Guilty Gear Strive Bridget is now officially trans. Well, as official as you tend to get in video games. Bridget, much like every trans character to come before her, has never said the words “I’m transgender”. To briefly catch up on her story, Bridget was born male but raised as a female, due to her village’s superstition when twins of the same sex are born. For most of her existence, she has been treated as a femboi or a trap, and trans people, starved of any decent representation, have looked to her as an icon – even as large parts of the community fetishized and mocked. In Strive, Bridget discusses her gender journey, and decides that being a woman offers her a sense of gender euphoria. Another character, still coming to grips with everything, calls her “cowgirl,” then quickly corrects himself to “cowboy”, but Bridget tells him that cowgirl is fine because, and I quote, “I’m a girl”.
A character born male openly saying “I’m a girl” is definitive proof that she’s transgender, so why not just say the word? Bridget is far from the only video game character to treat ‘transgender’ as a curse word, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand why. Trans people are no longer mythical creatures. When I was at school, I don’t remember being aware of a single trans person. This is not the reality today. Trans people may be more denigrated today, but we are certainly better known. We are often in newspapers and discussed in courts or the highest political chambers of the world. People hate us. But they know us.
The coyness no longer makes sense. It feels similar to the way bisexual characters were treated on television in the early ’00s. Their presence was increasing, and it was often full of intentions, but it felt empty. Characters rarely said they were bisexual, said they had ‘always been different’, had ‘exotic tastes’, were ‘curious’ or ‘inconspicuous’ or ‘ free’. We still see traces of this cowardice today (see: Loki ), but bisexual characters in the media are, for the most part, less afraid of the word than they were 15 years ago. There are trans illustrations in video games at the beginning of this arc.
When I think back to this recent emergence of video games willing to embrace trans characters, I think of Krem in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Krem is, for all intents and purposes, a trans man, but he does not describe himself in such terms. Instead, like bisexual sitcom characters in very special ’00s episodes, Krem ‘never fit in’ and ‘always been different’. The easy cover for this is that given the age of Dragon Age, the word transgender doesn’t exist, but I call baloney. Dragon Age characters speak in very modern styles, with sarcasm and witty 2010s sarcasm. They share an understanding of sexuality as we do today, and they have no trouble with other terminology. Krem is transgender and should have been allowed to say it.
Lev, in The Last of Us Part 2, is similar. Lev is a sign of huge progress (that the most popular character in perhaps the biggest game of the decade is a massively trans man), but he also doesn’t use the word ‘transgender’ at any point. This is true to form for The Last of Us. She has a queer guide in Ellie, but when she goes to a gay bookstore, neither she nor Dina (who is bisexual), have any knowledge of queer history at all – they don’t even know the Pride flag. Pearl Jam and Jurassic Park are still cultural touchstones in The Last of Us, but gay people ever being a thing is a bridge too far. I know Lev is in a cult and it’s reasonable to assume, from how he’s treated, that queer history has been suppressed, but the game never allows him to discover that he’s not alone , even after he breaks free, is extremely depressing. The fact that it was named only adds insult to injury.
At least the characters we’ve mentioned so far haven’t been deported, in the way Birdo has done. Trans people are, apparently, a really scary concept for developers. I understand the reluctance to include trans people at all, given how busy the conversation is around us, but if we are there, why are you so afraid of the name? Tyler Ronan, star of Tell Me Why, carries trans representation on his back and discusses hormones, top surgery, and being openly transgender. There may be an understandable reluctance, given how heavy-handed Mass Effect: Andromeda was with its Hainly Abrams trans character, leading to heavy backlash, but these depictions need more courage.
Bridget is another positive step for trans people, especially as a less playable trans woman in video games. But as usual, any progress for trans people only reminds us of how far we have to come.
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