This is a bit of a rant, but please try to stick with me through the whole thing
So recently OSRS (Old School Runescape) has joined a list of games that have replaced “Male or Female” with “Body Type A or Body Type B” with you selecting your pronouns secondary.
And it made me furious, but I had to sit down and ask why such a small meaningless thing that I only see during the character creator pisses me off. After all, isn’t this giving a seat at the table for Gender Non-Conforming/Non-Binary individuals?
So I tried thinking about this issue from the perspective of a Non-Binary individual. See I myself am female (Transgender MTF for what it’s worth), so the only thing I’m ever going to pick is the female option unless I’m doing a challenge run where I try to roleplay Guybrush Threepywood (Mighty Pirate!) while playing Fallout 3…
That’s when I realized why I absolutely hate Body Type A/Body Type B
This is not a solution to a problem, this is highlighting the issue.
As a woman, I look at “Body Type A or Body Type B” and think “Well, I’m a woman, not a Body Type B, and isn’t it kinda misogynistic that the secondary option is the female one? Like A+ for Men, B- for Women?”
As someone is very much not cisgender, I look at it and go “Well, isn’t every FTM going to pick Body Type A with male pronouns while MTFs like myself go with Body Type B with female pronouns? Who outside of a Far Right Troll trying and failing to be funny is gonna pick the buff bearded dude and select the she/her pronouns?”
It was only when I went “Let’s pretend I don’t exist in a male/female binary and see how I feel about it.” that I realized why I absolutely DESPISE Body Type A/Body Type B
Because when I look at it from that angle, I realize that if I am a non-binary individual, my options are to look like an overly buff dude but occasionally NPCs will refer to me as a They/Them, or like an overly curvy chick who again sometimes gets called They/Them…
That’s when I realized why Body Type A/Body Type B doesn’t do it for me.
Games that do this aren’t being progressive or inclusive, they’re changing the color of the cup that my drink comes in and pretending it’s an entirely new beverage.
I realized that if the choices in Body Type were something like
A - Buff Dude
B - Slim Dude
C - Fat Dude
D - Skinny Androgynous Individual who doesn’t need a bra/binder
E - Fat Androgynous Individual who doesn’t need a bra/binder
F - Skinny Androgynous Individual who requires bra/binder
G - Fat Androgynous Individual who requires bra/binder
I - Curvy Chick
J - Buff Chick
K - Fat Chick
L - Slim Chick
Maybe have also an option for a big buff masculine dude who has big tits, because that’s just how he rolls, I dunno just thinking aloud here…
My point is that gaming could abandon “A/B” in favor of something more like an actual spectrum of Height, Weight, and Gender Presentation instead of just awkwardly renaming the binary? I wouldn’t get so up in arms about gender replacing body type.
I don’t know what more I have to say on this. I guess it’s just a revelation I had about something in gaming that bothers me…
So, wider gaming community. What do you think? Am I onto something or is this all crazy talk?
While I agree having more options is always a better thing, I really can’t see body type A and B with pronouns choosing anything other than more inclusive, a good thing, and not something that deserves getting up in arms about.
I don’t really see how it could be seen as not more inclusive. Sure it’s not more inclusive than having full blown sliders that let you change every bit of a character’s body, but it’s adding more pronouns and not forcing those pronouns on a certain body type. If we look at number of options, it is more than the previous “male and female” options. Thus including a broader set of people
WhatbI don’t get is why they are using body type A/1 and B/2. One is clearly feminine and the other masculine, regardless of the gender of the character, why not use those words? They are describing the physical form of the body, it says nothing about gender.
Unless you’ve installed some very particular mods, the body types in most video games do not contain genitals, and therefore are not definitively male nor female.
I have boobs and a butt. My body looks like “Body B” from these games. It is not a female body. It does not have a vagina. I have a surgery planned, and that surgery will not result in a vagina. What I’m hearing right now is that you think my body is female. And that makes me feel uncomfortable because I do not want a female body. A feminine body, I am happy with, but not female. I choose “Body B” in these games because it looks like my body, which I am happy with. I do not choose it because it’s “female”. I feel a little bit of pain every time I have to click on female.
No, but we still see models that largely either have bulges or camel toes.
Seeing a buff, hairy, bulge-having individual labeled “she/her” is typically only done in transphobic alt-right political cartoons and it feels a little tone deaf that game companies actually expect transpeople to unironically go with that…
OP simply doesn’t believe in gender nonconforming people and thinks we’re all alt-right trolls. It’s a very privileged take.
Actually if you read what I said, I’d say part of my problem is that having two character models one that is “Unambiguously Male” and one that is “Unambiguously Female” while claiming “Oh you can just choose your pronouns, and we didn’t actually say Male or Female! So it’s fine” is a lazy solution that does more to annoy than to assist.
And that if they were actually serious about being more respectful to the wider gender spectrum that exists in real life, they’d have more than just those two options. But the concern dev studios have is not in helping gender non-conforming individuals be more immersed in games, it’s to say “I’m with the current trendy thing, upvotes to the left.”
We need to be critical of what’s called “Rainbow Capitalism/Pink Capitalism” or we’ll be stuck without any real meaningful change.
My issue is how half-assed the measure is. What’s the point of letting me pick between “He/Him” and “She/Her”, if it’s going on a character that looks like a stereotypical brodude or a model in a fashion magazine? Is it really doing anyone any favors?
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him? If there was more variety or perhaps something like Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldur’s Gate 3 where you can have a masculine build with feminine features or vice versa, I could see the point… but for most games that are only going to give you the most common denominator as your only two options?
It just feels like throwing a coat of paint to make it look like the studio cares about making their product more accessible, when really it’s just trying to check a box to appease HR.
It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s so small that it’s insulting to everyone involved.
To be clear, your stance is it’s such a small step in the right direction, you’d prefer no step at all? Keep it cis-only or invest time/money in extra character models?
I’m not saying keep it cis-only, I apologize if that’s implied, pronoun selection is fine and I don’t have a problem with that. My issue is if we’re not going to offer more options than simply two body types, both based on super idealized and gender stereotyped versions of the male and female form… Can we have a less awkward thing to call it than “Body Type A/Body Type B”?
Outside of a very offensive thing to call a heterosexual FTM individual, I legitimately do not.
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him?
Not sure what you mean by “good faith” here, but I can assure you there are some he/him dudebros that play female characters bc if you’re gonna be staring at someone in 3rd person the entire game it might as well be someone attractive to you.
Also it’s perhaps a minority of gamers, but people with fewer identity issues don’t need to see themselves as a self insert for their character, so why not play someone totally different from you?
I basically mean, who intentionally picks an overly masculine character unambigiously male character with female pronouns? Because that’s really only a thing in transphobic far right political cartoons.
I could see people picking the “female” character with he/him pronouns if they wanted to play a femboy and there wasn’t really an option to make the male character look “pretty”, but the “male” character with she/her, I dunno about that one chief.
Would anyone in good faith, with only two options “Stereotypical Brodude or Fashion Magazine Cover Girl”, is going to play the former with she/her or the latter with he/him?
I think so. Why not? There are as many valid genders and identities as there are people in the world. Who am I to judge what people want to be referred as? Also even if there wasn’t people like that, I can almost guarantee there are people who would want to put a “they/them” to those body types, which seems to be the main point of this body type trend.
I don’t see it as a bad faith thing to be like “hey, we should include the ability for NB people to have their preferred pronouns”
Again, I agree that having more options would be better, but why does perfect have to be the enemy of good?
Edit: I also want to say that NB does not equal androgenous. Sure many NB people may desire or have an androgenous look. But I also know people who like to look and be feminine but are still NB, and the other way around
The reason why perfect is an enemy of good in this particular circumstance because the message it gives off now is “We care about buzzwords”, with just a little more effort, it could be “We care about inclusion.”
As it stands now, I’m just left rolling my eyes because game studios see me as not a woman, but as “Body Type B”, but if we had some more androgynous options alongside itl, it’d come across more… “Oh I CAN have a feminine build if I WANT to.”
It’s that little bit that goes a long way.
