Given a choice... (a question for trans folks)

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Morgan_R

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I write interactive fiction, in which it's common to give the player a choice of gender for the character they'll be playing.

My question is: Would trans folks be interested in playing characters who are also trans, or would most just prefer to play cis characters of their gender?

Someone brought this up on another board a few weeks back (unfortunately I've forgotten exactly where, as my memory is terrible), and my hunch was that most trans folks would just as soon play as cis. But I certainly could be wrong... and if I am, I'd like to know!
 

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Offer multiple options including Other or Fluid or It Depends because there really are gender fluid folk.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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Serendipitously, Facebook evidently just added 50 new options to choose for gender.

Anther step towards the day when binary gender is not the default. Yeah!
 

DancingMaenid

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I think it depends on how much the character's gender can affect the game. Would picking "FTM" instead of just "male" result in differences (however small) in the narrative? Do these games have a social aspect where other people will be able to see the gender the player chooses? If so, then I think offering multiple choices is a great idea. Otherwise, I'm not sure it makes a big difference. Though not all men are trans men, all trans men are men (and vice versa), so categories like "male" and "female" don't automatically exclude binary-identified trans people, and a character can still be played as trans unless the narrative makes it too clear that they're supposed to be cis. But some people may enjoy being able to make their characters trans even if it doesn't affect the story.

However, it would definitely be nice to offer an "Other" option, especially since that generally will change a story somewhat (like generating different pronouns and titles for the character). I play the online game Fallen London, and I like that I was able to make my character neither male nor female.
 

Invincibility

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One thing to add is that if FTM and MTF are offered as separate options, they shouldn't be offered in addition to just plain "male" and "female", but rather to "cis male" and "cis female". Otherwise it's implying that trans people don't actually count as our genders.
 

Morgan_R

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One thing to add is that if FTM and MTF are offered as separate options, they shouldn't be offered in addition to just plain "male" and "female", but rather to "cis male" and "cis female". Otherwise it's implying that trans people don't actually count as our genders.

Yes, absolutely. It would probably go male/female/other and then trans/cis as a follow-up to the binary options.


I think it depends on how much the character's gender can affect the game. Would picking "FTM" instead of just "male" result in differences (however small) in the narrative? Do these games have a social aspect where other people will be able to see the gender the player chooses?

Yes (though probably small) to the former, no to the latter.


Thank you for the feedback, folks! ^_^
 
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