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?
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.
