You probably feel like trans women are everywhere. We dominate the news columns, the online discourse, maybe it feels like we're constantly demanding more, wanting more, taking up more space. A - the true figure is one percent. This fact can be interpreted however your current biases dictate. On the one hand, it shows that trans people are a microscopic minority and so much legislative and commentariat focus on us is ridiculous, unnecessary, and driven by hatred rather than need. On the other, it proves trans people barely matter, so why should they get all of the attention? On Transgender Day of Visibility, what I want is for more trans women to be visible in video games.
When you picture a trans person, you probably picture a trans woman. They are the type of trans person who is most often the subject of the aforementioned legislature and column inches. And when you picture a trans woman, you probably picture someone like me. Someone who transitioned in their 20s, post puberty, and looks like some sort of in-between creature. The voice isn't right, the shoulders aren't right, one of those 'you can always tell' types. The spectrum of transness is wide and does not stop at trans women, and I'm glad art embraces that with a diverse range of trans characters, but considering I am the typical dictionary definition of 'a trans person', it's odd that there are no trans people like me on our screens.
When we see trans women, they are either beautiful creatures that stand as a rebellious pinnacle of femininity, or they are male comedians in dresses making us the punchline. Hollywood is for the beautiful people, trans or cis, and it's natural that the trans women elevated to the ranks of the famous represent the most aesthetically pleasing. Maybe you can 'always tell' when you see me, but that 'always' stumbles in the face of Valentina Sampaio, Trace Lycett, Hunter Schafer, MJ Rodriguez, or Candis Cayne. But in video games, even this is lacking.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I've written about this issue before, and I always try to be careful not to tear down the work video games are doing for trans men. For them, it feels as though video games are leading the charge compared to television and cinema. Video games have Tyler Ronan, the trans male lead of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tell Me Why, as well as Lev, the trans boy who ranks amongst the most popular characters of one of the biggest games of all time in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2. Lev especially is not perfect, with the game never using the word 'transgender', deadnaming him in background barks, and defining him by trans-based trauma, but it cannot be understated how powerful it is to have a character like Lev in a game as important as TLOU2. These two are also supported by the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Horizon Zero Dawn's Janeva, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age Inquisition's Krem, and (though this one is the subject of some debate), 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tekken's Leo.
It's wonderful that games are giving a platform to trans men, but that's not the case for trans women. We're not entirely out of options - Kaiso from If Found... is our answer to Tyler Ronan, and we also have Madeline from Celeste - but there aren't really any games where we get to be a trans woman, in a fully realised world, and have agency and character in a narrative that is more than just transness. It feels like trans women are everywhere, I know that. But it also feels like we're nowhere. Where are our heroes? At this point, I don't care if they look like Valentina Sampaio or they look like me, I just want us to have them. Not as NPCs who have a couple of scenes to get some feel good press, but as heroes.
Transgender Day of Visibility is a day to celebrate trans people, and across games media and games development, I have been lucky enough to see people like me, and meet people like me. But as we look at how far we've come, it's important to also consider where we need to go next. We need more trans women heroes.