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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.
Every character that talk's about Sirona Ryan is incredibly in favor of them, trusts them implicitly and has only fond memories of them. Even the villains, when confronted by them, treats them with unusual respect and mainly denigrates the downward quality of the pub by the reputation of characters like the PC. My fiancé, who is on the social justice side of things, squealed in excitement at the "Some of them took a while to realize I was a witch and not a wizard line" confirming them as trans.
I'm not sure there is any way to make the trans community really happy, they have so many sacred cows that are, in aggregate, incoherent that there is simply nothing someone can do that can't be taken as hateful if done by someone not in the good graces of the community. It's pure who, whom.
I'll say that I don't think it's the trans community in particular that is causing the controversy. Definitely appears to be the subset of extremely online SJW types who insist that only TOTAL WAR against TERFS is acceptable, and no matter how many other talented people actually put work into the game, the fact that it puts any money into JKR's pocket is an attack on trans people.
Meanwhile I think the reaction of most normies is "Finally, some high-quality escapism." It sells like gangbusters.
I think my favorite part of all this is how it has demonstrated that Reddit is neither representative of the tastes and preferences of the 'real world' at large AND it has minimal power to influence that real world. It is safe to ignore any controversy originating from that site.
True, it is sometimes difficult to separate out the trans advocate group and the trans group. I have some qualms with both on epistemic grounds but despite me thinking the trans group is wrong about their fundamental claims I have no problem living and let live with them. The trans advocates, or whatever I'm to call them, are the problem.
Just note that this difficulty in separating them is the point.
They want to be able to claim that any backlash or counterarguments against their advocacy for trans people is hurting actual trans people.
Meanwhile, I can't trace a single actual harm to any trans person that could be attributed to JKR, who is apparently the final boss of transphobia.
I, too, could easily accept a "live and let live" posture and would happily advocate for protecting trans persons from violence from bigots.
But I just notice that once you grant the motte of "trans people are people and should be accorded full human dignity" then the advocates aggressively pull you down to the bailey:
"That means you have to let them use whichever bathroom they choose;"
"AND you have to let them into womens' sports leagues;"
"AND you have let them into womens' prisons;"
"AND you should be arrested if you misgender them;"
"AND you can't reject sex with them just because they're trans;"
"AND you have to permit pubescent children to get hormone blockers and invasive surgery:"
"AND you have to let us teach your kids that they might be transgender;"
"AND we don't have to tell you if they decide they're transgender, that would put them at risk."
And if you suggest that maybe it would help to slow things down a bit and discuss the implications of all this and set up some reasonable policies this gets you accused of transphobia or maybe even fascism.
And of course there ARE legitimately transphobic people out there who genuinely do see trans people as less-than-human so being lumped in with them is incredibly distasteful to say the least.
I just find it even more distasteful to be gish-galloped into a position that doesn't follow from the premises I actually agreed to.
I think the clearest examples of "harm" would be JKR publicly speaking out against the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill that would have made it easier for people to transition, and which was blocked from receiving royal assent by Scotland Secretary Alister Jack. It's hard to say if the Scotland Secretary would have acted the way he did without prominent voices like JKR preparing the public with arguments about why it should be shut down. To the extent that JKR made it easier for this to happen, she could be blamed for throwing her weight behind the movement to stop the bill from becoming law, for those who believe the law would have been good, pro-trans policy.
The only other "harm" I can think of is the cis-only women's shelter JKR opened up. I'll admit, the argument for harm is a little more esoteric here. It's the same kind of "harm" that the Salvation Army does in occasionally turning away gay people. Is it better that a flawed charity exists than no charity? Absolutely. But perhaps in an ideal world gay homeless people would also have shelters in such places, and trans-women who are the victims of violence would have a space they could go as well.
I'm not sure I agree with the idea that she merely "added another option" to the market. The shelter is private property, and she has every right to deny service to anyone she wants of course (subject to any laws her area may have about discrimination against protected classes.)
However, I think if some eccentric billionaire opened up a new homeless shelter in a town that already had one, and denied service to people whose names started with the letter U, the billionaire would probably be within their rights and also be acting as an arbitrary jerk. Don't get me wrong, the good the billionaire is doing is almost certainly outweighed by any pettiness or arbitrariness he is exhibiting, but I think it would be completely reasonable for people to protest and advocate for the billionaire to start admitting U-namers to his shelter. The main thing here is that A) the infrastructure to help is already there, and B) the group being denied service is small enough that adding them to the pool of people served won't dilute the resources by an appreciable amount.
Ciswomen are obviously capable of sexually attacking ciswomen, and I am sure women's shelters already have ways of dealing with potential abuse between the women they are helping. Especially considering that something like 50% cases of intimate partner violence are "reciprocal" with both partners acting violently against one another.
I have heard anecdotes about the very first women's shelters having to find ways to deal with violent and abusive women who made things worse for other women at the shelters. That being the case, I don't actually see much reason to be concerned about transwomen being admitted - screen them with the normal risk-assessment profile they use for everyone being admitted, and if the risk is too great ask the woman involved to find some other service to help them.
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perhaps even after that men may get their own shelter.
Sure, in an ideal world there would be sufficient resources for society to organize to help all people no matter what difficulties life throws at them. In our imperfect one, we're left to rely on what limited resources charity and government intervention can bring to bear on various problems.
I've already said that I'll accept imperfect charities as a practical matter, but I think the criticism with something like the Salvation Army or JKR's Beira's Place is that the populations they're denying service (gay people, trans women respectively) aren't going to add that much strain on their resources, and it seems petty to deny them.
Hopefully, if it is felt that there is some large unmet need for rape crisis centers for men in the Lothians area, someone will try to open such a facility.
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