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Hogwarts Legacy continues to generate controversy. Turns out there's a... transwitch in the game, and a mod that gave that person a more femme voice has already been purged from Nexus Mods. Is not passing a virtue or a source of trans pride now? Just a few years ago, I've been reading Tumblr discussions that went "if there was a magic pill that turned you into an afab woman, would you take it?" - "yes duh".
Yes, I have to admit feeling confusion generated by the reaction to that particular character.
I have encountered zero evidence that the transwitch is characterized poorly, or is made out to be a bad person, or that any other character in the game reacts as if their existence is absurd, offensive, or subhuman. The contempt sometimes shown in-universe to 'mudbloods' seems vitriolic in comparison.
So the stated objections to her depiction are literally her appearance, her voice, and her name, of all things. And actually the name thing is a little weird because Sirona Ryan does imply someone intentionally leaned into the character's identity when choosing it.
But the HP universe is fucking PACKED with weirdly offensive naming conventions, from the Weaselys (I intentionally mispelled for emphasis), to Draco Malfoy, to Luna Lovegood, Rita Skeeter (who literally turns into a bug), and Draco's henchmen, literally named Crabbe and Goyle.
I would argue Sirona's name is completely within the expected conventions of HPverse names, and that even if it was intentionally meant as a nod to her character's nature that isn't good evidence that it's trying to undermine the character.
The appearance, as it happens, doesn't strike me as overtly masculine, although she's certainly on the more butch side if I were to describe it. The voice is also a presumably deliberate choice, but as mentioned the complaints seem based on a Catch-22 wherein if the voice is too feminine then it's erasure, but making it 'non-passing' you're apparently calling attention to their nature as trans?
I get the sense that there is not any way to satisfy the complaints here since 'trans representation' presumably means adding in characters that resemble actual trans people and I'd guess that most transwomen are close to Sirona's phenotype.
And so making the transwoman extremely feminine such that the only way to tell they're trans is to have them straight up say it would come across as erasure.
or should they have gone completely the other way, and had Sirona display full on stereotypical male traits, including a beard, and just had them claim they identified as a woman without a hint of irony?
I think the complaints are based entirely on a bad faith reading of developer intent and thus working backwards to interpreting this character as a malicious, stereotypical depiction meant to demean the trans community. And of course attempted mind-reading like that is a process that tends to reveal one's own biases.
And going against my own advice, I would naively read the developer's intent here as simply normalizing a trans character's existence inside the HPverse by portraying them as what the player might expect a trans woman to look like, and not leaning into caricaturization whilst also avoiding idealization so that the character can stand on her own merits and thus not be a source of controversy within the game. i.e. if all the other characters treat it as fairly normal, there's no need to call extra attention to them or make it a plot element.
And I gotta say, I wonder how one even maps modern gender theory onto wizards, given that there's a clear binary between wizards and muggles, those who have magical power and those who don't, and while there's terms for certain subclasses of each (muggleborns and squibs) I can't think of any way the concept of a 'transwizard' would make sense. A muggle who identifies as a wizard would presumably not display any magical powers.
And with the existence of animagus and polyjuice potions and transfiguration, even if wizards consider gender to be fundamentally binary, they are probably less likely to care about someone modifying their own bodies to conform to any kind of identity different than the one they were born with.
That sums it up, doesn’t it? It characterizes the slapdash claims of antisemitism pretty well. It also catches the bizarre observation that “you can’t make white enough people” from last week’s thread. Actually, that last one is somehow remaining relevant, as commenters can’t seem to stop debating how hot the characters are or aren’t.
People are heavily invested in mining this game for anything they can use.
Also, I don’t think “trans witch” is supposed to mean magical-ability-fluid. It means a character who is magical and also trans.
Hmm. Transmagical?
Either way, kinda gets at the point that there's no known way in the original HPverse for a non-magic-user to gain magical abilities, so there's clearly a binary which can't be hopped across merely by modifying one's body to match their internal beliefs, and so it would be a little ridiculous to portray a person who was born a muggle but later became a wizard in the series.
Would there exist wizards who identify as muggles and thus refuse to use their magic to better conform with their identity?
Show me some books or games that examine that!
And THAT comes across as a way to try and further tar JKR in a way that gets the Jewish community aligned against her. I don't think the people making the complaint truly care if there's serious antisemitism afoot, it's just a tool/weapon for beating the enemy.
Although you can maybe see a point there if you squint and look sideways at the goblin characterization as these ugly little creatures who maintain a separate/parallel society and run all the banks.
But then they start trying to compile 'evidence' for it in a way that starts to resemble Qanon posters.
Well, it's looking increasingly plausible that some writing committee in US corporate HQ made the decision to include such a character, presumably in a meeting that opened with mandatory pronoun announcements and an "indigenous land acknowledgment", then handed all the work off to some eastern european programmer who decided to have a little fun
>trannies went into the code and found out that the NPC character model's name is "MrGirl"
I have no way to verify that tidbit of information as of now.
But I would expect that the majority of players aren't going to come away with a diminished view of trans people so not sure what that would achieve in any event.
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