CW: Transphobia, maybe
Disclaimer; I’m cis af, and I’m sure trans people have a better grip on this topic than me for obvious reasons. Please feel free to call me out.
Transphobia in Cyberpunk
I thought that the general consensus before it came out, where the ad featuring a hyper specialized mtf model, was that at first glance it can look transphobic (because it is, the ad is insensitive at best), but that it also fit in line with the dystopian, over corporatized world that the cyberpunk genre represents. The game wasn’t glorifying transphobia necessarily, it was presenting the topic in its rawest, most commercialized form, in a satirical way intrinsic to the idea of a cyberpunk future.
Anyway, that’s the take that I saw for the most part, even in leftist spaces, but now all the sudden since the games been out people have gone back to calling it transphobic, and I’m not really sure why? I guess if you can’t be convinced that the transphobic ad’s existence is justified I can buy that I guess. But there’s gotta be more to it than just that one thing right?
Spoilers for the main quest:
I’ve seen the interpretation that the corrupt ripper doc Fingers is trans coded, and can face harsh criticize from the protagonist, with even the option to call him a freak and punch him. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t see that in my play through? You meet Fingers right after discovering that he raped, tortured, and ripped apart and acquaintance, and was so brutal he inflicted intense ptsd unto his victim, eventually leading to her suicide. Now, he’s definitely gay coded, 100%, and calling a gay coded character freak specifically has some...questionable implications, for sure. Transphobia though? If anyone can share their take on why his character is transphobic please be my guest, that’s just what I got out of it.
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Spoiler for a side quest:
The only other trans character is Claire, who is very obviously trans. But she’s just...a regular person? Her gender has nothing to do with her side quest, and it’s not treated as a big deal at all. I thought her quest was fantastic personally, and love that you can own a vehicle with a big obvious trans flag on it. I haven’t seen her talked about in relation to transphobia in the game, but still think she’s worth bringing up.
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Finally, the character creator. It’s...fine. It’s not good, it’s not bad. Tying gender to voice is a weird choice, like why not just let the player choose? Otherwise though it’s unremarkable. Probably the most non-cishet options I’ve seen in a game, but it’s also kinda just the bare minimum, and it could have been way more robust.
That’s the worst thing about it in regards to these social issues, is that it has potential to present really radical and thought provoking questions on personhood in the age of cyber ware, what it means to be human, identity politics cooption by capital... ya know, the things that cyberpunk should do and always has done? So much just falls so flat, not seemingly out of malice, but writers and secs being stretched thin. It would have benefited so much from one or two more years of time in the oven, in almost every way.
Kinda rambly yeah yeah, I just wanted to see what y’all think. Also, it doesn’t hurt to actually play the game before criticizing it for specific elements. (That kinda goes for all media, though)
I feel like there's a term for deliberately constructing a fictional universe with a loophole that excuses away the shitty things the author always intended to include, but can now wave away as justified by the story?
Like, if some author wants to be sexist, they write a story that is set in a universe where being sexist has magical healing power, and the protagonist is a medic. Their character HAS to be sexist constantly, it's justified by the plot!
There's a term for this, right?
Yeah it's called the Thermian Argument (defending creative choices using in-universe explanations rather than explaining why you actually decided to write that into the story)
Ah, thank you! I was completely incapable of finding it from search terms. "story loophole bigotry"? No. "poor justification quiet MGS5"? No.
Youtuber Folding Ideas has a couple good videos discussing it
it's the diagetic defense. people use it all the time to justify racism and misogyny because it's "historically accurate", in a fantasy world, and the like.
diagesis is the construction of what's true and untrue within a fictional context. but human beings made choices to determine what's truth and it's those choices, and the process by which they were made, that's under criticism in the first place.
"cyberpunk criticizes capitalism because it's cyberpunk so the transphobia is fine" is a reactionary defense of the game.
Completely agree. The world setting is crafted based on the story they want to tell, and it shows.
I think you mean diegesis, which means something more like "narrative", literally it means narration. A diegetic defense would probably be best described as defending a choice for being in line with the narrative, ie, I am narrating a story set in the antebellum south so I am saying the n word a bunch in service of the narrative. But maybe I'm just doing this because I really want to say the n word, and the whole fitting the narrative thing is just an excuse.
Source: Greek.
I'm just including the setting as part of the narrative. I'm not sure how you separate the two.
Oh no, I don't disagree with your usage, you just said "diagesis" instead of "diegesis" and I felt like slightly elaborating on exactly what it means. Nothing important.
oh sorry. only heard the word said out loud, never spelled.
Yeah, I just always feel like correcting people when they get Greek words wrong lol
That’s too true, especially coming from CDPR it’s a bold move to give them the benefit of the doubt. Though I’m asking this in genuine faith: is it an all across the board bad move? Like obviously it’s used too much in video games, especially when devs don’t wanna give a shit about social issues while also acting like they do. But is it a valid worldbuilding technique? Like in cyberpunk, the world is an exploitive capitalist dystopia, and doesn’t exploiting minority groups for profit fall in line not only with that world, but ours too?
Though as I’m typing this out, I guess I’m implicitly giving CDPR the benefit of the doubt that they used it to flesh out the world, rather than use the world to to do the transphobia.
Thanks for contributing!
It's NOT always a bad move: Media can and should explore harmful ideas. A story with a transphobic character is not itself always a transphobic story. But if someone is, say, R*wling and wrote a story exclusively to spread transphobic ideas, then yeah, you made a transphobic story.
The Thermian Argument is an accusation about the motives of the creator, using media analysis and context.
We have, I think, enough information (1. plentiful other examples of transphobia, 2. no understanding of cyberpunk, 3. the copaganda in CP77) to confidently argue that CDPR added transphobic material to their game primarily because of internal transphobic thoughts of the creators in charge of that decision, or perhaps, very generously, because they did not have enough competence with queer theory to treat transgender topics with the care it deserves, and included harmful material because they didn't know better. I don't really see the evidence that we should give them the benefit of the doubt, however.
Yeah, that’s a really good assessment. The copaganda is so weird in the context of the world too, because theoretically the corporations should have complete control of law enforcement through private security details, having a nationalized police force is so out of place and off. It would have been so much better if you only got chased and shot at for doing illegal things if you did them to the wrong people, and that enforcement was based off whatever corpo you offended. Oh what could have been
Yeah, a real shame. But 90% of everything is crap .