What is it about?
We look at four prominent video games with depictions of transgender characters as case studies and show how these depictions can cause distress (gender dysphoria) in transgender players. We use a range of social theories to explain these experiences, and the reasons range from straightforward stereotyping and objectification to more nuanced experiences from transgender life, as well as certain problems that require an understanding of contemporary anti-trans political rhetoric. Our methodology is thematic analysis applied to a diverse corpus of published sources, written and interactive
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Why is it important?
Inclusive design is a central part of modern human-computer interaction, including games HCI. Transgender people have our own unique inclusivity considerations, but they have received little research attention, specifically within the games HCI subcommunity. This work helps break new ground in trans-inclusive HCI. Because inclusivity issues often intersect across different subcommunities, our techniques and conclusions are likely of interest to researchers in other parts of inclusive HCI as well
Perspectives
Transgender-centric research is also important because transgender people are under attack in much of the world. I recently told one of my transgender students about this project, their response was "I didn't know you were allowed to do trans research." When we as researchers give attention to transgender issues, it sends a much-needed message to trans youth in our own academic communities that they too matter, deserve equality, and deserve friendly supportive relationships with their broader academic communities. Work of this sort does not end transphobia, but that would also be an unrealistic expectation. It does, however, help transgender students see a place for themselves in academia, a more achievable but nontrivial goal
Rose Bohrer
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Analyzing Trans (Mis)Representation in Video Games to Remediate Gender Dysphoria Triggers, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, September 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3611034.
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