I didn't entirely understand the outcry over Hogwarts Legacy, although it was generally depressing to see that people's loyalty to their own stated ethics is so flimsy. It was personally discouraging that many people's entertainment was more important than making sure that the trans people in their lives received the clear message that you will support and choose them, no matter what. However, what was clear from the beginning was that by the time this "wizard game" became a consumer-level decision, the issue was already moot. The boycott was insipid.
With fascist law taking hold in some states and threats toward trans genocide stemming from the conservative right, what should have been informative--and what was telling for me, from the very beginning--was that the game was made at all. The situation was clear in the many dazzling, world-spanning trailers. The issue was obvious when it became evident how well this game was made. Not to mention the raving reviews that came just prior to public release.
The disturbing fact, in addition to the clear expectation that any boycott would fail, should have been evident when it was announced that a AAA game based on Rowling's franchise was being made at all.
From studio, to producers, to quality designers, if trans people were to expect that the rest of world weren't going to go down this road where they would ignore all the clear transphobia and growing threats to trans rights in favor of their own day-to-day comfort and entertainment, then this game would never have been able to have been made. Especially not in the form that it was. It would never have been of the clear quality that it is... It should never have had the resources.
But instead, many educated, quality professionals decided to work on this game. Money and creative minds were invested in the project from it's very inception. Many professionals of all sorts decided that this game should be made, and devoted their time and career to it; rather than deciding not to place another brick on the foundation of a woman who has spent the past three years spouting trans exclusion and vitriol: JK Rowling.
The road was chosen long before consumers had a chance to make their choices. The market's hungry demand was just a projection of an already decided truth in the supply. Thus, a truth in society at large:
Trans people need to realize that a very scary time is very likely to arrive within the next decade, and very few people will involve themselves in doing anything about it until after it has reached a fever pitch, if ever.
This post isn't meant to end in gloom and morbidity. But it is intended to help alert the senses.
I watched a stream from YouTube creater Vaush, in which he debated a trans woman on the legitimacy of the recent Hogwarts Legacy boycott and the outcry of transgender people, when such a boycott was clear to fail.
As stated above. I agree this was doomed to fail. The demands across the internet really irked me at first... But the resulting outcry at the boycott's failure did not. Although I couldn't understand why at first, I did have the same feelings and point of view.
The creator submitted that because the issue was socially and politically alienating to most Americans, that the concerns of the trans woman--and in the larger sense, all trans people--are "retarded" and "stupid". That the outcry drives the public further from political outcomes that favor trans people, and thus that trans people are figuratively shooting themselves in the foot by asking for a type of "virtue signal". He claimed that what the trans woman he was debating was really looking for was friends.
But I know the community at large was not ever asking for a virtue signal. At least, I never asked for that, I don't believe that was the driving ask behind the boycott, and I myself am not even asking for it now. However I do expect that people hold to their ethics and principles, on any general issue. And I do also believe that actions speak louder than words. I think most people believe that.
Vaush, and others who think like him on this issue--whatever part of the political spectrum they may be--speak in their own ignorance. They resound that point of view within the music of a world that seems to have forgotten what individual ethical conviction looks like, and that actions do speak louder than words and further, do speak to the person's truth.
Trans people have lived the past six years seeing more and more rights stripped from them. Each year another bill or law rears its head, trying to harm or eliminate trans people in this space or that one. In this state or that one. More and more powerful transphobes and TERFs come out of hiding and make themselves heard--both on the national scene and in our personal life. At work. At school. At home. In our state governments. In the courts. Each year we loose more ground.
The outcry people are seeing is trans people collectively recognizing a pattern, and working out the contingencies. And while I didn't entirely understand it at first, it is the concern that became the reason for this post. In a few more years, with just a slightly more right-leaning government, we will likely be legislated out of legal existence, and probably worse.
As transphobic messages and laws become more and more pervasive, many trans people are no longer gambling on simply increasing our political allies or campaigning effectively. Many trans people know what future is coming, and they are simply trying to perceive who they can trust. Even if it's a random stranger, we want to know where the possible safe spaces are.
Because when the Gestapo finally do arrive in force, it is abundantly clear that this time we will be the first line of the Niemöller poem. Then, it only takes a few lines before that first is a distant memory. Because, if only in the end you realize there is no one left to speak for you, what chance do trans people have?
And for any forward-looking trans person in this decade, that is were their worries reside. It's not really about a game. It's not about an author. Not really. Its about the sheer volume, and the patterns that seem to be veering our community toward the catastrophically unavoidable.