(March 18, 2023 at 12:28 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: 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.
All good points and like Vaush I think it was pointed out, one can't necessarily justify boycotting Hogwarts Legacy, because we spend our money on other things that cause harm to the world or we are putting money in the pockets of rich immoral assholes all day every day with our purchases, so why single out Hogwarts Legacy, right? And JK Rowling was not even involved in the making of the game. She's only getting some royalties.
But yes, I agree that trans folks need to pick their battles, and the Hogwarts Legacy battle was a big misfire. When trans people's lives are really on the line here and anti-trans legislation is being rammed through and shit's getting real, now is not the time for the boy who cried wolf, which is what the Hogwarts Legacy debacle was. Again though, I blame a select number of activists for this, and not trans people in general, as that would be unfair. But when Vaush and Hassan Piker who go as far as calling the situation in the US right now trans genocide, can't even get the trans ally pass, it's tough out there. Trans and cis need to be able to have differences of opinion while still respecting eachother, because if the trans are expecting their version of perfection from us, they're just not going to get it. Like Destiny said, what trans people need is mid allies that are going to vote for trans rights. They don't need hardcore allies that are going to listen to all their demands and stop buying video games.
