Taking a step back: Handling gender dissonance in games with distance and abstraction

Introduction

I've been thinking a fair bit about gaming and some of my choices in games. Sometime over the last year, my partner noted that I've been running almost exclusively female avatars, and asked what was up with that. Earlier this week I found this essay by Riley MacLeod on responding to a certain type of masculinity as a trans man:

The male bodies in shooters disrupt, beg for attention, decide how a situation will unfold. They storm in and take what they want, destroying everything in the single-minded pursuit of their desires. They are greedy, unpopular children, behaving in all the ways men are told we have to but can’t, all the ways that wreak havoc, big and small, on ourselves and those around us in the real world. Stealth bodies let me share in what is; they have the dexterity to repurpose what’s provided to my own ends. They let me cooperate with a situation, ask me to take into account all the moving parts and my role in them. The way men behave in stealth games feels closer to what I hope my own masculinity is: thoughtful, adaptable, aware of myself and my effect on the world around me. Shooter masculinities close off possibilities, make an enemy out of the world; stealth masculinities place me firmly in the world and let me nurture it into something new.

In recent months, I find myself feeling much the same way from a different perspective. Even "stealth" bodies are, at times, painfully masculine. And I think the difference is as much to do with narrative and game design as character design. I find myself gravitating to games with more abstraction that give me more distance from the gender of the player character or protagonist.

I'll define a game as a set of rules for organized play including some method to keep track of game state, rules for manipulating that state, and likely a set of goals or outcomes. Open-ended and "open-world" videogames may not have a single defined victory condition, but they usually will have a set of iterative or intermediate goals and achievements.

What I intend to do here is describe abstraction, gendering of characters in games, and how I find myself responding as a non-binary/non-conforming person.

Abstraction: From Senet to Mocap

To start with, modern video games exist as an interesting synthesis of board/card games and cinema. I generally reject the idea that video games offer much that is new in terms of social impact. One of my grandmothers taught me to play contract bridge, the other repeatedly warned about the additive nature of playing cards as a gateway to alcoholism and gambling. The debates about games have changed in degree but not so much in character.

English Caricature of Whist Players (wikimedia)

Evidence of games dates all the way back to the neolithic. Equally as long, we have evidence of different degrees of abstraction with tokens that resemble animals. On one end of the scale, you have backgammon pawns or pips. Senet is a game ubiquitous Egypt starting from pre-dynastic times using primarily abstractly shaped tokens.

Senet Board (By Keith Schengili-Roberts, via Wikimedia Commons)

At the other end of the scale you have the Lewis "chessmen" (probably used for a different game) with figures representing different ranks. Chess is an interesting example with sets having different degrees of abstraction ranging from human and animal figurines to nonrepresentational Muslim "pepper-pot" pieces with the standard Staunton set approximately in the middle.

Lewis "Chessmen" (wikimedia)

Staunton Chess Set (Frank A. Camaratta, Jr.; The House of Staunton, Inc.; via Wikimedia Commons)

Early video games used a high degree of abstraction due to the limitations of the hardware. When publishers communicated gender, they used secondary text and artwork to do it. Pacman is masculine by virtue of name and secondary art work. We personify Pacman more by contrast to the ghosts. Advances in video and audio technology over the last 30 years has brought us to high-fidelity rendering on home hardware (warn:feminine android violence).

At this point, representation of gender in-game is a stylistic choice. Those choices tend to reinforce gender binaries to various degrees. However there are ways to get some distance from forced gender in games.

Pushed Gender: The Cinematic CRPG Protagonist

One of the areas that I'm struggling with as a gamer is the popularity of the cinematic CRPG/action protagonist. Game storytelling typically alternates between action sequences and menu-driven dialogues and cutscenes. In early versions, the game told the story purely through text. NPCs received limited voice acting for particularly important scenes first. Today, in a typical AAA game, storytelling cut-scenes can involve animation and vocal performance for all characters.

While this offers a more cinematic experience overall, the relationship of player to the performance becomes something akin to a stage manager shouting cues off-stage. At least for me, the use of player-character vocal and animated performance limits the degrees of freedom to imagine variation of the characters. In Mass Effect, Jennifer Hale owns Commander Shepard, I'm just picking which variations of Hale's performance I prefer. Which I should say isn't a slight against the quality of Mass Effect (at least the first two games), just a statement regarding how I perceive the player-character when animated and voice-performed.

The tension is particularly jarring for a player-character with even fewer options, Jensen from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The sexual tension driving the plot is hinted in the prologue and made explicit in the opening credit cinematic (warn: medical horror). Of course, you can "headcanon" and fanfic just about any interpretation of a character, but the more stuff on the screen, the further you have to go "off the page" to get to a bi or nonbinary interpretation.

Getting Distance: The Isometric RPG

Shadowrun Hong Kong, Establishing Shot

"Isometric" RPGs are named for the bird's-eye, top-down perspective on the scene. The genre is currently undergoing something of a revival, with Pillars of Eternity and Shadowrun Returns as new games, and remasters of the classic Baldur's Gate series also on shelves. Some common features of the genre include:

• "Isometric" perspective.
• Control of multiple characters.
• A "primary" plot line centered on the player character.
• "Secondary" plot lines centered on companion characters, sometimes more interesting than the primary character arc.
• Primarily text-based storytelling, usually shorter than provided by cut-scenes.
• Character customization primarily via pre-generated portrait images.
• Reduced or minimal voice acting.

While I don't know of any that allow you to specify a nonbinary character at creation, Shadowrun games have a "shadow" character portrait with obscured details.

Shadowrun Hong Kong Character Creation

The visual distance from the character makes it easier to imagine androgyny, while the multiplicity of game identities opens the door for some fluidity.

Vehicles: You are the Machine

Vehicle games put most of the action as the driver/operator/pilot of a vehicle. The game may or may not offer character icons or a character model, but they don't interact directly within the game world. With the perspective centered on the vehicle rather than a humanoid character, the physicality of the human character can be completely re-imagined.

In Euro Truck Simulator 2, all of the game mechanics are achieved at the wheel of the truck or through a text-based management interface. There is a character icon that appears in some views, but the game offers a fair variety of photographic choices with a range of age and ethnicity. If you twist the camera round far enough, you can get a view of your pragmatically dressed character model. Voice performance is limited to increasingly emphatic yawns when you stretch a driving shift out too far.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 (Yes, those are bi-pride colors.)

In Eve Online, you are the immortal cyborg pilot of a set of space ships. The development of Eve is an interesting case. Several years ago, the company announced the development of "walking in stations." The project went as far as new character-creation tools and two rooms of "captains quarters." Players objected strongly to the shift in focus combined with planned microtransactions, and development was dropped. Eve Online is intensely social, almost every action involves cooperation or competition with other players. However the community rejected the idea of basing that sociability on virtual avatars.

Eve Online

Both games offer a role-playing component. Choices professional development unlock skills and goals over time. However that role-play doesn't involve interactions between animated human bodies. With sexuality and gender presentation kept off the screen, I can imagine anything I want behind the metal and chrome.

Conclusion, the tl;dr

Taking a step back from the cinematic perspective of many contemporary AAA titles helps me work with the dissonance between the publishers ideas about gender and my own ideas about gender.

100 years ago today: trans arrest

The Seattle Star reported that Professor Eugene de Forest was "confronted with the charge of masquerading as a man.

(de Forest:) "Before God, I have never harmed or done wrong to a living being. Born with a handicap of a strange personality, which makes me wish to appear as a man, I have done my very best with the life God has given me. All I ask is to have the right to earn an honorable livelihood, and to live in peace without hurt to any one." (quoted verbatim)

tw:transphobia

Three from Delany

Delany is having a busy month with a new edition of three early novels and a homage anthology. So, he's giving more interviews.

From The New Yorker:

In the contemporary science-fiction scene, Delany’s race and sexuality do not set him apart as starkly as they once did. I suggested to him that it was particularly disappointing to see the kind of division represented by the Sad Puppies movement within a culture where marginalized people have often found acceptance. Delany countered that the current Hugo debacle has nothing to do with science fiction at all. “It’s socio-economic,” he said. In 1967, as the only black writer among the Nebula nominees, he didn’t represent the same kind of threat. But Delany believes that, as women and people of color start to have “economic heft,” there is a fear that what is “normal” will cease to enjoy the same position of power. “There are a lot of black women writers, and some of them are gay, and they are writing about their own historical moment, and the result is that white male writers find themselves wondering if this is a reverse kind of racism. But when it gets to fifty per cent,” he said, then “we can talk about that.” It has nothing to do with science fiction, he reiterated. “It has to do with the rest of society where science fiction exists.”

Interview with SciFi Signal part 1:

In 1962, the idea of starting off a science fiction novel with an adolescent girl in the middle of a discussion of Da Vinci and Christianity contrasted with Buddhist iconography, against a background of renaissance art history, atomic devastation, and political atrocity, was a way to alert a reader to something a little unusual, and—indeed—that it might be something you had to dig for a bit.

I don’t think it necessarily works that way today. I suspect the closest that the current three- and four-star Amazon reviewers will get is to wonder if this has anything to do with the stuff the various puppies in their several emotional states might have been on about last year—and they would probably be a little surprised that the answer was, “Yes, it actually does,” only not in the way they are used to, so that, as they go on, it doesn’t strike them as terribly interesting. Now I’m the last person who can complain that they’re in any way mistaken. But a few readers who are interested in either writing or the genre’s history may find something there to think about.

The extended answer to the last question discusses Gay ideolects

So now I’m ready to answer you last query as directly as I can, “What kind of question are you never asked”: To which my answer is, “There are a set of questions that always seem to me to be—or at least to begin—as aesthetic bad manners, and, yes, I balk at them, even as I eventually—once I watch others start to come to terms with them—try, indeed, to do so myself. They get their impetus from someone taking the easy way out. The way I learned to adjust comes largely form the street—as well as from summer camp. In summer camp, largely from the white kids around me, I learned to curse. “You taught me language, and the profit on’t is I know how to curse.” And a fouler mouthed bunch of kids you couldn’t find. And in Harlem, on the black ghetto streets where my black friends taught me a whole other set of “bad words” which we used just much as the hip-hop kids today—nigger, and all the other ethnic slurs, though the ones reserved for us clearly were the most powerful. (As they are today.) Harlem was a crowded and condensed neighborhood, and people—all sorts of people—lived shoulder to shoulder. Though I went to school on the very white East Side, I lived in the black ghetto. And by the time I was six, seven, or eight, I knew there were a fair number of men who would come out dressed as women, wearing make-up and nail polish—and my best friend on the street, Johnny, a black kid who lived with his mother but who had no father, as two or three of my friends didn’t, was mad to wear nail polish and lipstick so that, to keep the peace, sometimes his mother would let him. I thought it was strange, but he was smart and fun—and so we were the two who ran away from home together . . . when we were six.

...

Those languages subgroups are good to use to face the parts of the world that folk don’t want to face. At least I’ve found all of them a help.

My mother was the one who told me: “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Well, yes, they could—but that is when other people took them more seriously than, perhaps, they should have. But soon I had words to use in the same way that the kids in the summer camp, the black kids on the street, and the only slightly older black transgendered young people (who most mistook for gay) used them. I still do, today even more—all three. Those were the idiolects I thought in (first) and tried to speak in as a child. (And sometimes just practiced the transgender one, in the privacy of my imagination: no, I had no one actually to use it with. Johnny, by now, had moved out of the neighborhood and probably the city. Those are the languages I did not dare mix until I became an adult—on paper as much or more than in the air. The ironies each have at their disposal allows each to do things the others can not. Add to them the range of accepted analytical language, and the music of that linguistic quartet is a great part of what an American writer might be.

My Name is N/The Swede, and other links

A few years back, a US literary agent considered making a first attempt to sell My Name Is N to American publishers. (The book is titled The Swede in the US.) But the agent hesitated, saying the mainstream crime fiction market couldn’t stomach a gay male hero. She suggested that I rewrite the book to make the protagonist straight.

I thought seriously about it. But in the end, I decided to be true to the man I based my protagonist on. Hugh Swaney was a legendary homicide detective on the US west coast. I’d spent a week interviewing him, taking notes on his life and work as he was dying of Aids. He was the toughest man I’ve ever come across (including many in the special operations community I’ve met over the course of my military career).

— Robert Karjel comments on negative reviews regarding the bisexuality of his protagonist for My Name is N. (Guardian)

Also:

• A reason why I'm a bit nervous around police. Gay man dies in custody after being denied medication. (Advocate)
• The true meaning of the word cisgender (Advocate)

Sex & Gender Identity: An Intro

Sex & Gender Identity: An Intro

From cisgender to transgender, the terminology associated with gender identity can be confusing. Here's a look at some of the most common terms defined.---Watch more videos on TestTube! | New Videos Daily!

Posted by TestTube on Monday, July 27, 2015

Jenner at ESPYs

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/IA9I8WUIXs

— ELIEL CRUZ (@elielcruz) July 16, 2015

Sense8: Jamie Clayton and Miguel Silvestre on the show's relationships

“The thing that I love about Nomi and Amanita’s relationship is it’s such a middle finger to anyone who has you know a more conservative view of what a relationship is supposed to look like,” said Clayton, who jokingly referred to the couple as Nomanita. “Their interracial, and they’re trans and they’re lesbian. And so it’s this new way of looking at healthy love and saying it doesn’t have to look like what you were taught it was supposed to look like. And I love that. I think it’s extremely important.”

— Jamie Clayton (Nomi)

“I thought it was real and beautiful. Love is like this,” he said. “I see that it really helps in the understanding of someone that can be away from these two couples to feel the connection and how close we are when it comes to love. So how close we are altogether because we are all looking for that kind of love, a pure love you know? So I really love it.”

— Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Lito)

Nomi and Lito talk positive LGBTQ relationships, being authentic, and the orgy scene from Netflix’s ‘Sense8′ | Brad Kutner @ Gay Richmond News

Cisgender in the OED

In a small milestone of transgender progress, the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary have added the word "cisgender" to its pages. The venerable reference tool, generally considered the dictionary of record, now defines the word as "designating a person whose sense of personal identity corresponds to the sex and gender assigned to him or her at birth."

— The Word "Cisgender" Is Now in the Oxford English Dictionary | Bitch Media

Gender is like Calculus, Not Addition

tw:bullying, suicide

A great commentary on transphobia...

Call them what they want to be called. You can do it, we do it all the time. Think of it this way: David Evans woke up one day and said "Everyone call me The Edge." And everyone said, "Fine, The Edge, are we talking the noun or the verb?" And it's not just that. Over the past 20 years. We've agreed to call this man, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, just Diddy, and now Puff Daddy again, and most people don't even like him.

Facebook's names policy

The woman responsible for facebook's gender options was kicked off facebook for using the name she had on her nametag at work.

Facebook is a vital tool for community, especially for those of us who are marginalised. It withholds our access to friends and support in order to enforce their policy, and in so doing we are faced with a stark choice between a name we do not identify with and do not want to use, or being disconnected. If we make the choice to stay we find ourselves increasingly recognised by other people by that forced name.

By forcing us to change our names on the site, Facebook changes the names we are known by in real life — whether we like it or not.

— My name is only real enough to work at Facebook, not to use on the site Zip @ Medisum

From the Devi Gita

I am the Lord and the Cosmic Soul; I am myself the Cosmic Body.
I am Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra, as well as Gauri, Brahmi, and Vaishnavi

I am the sun and the stars, and I am the Lord of the stars.
I am the various species of beasts and birds; I am also the outcaste and thief.

I am the evildoer and the wicked deed; I am the righteous person and the virtuous deed
I am certainly female and male, and asexual as well.

And whatever thing, anywhere, you see or hear,
That entire thing I pervade, ever aiding inside it and outside.

— Devi Gita, verses 3.13 – 3.16, C. Mackenzie Brown, translator (Amazon Link)

Compare/Contrast: Transracial and Transgender

Comparing transracial identity to transgender identity strikes me as very much along the same idea as comparing the anti-vax position to modern immunology because, after all, they're both theories and we should "teach the debate."

The word and self-identity of LGBT people has never been sufficient. Medicine and psychology has reluctantly come to support and acceptance in the 21st century. This happened because the alternatives were proven failures that were more brutal than non-intervention. We can debate the etiology and ontology of sexual and gender identities until the cows come home. We can't debate the practical problem that attempts to coercively change those identities kill people.

Links saved over vacation

Bookmarks saved over vacation:

African American lesbian or bisexual women and health care

More than one-third of the sample (African-American lesbian or bisexual women) reported a negative health care experience in the past 5-years. One fourth of those reporting a negative experience attributed it to discrimination including race/ethnicity (70.4%), gender (58.2%), and sexual orientation (46.2%). (The categories were not mutually exclusive). Reduction in health care utilization (i.e., didn't see a doctor next time when they were ill) following the negative experience was common (34%).

Predictors and Consequences of Negative Patient-Provider Interactions Among a Sample of African American Sexual Minority Women, Chien-Ching Li @ LGBT Health

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy Girlfriends

In a hashtag chat with DC Comics, writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner confirmed that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are totally a thing.

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy Confirmed As Girlfriends “Without the Jealousy of Monogamy”, Jessica Lachenal @ The Mary Sue

Suicide Risk among trans teens is preventable

Bauer’s team looked at 13 modifiable factors in the lives of trans people. They found that strong parental support for expressed gender “corresponds to a potential prevention of 170 trans persons per 1000” from seriously considering suicide, and those who reported experiencing lower levels of transphobia were 66 per cent less likely to have seriously considered suicide in the past year.

Suicide risk for trans people can be reduced, new study shows, Julian Uzielli @ The Globe and Mail

Health risks for bisexual men

Psychosocial vulnerability and HIV-related sexual risk among men who have sex with men and women in the United States, Dyer, et. al @ Archives of Sexual Behavior (Pubmed)

The Notorious RGB

“Gay people stood up and said, ‘This is who I am,’” Ginsburg said, and Americans saw that the person was a neighbor, a child’s best friend or maybe even their own children. They were “people we know and love and respect.”

As she was speaking, the gay pride parade was rolling through downtown just a few blocks away, and the Capital Hilton, where the ACS was meeting, was flying a rainbow flag just below Old Glory.

“The court is not a popularity contest, and it should never be influenced by today’s headlines,” Ginsburg said. But she added that it “inevitably it will be affected by the climate of the era.

Looking for clues to Supreme Court’s final rulings in Ginsburg’s good mood, Robert Barnes @ The Washington Post

Father sticks up for gender-fluid daughter in the most perfect way

Father sticks up for gender-fluid daughter in the most perfect way

‘I want you to see my child as I do,’ he said.

‘See pictures of her smiling like the world has no gravity. See how lovely she looks in a sparkly dress. See how perfect she is.

‘Then I want you to notice that all of my children look that way. So do yours. They are too young to be malicious, or contrived.

They simply exist, and when we allow them to exist as they really are, they are happier than anything you will see in an adult.

‘ I don’t ever want the light that beams from my children’s eyes extinguished.’

Caitlyn Jenner comes out, and social conservatives take an apocalyptic view - The Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Caitlyn Jenner comes out, and social conservatives take an apocalyptic view - The Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/:

But among the social conservatives who are a powerful force within the Republican Party, there is a far darker view. To them, the widespread acceptance of Jenner’s evolution from an Olympic gold medalist whose masculinity was enshrined on a Wheaties box to a shapely woman posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair was a reminder that they are losing the culture wars.