...Would it?
I don't recall any anger over being "forced" to kiss boys 20 times in order to perfect the 360 version of Bully.
Really?
...Would it?
I don't recall any anger over being "forced" to kiss boys 20 times in order to perfect the 360 version of Bully.
I mean, it's not like everyone has to be canonically bi because they are allowed to romance both genders, but they can be either gay or straight depending on the player's gender. The game doesn't explicitly tells you their sexuality, but only if they're interested in you.Dragon Age 2 made every squad mate bisexual. People threw a hissy fit over it.
Sure, but in a game like this? You have an extremely limited set of options, so why have even less for such an arbitrary reason? It's not like the character is ever gonna be developed through their sexuality, so if they're gay or straight it doesn't involve the game's writing at all.Personally I want more canon romantic and sexual preference in games. I don't actually like that everyone is romanceable as long as you're their preferred gender, it's simplistic.
Seeing how the usual suspects have come out to play, figured it was time to dust this off.
The purpose of a deadname is to basically cast aside a name that you no longer wish to have associated with you. Trans people, in general, do not deadname themselves unless they are required to do so - bringing up your deadname only invites people to use it. It should also be noted that it is not simply a case of an individual person doing so, but in fact a character being written to do so.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but this whole thing reeks of tokenism. It's like they didn;t really care about the M/M relationships and only threw them in there because people expect them to be in a Bioware game.
That trans character is really bad. Honestly I would have preferred no representation.
Could you possibly help educate me? I'm wondering what the material difference is between the mass effect dialog and what you've done here. Superficially, both instances are transwoman identifying themselves as trans to provide context for a conversation. Why is it wrong for the ME character to admit she's trans when you've just done seemingly exactly the same thing?
I stand corrected.
(Honestly, I suspect they will patch the line to say "people knew me by another name, but that is never who I was" or some other similar line post release, but otherwise leave the clunky exposition dump)
Wouldn't deadnaming be something you have done to you by others or you do to other people, but not something you do yourself?
ie a character in a game saying "I used to be Scott but now I am Sarah" (basically what happens in the MEA convo) does not seem to be deadnaming, since presumably a character should be allowed to do whatever they want for themselves. Maybe they really LIKE everyone knowing who they used to be and who they are now, why is there only one acceptable way of handling names?
Now of course if another character walks by and says "haha, don't listen to Sarah there, she used to be Scott!!" or if your PC responds with "well, I think I will just call you Scott" then of course I'd agree thats offensive and wrong but I don't understand why a character themselves can't do with their own identity whatever they want. That attitude of "THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT" seems to be the exact opposite of what self identity is supposed to be - deciding for yourself how you present yourself.
Now of course if another character walks by and says "haha, don't listen to Sarah there, she used to be Scott!!" or if your PC responds with "well, I think I will just call you Scott" then of course I'd agree thats offensive and wrong but I don't understand why a character themselves can't do with their own identity whatever they want. That attitude of "THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT" seems to be the exact opposite of what self identity is supposed to be - deciding for yourself how you present yourself.
There was like 32 different ways to show that she is trans without needing to be this shitty.
Make an item description on her room that says that she takes female hormones, she says that she came for a surgery with Doctor X, than later you see that Doctor X is specialist in corrective sexual surgery, make you read her journal where she talks about preparation for her surgery .... Hell ! Even making a character saying transphobic shit to her would be better =P
I didn't know about deadnaming before this thread, and that's why it didn't strike me as out of place (or transphobic?) writing when I heard it in game, so would this way of phrasing her transition make it acceptable for transgender people?
I am cis- (and straight, and male...) so I wouldn't speak for you, clearly your voice matters. But I suspect you will find that many others in the trans- community or those generally seeking to be represented at all would find your suggestions as replacing a bad portrayal (the one in the OP) with other bad portrayals.
Rather than tokenism and given the state of the rest of the game, I would expect it is more about priorities. That is, they didn't put representation in as a token effort, they probably didn't put better representation in because they were completely rushed and couldn't add more content.
Perhaps put more simply, I would chalk this up to incompetence rather than malice. While even then you could question their priorities, given they didn't seem to get to story/writing/animation either you could cut them some slack.
I think it's both a difference in the exact text (i.e. that the handling of the person saying the name they no longer identify as seems like not the way a trans person would refer to themselves) and in terms of the context (that the ME shot is not a conversation about trans identities and experiences, it's <Ryder> Hey tell me about yourself <Character> *random deep exposition into character's history and transition AND I'M TRANS!!!!* versus the conversation here on GAF being explicitly about presumably cis-identified people discussing and asking about trans representation and trans-identifying people identifying themselves in context to offer advice).
A good example of this is media coverage of Chelsea Manning, which has often had to address the fact that she is trans- -- for example, because pictures of her in uniform are relevant to the story, or because she faced criminal charges under another name, or because the story itself was about trans- treatment in prisons and the military. There is not an obviously correct way to deal with this. Ways that are more true to Chelsea's identity often lead to confusion about what the actual story is, weird pronoun-subject accord issues, etc. But the alternative is to "deadname" her or to use male pronouns. And so the best outlets have mentioned the context only when it is necessary, allowed Chelsea to speak for herself, consistently used the female pronoun and the name Chelsea where possible, and generally wrote in a way that made it clear they respect her identity.
But also there's not, like, one uniform way for trans persons to identify themselves. Some might affirmatively carry both the "trans" label and the label of their identified gender -- like, say, Laverne Cox -- while others might wish to not associate as "trans" at all and simply live their life as their identified gender, viewing the "trans" status as just another way in which they are othered and denied the ability to be who they are. And others still might prefer to be the latter, but choose to identify as trans because they feel they owe it to others who are themselves struggling with their gender identity.
This speaks to the complexity of the issue, but also the importance of getting it right and really making an extra effort of internalizing good practices in company culture, including for example consulting with external experts and listening to employees who have experiences that they are willing to share or desire to share.
There are basicaly 2 problems here :
1)You : Hello, nice to meet you !
Person X : Nice to meet you too, I love to have sex with vegetables
This is NOT you say in your second line in a game with huge dialog trees
2) and more importantly, deadnaming means supporting stuff like "yeah you say your name is Barbara but what is your REAL name ?" that transphobic people say all the time to deny our trans lifes (see ? makes sense to include the fact that I am trans in this conversation) as fake ones.
There was like 32 different ways to show that she is trans without needing to be this shitty.
Make an item description on her room that says that she takes female hormones, she says that she came for a surgery with Doctor X, than later you see that Doctor X is specialist in corrective sexual surgery, make you read her journal where she talks about preparation for her surgery .... Hell ! Even making a character saying transphobic shit to her would be better =P
I said poorly, not outright offensive
ALTTP above gave a good reason as to why dead naming is a bad thing.
But the big difference is that I didn't identify myself as trans for the sake of being trans, but rather to provide context for my opinion on the subject. I also didn't deadname myself and make things awkward for everyone.
And this goes back to what I said earlier: There are a ton of ways Bioware could have identified the character as trans without resorting to the character openly admitting it via deadnaming. A little bit of effort into the writing could have made all the difference in the world between a well written character, and a tactless one.
You are absolutely correct. For me, personally, the fact that I am trans is not something that is a secret. At the same time, I don't really bring it up unless it's relevant to the conversation as it is here.
This is just overblown. Adding another romance option would mean adding more to the script and story and possibly adding another character. While I'm sure that's possible, the game already has enough problems as it is that you can't expect them to tackle everything at once. If this was a game where this is the only or just one of the few problems, I'd be more concerned.
I think many would say no, but also I think BioWare is likely to respond as incrementally as possible and this would be a quick fix for the most overt problem. I do think it would be incrementally better. Like, I think if the question is "given that we're going to have this awful exposition dump, how can we make this better", that would be a first step. I'm not saying they should do that -- they should do more and better -- I'm saying that the baseline level of cynicism I have is that I expect that is what they will do. But you will probably get responses from trans-identified posters who are better people than I to answer the question.
Listen, I believe in equal rights and representation in all things as much as anyone, but, no, it is absolutely NOT important for a videogame. This is especially true when the subject currently up for discussion isn't even a key focus of the game to begin with. Just because romancing or relationships are possible is not itself an automatic mandate that every type of relationship be represented. I ultimately don't know yet because I don't have the game of course, but even if they didn't make same sex relationships of any type possible, that, too, wouldn't somehow (at least in my view) be evidence of some kind of insensitivity or discrimination. If the developer decides it isn't something they want to explore in their game , that's very much their right. Same as if someone directing a movie decided they only wish to focus on one style of relationship.
I mean, you could say lesbians were left out or underrepresented in Moonlight. Where does it really stop?
Is the first example in the deadnaming section really considered transphobia?
These issues reflects a lot of the game is seems.
This is just overblown. Adding another romance option would mean adding more to the script and story and possibly adding another character. While I'm sure that's possible, the game already has enough problems as it is that you can't expect them to tackle everything at once. If this was a game where this is the only or just one of the few problems, I'd be more concerned.
Not really a valid argument. It'd be like saying that there's so much wrong with The Phantom Menace, but we can't talk about every problem with it (AKA, no Plinkett review).
Yes, deadnaming is transphobic.
Yeah, thinking at this, I think there's like two steps at work here.
The first is that given you're writing a trans character, the typical mode is to have them identify as trans or known to be trans (or to explicitly tell a transition story). So this is an approach done in OITNB, The L Word, Transparent, Transamerica, Boys Don't Cry, Sense8, The Danish Girl, etc...
This in contrast to just having someone incidentally be trans. But the issue being of course that the viewer or player will likely code them as cis, so you miss the benefit in terms of representation or exposure -- and you rely on some external cue like casting a trans actress/actor and using that to say something about the character (which is not ideal, the same way that casting an actor of the opposite gender to the character is not ideal, because it also probably plays into the pernicious belief that transfolk are analogous to an actor in drag or whatever even as it may be a performance that itself is transgressive and genderqueer)... or you have to have the author do a "Actually, Dumbledore is Gay", which I think again is not ideal.
But given that you wish to have the representation be overt, how do you portray it? Set aside the truly ugly options that many films and television shows resort tothis GLAAD article discusses the omnipresence of trans characters as killers, villains, sex workers [often "deceiving men", another awful stereotype], and victims -- really, truly awful, and I include here even the tendency of OITNB to define Sofia's identity by people hurling transphobic slurs at her and simply showing that she's tough enough to take them) and the remaining best options are either to use a flashback or narration framing device, or an exposition dumb. So with a flashback you can show someone's pre-transition life through the lens of the camera or narrator without needing to engage with why the person is discussing their pre-transition life or if that is true to the way she lives now. Or the other alternative is basically an exposition dump where the person announces they are trans. Which is almost certainly going to fail due to terrible writing, and it's probably going to fail in exactly the way this does.
So it sounds to me here that this is a reflect of ignorance borne of good intentions, where the thought process was:
- We want to be inclusive and tell a trans story
- How do we make it clear that the character is trans?
- Have them discuss their transition
- Okay, well, the way we do any characterization in our games is we just have them monologue their life story
- Bingo, all done!
And the result is bad writing which reads as tonedeaf, untrue to the trans experience, and hackneyed.
I think the need to back up good intentions with good results speaks to the value of having trans team members (and also not tokenizing them by using them as your Hey I Need You To Be The Voice Of All Trans People), listening to their ideas, and consulting with external groups who want to help on this stuff, rather than just a priori deciding "We want a trans character", writing what you think works, and settling for that.
(Honestly, I suspect they will patch the line to say "people knew me by another name, but that is never who I was" or some other similar line post release, but otherwise leave the clunky exposition dump)
Can you explain that to me, because I'm not seeing it.
This isn't snark, I'm genuinely curious as to why accidentally calling someone by the name you've called them their entire life and apologizing is expressing negative viewpoints and opinions on transexuality.
Can you explain that to me, because I'm not seeing it.
This isn't snark, I'm genuinely curious as to why accidentally calling someone by the name you've called them their entire life and apologizing is expressing negative viewpoints and opinions on transexuality.
Seeing how the usual suspects have come out to play, figured it was time to dust this off.
I mean, sure, but that doesn't make you someone who has negative feelings towards your friends face. You're just being aloof or careless, not hateful, scared, or have any negative feelings towards said face.
I mean, sure, but that doesn't make you someone who has negative feelings towards your friends face. You're just being aloof or careless, not hateful, scared, or have any negative feelings towards said face.
Yes, deadnaming is transphobic.
How? Is the name really that big of a deal?
That's like being called antisemitic for saying "Merry Christmas" to someone not knowing they were Jewish.
How? Is the name really that big of a deal?
That's like being called antisemitic for saying "Merry Christmas" to someone not knowing they were Jewish.
No, that is like saying Merry Christmas to someone KNOWING they are jewish and hate to be said Merry Christmas. Because he went out of his ordinary life to get a visible "I hate christmas" tatoo on his arm
Is deadnaming purposely calling someone it while knowing you shouldn't? Genuine question.
Listen, I believe in equal rights and representation in all things as much as anyone,
Is deadnaming purposely calling someone it while knowing you shouldn't? Genuine question.