New Call of Duty game let's players be Non-binary

[deleted20220709]

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[Dreiko]

I think I see what you are getting at and I tend to divide how people approach game avatars in three broad categories.
1. Wish fulfillment: The game avatar is meant to be what I can not be. It might mean a white man playing as a black man, a woman playing as a man or a transsexual person playing as the sex they identify with. It can also be simpler stuff like my character being sexy where I am not or strong where I am weak.
2. Player Insert: The character is meant to represent the player. You'll make a character that is an approximation of you, perhaps a little cooler or hotter, and that means you want it to have your sex, gender, skin color, eye color and what not. If you're transsexual this also means being able to play as a woman in a man's body or viceversa.
3. Roleplaying: The player makes a character divorced from themselves in favor of giving the character its own story. Maybe I already have envisioned V as a really cool black guy or you want your V to be a slick Asian girl. It doesn't necessarily mean anything to us other then that we wish to tell the story of someone else without having to bring too much of ourselves into it.

Like you I struggle to see how the option to be transsexual in CP2077 fits into 1, but the other two options are certainly open both for representation and for people who just want to do transsexuality as a roleplaying thing. Which in a game set in a genre that is explicitly about subverting gender and sex norms, seems like a pretty natural thing.

I acknowledge #3 as valid but I just never see that being brought up by the people complaining about this stuff in this context, and I guess my issue is with the #2 type of player (I am very much the #1 myself XD).
What you're saying is that transgender people identify more with being transgender than being the sex they feel they should be. If I feel I'm a man and I'm making a self-insert char, I don't care what society thinks about it, I'll make a man.

It sounds like these people identify with being their superficial traits, the traits they tell us to ignore when we gender them, more than with what they feel like on the inside. If, when prompted to make a self-insert char, they make a char who is not who they really see themselves are, merely because of the fact that reality and science is not advanced enough to let them be that way in real life I think that puts a cheenk* in the armor of their agument.

Games have no such limitations, there is no basis for not making someone who you already feel like you are be your self-insert.
This is not like #1 where I feel like it'd be cool to be a dragon, but acknowledge I am not, so I find novelty in playing as a dragonkin. This is someone who claims they already are a dragon choosing to play as a human because in reality they can't breath fire that well. I think ultimately this betrays that they acknowledge somewhere deep down that either trans is its own thing or that they're just troubled people of the sex they were born with, so they can't really identify with the other sex, despite wanting to.



*the correct spelling was being censored and a parenthesis explaining it was making the post not go through so I am writing this lol

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Trunkage]

Don't tell lies about me

Of course this is a lie. How silly of me

 

[Trunkage]

Ehm..I never said that.

Since it's so pervasive then, most of us here must be SJWs etc

 

[Dreiko]

Not quite. Most of us accept the physical realities of who we are and getting the ability to be represented is big in this context. A person might feel like a woman in a man's body and being able to make a character that mirrors that is huge. They might just play as a woman, sure, but if you want a 1:1 self-insert you'll go for the masculine body with the female voice that identifies as woman by the game.



I think you are in a flawed line of reasoning here. It is correct if we assume wish fulfillment, but if we assume the player wants someone who looks like them right now (pre-transition as it would be) then they will obviously make a character that's masculine body, female identity or the other way around. There are also transsexual people, we should remember, that identify as the other gender but has no desire to go through with the transition process for whatever reason.



And I am fairly certain you've just taken an erroneous line of reasoning way too far and reached a pretty distasteful conclusion as a result.

I think there's aspects of who you are right now which are arbitrary and ones which are not. And I think focusing on the ones that are arbitrary in this context doesn't make sense given the things we've been told to think of as truths.

If who you are right now entails the male body and it isn't a fault you wanna try and fix, then it's not transphobic to not wanna date trans people if you are a hetereosexual male, for example, as they're not into that.

Similarly, this to me sounds like a handicapped person wanting to play a char with their shared handicap, which I think is odd when you are someone who thinks that being that way is not how you're supposed to be (and I guess kinda self-hating in including in your identity an arbitrary problem as opposed to excluding it and not basing yourself around it which is the healthy way to go about defects). In that sense it's not like you're playing a fictional idealized version of yourself, but just the regular version that you were unjustly denied. So ultimately my original point here is that, like how some deaf supremacists think that turning deaf kids into hearing kids is some kinda betrayal to their community, there's a climate of trans people who see being trans as its own thing, and not as a liminal state which ideally should be removed from existence through technological advancement.

If, for example, you turned every single trans person into the sex they identify with so there were no more trans people any more, I think that'd be a good thing, but I dunno if they'd agree with that assessment.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Similarly, this to me sounds like a handicapped person wanting to play a char with their shared handicap, which I think is odd when you are someone who thinks that being that way is not how you're supposed to be (and I guess kinda self-hating in including in your identity an arbitrary problem as opposed to excluding it and not basing yourself around it which is the healthy way to go about defects). In that sense it's not like you're playing a fictional idealized version of yourself, but just the regular version that you were unjustly denied. So ultimately my original point here is that, like how some deaf supremacists think that turning deaf kids into hearing kids is some kinda betrayal to their community, there's a climate of trans people who see being trans as its own thing, and not as a liminal state which ideally should be removed from existence through technological advancement.

Cannot speak for anyone else (obviously), but I believe there are a fair few disabled people that'd disagree with that. Either at the idea that they "should" be normal, or at the idea that the fantasy world doesn't have people like them in it.

 

[Dreiko]

Cannot speak for anyone else (obviously), but I believe there are a fair few disabled people that'd disagree with that. Either at the idea that they "should" be normal, or at the idea that the fantasy world doesn't have people like them in it.

It depends on the sort of disability, if your leg was blown off at a war just having a prosthetic be as realistic as the real thing is not that far fetched.

I think the difference is whether you were born that way or whether it happened later in life, as well. If you've been blind all your life you won't care for seeing as much someone who was blinded after first being able to see for all their life up to that point. And even that is not absolute; I remember this very touching video of a colorblind person being given these glasses that made them able to see colors somehow and he was jumping from joy and crying at the grass being green and stuff.

It's not that a fantasy world doesn't have people like them but rather that it has found a way to heal people like them and allow them to experience all that life has to offer with no added hurdles.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's not that a fantasy world doesn't have people like them but rather that it has found a way to heal people like them and allow them to experience all that life has to offer with no added hurdles.

Sure, I know what you mean, but there are lots of disabled people who see things differently.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Ugh, you have a decent point here especially under Reagan who was totally willing to ignore the aids epidemic till his friend Rock Hudson died from complications related to it and till then the closest they got to doing anything was calling it the "gay plague". It would be cool if you had to play a nonbinary (or gay, just do gay since that would work better) character and part of it was making sure no one else found out about it since you would be forced out of the service. So a stealth game where you had to avoid your own side at times also.

Out of curiosity, how hard is it to not have gay sex in front of people? I mean what is the struggle with "hiding" homosexuality?

Because out side of finding the same sex attractive, there isnt some defining feature gay people have like tails or horns growing out of their foreheads.

 

[Houseman]

You keep saying this, but CoD:CW isn't "secret history",

It's not? Well then someone needs to change the Wikipedia entry for the first game, which this game is a direct sequel of.
It is secret history, and you saying "no it's not!" isn't enough. Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

It also has an ending where nuclear war wipes out Europe

I had to say this once already, but that's the non-canon "bad" ending. Is this a new concept to you? That "bad" endings aren't canon?
When things aren't canon, that means that they didn't really happen, not even within the game's universe.

So your problem is not what is and isn't contradictory to established history and we all know this by now.

It's not, you just don't know what secret history is, or what canon means.

 

[ObsidianJones]

The irony is that places like the CIA and KGB have historically been pretty accepting of LGBTQ agents and assets, because they are a great way to exploit the sexuality of their targets. The KGB especially was notorious for its ability to find and/or train homosexual men to act as honeypots for closeted gay men working in sensitive fields in the West (such as scientists, militaries and companies providing contract works for the military). They might not have cared much for their civil rights or the hardships of daily life as a LGBTQ person, but if they can get you classified information from the enemy they can fuck whoever they want.

Let's not forget Britain's turn on using Gay Spies. Homosexuality and the LGBTQ spectrum is simply apart of human nature. It was always a part of our history and our species. Whether it was accepted or not is the most central part of it. Because if your very nature is reviled, any chance to explore it and be who you are would be leapt at. Britain and the KBG knew that and exploited it.

While not batting an eye while their agents who were risking life and limb for their country were still demonized for being born.

But yet and still, Canada (yes, that Canada) did everything they could to purge. And once instance they used was (forgive me, my LGBTQ siblings) the "Fruit Machine", designed to find homosexuals and purge them from government jobs.

So logically, knowing that spies were used as same sex honey pots, I would have to assume that the US did the same. But then you see stuff like Canada and... without hard evidence, I gotta say while I know 100% that there were LGBTQ in all forms of life and service, how well they were used or tolerated in spy craft during the 1980's is questionable.

Not out of the realm of reasoning because... well, history shows they were widely used. But I don't know how deeply wrapped Reagan was with those Spy craft things. It could very well be that Reagan was an asshole homophobe, but the CIA saw the value of LGBTQ agents and kept using them right along. No data is supplied.

 

[Silvanus]

Out of curiosity, how hard is it to not have gay sex in front of people? I mean what is the struggle with "hiding" homosexuality?

Because out side of finding the same sex attractive, there isnt some defining feature gay people have like tails or horns growing out of their foreheads.

Most people will, from time to time, mention their partners, crushes or love-lives to their colleagues, friends, family. It naturally comes up. People ask about it.

So hiding your sexuality involves lying or deflecting every time, and never slipping up, for however many years you're doing it. Guarding what you say constantly.

 

[Houseman]

Most people will, from time to time, mention their partners, crushes or love-lives to their colleagues, friends, family. It naturally comes up. People ask about it.

So hiding your sexuality involves lying or deflecting every time, and never slipping up, for however many years you're doing it. Guarding what you say constantly.

Or just never have a love life, boom, problem solved

 

[Worgen]

My issue has always been the arbitrary line of which people draw to limit 'being authentic with a fictional premise in a real life setting' and 'IT DIDN'T HAPPEN THIS WAY!!!'

Agent Russel Alder isn't a real person. Are we ok with that falsehood? Let's proceed.

Qasim Javadi isn't a real person. Still ok with that Falsehood? Ok, Proceed.

Operation Greenlight wasn't a thing. Falsehood. Proceed.

An agent was non Cis... WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE, WHAT KIND OF BS IS THIS?!?!

I don't think Reagan was a saint. Hell, I don't think many agents at that time strayed from Jason Bourne mold during the 80's unless certain countries needed to be infiltrated. Was there LGBTQ agents? 100%. Would it be spoken out loud? Don't know. But if we're ok with Operation Greenlight and we can't be ok with other parts of fiction, what the hell are we even doing? Just make a video game about actual events if people can't handle flights of fancy. And if you can handle other made up events that didn't happen at that time, then you can handle one more.

I think his point is more that having a nonbinary working directly under Reagan gives Reagan too much credit for not being horrible. Personally I'm fine with the choice but I can see his point about it not being the sort of thing that Reagans administration would be ok with at all and to allow you to be open and under him implies that he was less of an ass then he was... and more competent... hmm.

 

[Worgen]

Out of curiosity, how hard is it to not have gay sex in front of people? I mean what is the struggle with "hiding" homosexuality?

Because out side of finding the same sex attractive, there isnt some defining feature gay people have like tails or horns growing out of their foreheads.

Harder than you would think if history is any way to judge. But also keep in mind that there were people who were actively trying to root out any gay members of the armed forces and such.

Friend of Dorothy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Or just never have a love life, boom, problem solved

How's that working for you?

 

[Wintermute]

This thread is 15 pages long.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Harder than you would think if history is any way to judge. But also keep in mind that there were people who were actively trying to root out any gay members of the armed forces and such.

Friend of Dorothy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Which thankfully isn't the case anymore.

I think the "dont ask, dont tell" policy has helped because even if someone says their partner in conversation, nobody really cares and nobody asks about it. Though I was in the Navy in 2003 so i dunno if further policies have been evolved since. I know we had a couple of gay dudes and one gay girl in our division and nobody gave a shit.

 

[Worgen]

Which thankfully isn't the case anymore.

I think the "dont ask, dont tell" policy has helped because even if someone says their partner in conversation, nobody really cares and nobody asks about it. Though I was in the Navy in 2003 so i dunno if further policies have been evolved since. I know we had a couple of gay dudes and one gay girl in our division and nobody gave a shit.

Yeah, in the 90s 'dont ask, dont tell' was probably the best they could do considering gay acceptance at the time. It was repealed under Obama and after that, gay people could be out and proud in the military.