Obsidian accused of transmisogyny in Pillars of Eternity

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

*cringe*

the 2010 decade will be known as the decade of whining, sweet jesus out of all the problems in the world someone could have, they are offended over that...

Two things:

1. Seems to me the poem is more at the expense of the guy who killed himself rather than any transwomen.
2. Even if it were something transphobic, inclusion of specific material is not akin to endorsing it, and assuming this to be the case sets up a dangerous precedent where a creator's artistic vision can be severely hampered because of the content shown. Only videogames seem to have this problem for some reason, no one ever goes after films and books.

also highly agree with this, especially the second part, it seems like games are put under a magnifying glass in the sun and are burned at the stake, yet movies and books are free as can be relatively when laying out possibly complex or frowned upon issues.

 

[DoPo]

And the other day I saw some claim they had to make a male because it was possible to have THREE WOMEN (OMG!) in the opening scene of DA:I doing shit without a man present and that this is pushing feminist agenda as well as claims that bioware are attempting to turn men gay by having character like Cassandra.

That's funny. In Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, I eventually decided to have all my subordinate assassins to be female. Why? Because one of the random missions you could send them on was "steal a kiss from " - I think it was either a noble woman or the wife of somebody influential. Something like that, at any rate - it's not really important, however, I thought it'd be funny because I imagined them ditching men (including their husband) afterwards with their newfound sexuality.

 

[Creslin321]

Wow, so I made an account just to respond to this lol.

I have seen a lot of arguments online stating that this joke is okay because it's within a fiction and thus does not necessarily represent the views of the developers. That's all well and good, but I want to take this a step further.

Instead of taking the joke literally, let's examine sentiment behind the joke. The main idea of the joke is that the man sleeps with someone he thought was a woman, turned out to be a man, and then is upset at this.

In what universe is this transphobic?

Honestly, in this scenario, what would you prefer the man have done? Just decided to be happy that he was deceived into sleeping with a man? I mean, what would YOU have done if this happened to you?

A straight person, not wanting to sleep with someone of the same sex is not transphobic, homophobic, or any kind of phobic, it's called "being straight." I mean, I'm not going to call a gay guy "heterophobic" because he doesn't want to sleep with a woman.

I'm sorry, but someone's sexual preference does not make them X-phobic.

The triviality of things that people take offense at nowadays never ceases to amaze me.

 

[DementedSheep]

Transmisogyny? is that a thing or are they just mashing terms.

It is, and was coined by Julia Serano (a person I generally agree with in regards to trans issues) but its a term that I personally object to myself. Its essentially a way of saying "transgender women face both transphobia and sexism against women" which can be true in separate instances, but not at the same time. Thats kind of the point of transphobia - they're not recognizing you as your identifying gender, so the treatment they inflict on a trans woman wouldn't necessarily be misogyny. Some might say that it is, based on disdain for feminine traits, regardless of whether they're from a woman or a man, but thats a whole other argument that has entire books and debates about it already available. The term also excludes transgender men, who are often excluded or otherwise ignored in the transgender community.

OT: Mildly offensive joke that a backer wanted included in the game. I would say that Obsidian probably should've said no to it, but its their game, their choice if they want to edit it or not. I'll be getting the game eventually regardless because Obsidian is one of my favourite developers.

Ah ok, thanks for the explanation. I think the word they would be looking for here is transphobia anyway as there is no misogyny in that poem.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

If they cave, I hope the dude who put it in sues them for breach of contract ... this is not obscene.

I have to live with the horrible memey and SJW stuff, they and Josh should learn to live with a dirty limerick.

 

[Fat Hippo]

You cant just disregard the english language like that words have set meanings and if you just start mashing em together higildy piggildy you are destroying the very culture and traditions upon which we stand.

Damn straight! It's only german-speakers who get to slap words together however they like, don't take it away from us.

Also, the funniest things about this to me is that someone is actually reading the entries on those gravestones (there's bajillions of them), and then giving enough of a shit about it to complain on the internet. And I though I was good at wasting at my time.

The Swedes do it as well. Apparently Spårvagnsaktiebolagsskensmutsskjutarefackföreningspersonalbeklädnadsmagasinsförrådsförvaltarens is a word.

Ah true, it's a germanic rather than an exclusively german thing. But really, pointing out single instances of long words, while entertaining, is missing the point that there is a literally infinite amount of infinitely long words, because the languages just allow you to smush words together however you feel like. Hell, most of the german words used in the english language (Schadenfreude, Blitzkrieg, Kindergarden, Zeitgeist etc.) are all just two words which got glued onto each other to create a new word, with a new meaning.

I actually think it's rather elegant, since it allows you to introduce new words with new meanings that are intuitive to anyone who recognizes the two old words, and therefore doesn't need to look them up or have them explained.

 

[ZiggyE]

Except for the fact that it calls the trans woman a man. Not the man who killed himself calling her a man, mind you, but the gravestone itself.

See, here's the thing about world building. In that setting, someone, some unnamed character, wrote that gravestone. The character who wrote that gravestone is bound by limitations and prejudices about the setting. It's this form of subtle narrative that conveys meaning about the world, information about it and makes it feel alive.

 

[endtherapture]

If they cave, I hope the dude who put it in sues them for breach of contract ... this is not obscene, they have no standing to remove this.

What is considered "obscene" is based on those making the project, not the backer or an outside force. Additionally, there's no real "contract" that you seem to think that there is, so its ridiculous to think that suing Obsidian would be possible. Realistically, if the backer contacts Kickstarter (which is their first step in regards to recourse) they'd get Obsidian to have the backer include something else that isn't considered obscene, and if the backer is being contentious, if they're lucky, Kickstarter will give the user a refund, and if not, they'll just not have Obsidian deliver on it, and there'd be no further recourse because the backer signed the Kickstarter Terms of Service which would make any potential litigation a waste of money and time.

]

If the backer pays $500 for the privilege of having this piece of text in game, and they've taken it away from him and he isn't offered a refund for some reason, I fully expect he has the grounds to go to court or at the very least trading standards to get the stuff he paid for back.

 

[DementedSheep]

Josh Sawyer, game designer at Obsidian, said the producers of the game are looking into the content. So this random Twitter persons opinion is actually being taken seriously, which is a shame.

Damn, that's some oldschool, witty gravestone writing, goodstuff. Also, it has literally nothing in it that could even be considered eyebrow raising, let alone whatever the fuck kind of made up word that bint is using.

Would love to see a source on the Josh Sawyer thing, if only to laugh how pathetic shitkickers get what they want at the expense of actual kickstarter backers.

This at least I can see why it would annoy someone as it using the tired old trans are gross and you should be ashamed if you are ever attracted to one thing though I don't agree with the complaint.

The poem literally has nothing to do with trans people. If that was what they wanted to imply, the wording would a tad different. (I mean, like, they'd write "used to be" instead of "turned out" or something along those lines. As it stands, guy shagged a dude who he thought was a woman for some reason. Jokes like this fall apart once you start thinking about it too much.)

Transmisogyny? is that a thing or are they just mashing terms.

Mashed up. Hell, only one of the three user defined online dictionaries I checked (results no.1, 2 and 3 in google) had the term, and the actual Oxford dictionary thought I wanted to say transmogrify.

A lot of people still refer to transwomen as "men" but yes, it could just be his mistook a gay/bi man for being a women (or hell, maybe they were both pissed as a fart and misgendered each other, it's short humor poem it doesn't go into detail) and edited that into my reply before although usually when you see this joke it's with a cross-dresser or transwomen.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I never got why showing racism, sexism, etc in fantasy worlds without them being a Bioshock Infinite type where racists=suicidal nazis you have to genocide is terrible? The world Pillars of Eternity is set in doesn't have to obey our standards because it's not our world. Is Game of Thrones a disgusting show because gays are murdered in Westeros and women are treated horribly? No.

 

[ZiggyE]

No, a person in the real world wrote that gravestone. I addressed how this is the root of my distaste for the joke in the same post you're quoting.

"I normally would agree, but in this instance I would argue that it is, not because this is an extension of the fictional universe, but because this is what some backer wanted to put into the game. Its completely unrelated and unattached to the rest of the game. It'd be like if somebody backed the project and was able to put something into the game, and they decided to add a blatantly racist screed."

Its not in-universe, its a person from the real world getting to project their prejudices into the game via a Kickstarter reward and poor oversight by Obsidian. Its not any different than if the backer made a joke where the punchline was that gay people were pedophiles or black people were chimps.

Games are written by real world people. Games often have multiple writers. Simply because someone paid to contribute rather than the other way around doesn't change the fact that that backer is a writer and contributor in the game and has some hand in establishing the world, no matter how small.

What's more the given quote is NOTHING like "gay people are pedophiles".

As an aside, I want to say that when a piece of fiction pokes fun at an entire people group

You're one of very few people who is getting that message from this poem. Have you considered that this might be a me problem of yours instead of a we problem of ours?

 

[ZiggyE]

Oh this is fun. Turns out the twitter user who initially discovered this and kickstarted this controversy is an outright misandrist who says that men should be holocausted for... being men?

Spoiler

I dunno about you, but these comments seem a lot more inflammatory than a short poem that may or may not have been about someone transsexual.

 

[ZiggyE]

They're not a writer for the game world, they're a writer for an easter egg in the game world. They have nothing to do with the rest of the writing of the game. Hell, from what I heard about the game from somebody else, the text blurb might actually contradict how the PoE universe views transgender people.

And easter eggs contribute towards the game world.

Sure it is. Its an offensive sentiment held unjustly towards a group of people. So is the sentiment that transgender women are really just men in extreme drag trying to trick straight men into having sex with them. Its perfecly analogous.

Once again, only a minority of people think this. Some people are even calling into question whether it is about a transwoman at all. I wonder has anyone tried to get in touch with the actual backer himself for context? No? What a surprise.

And you're offended? So what. I don't care if you're offended and neither should obsidian. Perhaps you just WANT to be offended.

No, I'm pretty sure that cisplaining about trans stuff is wrong because its, you know, cisplaining.

Cisplaining is an actual word now? Lol. Yeah, I'm cis. I'm male. I'm heterosexual. Guess what, I'm white too. Does that offend you to the point I'm not entitled to an opinion now?