[Serious] That Trans Thread

[Rev. Rye]

I followed the controversy behind that, and while I get the impulse behind the boycott, (and when Jessie Gender makes a 4-hour video about it and you watch the whole damn thing, it’s kind of hard to not do so), I do believe it’s probably the sort of moral wankery that doesn’t really work out in the real world.





Yeah, no shit JoJo’s devoting her time to fucking with trans folk. No shit she’s gone on record saying that as long as the royalties keep coming in, she doesn’t care that she’s alienated a good-sized portion of her fan base. But, frankly, this could only have ever ended one way. Boycotts only work on local scale, with individualized and targeted action )like, say, the Montgomery Bus Boycott). Anything else, especially with, say, an internationally released game that’s part of a franchise that rakes in hundreds of millions with every new installment, even if they haven’t been anything to write home about since 2007, is doomed to fail, even at the best of times.

All shit like that does is drum up a bunch of free publicity for the game, maybe make people want to see how bad it is for themselves. Fuck knows I’ve spent every week for the last couple years watching movies I’d most likely have never even heard of if people hadn’t taken the time to say how horrible they were.

Add to it that the controversy is an issue that’s controversial in such a way that, even if the content itself is abhorrent, any controversy is guaranteed to rack up endorsements from right-wingers who want to promote the game out of spite. Add in the controversy that comes when boycott supporters try and harass streamers who are normally allies, the boycott just becomes a liability.

You want to show the world that transphobia is not okay? Maybe find a way to inform the world in a way that isn’t guaranteed to make shit worse for you.