Before you read the title and go "wait, what does transphobia BS have to do with homosexuality" - hear me out. The company that made this game, CD Projekt Red, is a Polish company. Poland (and nearby countries) are currently rather conservative and not very accepting of LGB, and sometimes acceptance rates seem to be dropping. This seems to be the case even worldwide, there has been data suggesting that acceptance of LGBT (as a whole, no specifics given) has been dropping among young people, and I can't help but think that SJW outrage like this may be to blame.

For those of you that are unaware, Cyberpunk 2077 is a newly-released game that's been massively hyped on the internet for a while, it's possibly even the most hyped and anticipated game of the year. Early into the hype, the game advertised a "gender diverse" character creator that would allow the creation of trans characters, and/or mix and matching sex characteristics, genitalia, and voice, So, of course the social justice crowd hyped it even more for being "inclusive." It's also why, despite liking the "cyberpunk" genre, I was hesitant to try the game myself as I don't like to support anything that panders to social justice fads. So when I saw people complaining that this very game I sought to boycott due to forced "inclusivity" was actually "transphobic" all along, I was very confused.

I will also mention that, to my knowledge, I haven't really heard anything about sexuality in this game. I haven't seen anyone say that you can play as a gay character or not. A quick google search only told me there are "diverse romance options beyond heterosexuality" & more articles about the "gender diversity." Okay, but just saying that there "non heterosexual" options doesn't answer my question, which is "can I play as an exclusively gay character?" Or even an exclusively straight character? Is this something you can choose or is everyone bisexual by default, as other games have handled it in the past? Because although I think bisexual representation is equally important, it'd kind of suck to go in wanting to play an exclusively gay or straight character, only for your character to be portrayed as a "queer" who likes "all genders" with virtue signaling shoved left and right.

I think it's pretty telling, and depressing, that there are tons and tons of articles about this game's "gender diversity" and so much user hype about it, but mentions of homosexuality are vague and hard to come by. Why? Is trans "representation" important but gay representation not? Is this a case of "grr the gays are privileged so we need to stop pandering to them and focus on trans instead?" Did CD Projekt Red know that they weren't going to have a huge gay fanbase?

But we all know this isn't an isolated case. Plenty of supposed "LGBT" pandering is T-only. I swear someone posted a graph showing the different focuses of L, G, B and T respectively in various LGBT organizations over the past few years, and to no one's surprise, the T was rapidly getting more and more of the focus.

Anyway, the article I mentioned in the title comes from Polygon, and the link is here. I don't know how to mirror or avoid giving articles "clicks" if you're concerned about that, but I have an ad blocker so they won't be getting money from that at least.

I'll be honest - I can barely make sense of this article. Video game "journalism" is a joke to begin with, but Polygon is one of the worst offenders, always full of social justice warrior nonsense and typically makes big deal articles out of tiny things. While trying to read this, my brain couldn't follow along very well. Besides, any article that unironically uses the word "edgelord" in what's supposed to be a serious article about systematic discrimination can barely be taken seriously anyway. But I digress. Let's get into the article content.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/22058784/cyberpunk-2077-marketing-cd-projekt-red-transphobia

"My skepticism started when the game revealed its controversial “Mix It Up” promotional poster back in June 2019. This poster featured a feminine model with what can only be described as a huge, bulging penis. Her skin-tight leotard left nothing to the imagination; even the veins were visible. At the time, some fans called out the imagery as exploitative, mocking, and transphobic, though CDPR defended the poster. “I like how this person looks,” said Kasia Redesiuk, the artist who designed the poster, at the time. “However, this model is used — their beautiful body is used — for corporate reasons. They are displayed there just as a thing, and that’s the terrible part of it." I don’t buy it. While a cutting critique of queer commodification might have been part of the idea’s nucleus, the outcome is a commodification itself, objectifying trans people as creatures of deviance, defined by their genitals and suitable only for sexualization or rejection."

So, unless I am misunderstanding here, the writer of this article claims that the game is transphobic because... they advertised mix sex characteristics in a positive light? Like, as far as I understand (as someone who has never played the game) the message of this poster seems to be that "mixing stuff up" - whether that be drink flavors or sex characteristics - is exciting, fun, and new. How exactly is that "transphobic", meaning hateful or fearful towards transgender people? Isn't that the very opposite?

And of course, the writer of the article can't explain why this is "transphobic" without using buzzwords that mean little to nothing. What the hell does queer commodification mean? Fuck if I know. But given that "queer" originally referred to homosexuals, isn't using meaningless terms like this going to make the rest of us look ridiculous? I don't self identify as "queer", and I don't think anyone on this sub really does either, but we all know that homosexual & bisexual people are going to be included in the backlash regardless. I don't want to be a part of this, I'm not oversensitive, I wouldn't write an angry article if a videogame included a fake advertisement poster of a gay man with a huge throbbing boner through his pants.

Anyway, he/she goes on to say, in an unnecessarily weird way, that the problem is "it's sexualizing trans people and making them out to be deviant and implying that trans people are only good for sexualization or discrimination."

Okay, but... this is the same game that SJWs were PRAISING earlier in the year for the ability to give a female character a dick. This really seems like a situation of damned if you do, and damned if you don't. They want to be able to give their MTF characters dicks. They want full genital customization. They want focus on dicks and they want other people to like it. /r/actuallesbians on Reddit can't go two minutes without praising "girldick" and shaming anyone who doesn't like it.

But at the same time, if you DO praise or represent "girldick", you're "transphobic" for sexualizing trans people. Huh?

How is anyone supposed to avoid being "transphobic" if it's simultaneously offensive to NOT include "girls with penises" and not be aroused by trans bodies, yet offensive if you DO include "girldick" and are sexually attracted to trans people?

Moving on...

"While I didn’t believe CDPR’s stated intentions around the Mix It Up poster, that didn’t mean they couldn’t become true. When I was a kid, trans stories on television and in movies were hard to come by. I learned to see the trans experience in things that were designed to mock it. Body-switching stories, boys being made to dress up as girls or given makeovers as punishments, boys being pushed into the unspeakable horror of the girls’ bathroom. "

These are "coming of age" and/or sex stories that have fuck all to do with trans people. This is a reach and a projection. It's more accurate to say that depictions of boys in dresses as "humiliation" is a product of sexism against women, not "transphobia." Not everything is out to get you personally.

It's important to note that transgenderism blowing up to the level it's on today is a recent fad. Prior to the 2010s transgender people seemed hard to come by, even online. So, I'm pretty confident that a large chunk of those "trans experience stories" this author mentions were made by people who probably didn't even consider transgenderism at all, let alone knew much about it, if anything.

"The poster seemed tied to the then-rumored, now-confirmed prospect of creating a protagonist similar to the character in the poster. It seemed like the closest big-budget games would ever get to embracing a trans character, even if it had to sit alongside exploitation dressed up as social commentary, and come with humiliation disguised as humor as well."

Again, earlier in the year, people were praising the "inclusive" character generator, but now apparently it's "exploitative" and "humiliation."

I just wanna say something real quick - I don't think I've EVER had the option in a videogame to create a character that is exactly like me. There are aspects of me that game creators don't even consider putting in their character builders, solely because these aspects don't have huge angry Twitter mobs ready to bully the game developers into submission.

But you won't see me complaining. Because I acknowledge that the world does not revolve around me, that I am the outlier, and that there are limitations in game design. It's simply not feasible to make a character creation that is "inclusive" to anyone and everything because it would take too much time, resources, and frankly, would most likely not be worth the monetary investment.

I can still enjoy a game without having to make the character exactly like me. Even without really niche and uncommon aspects, there aren't a whole lot of games where you can play as a homosexual character. But that won't stop me from playing games.

"The Mix It Up poster is so brazenly exploitative of trans people, conjuring up very transphobic images and ideas that indelibly link trans people to the contents of their underwear, images that are responsible for real-world harm to trans people. Yet, there’s a deep irony in that it offers trans people one of the few opportunities to see ourselves and play as ourselves in gaming."

Right. So. Once again, focusing on a trans person's genitals is "exploitative" and "transphobic" but at the same time, it's also transphobic and offensive to NOT acknowledge their genitals, NOT give players the option to slap a penis on a female character model, and for homosexual people to NOT be into "girldick" or "man vagina." Again, this is a no win situation.

"Because of all of that, Mix It Up has arguably become the single most divisive, most controversial moment in the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077’s marketing, yet it’s the one they’ve decided to build around. Since then, the game’s official Twitter account has joked about canceling their FIFA 78 pre-order due to the lack of vagina options, a joke which pokes fun at their own potentially progressive non-gendered character creator, again tying any positive representation of trans people to mockery, exploitation, and humiliation."

...So making a joke saying "This game is inferior to OUR game because we have a trans inclusive character creator and THEIRS doesn't" is somehow transphobic and humiliating?! How...?

CDPR also included a cisgender cosplayer as the Mix It Up girl among their cosplay contest finalists. Even if you buy the company line that the poster represents how queer bodies have been appropriated for marketing, their entire argument is negated when they have a cis person dress up in that queer body as part of their own video game marketing.

Allow me to just casually recoil in disgust at the term "queer body" for a moment. ... ... Okay, got that out of my system, back on topic - the sheer HORROR.

Again, one trans argument I've seen several times online is that "cis" women and trans women are indistinguishable. That trans women actors should play "cis" women because both are women, and you're a bigot if you say otherwise. But now it's inherently a hate crime for a "cis" woman to appreciate a FICTIONAL trans character and dress up as them? O...kay.

If you’re thinking perhaps the model was well-meaning, attempting to create a trans-positive cosplay, trying to further highlight queer commodification CDPR spoke of originally, or just a misguided ally who got it wrong this time around, I have bad (yet predictable) news for you. Yugoro Forge, the cosplayer in question, tweeted that her costumes are “beyond politics,” and when pushed on the fact her Cyberpunk 2077 costume dehumanized trans people who are already subject to violence so frequently, she replied, “many cis men and women face acts of harassment and violence on a daily basis as well.”

WOW! She must be LITERALLY HITLER to say such shocking statements like "My cosplay isn't political, I just do this for fun" and "all kinds of people face harassment and violence." The fucking audacity, am I right?

No but seriously - how can writers like the author of this article type this shit and still decide to post it? What level of insanity do you have to be on to think that either of these statements are hateful? I genuinely cannot fathom it.

Defenders of Cyberpunk 2077 may point to its character creator— one of the most heavily showcased features in pre-release — which doesn’t tie gender to genitalia. It’s true that this means the game provides the opportunity to create a transgender protagonist. However, gender in the game is still tied to voice, meaning if you want to be referred to as a woman, you need to select the voice actor with a typically feminine voice. For me — and in my experience, many other trans people — voice is far more important than genitalia. No one sees what’s in my pants, but everyone hears my voice. To truly create a character who is trans like me, I would want a more typically “male” voice in a more typically “female” body. The junk, especially in a first-person game, isn’t that important to me. The fact that Cyberpunk has fixated on the junk as the ultimate feature of a trans person, yet given no consideration for voice, and then repeatedly joked about customizable genitals in its marketing efforts, shows the complete lack of a trans perspective in both the design and in the advertising of the game. It’s also worth noting, that for a character creator which prides itself of inclusivity and depth of customization, there’s been nothing said of a non-binary option.

Because, as I said, game development has limitations and it wouldn't be profitable to pander to such a tiny demographic. Having gender determined by voice is the most simplest way to do it. In order to make it so, I don't know - you pick your pronouns at the start of the game or some shit, regardless of what voice you chose - they would have to get multiple voice actors to record many variants of the same lines, referring to the protagonist as he, she, they, etc. This may not seem like a big deal to people who think games are made simply by hitting a button and having a game magically generated on a computer, but this would involve a LOT of extra work.

Not to mention, forcing people to "choose their pronouns" or gender in the character creator would absolutely cause them to lose a ton of players, I imagine. For one, I would certainly not buy or play a game that makes me "choose my pronouns" and I've actually boycotted certain social media websites for things just like that. Mainstream, big videogames like Cyberpunk are not just made for fun, they are made for profit, and something like this would most likely cause a mass boycott and a drop in sales. Again, it's not worth pandering to a tiny percentage of players and losing the support of the majority in the process.

"As well as criticism for its depiction of trans folk, Cyberpunk 2077 has also come under fire for its use of racist imagery. The game includes the Voodoo Boys, who in the original board game were a white gang who dressed in Haitian gear as a commentary on cultural appropriation, but in Cyberpunk 2077 are actual Black Haitians and racial stereotypes. The Asian gang, Tyger Claws, are a strange amalgamation of various East Asian cultures, all armed with swords despite the high-tech advancements of their world."

"These characters were white and that was bad, so then they changed them to black but that's also bad because they're stereotypes." The author of this article seems to be offended by everything and everything. He/she has probably written an article about how My Little Pony is secretly white supremacist because Rarity, the white pony, is the fancy luxurious one.

Also, it sounds like this author doesn't know anything about the Cyberpunk genre at all. "East Asian amalgamations" have always been a part of the aesthetic. Blade Runner had a lot of that, yet I don't see anyone complaining. It's also not at all unrealistic nor racist - it's feasible to assume that in a high-tech future, especially in a dystopian one, countries and cultures may fuse together and you may well end up with cyberpunk cities that are a mismash of English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and whatever else.

And is it racist to use swords in the future? Swords are fucking cool. Why's that an issue?!

"Cyberpunk 2077’s advertising has been saying the quiet part loud. It has maintained the spiky, anti-SJW, anti-woke persona throughout its marketing campaign, careful to always pepper any diverse characters’ inclusion with stereotyping or humor designed to mock its own ideas. As such, it has earned an army of fans who will defend it from criticism, whether that be from accusations of transphobia, racism, or even crunch. With the specter of GamerGate still looming over gaming, the company may have even gained fans through this reactionary and edgy marketing style."

I can't believe someone would use the term "anti-SJW" and "anti-woke" unironically, like, seriously believing that being a SJW and "woke" are good things.

ANYWAY - god, this post was a lot longer than I intended it to be, sorry for apparently being able to condense my points into a shorter format - the bottom line is that, although at first glance this is just one idiotic "journalist" typing up utter bullshit and claiming it's woke activism, I actually think it's bigger and more dangerous than that. First of all it's not just the article writer - a FTM I know shared this article and also expressed outrage, and I've seen multiple people agree with these points.

I'm afraid of what this might do to public opinion towards homosexual & bisexual people, NOT just transgender activists, because remember that everyone insists it's "LGBT+" and that we're all some kind of interconnected hivemind. I'm especially worried for countries like Poland where things are far less "accepting" than the US or UK, and where this game company is based from. It just seems like fuel against same sex attraction, you know? Like; "oh look, the LGBTs are getting upset over stupid shit again, they're all whiny and oversensitive and we need to get rid of them."

Am I being overdramatic? Am I too sensitive? I just really don't want to be associated with this crap and this... odd trend where it's fashionable to be enraged by everything. I'm not publicly "out", my sexuality is not common knowledge to people I know, and stuff like this just makes me more paranoid about people knowing. The last thing I want is people judging me based on my "LGBT status" or "queer status" - neither label which I consented to, but am assigned to by society. It doesn't matter how many times I say "Actually, I don't consider myself part of the LGBT" or "Please don't call me queer, I don't identify with that term" - I will still be referred to as a "LGBT person" or a "queer person." I talk about my sexuality a lot online, as it's my only current outlet, and I have to make this correction a lot. Nobody remembers and they keep doing it anyway.

I don't want to be blamed for something that trans activists are doing. I don't want people to feel like they have to tread on thin ice around me lest I call them "transphobic" or "homophobic", because I won't. I like to think I'm a pretty laid back and hard to offend guy and I think hate truly is a strong word, so it's rare that I call something -phobic.

And what about the inevitable backlash - that's arguably already happening? I've been in communities that criticize trans and "queer" activism, but they believe it to be a "LGBT" thing, they think homosexual & bisexual people are also responsible for it.

Anyway, I'm rambling and this post is already way too long, so I think I'll end it here. But man, I am pretty sick and tired of people getting so offended over stuff that doesn't matter, especially stuff that contradicts their previous statements. The same people who claim homosexual & heterosexual people are "transphobic" for having a "genital preference" are now saying it's ALSO transphobic to celebrate trans genitalia & mixed sex characteristics. I have no words for the level of hypocrisy and insanity that is. It's apparently impossible to not be "transphobic" - unless, of course, you are trans yourself.