Sure, that’s what I’ve been doing. But I also don’t want to talk about gun control in a Call of Duty thread, or gaming violence in a Doom Eternal thread, or any number of other politically charged topics. I come to the games forum to escape that stuff. I mean, do what you want, I was just respectfully asking the question.
I might be in the minority in that I found the discussion here following the RPS articles quite interesting. Telefrog’s contribution about how sexuality has been used in horror movies was great and not something I had considered before.
I know we’ve had something like 30 throwaway one-liners about ‘what are we being told to be outraged about now, lulz’ but the conclusion of the second RPS article presents this:
please know I’m not here to tell you not to buy the game or to stop enjoying it. I am asking instead if you could please engage with this issue, in Cyberpunk 2077 and beyond.
That seems rather reasonable and not really engaging in Twitter outrage culture.
It also seems a bit odd to want to move this discussion somewhere else in a thread about a game where transhumanism and transgender concepts will play major roles. It’s likely players will be able to create a transgender character and the ad in question hints at a world that will include much more of that. It seems a little like asking if the homosexuality/Queer discussion could be moved out of the Gone Home thread.
But anyway, back to the fawning previews.
Yeah that’s fair enough, I just think it’s inevitable with game media featuring more and more social commentary that people on game forums will discuss it (sometimes) as well. I can understand the desire to prefer its absence, but it’s also a sign that (some) people are taking videogames more seriously as a medium of artistic communication. When games aren’t yet released there’s also alot less to talk about, so things other than gameplay impressions will crop up.
It’s an issue that (apparently) has been a thing in the trans community for years, but I’ve only recently been made aware of it since Sleepaway Camp 4: The Survivor came out and had a big horror buff following. There was a lot of online discussion about the topic and the conclusion by many in the LGBTQ community was that while they want representation in movies, not all depictions are helpful or wanted. The way they were specifically vilified in horror for decades being an example of unwanted characterization. They’d frankly rather not have been in those movies at all.
So, going back to Cyberpunk 2077’s kink porn trans poster, no, that depiction is not better than nothing to many LGBTQ folks regardless of the in-game universe context. Like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, the general public doesn’t care that Lecter says he’s not really transsexual, they only think about how creepy and “other” Billy is, and how his perversion motivates his killings.
I think that perhaps the inclination to label it “kink porn” at least partially stems from our current societal inclination to ostracize trans people and perceive them as inherently deviant.
Perhaps it is over the top, but hyper sexualization of a person in an advertisement is not something new. How many times have we seen ads with some woman with huge breasts straining against her shirt? Not even in video games, but in actual, real life ads?
Buffalo bill was a character.
This… Isn’t actually a character. The entirety of the characterization here is, “a model posing for an advertisement”. I don’t think that’s actually a negative thing, at least any more than some other traditionally gendered person posing in such an ad would be.
Is this the image we are talking about?
No problem with the sexualization. Trans want to be sexy just like everybody else. What the hell is that in her/his mouth though? First I thought it was a cigarette and I was about to have… issues. It looks like a stick pointing to an icon of a hockey skate. What is that?
I think it’s a straw going into the drink?
but what’s the square thing it hits at the angle? Kinda crappy rez on that.
Edit: and how is she holding the drink with a finger up like that?
But the straw is… penetrating the heart part. And there is a square. He looks scared.
Honest question. What pronoun are you supposed to use for trans? He/she?
Normally, just whatever they prefer. In this case, since it’s not actually a person or developed character, there’s no real way to know how they identify themselves.
Definitely a complex subject. Is it polite to ask a person what pronoun they prefer??
Yes, especially random insecure people who will have no idea why you’re asking.
lol, you mean just walking up to a random person and asking them if they prefer “he” or “she”? I dare you to do that in a restaurant and then ask for a bite of their food.
edit:No offense to anybody. It’s a complex subject and I was genuinely curious. I’ve been in that situation before. Still, definitely humor there.
I was perusing the comments of the op-ed on Rock Paper Shotgun about this topic, and there were 2-3 self-identified trans people in there saying they didn’t really see what the problem was, for some of the reasons already pointed out by others in here.
Personally not really sure what to make of the discussion around this ad, or the idea that an in-game advertisement designed for ambient transhumanist world-building in a cyberpunk game, is doing tangible harm in the “real” world.
It is obvious what to make of it. It’s bullshit.
And other self identified trans people have found it to be a problem. It’s almost as if not every trans person has the same opinion as each other. Unreal!
Which was my entire point. That trans people themselves aren’t a monolith of thought on whether something like this is actually, tangibly perpetuating harm against them.
Great, then I am sure you won’t mind accepting that it does upset some people and that they will have good reason for that, rather than shrugging it off because it doesn’t bother you “personally”.
if this game is half as interesting as the discussion of the ad here, I would be totally in it to mix up my backlog. But from some previews, it doesn’t look like it will be anything else as the usual teenage-power-fantasy in a dystopian world.