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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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In honor of GTA 6 coming out this year. I'd like to talk about the fake progressiveness of the games industry, particularly, of Rockstar. They apparently have removed content that makes fun of the transgender community in GTA 5. But fascinatingly enough, they dont seem to extend this progressive attitude towards their workers or staff. According to a former employee:

He also described one case involving a colleague who was fired while on paternity leave. “One of our friends in particular had plans that didn’t involve being unceremoniously fired while on paternity leave, just 9 days after the birth of her second child. This is the human cost of this decision, the human cost that wouldn’t have been considered when it was brazenly and recklessly made, because it wasn’t a quantifiable number on a spreadsheet.”

They have had these complaints in the past and were have thought to have gone through a restructuring, apparently according to this new report & some others, that is not the case. I know that at the end of the day they are a corporation that only cares about the financial bottom line, but one thing that bothers me a lot about this kind of progressive outrage is why its so.... selective? Why give more heat towards someone making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in comparison to say, someone being underpaid at the company or not getting the right amount of maternity leave? Things that are arguably much more important? Along with the (quite regressive id argue) decision to make the game completely digital. Is this just a problem with the public caring more about culture war issues than economic ones? Or perhaps they are just more responsive to the culture war outrage because it costs them nothing to adjust?

“One of our friends in particular had plans that didn’t involve being unceremoniously fired while on paternity leave, just 9 days after the birth of her second child.

What is happening with the gendered nouns here?

I've known Chinese people to do this since they lack gendered pronouns. "He", "she" and "it" are one word. In the 20th century they created written gendered versions of these; inspired by gendered Western languages. But spoken is "tā" for everything.

Countless times I've been listening to someone live translate their Chinese language thoughts to English and veer between "he" and "she" even though there is only one subject in the story.

But maybe this is instead radical gender fluidity or the rare post-partum sex change. Or someone wrote down a single incorrect word