasJokubas Posts: 100 Member
    edited February 2023
    I found this strange as well, but after reading through the thread and thinking again, I may have figured it out.

    However hard-coded "male" and "female" may have been when the game launched, the customization added later removed those limitations so it shouldn't be a problem, but then I realized the one exception.

    Whatever "sex" a Sim is determines whether or not their top is covered, regardless of which "frame" they're using. I bet the reason this is limited to "male" Sims is because the scar would either be flat out covered by the non-removable bra/pixelation for "female" Sims, or otherwise is related to the built-in auto-censorship of "female" chests.
  • LSM36LSM36 Posts: 593 Member
    Jokubas wrote: »
    I found this strange as well, but after reading through the thread and thinking again, I may have figured it out.

    However hard-coded "male" and "female" may have been when the game launched, the customization added later removed those limitations so it shouldn't be a problem, but then I realized the one exception.

    Whatever "sex" a Sim is determines whether or not their top is covered, regardless of which "frame" they're using. I bet the reason this is limited to "male" Sims is because the scar would either be flat out covered by the non-removable bra/pixelation for "female" Sims, or otherwise is related to the built-in auto-censorship of "female" chests.

    That makes sense unfortunately, but also leads back to a feeling of disappointment. Like it's a recurring theme when things don't quite match up to what it seemed we'd get. And in this case, if it's because of refusing to allow the chests of female sims to be seen, that's likely a result of lowering the age of this game and trying to make it appeal to kids. So more censorship of bodies.

    Making using these scars something that would only be possible with CC and mods.
    Check out my posts in the Ideas corner, and see the Simsverse living inside my head. :blush:
  • Ginger0802Ginger0802 Posts: 2 New Member
    Completely agree with/get everything said in this thread so far!

    I also want to expand by saying that it's completely strange and frustrating that we can't have feminine-framed sims that have completely flat chests and that the "masculine" clothes pucker at the chest for feminine-frame sims. Maybe this is just an issue for me as a console gamer? Whatever it is, I'm constantly bummed by it. As a GNC simmer, it's important to me that I'm able to create a variety of sims, including ones that look like myself and people I know.
  • Tequila_Rose_13191Tequila_Rose_13191 Posts: 143 Member

    What I'm upset about is that I can't apply any of the body scars on any of my preexisting Sims in my already existing save. I had a trans Sim that I'm currently playing & wanted to use them on him but couldn't as I couldn't even access the option but face scars were accessable. I could only access the body scars with newly made Sims/households in CAS.

  • wingweaver84wingweaver84 Posts: 80 Member
    Is it only for the top? I have a scar on my right knee and thought maybe I could apply it to my Sim.
    A friendly reminder that Project Rene has not yet been confirmed as Sims 5.
  • crocobauracrocobaura Posts: 7,342 Member
    Is it only for the top? I have a scar on my right knee and thought maybe I could apply it to my Sim.

    I think they only released gender affirming scars. Naughty behaviour scars are probably reserved for another pack. :lol:
  • Flikka_FlikkaFlikka_Flikka Posts: 431 Member
    Self-identifed women: can we have breast scars to better represent ourselves?
    EAxis: Ew, no.

    Self-identified men: can we have breast scars to better represent ourselves?
    EAxis: Done!

    What's next: the introduction of menstrual cycles, which can be enabled for trans-male Sims, but not cis-females?
  • annalephantannalephant Posts: 98 Member
    What I'm upset about is that I can't apply any of the body scars on any of my preexisting Sims in my already existing save. I had a trans Sim that I'm currently playing & wanted to use them on him but couldn't as I couldn't even access the option but face scars were accessable. I could only access the body scars with newly made Sims/households in CAS.

    Yes i encountered this issue and failed to understand why we are unable to add scars to pre-existing sims. Surely for storytelling purporses all scars should be available to add to a sim in CAS at any point in a sim's life cycle?

    I also was confused when i could only find the top surgery scars for male sims. The explanation of blurring out of breasts makes it make sense but is frustrating/dissapointing and i can see why it would be upsetting for members of the trans community. I think it is something that needs clarification and further consideration from the sims team as it does come across as really insensitive.

    Finally, as a diabetic who wears a libre 2 glucose monitor it was a wonderful surprise to have medical wearables added to the game, including CGMs that look like libre! The fact you added a variety of body sites and device styles means we have a choice of realistic representation not only for continuous glucose monitoring but also for those wearing insulin pumps or hydrocortisone pumps and other medical devices around their bodies. So i really thank you for that. It is the little touches that make living life with a disability that little bit more relatable to others and help us to feel more seen and understood.

  • Tequila_Rose_13191Tequila_Rose_13191 Posts: 143 Member

    @annalephant I'm really happy about the medical wearables, too. It warms my heart to hear you say you feel represented! That's awesome! I can't wait to see how much further in that direction they'll go.

    I just wish they kept us LGBTQIA as much in mind as they'd like people to think; especially, with trans Sims. It seems like everytime something awesome comes out, it's just slightly more glitched for trans Sims (especially with custom frames). There was the nails thing & now the body scars.... What will they half effort next?

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