I hear this argument all the time about constantly moving goal posts, complicated rules, and how difficult it all is and I don’t really get it. I don’t know what’s so incomprehensible or hard to follow here. Use a person’s preferred pronouns, use their stated name, and don’t make any assumptions. What so hard about that? It seems like basic human decency here.
I don’t know if CDPR’s missteps here are due to ignorance, arrogance, disgust, phobia, or just not really caring. These are certainly worthy of discussion whether or not you agree with the premise of the article that CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077 are inherently transphobic.
It’s clear to me that there are issues here. I may not be cognizant to some specifics or nuances which is why I rely on my friends here who are way more knowledgeable than me to share their perspectives. Just hand-waving things away as being “overly-sensitive SJWs being overly-sensitive SJWs” doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.
It’s amazing to me how incapable so many people are of seeing they’re making the same tired arguments about every new oppressed group that is in the spotlight.
“You’re too sensitive”
“It’s just a joke”
“It’s just a game”
“That’s not really -ism and let me ‘splain why at you”
“You shouldn’t rock the boat”
“Not being -ist is too hard”
…blah blah fucking blah. The top half of this thread is a tour de force of the same crap Jewish people, people of color, women, gay folk, and all the rest have had to wade through time and again. But now that it’s trans people, you’re certain this time those bullshit arguments are valid.
I wish there was a Shadowrun 1st-person RPG, cuz I damn well would. I wanna try dealing with dragons!
Re: The main topic:
Yeah, they sort of tried…kinda…and they sort of didn’t; it ends up pretty far out there in “WTF?!”-creepout-land, no matter what perspective you have on this. But I had the game more than 2 hours, futzing with the intro, and I apparently live under a f*cking rock and had no idea, so I’m stuck with it.
That said, the game is still fun, even with the bugs and “WTF”. Luckily, it should be pretty mod-able, and maybe the community can fix this, whether or not CDPR gives 1/16th of a crap or not -.-’ .
I’m really disappointed; I honestly thought better of the studio.
Though I am not Trans or Gay, I speak up whenever I see hatred bigotry and oppression against Gay and/or Trans people, because I fully understand that it’s all the same fight against the same kind of hatred, just pointed in a slightly different direction.
We are all human and we ALL deserve the same basic human respect and agency, fucking full stop.
Yeah I kinda bailed after a couple of the replies to my comment way up there. I felt like I was being told to sit down, shut up, and be happy with what I got. And it also just smacks of “You’re not protesting the right way.” How are we not past this already?
OK. I’m lost. Dictionary.com gives me nothing. Wikipedia gives:
Chud or Chude is a term historically applied in the early East Slavic annals to several Baltic Finns in the area of what is now Estonia, Karelia and Northwestern Russia
Wictionary gives:
champ or bite
Cannibalistic Human Underground Dweller
A gross, physically unappealing person
contraction of “I could”.
Can anyone give me a clue of the intended meaning since none of these are making sense for me?
Also, I was finding some of the posts here hard to follow since I wasn’t seeing a link from dismissive behaviour or hate to fear. And then I found that according to Wikipedia:
Transphobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes, feelings or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence, anger, or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who do not conform to social gender expectations.
So the thing that was confusing me was that transphobia doesn’t require fear. Maybe a poor choice of word, but at the moment it seems to be the generally accepted word. I kept reading to see if Wikipedia suggesting any less confusing alternatives. None were explicitly suggested, though it notes:
Transprejudice is a term similar to transphobia, and refers to the negative valuing, stereotyping, and discriminatory treatment of individuals whose appearance or identity does not conform to current social expectations or conventional conceptions of gender
Apologies to any better informed readers who feel I’m wasting their time stating the obvious. This was new to me, so I’m hoping these comments may be helpful to someone.
You’re looking at the wrong dictionary. You need Urban Dictionary.
Specifically definition #2:
An insult used primarily by people on the socialist left to describe conservatives, reactionaries (reactionary), members of the alt-right, libertarians, and even mainstream liberals. Generally the connotation of a very uninteresting and uncool male who contributes very little to society in terms of both productive work and original thoughts/opinions.
Obviously. But while it may not be rocket science, I don’t know that everything that is an every day part of, for example, your life, can be reasonably expected to be as obvious and easy to understand for everyone else.
I can understand emotionally why you get angry, but not rationally. I guarantee you that there are many people asking themselves the same question but won’t post them here because it is guaranteed they will be met with anger.
Sexual objectification in media is an every day fact, but far from a transgender exclusive issue.
I still think that you will be hard pressed to find a game developer willing to go out of their way to include transgender characters in their game after witnessing the backlash to CDPR, especially considering the general chauvinistic climate that seems to be prevalent in that industry.
And just for the record, I am not transphobic in the least. I could not care less what way people choose to life their life if it makes the happy and doesn’t harm anyone else. I am just witnessing this discussion as a bystander and wonder about the outcome.
As someone who doesn’t own the game (and probably won’t until it runs on the M1 MacBook Pro he plans on buying next month), take my opinion with a huge grain of salt. That said…
I wonder how much geography and politics plays a role, as Poland is currently being torn between reactionary authoritarians and a social libertarian movement. There are Polish towns which have labelled themselves “trans free” and the ruling PiS party has basically waging war against all non-heterosexuals. CD Project seems to be wanting to do good, but some stumbles I do expect because of the worse-than-Trump-voter atmosphere, the way the conservatives have dominated the media there, and so on.
And really, this is just another facet of the old problem of letting Marketing drive the release date: bugs in the code, but also bugs in the UX, pressure from higher up to get hackles up at criticism, and so on. They are moving forward, even if it is clumsy and sleep-deprived and punch-drunk at times. My big hope is that this can be made into constructive criticism, and make a good game better by addressing its faults.
Hence, why it’s important to actually consult with trans people (or any minority, really) and find out from them what good representation means, rather than blunder about on one’s own assuming you know best. Again, this stuff isn’t hard. It just takes knowing your limits and being willing to listen. Trans and other queer representation tends to be far better in indie titles because those devs either are queer, or have friends who are, and are more familiar with and sympathetic toward their issues.
If you’re not sure who to talk to, hire a diversity consultant. It’s a whole cottage industry of people who will tell you who to listen to and what to keep in mind so you don’t end up doing awkward stuff like tying voice to pronoun selection.
jah, youre right. sorry bout that. its just…Im still amazed what people expect in this system. and I really dont give a single fuck about the so-called “gaming industry” and this game in particular. especially in these times.
I don’t know if I got much to say on this that hasn’t been said by others but I’ll say one big issue that I’ve noticed with CP77 is the fact that it leverages sexualization of trans folks while society as a whole tries very hard to make trans folks feel bad about being openly sexual like cis people generally can through various means (clothes, attitude, etc). We’re only allowed to exist as sexless pariahs but any time we even try to express ourselves wrt sexuality then we get smashed down hard. We called perverts at best and sexual predators at worse. It’s just one of those things that trans folks can’t win with cis folks most generally because they define the rules of play, we’re just the ball they get to kick.
