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Originally Posted by BethDragon
No, I accept that there are different languages in the Firefly universe. It's just that those words mean different things to me:
A slut is a woman who is promiscuous.
A whore is a woman who is paid for sex, also known as a prostitute.
A Companion is a woman who has training in various arts, who may be either.
If someone were to call my Amorous character a Companion, she would correct them: she's a pilot.
If someone called her a slut, she'd either smirk at them and ask who they had been talking to or else throw a punch depending on who was doing the name-calling and her mood at the time.
If someone called her a whore, she'd break their arm for starters.
And if they are in a different language, don't you have to translate them into your own to know what it is you are talking about?
Beth
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To many people, particularly those of a conservative and prudish background, there's no real difference between a slut and a whore - the terms are interchangeable. Whether she does it for money, or does it for favours, or does it simply to get off, they'll call her some derogatory term or other that's equivalent.
The point is, you're assuming that 'slut' and 'whore' are going to have only the meanings and associations that are applied to them in your cultural background...but in a more prudish and religious culture where sex outside marriage is at least frowned upon, and must be at least discrete, slut/whore have the same cultural associations with each other and looked at as pretty much the same thing.
In some languages also, there is no difference. The two different words in English 'slut' and 'whore' are translated to the same single word without distinction. Most languages have only a fraction of the number of words that English has, so aren't so specific in fine distinctions between words of similar application. Most of them also don't have the influence by Feminism and western-style Political Correctness on the use of language that has been promoted in English-speaking countries.
By the way, in the Firefly series, did you happen to see an equal number of female authority figures apart from teachers and other traditional female-only occupations? I didn't. They appeared to be the unusual exception in most cases. I noticed that on the Alliance vessels, every officer and it seemed all the soldiers were male. The 'Verse is not a gender-neutral setting (unlike the later Star Trek series such as Voyager and DS9, and the setting of Babylon-5).
At least in GURPS, when the setting of one of their world-books has a setting that isn't gender-neutral, they have it reflected in the Reaction Rolls, and the types of Advantages/Disadvantages that female characters will have and that these will have DIFFERENT costs/penalties than if they were bought by male characters.
The Serenity RPG ignores the fact that in actual game-play, in
most people's games the female characters are going to be treated differently from male characters in the same game. By ignoring gender, the game-system as it is in the book ends up treating female characters unfairly.