[Discussion] Trans Issues and Rights

This thread is for the discussion of current events relating to trans rights, for discussion of the lives of trans people and difficulties they face, and for basic questions about the lives and experiences of trans people. (If basic questions become dominant we'll look at making a Q&A thread at that time.)

You can actually switch off the sex scenes and nudity I believe But really i'm not sure what the point of that would be.

I'd also have suggested the demo release of Hardcoded on itch.io but that's very specifically a cyberpunk porn game for trans folk, so would probably be a bad idea

It's a tough call really, 'cause when I say there are very few positive representations of trans folk in games i mean there are REALLY, REALLY few positive representations. The vast majority of what there is is small scale indie stuff, and a fair portion of that focuses on stuff that's probably a potential issue for streaming.

oh! I just thought of one though...

Sentris.. a musical puzzle game..

Music game by Samantha Kalman, a trans creator (showed up a lot on Giant Bomb stuff, seemed cool. )

* * *

And another one to avoid : anything by Earthworm Jim creator (like that Plasticine thing he did a revamp of that I forget the name of. The one with the duck). Extremely homophobic/transphobic toxic dude.

This is also more of a personal request but I for one will not watch anything involving games by Stardock, the Kingdome Come : Deliverance devs, or anything from an openly gamergate allied studio. for multiple hopefully obvious reasons. So...just putting that out there as well.

In my mind, being openly aligned with Gamergate is a history of overt transphobia. If you want to align yourself with a group of reactionary bigots, you get to own all the intolerant garbage they bring with them.

yeah that's mainly why i wanted to make sure they were also highlighted just in case. (especially since Stardock games do tend to be quite popular around these parts)

Another thought!

I've not played the series in a while but I seem to recall The Sims opened up it's character creation options ages ago to include non-binary/trans characters (mostly just by removing clothing limitations but it might be something to consider? Despite any other flaws, EA have generally been pretty good (afaik anyway, do somebody let me know if I'm wrong) on the gender/representation front, at least compared to other companies. Especially from the employment side of things.

Also Life is Strange. The first one (and Before the Storm), not the second one!

Samantha and I went to high school together! I'm glad Sentris got some traction.

Neat!

I must admit i've not played it very much (music puzzle games are not really my..thing...) but I did buy a copy at the time just to support her.

.

Ok. This is the second Science vs. podcast that I’ve linked today in our forums. They did one on the Science of being Transgender. The first thing they cover is how up until very recently, the Science community had completely misunderstood what it is to be trans. One thing I love about the scientific process is that if you’ve gotten something wrong in the past, the process allows you to rethink and update your position on the issue. Thankfully, it seems like Science is finally on the right track in regards to Trans issues.

I think the biggest take away from the podcast is that being trans is more common than most people realize. Being trans is totally normal.

Thank you to all in this thread.

here is that podcast

Supreme Court Permits Trump’s Transgender Military Ban To Move Forward

The Supreme Court on Tuesday narrowly allowed the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

The 5-4 ruling temporarily reinstates the ban, but several lawsuits in lower courts are still pending.

The court’s four liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented.

Tuesday’s decision came after the Justice Department late last year asked the court to fast-track the case, claiming it was “an issue of imperative public importance.”

They want to kill us. There's no other end goal.

So to follow up on that glorious Hbomberguy stream story (where he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Mermaids, a UK charity to help young trans and NB youth, in 'retaliation' for Father Ted / IT crowd creator and general sleazeball TERF attempting to get the charities attempted lottery funding revoked)

...Turns out they got the lottery funding ANYWAY. So that's an extra £500,000 screw-you to Linehan and the gutter press. Noice.

Although the response the lottery gave to them was a bit tone-policey (looked like they were basically saying if they weren't so pro-actively campaigning on trans issues and were a bit "nicer" about things they wouldn't have had this trouble in the first place...so...eff that business, chumps).

Oh and just to show the kind of quality journalism you can expect from the anti-trans tabloid press in the uk, the Sun posted a story about the charity using a march image from ANOTHER group who literally dress up as Mermaids. For which they were appropriately ridiculed.

This felt like the best place for it...

Non-binary Magic the Gathering player, Amber Burchett from London is the first non-binary person to make the Top 8 of a Magic Mythic Championship (formerly Pro Tour), beating out 491 of the best MtG players in the world. It's a huge accomplishment.

MtG has done a pretty good job of late of trying to be representative in their cards. Featuring more women and people of color, including a canonincally trans character/card.

I didn't watch all of the Twitch coverage, but what I saw did a great job. In casual viewing, I at one point heard an awkard to my ears "they" that in context was about a single person. Turns out the coverage team was just doing an excellent job respecting their chosen pronouns (they/them).

Edit:
And they won the tournament!

They played amazingly well all weekend and especially in the finals with an intricate, hard to pilot deck (and got lucky too, but that’s always the way of it.) It was great to watch and I definitely cried at the end.

Video on homophobia in the black community.

Something they bring up that I never considered is that the media doesn't show any black cis speaking positively or in support of the LGBTQ community and that is be design according to them. The lady on the show is a writer. Her bosses refused to allow her to write anything about black celebs supporting the LGBTQ community. They only let her do things like report on kanye doing crazy things. She put out a long list of black celebs supporting the LGBTQ community that I have personally never heard say anything in support probably because I don't follow celebs in general.

She is also stated that the black community is no more or less homophobic than any other community. I hope I'm wrong but I don't really believe that. However, she is a trans woman so would no better than I would. The last six or seven murders and attacks on trans people I know of have all been done by black people. On the other hand I follow more news sources that follow black people in general so I might getting a skewed outlook. Those murders and attacks were all on black trans women but there must have been others on non black trans women. On the other hand there is a ton of homophobia or sh*tty attitude towards the LGBTQ community from the black media sources I follow. I had to stop following a few because they wouldn't stop saying f@ggot on every video. And another guy I stopped following mainly because he was oddly also a trump supporter but he would also go off on gay people because as he put it they were trying to destroy the game community. Such a odd ball considering his views on other things.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Video on homophobia in the black community.

Something they bring up that I never considered is that the media doesn't show any black cis speaking positively or in support of the LGBTQ community and that is be design according to them. The lady on the show is a writer. Her bosses refused to allow her to write anything about black celebs supporting the LGBTQ community. They only let her do things like report on kanye doing crazy things.

She said a lot of stuff that makes sense. She also led the host to treat the issue with a lot of nuance. My reaction, though, was still, “Enh...” She’s right but she’s wrong, you know?

Another attack on a black trans woman today.
What the hell.

Emmelia Talarico, 30, told her housemates she had been attacked at a nearby grocery store in Northeast Washington by a group that slung homophobic slurs and pushed her as she walked past. Then, about 45 minutes after she arrived home Tuesday, she heard a noise outside: the clang of a rock hitting metal, quickly followed by another sharp thud.

Talarico ran to the window, where she saw one of the same men from the store pacing up and down the porch.

When he saw her, she said, he lifted his arms like he was lifting something to his side. Then, she said, he made a pumping motion — the kind one might see when a person is loading a shotgun.

Panicked, several of Talarico’s housemates ran to the basement, she said. One woman called 911.

D.C. police are investigating the incident — the third in less than a week that has violently targeted members of Washington’s transgender community — as a “possible hate crime.” No arrests have been made. It’s part of a series of recent attacks in the region that has many in the LGBT community on edge.

“A lot of us are feeling like we can’t even walk to the store safely right now,” said Talarico, a transgender woman and lead organizer with activist LGBTQ group No Justice No Pride. “Everyone’s on high alert.”

The web site has more disturbing information. I think people are being encouraged to attack black trans women. The site said there were multiple attacks just this week.

Yeah. Nobody can tell me this doesn’t feel like a war.

Germaine to the political campaign debate, from the same article:

“The murder of Black trans women is a crisis,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted Saturday, listing the names of the 10 most recent victims. “We’ll fight this, and we will continue to say their names.”

“There’s a crisis of black trans women being targeted and murdered across the U.S.,” tweeted Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro.

I'm sorry if this question is ignorant or insensitive, it comes from a place of sincerity and for my edification.

Ellen Paige recently came out as Elliott Paige. He mentioned that he is proud to be trans and queer. His partner is a woman. Would that not make him straight.

If this question is wildly inappropriate I will gladly take it down.

Depends on how he identifies.

Thank you. Now I feel dumb.

Edit:
To be clear I felt dumb before asking too.

Queer != gay.

I don't know that there is a firm fixed definition, but I read it as fairly umbrella-y and intentionally vague for "not cis-het"

Increasingly, queer is an umbrella term for a broad spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities. It's a more inclusive replacement for limited acronyms like LGBT or unwieldy alternatives to that like LGBTQIAA+. So rather than thinking of the word queer as a binary opposite of heterosexuality, think of it as a larger term that captures all the nuances and permutations of gender and sexuality that aren't described by traditional ideas of those things.

That helps a lot. Unlearning things that were implanted in my youth isn't always easy.

Understandable. I grew up with "queer" being an insult. It's a bit disorienting sometimes that it's now a word I identify with and encourage others to use.

I am happy Elliott felt safe enough to publicly announce what all of us already knew.

I don't know, assuming someone is trans/queer just because they don't fit our idea of gender/sexuality seems pretty f*cked up and backward thinking. I didn't know anything until he told us.

Paleocon wrote:

I am happy Elliott felt safe enough to publicly announce what all of us already knew.

I can read your intention here and all, but you may want to rethink this post in terms of what thread you're in and who this thread is for, while at the same time consider just how easy it is to see your post as a condescending joke (which I'm sure it isn't).