I touched on some of these thing briefly in a previous post but wanted to expand on them. In D. Fox Harrell’s talk at Amherst, he talked about how the underlying systems that programs use to store information carry a social bias. As a computer scientist and trans person it was an engaging talk and something that I had given some thought to in the past. His Mii example was interesting because when he showed the code (I’m not sure it was the actual code, but I’ll assume it is) there was a boolean, isGirl, that determined the Mii’s gender. They not only imposed a gender binary just by using a boolean, they also made male the default state, with isGirl as a modifier to the default. Since I’m nonbinary it’s often frustrating to have to deal with gender binaries in bureaucratic documents, but when it’s shoved into what’s supposed to be entertainment it’s just disheartening. What’s worse is that in games with characters you can create, strictly enforcing a gender binary is actually more difficult for developers. In a character creator, gender is always one of the first things you choose, and then all the other options from there are restricted. Male characters can’t have boobs, use “female” hair styles, wear makeup, and female characters can’t be muscular, or have body hair. Each one of these restrictions has to be specifically written into the code, and often completely separate base body templates are created for men and women, instead of just having one that can be modified in any way. Clothing must also be specifically coded to be either for men or women. When there are 50 sliders for eyebrow shape, why isn’t it possible to make a muscular character with boobs? Of course, not every game is like this, Dark Souls has a binary gender choice, but then has a “hormone” slider to make the character either more feminine or masculine, Sunset Overdrive lets any character wear any piece of clothing, but they’re exceptions. Pronouns are also not difficult to add into the code. If you have the option to use either “he” or “she” in dialogue (assuming it isn’t voice acted), then it’s trivial to have a longer list of pronouns or just have the player type in whatever they use.

For NPCs or player characters in games where you don’t create your character, it’s easy to make them trans too. There are tons of trans developers and writers who are making games and would love for someone to pay them to make games. But they don’t get hired, because of hiring discrimination and a lack of people who think they need trans characters in games. But this is vitally important. Trans people commit suicide and get murdered at a hugely disproportionate rate, and a lack of representation is one cause of this, especially suicides. When the only way you’re portrayed in media is as disgusting and dirty or as a joke, that’s not something that’s going to make you feel like you want to exist. Almost every single trans person that I’ve talked to (myself included) has said that one of the main things that helped them come out to themselves was listening and talking to other trans people online and realizing that being trans is a thing that real people can do. All the mainstream media depictions of trans people (which are pretty much exclusively created by cis people) are so completely off the mark and alien to actual trans people that we don’t even realize we exist until we come into contact with anyone else. Genuine media depictions of trans people will not only get some cis people to recognize that our lives have value and aren’t as sensational as on Jerry Springer, but they will help trans youth who feel alone and trapped know that they exist and give them at least one small place they can see themselves in and feel accepted.