Are you a Girl? Or are you a Boy? Part 2 - Queer

Auntie Pixelante, creator of Dys4ia notes that "videogames are one of the few places in life we’re asked “what gender would you like to be? what would you like your body to look like?”" In contrast, her game "exists where that choice does not: it is seeing the reality that has been shaped around you like a wax cocoon, and feeling utterly helpless to change it." 

The game is free and available to play on Newgrounds and documents Auntie's transition to the sex she has always known herself to be. Whereas in Fallout 3 all that is required is to restart the game and select a different gender, Dys4ia plays as a series of impossible minigames. They are designed to undermine player choices, so that in playing the game you experience the barriers that those undergoing gender transition come up against. The first screen is a Tetris shaped body unable to fit through the gap provided. Other barriers include patronising doctors, the search for the right clinic, high blood pressure and the experience of not having one's gender accepted by others. 

In the game, Auntie talks about so called "feminists" who refuse to accept her as a woman. I have no doubt that she suggests that their self-identification as "feminist" is undermined by their unwillingness to support and protect a trans. woman. But in mentioning these women, Auntie recognises a divide between internally understood gender, and the appearance of gender to others. In Fallout, as I mentioned in the previous part of this article, your gender is never challenged: no-one suggests that you might be trans. 

In the real world, the question is asked:
Are you a boy or are you a girl? 

Mattie Brice, a second trans developer explores the ways in which external forces; (particularly the male gaze) enforce specific behaviours upon women. Her game Mainichi is free to download. Initially I played the game without making assumptions about the player avatar's gender. I couldn't understand why my protagonist was so anxious to put on make-up and get dressed up to go for a coffee with a friend. So I milled about the house, played video games and ate left overs. Only  once I leave the apartment and a man verbally assaults me, do I discover that the avatar has a male shaped body.  At the coffee shop I feel so anxious and unnerved I don't want to chat up the cute man at the counter. 

A second play-through involves baths, makeup and best dress. I saunter into the coffee shop and get the previously-frosty barista's phone number. The game clinically outlines that unless I behave according to societal standards of femininity I will outed as a fake. At the point at which internally a trans person should feel most comfortable; when they have moulded their wax cocoon into something that resembles how they believe themselves to be, they are at their most vulnerable. In both Mainichi and Dys4ia, gender is the point of conflict from which the games' tensions spill forth. Each story closes without resolution, Auntie still has to remind people to call her ma'am, and Mattie Brice has to enact a  barbie-fication in order to find limited acceptance. For them both, their gender choice is disputed by a society that will not allow them their convictions. Mainichi and Dys4ia bristle with frustration.. and this anger gives their personal stories realism and depth. They are games that can't be beaten.