“game changers drama” It feels a little weird to be writing about this right now; I mean, trans people are seemingly always dealing with needlessly vicious persecution but given the fact that the unironic genocidal dictator currently running a certain country has literally just decided to officially allow his extrajudicial secret police to target anyone that “looks trans” – days after the supreme court ruled that adult trans healthcare bans are legal – it just feels a little frivolous to be talking about my funny little scene in my funny little video game. Nonetheless, if I’m being honest, I don’t know what the fuck to do about that and the more I think about it the more scared I get that we are all wasting our time here and that, maybe, just maybe, that is one of the most evil things we could be doing at the moment. Anyway I was also lowkey thinking a lot about the recent YFP incident and really just the discourse around gender identity in GC in general. I feel like we have basically been having the same discussions for years and more often than not they seem to only really make the scene look bad, be horribly misconstrued by people on the outside looking in, and actually accomplish very little in terms of advancing GC as a program in val/evolving the concept for the future. I truly think that a majority of you have the scene’s best interests in mind, but these are incredibly complicated discussions to be having, and we should be really careful about our intentions when we talk about this stuff. I really do think GC in val has actually been incredibly successful. If the goal was to develop talent of marginalized genders due to the discrimination they face in esports, maybe even to inspire certain young people that would’ve never had an interest in competing to give it a try, I think these have undeniably been accomplished and if you really want to see more women competing at the highest level of gaming these things probably do scale. One of the problems we seem to run into, in NA at least, is that you probably don’t want to invest into a scene that seems to be constantly involved in witch hunts debating the legitimacy of players’ identities. Every single time you do this, you make me scared that one day these types of programs might simply decide that the only solution is to determine eligibility by “birth sex” or gender markers on ID or some shit, I mean some regions already do to my understanding. Obviously this is a horrible solution, we’ve had this debate for years. There are countless gender identities that, even if you don’t necessarily present outwardly queer, if you were to ask your random tier 3 team to simply show you basic respect and acknowledge your identity, you would experience a good chance of just getting dropped or perma misgendered or ridiculed and dehumanized. Maybe all of the above. On top of all that, there are numerous reasons that trans people might be struggling to get official documents or healthcare (like the highkey genocide) and gating their access to this environment in the most critical years of their careers effectively defeats the purpose for them. Personally I fucking love trans people. I am a trans person. This scene changed my life and I am eternally grateful. I want to keep seeing more and more people of all different kinds under those bright lights standing up and yelling across the stage. I don’t think anyone has a perfect solution, maybe there isn’t one. AnyKey isn’t perfect but honestly man they do a pretty decent job, and I’m just at a point where I feel like we are beyond this. Who are you to say that someone isn’t trans enough to play in GC? Obviously if people are outwardly misogynistic, hateful, dangerous, etc. they have no place in the scene and every gaming community kind of has a responsibility to deal with bad actors, but vagueposting and debating people’s identity is legit gross. Surely if we are truly sure that someone in the scene is disingenuous in their identity, we have actual compelling evidence that can be shared through official channels so that these people can’t just rebrand? I’m sure that a few people have done these things you allege and it sucks, but the beauty of GC is that a few shitty noobs larping cannot defeat the purpose of the program. Is it really worth forcing more trans people to debate the validity of their entire existence – especially now – as, for many of us, our lifesaving healthcare is being taken away, and we legitimately have to worry about being kidnapped with no legal recourse in the “world’s greatest power,” all the while you are effectively shooting your own scene in the foot?