Video Games and the Transgender Experience (VIDEO ESSAY) 

I really enjoyed this vid and decided to check out your chanel, only to be really surprised to see some Gridman stuff! More on topic though, as someone who over a year ago declared I was MTF trans to my close online social group, yet still struggles to actually legally afirm my gender, I really appreciate this video where you share your experiences through this lens. I think this will actually be the final push I need to call up my GP and ask to talk about a Gender Dysphoria diagnosis. If I remember I'll put a reply under this giving a tiny update lol. However, even if I don't, thank you for making this, it really did help!

i'm trans-masc and i love character creation and before i always ended up picking femme options because i didn't like the boring big burly masc options. for the longest time i thought that meant i wasn't trans until i started modding my games to let me make twinks and it was all over from then on.

Honestly the first time I felt gender euphoria was when playing VRChat whilst doing a femvoice. Back then I wanted to understand firsthand how women were treated in online communities. I was playing something and someone joined. They were named Ms, Kitty. Back then my avatar was a femboy avatar with cat ears. So when someone was talking to that person, I thought they were referring to me. It felt warm inside, as if I was hugged, it felt like I had finally achieved something truly wonderful. To say the least it's been a few months and yeah, turns out I was transfem all along.

As an afab person i always loved video games but my parents didnt think it was important for me to play them, as an adult transitioning its been a very healing experience to be able to play the games i loved to watch on yt as a kid

made the mistake of giving my cis friend a copy of celeste for his birthday, She loves it.

Celeste was the game that kicked off me getting my life more in order. I may not be able to drive, hold a job, or live on my own, but I was able to get enough order in life to have SSI.

tbh in the US 66% of males identify as Gamers and 65% of females identify as gamers so its a common thing among females. its just that in the US the false idea is most tv is watched by males, most movies are watched by males, most music is listened too by males, most games are played by males. basically media "geared" towards women is almost nonexistent due to the idea that most product is consumed by males.

I can say with my full heart that Skullgirls is super supportive to trans people and the LGBTQ community and has helped many discover themselves.

This essay explains to me so well what I love about video games. I am a transmasculine person with an addiction to RPGs, to put it simply. However, I love being able to come home after a long day of doing whatever and sit down and play a game through the lense of a man who is beating up monsters and saving the world. What I can't have in real life and what is restricted from me because of my biological sex can be fulfilled through video games in more personally symbolic ways. So, I truly thank you for making this video essay because it answered a question I've had for so long regarding my identity and love for video games.

Celeste taught me that trans people can double jump

this video really helped me highlight my own LGBT experiences (cis bi male) once I started getting into offline video game events. When I was 14, I had just graduated from my catholic school where I wrestled with gay thoughts telling myself every day that I wasn't gay. Then I went to high school and one of my friends told me about local Smash tournaments. I started going and it was a massive culture shock. So many LGBT people were there. They were out and proud, and they were usually the ones WINNING the damn tournaments. Being around so much support, I finally felt comfortable to admit to myself and to my friends that I was bi. I didn't even know 99% of the people there, but I knew that it was a safe place for me to be casually open about my sexuality. My local smash scene knew I was bi for THREE YEARS before I told my parents. I love video games so much.

As an AFAB nonbinary-trans person, I grew up loving video games, but had an incredibly different experience with them and a different kind of love cultivated in me than my AMAB trans partner. I grew up watching my dad play Portals 1&2, Half Life 2, Mass Effect 3, Alan Wake, Dead Space, Bioshock, and other such games of the sort. Some of my earliest memories are of me laying on my parents' bed watching them play WOW, only to transfer to my mom's lap when she logged off to play Diablo while i spectated and mimicked "not enough mana." I grew up loving video games as an outside observer who rarely engaged in hands-on gaming. As i got older i got my own computer and began playing Gmod, then Minecraft, then some F2P MMOs that i found on Steam which carried me into my teenhood and eventually, once I began dating my parter, I got into FPS games like Overwatch, COD, and TF2, and survival multiplayer horror, like DBD and Phasmaphobia. I still carry my observational love of games into actual play with my playstyle, choosing to play supports or snipers, people who overlook the battlefield and keep tabs on everything and everyone or being the gen-jockey/healer or playing the van guy. My partner on the other hand, was playing in COD lobbies as a very young child. They grew up playing hands-on with their older family members spectating and teaching them. They tend to go for hands-on characters like DPS or Tanks, they're more confident when taking duels, are willing to take on the pressure of making a game changing play, and are overall better mechanically than I am. They grew up with controllers in their hands and a mouse and keyboard as an extension of themself and are far more comfortable being the one to charge ahead as a result of a lifetime of hands-on play, whereas I'm behind them cheering them on and being the one to scrape them off the ground when I spot the sniper aiming for their head that they missed lol

Should have expected FF14 would come up just from the title lol. The FGC portion was interesting as I don't go to any local scene. There's an irony in LGBTQ+ being drawn to online spaces because we won't be judged by our physical at tributes, but being more safe in a local scene because face-to-face hatred has greater social risk. This video would be a great companion to Transparency's videos on FF14 and Celeste - their videos agree with yours, but come from distinct viewpoints and your expression feels very different. It's pretty beautiful when similarly marginalised people feel the same thing in different ways Not too insightful, but an iconic gender moment from my (AFAB) childhood was that I instinctively thought player character Red from Pokémon Red/Blue was supposed to be of ambiguous gender. There isn't much direct acknowledgement of his gender, and I'd just assumed the vague shape of the hair and face was so he could be interpreted as a boyish girl. Extremely cis thing to think. It wasn't until I was into my teens that I found out his gender wasn't up to interpretation and in every other game he's more obviously masculine. That being said, adult Red from S/M gives me huge trans guy vibes and I get a kick out of imagining that Red literally holed himself up in a cave for a couple of years for his transition. My misinterpretation became a tidy, canon-compliant headcanon: trans boy Red.

Being trans sucks, I just have to sit and wait for school to be over, so I can leave my parents in the dirt and go to uni, so I can finally transition…then what? Having to sit and fight every single day just for the privilege to live shouldn’t be a thing, and I hate it.

Oddly enough, I've met the most trans people in TF2 for some reason. Or, at least the ones who are most open about it. I don’t really understand why. In most other multi-player fps games of its kind, I don't encounter many.

I actually wrote a 12 page essay on something similar to this topic :)

Pokemon: "Are you a boy or a girl?" Trans people: "nervous laughter." Edit: Of course you are talking about Celeste.

i’m a trans man and oh god there’s like no trans masc rep in games that doesn’t ring completely hollow. cool there’s like one trans masculine dragon age character and that’s like it. i mostly play rpgs or horror games. games like fallout new vegas or the outer worlds let me pretend to be just some guy. someone who is a man but isn’t me. i write stories for all of the characters i play lol. silent hill 2 and 3 are gender as horror, they feel like how gender as a system feels to me. it provides catharsis and comfort. games like resident evil 7-8 and outlast allow me to experience strong emotions like fear and sadness complete disconnected from any identity. ethan and milo might as well not exist, the horror exists separate from them. the horror exists separate from me.

Man even LTG isn't transphobic, i think they just went beyond humanity and found more lgbt+ friendly ways to be toxic

The first game that told me that I enjoyed playing as a woman was Fallout in 1997. Yes, I had played Chun Li as my main in SF2, because I liked her mobility and the stomp. But I started the isometric RPG and decided to play a woman the first time out, she was a savvy talker and scientist named Lain. The name came from the anime, and I had heard about the game’s choices to play as a good or evil character in this post-nuclear wasteland. I loved the game. I did an evil playthrough as a man, but it felt just wrong. And so when Fallout 2 came out and I was in undergrad, I started again as Lain, named after her legendary ancestor, and she saved her village and the Wastes, staying morally upright. Anyway, I played a LOT of BioWare games, and I kept playing as a woman, going for a paragon, with communication and incorruptibility. My egg cracked four years ago, when I was mostly not playing many video games and was mostly playing MTG in Japan. I had been a minor MTG personality at events there and had a few high finishes. It had nothing to do with gaming at the time, since I hadn’t met any trans players in JP. But I knew a few in the online MTG community. I had two American colleagues who I came out to with my new name (which I had been using in games for 20 years). I just didn’t know that I was roleplaying as… myself. These days I don’t play Magic, but I do go regularly to a ladies’ pinball league while back in the States, and we cheer each other on. About a third of us are trans girls or enbies, and the rest are almost all cis lesbians or bi. And it’s great as we share tactics and strategies and drink and talk between games. Some of the players join the open night as well, but the guys who are not that good try to compensate with trash talk, so I don’t. I am happy hanging out with other girls and sharing stories between taking turns with the flippers and plunger. We do a lot of other things, like barbecues, film, going to cabarets and plays. And it’s great having a found family.

I’ve been struggling with my identity for a long, long time, and having characters like Bridget and Madeline from Guilty Gear and Celeste respectively helped a lot in accepting who I was. Weirdly enough a character who is not confirmed trans made me realize I was trans, and that’s Noelle Holiday (I will fight for my trans headcanon to become reality)

You rip and tear, babe. You rip and tear

My favourite thing about trans people and video games is how trans women, - even though changing their whole lived experience as they come out. Still play male-dominated video games, like Dark Souls. While trans men still play the games that have sort of been branded as «girly» like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. It’s a weird psychology thing that I find very interesting.

All I'll say is that life should come with a character creator.

im an afab transmasc nonbinary person and. gaming has been incredibly important to me throughout my life. i got my hands on twilight princess when i was 9 and despite at first being unsure because of "princess" in the title, it entirely blew me away from anything i was expecting. link was someone i wanted to be, not just in some heroic sense, but his gender presentation and just. link is so integral to my gender man. tw, ss, botw, and totk... all so important to me throughout my lift and self journey.

FFXIV was a big thing for me working through questioning my gender. Made my self-insert enby catboy (it was a stepping stone to accepting and embracing being transfem), Ehri'to Nelhah, and shortly after some dresses were no longer gender-locked. I was so happy about that, and I got used to expressing myself more effeminately. I joined an FC that was honestly my first long-term interaction with the LGBT community on a regular basis, and though they may not know it they're a group of people that are profoundly important to me. (They were the group of people who helped me decide on my legal name, although they also don't know that. In the Discord a couple of FC members were in the vc and helped me with a duty I hadn't done yet, and we used the names of our WoLs to refer to each other. They hit me with "Ehri" and instant euphoria. FFXIV actually named me.) Then in the post ARR quests (I think? maybe it was Heavensward and I'm bad at remembering?) they give you a Fantasia as a reward, and I put that in my chocobo's saddlebag and just kinda left it there. I didn't stop thinking about it, but it wasn't until after Stormblood, going into Shadowbringers that I finally used it. All I did was swap the gender of my WoL. Kept everything as 1-to-1 as I could. My lil Keeper of the Moon Mi'qote catgirl. I kept the lore-accurate male Mi'qote name Ehri'to, because I didn't want to erase my (and by extension my WoL) being trans. It was like going through a practice run of a gender transition, complete with gender affirming hormone therapy in the form of a magic potion. FFXIV was a huge stepping stone in my coming out to my wife, my irl friends, and even to myself. Then fast forward to GG Strive and Brisket coming out as trans and boom, I'm in my golden age of being out and fucking happy.

as a trans masc person for me it was DnD and Stardew Valley that helped me discover my identity. i've played a lot of games as a kid but they were mostly either arcade type ones depending mostly on quick reactions and skills or escape rooms and other riddle stuff so i didn't pay much attention to my identity within the game, i was just doing stuff and seeing my progress. since i first played pen and paper rpgs i've only played as male or nonbinary characters, trying to explain it to myself as internalized misogyny but it just always felt right. the turning point was when my other trans friend itroduced me to Stardew Valley and convinced me to buy it so we could play together. shortly after we forgot about our shared world and then i started to play on my own, making my first single player game and choosing a male character. being able to interact with the npcs, especially romanticly and having them see me as a man had a magical liberating feeling to it that i don't think i've ever experienced before. it wasn't like playing a male/masc nb character in DnD where the people who i played with knew that i was afab, i was on my own and the npcs couldn't possibly have known what i look like or how others see me behind the screen. i don't know how to better explain it but while playing i wasn't just acting as a male character, the character was just me, it looked like me and it interacted with the world and characters around him like i would. i was never a fan of multiplayer or competitive gaming. for me the best thing about video games is being thrown into a world where nobody knows you and freely discovering it and the story someone has created for this exact purpose. nowadays my fav game genre is probably adventure, especially indies cause they offer the best, most interestiing and original narratives but i still like to launch my old Stardew world from time to time and chill there for a bit. i also really wanna play Disco Elysium since it's like Celeste for trans guys and it's an adventure/rpg

I still live with my very transphobic conservative parents. The escapism video games give me help. I hope I can transition one day.

Love this! I think fighting games as media also have a long history of diversity being part of the aesthetic and values. As a designer we want diverse playstyles/mechanics and that necessitates a diverse cast of characters. And while fg's have a ton of great trans and non-conforming characters I think it resonating with trans girls also had a lot to do with just showing different types of girls. Lots of different ways of being talented. Lots of different ways of being strong. Lots of different ways of being pretty. "Wait... I can be THAT girl? I can be cute AND strong!?" For me it was Racheal [sic] from Martial Champions.

As a transmasc nonbinary gamer, i absolutely get why there aren't too many of us (at least not any public ones, i think there may be more solo games out there :) ) We're not welcome in the "girly" games we grew up with bc those games tend to be girls only, pink, glitter & princesses (and just bad quality wise bc girl games are still not a market "worth funding"🙄) and we're not welcome in "manly" games either bc their fanbases tend to be those queerphobic alpha/sigma male gamer guy bros, additionally i often feel like 'non girly' games are out of my skills bc i couldn't learn how to play them at a young age, the controls, mechanics etc just don't come naturally to me :/ and thus I lack behind the average player of those games largerly And i also don't enjoy those power fantasy hyper masculine characters very much,I don't feel my body type nor my ideal body type represented by them at all! Respect to any transfems that is openly trans/feminine in chats in toxic games❤ Misogynie is already awful enough in those chats but additionally transphobia😨

Absolutely fantastic essay, very insightful and empowering, brought up a lot of points and connections I'd never have thought of otherwise. Thank you for this, looking forward to more!

I can't speak to fighting game or MMO experiences, but as a transmasc, my most recent major memories of gender euphoria were very firmly in both rooted in the power fantasies inherent to both The Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. In the Witcher, I get to roleplay as a big masc grumpy asexual dad with an often snatched waist who helps people solve their problems and is a (sometimes) respected badass freelance magical park ranger and in zelda, Link is a very tiny, very androgynous looking aroace young man who almost has superpowers of strength and speed with bullet time shooting, and everyone respects him as masculine and even attractive! He is shaped almost exactly like me, at exactly my height, and playing this game for the first time coincidentally after getting top surgery has been one of the best experiences in my entire life as a trans gamer and a creative person. I have been chugging gender euphoria like gatorade on a hot day for like three years now because of this little guy and his cute little hips and face I cannot tell you how many transmasculine and/or asexual people there are in the zelda fandom, and cosplay/writing fan communities in general, but it has been a wonderfully affirming experience for a long, long time

I love the journey of discovery video games can take us on, both in terms of our own experience and understanding the experience of others. For me I've almost always been drawn to characters who are not like me, and playing as these characters opened my mind to a lot of things. Characters like Sonic and Chun Li and Samus and Ramza Beoulve and absolutely without a doubt Madeline. I think of how much my understanding of the world was shaped by respecting and understanding these characters, and I think it has been a profound help in making me a better person.

One point that I wanted to make for the flocking of trans people in videogames as a media is the fact that the Japanese/Asian videogames have done a lot of the work. In a sort of assbackwards way to see the world for us westerners, there, it is way more acceptable to be trans than being gay, but the reason is very easy to understand: a Trans woman can still embody "traditional" gender roles, as opposed to a lesbian woman, and a Trans man can do the same opposed to a gay man. The funny thing is that trans people tend, more often (from what I've seen), to fall onto the homosexual spectrum.

I was going to Riptide 2022, a Smash Brothers/Guilty Gear/Splatoon major, and I’ve never seen so many trans women in one place in my life. I remember there was a stand selling Mimikyu Eveelution plushies, and when I asked about the Sylveon one, the guy there told me it sold out within an hour on the first day. Fighting Games are fucking awesome

It's interesting to have found someone else who found (and likely continues to find) a lot of gender euphoria in Final Fantasy 14. Also, want to point it out that Catherine: Full Body doesn't technically introduce a trans character. HOWEVER, Catherine from the get-go has had one, and they are one of the best characters.

Videogames help me tame the body dysmorphia. I made the terrible career choice of being a mechanic, so I can never ever transition lest I be nailed to a cross. At least for now.

😭💞🏳‍⚧ That entire Mountain analogy at the end, there... Holy heck do I feel seen. 🏳‍⚧💞 😭

Transmasc here! I find it interesting that your focus in the first half of this is in fighting games, as it contrasts heavily with my own experiences. I'm... comeptitive, to the point where competitive games are often bad for me because I tend to break things when I lose too often. But even before getting to that point, being bad at fighting games gave me this sense of insecurity that I can only interperet as early dysphoria. That aside, my own exploration of gender started when I was around 8, on club penguin, when I chose a gender neutral appearance to start and people assumed I was male. It does make me wonder if transmasc eggs tend to crack sooner because a neutral presentation being interpeted in such a way leads to easier "passing" in online spaces? It's an interesting thought. It's also generally easier to embody a character as a means of having gender euphoria in most games as a guy because, well... male is the default for most games. I could be Sora from KH, I could be Link from loz. Girls get Samus, but even then her regular appearance intentionally obfuscates her gender.... but I'm rambling. This is an excellent video. :]

I'm happy Skullgirls is not only such a great game but can also have these awesome top players who can help others feel welcome.

Nice essay! Also I'd like to add to the beginning of the video where you asked for afab trans ppl's input, specifically I wanted to point out the part where you said, "video games are male dominated." While yes, this is technically true (men are more vocal abt being gamers and video game companies market much more to men than women). In actuality studies show that women play games just as often or more often than men. Mostly women seem to play mobile games or laid-back story driven games. However due to the mainstream gaming sphere being more aggressively competitive (due in large part to loud cishet men), "casuals" (usually women who play laid-back games) are laughed out of the community or have to prove their worth. Additionally, despite the fact that MANY women had huge roles in creating a lotta popular video games in the early days of gaming, they were rarely properly credited, having them being forgotten or ignored by history. So as a result of growing up in this environment, women and (I suspect) afab trans ppl often aren't very vocal in their gaming interests or don't allow themselves to fully indulge in gaming, or at least not outside their own small, niche communities. There's also the fact that video games rarely (negatively or positively) depict trans men. Whenever I hear abt transgender video game characters it's always trans women or androgynous characters but never trans men, at least not until recently and even then the trans men characters aren't nearly as popular as Birdo or Bridget except for maybe Mettaton from Undertale ig. (Additionally when you Google "the first trans man video game character" the first result is Birdo who's canonically a trans woman and the other results are other various nonbinary and trans woman characters, so there's that) Point being, I think the reason why we don't see as many transmascs in gaming isn't bc there aren't as many transmasc gamers as there are transfem gamers, but more so because (similarly to cisgender women) we've been ignored, forgotten or (directly or indirectly) forced out of the mainstream gaming sphere from a very early age and even after we've transitioned (especially since a lotta us don't fully "pass", so we still get sexualized or get misogyny thrown our way by cishet men.)

How does this only have 900 views?? This is really good!

Good video. I wrote a massive and in depth comment about my experience being a few years older than you and going through similar things at a time when our horizons were different, but I'm on mobile and tapped out of the field and lost the whole thing. Not only did we endxup in mass graves in WW2, or passing alone and unmourned in Reagan's genocide, but now, the very design of technology conspires to suppress knowledge of our history! (That last bit was tongue in cheek, but the way these social platforms work really does restrain the very possibility of nuanced discussion to nearly nothing.)

Re: FFXIV. I was stunned by how many other trans people there were around me when my egg cracked. But I'd been playing with my gender and thinking I was doing something awful for almost two decades. Starting in RP chats, and then in EverQuest and WoW. But I had to be undercover about being "male" because there WAS a stigma back then. I ended up doing some kind of roleplay inception where I was playing a mage who was played by the kind of girl I wished I was, being played by the person I actually was.

As someone who is very much a cisgender woman, I find this interesting. We all have our own little experiences with games, and that's what makes them great. :)

Loved this! As a older mtf transgender gal playing rpgs such as final fantasy gave me something I could relate to on a experiential level.

that's a really cool video. and yeah, as a fellow trans girl, i agree with everything. but talking about ffxiv is almost like cheating. that's the game with the most acceptance i've seen in ages, even compared to trans reddit. but we need more trans man representation, trans woman are being represented really well, look at guilty gear, but where do we even see a trans man? also, i feel what you said about voice chats in games. i mean, i plan on training my voice, but, some people feel confortable with their voices, wich, amazing to them, i can't, and, hearing your voice, yeah, no doubt that people might trat you poorly. but i belive that we, as a society, will get better in some years, but the us politics shows us that either way, there will be people aggainst us even in the most trans positive states.

Hatsune Miku gives me gender envy

Genuinely really insightful, it's great that communities like these are there to empower marginalized people but christ it's bleak thar just having a community to go to or owning a home are power fantasy ideas. Hope those dynamics get better soon

litterally went "SAME" out loud during the intro, beacause when i was 7 or 8 we had a retro gaming club at my school and there was an old coop beat them all game with a girl barbarian character and i just wanted to be like her sooo bad

As a transfem fighting game player, I 1000% agree with what you say about the FGC in comparison to other esports. I feel like I can pursue higher levels of play without the fear of bigotry weighing me down.

8 months later, this is still the video i credit for bringing my experience in to focus and making me accept myself. Tysm.

i needed this video thx for shedding some light on the topic you go girl

Hey friend this is absolutely beautiful

I just stumbled upon this and it really resonated for me in some interesting (and some very sentimental) ways as a transmasculine person, and I thought I’d share. I think it’s super interesting that you tie the trans appeal of games specifically to multiplayer games and settings, because for me it’s very much the other way around. I grew up fascinated by video games but kind of scared of the culture around them. This was like 2010-2015 dawn of the reddit neckbeard times and these spaces were dressed up not only as really hostile towards women, but also as hyper-competitive and really easy to sort of ‘fail out of’ - so there was this double threat of, on one hand being singled specifically for ‘being a girl’ (which for obvious reasons felt really bad), and maybe even more importantly - the prospect of failing at masculinity through ‘bad gaming’ in public view. I think this has a lot to do with not growing into it, but coming into the hobby later on. I played assorted horse sim games growing up and then saved up at 13 to buy myself a PS4, specifically so I could play Dragon Age Inquisition - my crunchy looking, egg-cracking origin story of a game. And I remember really liking the single-playerness of it, the fact that nobody was there to say wether I played well or not, and at the same time a little bit of gender euphoria about being in that world at all. I made a male character and I made him gay and that was really elemental to my egg cracking; because experiencing romance through the lens of my male character gave me access to those very hard to pin down feelings reserved specially for the trans-flavoured homosexuals. Which is good, because everyone knows that DAI has much(!) better character writing than it does combat mechanics. I realised I was trans around the time I finished that first DAI play through and the for various reasons was mostly closeted for another 4 years. What you say about video games offering a space to express and live gender away from any scrutiny rings extremely true to me. It was super healing for me during that time to just be a twunk with a weapon for a few hours no questions asked. I think the only difference is that these were always non-competitive and non-social settings and that that was a crucial part of it for the longest time. Witcher 3 is the game that finally made me fall in love with games being mechanically challenging. I picked it up because I loved the novels and then played it intensely during lockdown. And I think in a way that also offered me a way to tap into a sort of aggression and ambition in play that I wasn’t allowed and/or didn’t allow myself growing up. I think it’s only fitting that did come out publicly as trans shortly before finishing the main story. So I relate all-round to the incredibly trans potential of the choosable identity, maybe even with the added bonus of the masculinist vibe of a lot of Action RPG type games; but specifically alone and in private, like a little secret slice of boyhood, as a treat. I moved abroad to uni that fall, taking my aging PS4 with me so I could finish Witcher 3. That was the first new environment I ever went into where nobody remembered a time where I wasn’t trans, and I immediately made friends with a cis guy who was a big gamer; classically trained if you will. I do think neither the yearning-by-proxy nor the quiet grinding live quite up to this dude genuinely being impressed at my combat skills (400 concentrated closet-fuelled lockdown hours will do that) and taking turns playing Dark Souls in his dorm room. That moment of connection and camaraderie was always both the ultimate fear and the ultimate dream I think. So I guess its does loop back around into the social realm in the end. Anyways, I’m 24 now, I’ve been out for a good while, on my way to get top surgery soon, and I’ve just finished my 4th full play through of DAI, which I still love to death. :)

I love this video! Gave me good insight. I have met trans people through my job and discussed competitive fighting games with them. I kinda feel bad now, like I dismissed why it was important to them because I don't care that much about competitive play. I like the games purely for the art. This video gave me something to think about! I also really love the positive take on gaming here, even if toxicity is so high in online games. I just avoid online games myself, haha~ It's refreshing to hear about positive gaming experiences!

Such a great video, you deserve more subscribers.

needed this today, truly a amazing essay. your way with words just make me feel something

Not the "Heal" song from ICO at the ending slide. Did we all live the same life lol

Yo, great video. I'm trans myself and just wanted to mention this reminded me of when a supporting character in the game indivisible gave me the idea of what name to go with for myself, and that character is Leilani. She's such a fun character character in that game and this video reminds me of that a lot.

I've always described myself as "not a girl not a boy but kind of both too depends on the day" and this was really nice to watch..

was waiting the whole vid for spatoon to get mentioned

Back in June of this year I started playing Guild Wars 2 again after having left way back when Living World Season 1 was being released (pre-Heart of Thorns expansion). There was a Tyria Pride march event and I wanted to join them and see how the game was doing overall. It was so much bigger than I could have imagined, filling up multiple map instances. So many cool outfits and funny LGBT gimmick characters like "Transhearne", with even ArenaNet employees joining in and marching with everyone. I found some LGBT-friendly guilds through the events and have been playing with them since. Anyway, the first time I was doing fractals with one of these guilds, a type of content in the game like mini-dungeons where the higher difficulty tiers have rotating modifiers, I noticed something I'd seen in the march but hadn't fully registered the significance of. Right in the area where you gather to form parties before entering the fractals, there's an NPC named Aid Worker Sya. Every now and then, Sya chatters with another NPC about a past event but the other NPC does not recognize her. She explains that at the time, she was Symon. With the tragedies she experienced, she realized that life was too short not to live authentically and used Mesmer illusion magic to aid in her transition. I knew of Sya before doing fractals, but it struck me then that her placement in such an important hub of activity was likely deliberate. That *somebody* in the staff at Anet wanted Sya to be seen, and by proxy for trans people to *feel* seen.

Ooooh, another youtube video essay girl to watch~! And thus the torch that has been burning bright from aaaallll the way back with the Pedantic Romantic and Zeria is passed on once more ;p

my first "I want to be her" moment gotta be Zinnia from pokemon ORAS and my most recent Yuffie from FF7 remake So much has changed yet so little

i love that last part with celeste because at the same time i was almost crying because of the beautiful things you were saying about how games make you feel like *you* could get through things and also completely incredulous thinking _"holy shit how is she so good at celeste"_

I played as a girl a few notable times growing up, but always got bullied for it until I stuck to playing male characters. I even played as a male character when I first started FFXIV, and I realized I was trans elsewhere, but changing my character into a girl and being her in game was a huge part of my gender exploration. Honestly I really want to make a cosplay of my main RDM glam because it would make me so so happy to actually look like my idealized video game avatar irl, my hair is almost as long as hers now too so I could get pretty close.

The FFIXV bit honestly made me cry it resonates so much to me I was always a huge fan of MMORPG's bc of the personalization and the life I could have, and later on when I figured that I don't have to conform with society's norm it became a way to live whatever way I want at moment I'm a transmasculine non-binary person with also a huge love for feminine things that I can't get myself to use IRL because people in general would see this as a reason to question me or just outright be completely assholes, but in online spaces I can be what I want That's the major reason that I'm incredible excited to see more and more videogames letting you pick your own pronouns instead of defining them and your entire gender based on your aparency! Or, hell, many doens't even have gender at all, just a customizable silly lad so thank you so much for doing this, it truly meant a lot for me And I just hope those games keep on bringing you joy

FFXIV was my favorite avenue for gender expression and still is! (*Cough* Goopy Gummy on Primal Ultros)

trans guy here. i've went down another rabbithole of media trans analysis vids with this being one of them and...even if it's very transfem-centric [not a bad thing but it does make me feel like i'm the only one in the world who doesn't want to be a woman sometimes], it beckoned me to see more into myself regarding my relationship with masculinity. even if this ain't no video game thing, i found out i was trans through...fist of the north star. i guess that's related due to that manga having games too including that arcsys fighting game one that's broken as shit. regarding representation in games though? i haven't seen a single peep of a trans man, especially in fighting games--and while i'm fine with any sort of man, personally when i *really* wanna see *me*, someone whose body and appearance goals is basically ''bishounen brick shithouse'' as i described it [androgynous while still recognizably masculine/male, while also not being mobile dating game ass levels of skinny lanky man or ever so gently toned as to not scare the hoes--but rather..actually beefy. actually muscular with some mass, and also is cool man while still being elegant if need be [all of this can be traced back to the fist of the north star bit--rei made me trans]]...nobody in gaming as far as i see fits that. literally not a single trans male character out there in this medium does. not even in any media from what i've seen. and i especially don't want to see games where it's Personal Heartwrenching Story With Gameplay Attatched Ig either, or stuff like life is strange or celeste. what i want is a action game for once where it never gets too sappy. what i want is a fighting game or a hack and slash or a beat 'em up, and what i want is a character that i can geniuenely see myself in or project myself onto. in short i don't think there exists any trans male character that even remotely resembles me or my sense of masculinity at all in media as much as i'm happy that there exists trans guys at all and honestly: if girls got bridget, where's mine? especially when i bet there's other trans boys like me who want to see something more than the usual-though maybe...again, i may be the only one who wants a somewhat macho trans guy for once because i myself align myself with such things. aside from that giant massive dump, got nothing else to say

Ngl, I've been choosing female characters forever because I always was like "this is cuter" or "I prefer this design" Until recently when I started playing MH Rise, when finishing quests and the village talking about how great I did and what a nice huntress I was, it felt great, idk if it was euphoria or just satisfaction for advancing in the game. It was a little crack on the shell, a shell thay for personal reasons I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get out of. But I'm so happy and supportive for everyone that manages to do it!!

i remember when i first started celeste i was like "EWWW the main character is trans?! they ruined such a good character!!" ... im a celeste grandmaster rn and im a trans girl :3 also damn this video is so cool!!!! okay last edit: wow.. that ending almost made me tear up ;w;

the story you said about resonating with Akira reminds me of an early experience i had when i tried pretending to be Samus irl bc i had gotten a toy whip and she was my fav character in Super Smash Bros Brawl i might've bruised my knee because i didn't have alien bird dna to be more acrobatic but it still felt nice

Thank you for this video. Also, really well done. Concise, insightful, and well executed. Slay, Queen.

21:35 nice corner jump btw!!!!

This video made me realize and accept that I'm trans. It made me look back on my life. All the times I did feel gender euphoria was when I was either referred to as a woman or genuinely felt more feminine ig. growing my hair out. It made me realize that there might be more to that and I started questioning myself and considered if I was gonna be happier to continue being forced into my assigned gender or if I was gonna be more comfortable taking a risk and becoming more like what I wanted to be, a girl. All the people I've come out to thus far have been super accepting and understanding and I honestly can't believe my luck with that. All I wanna say is thank you for making this video, it helped immensely

You know, I've been playing skullgirls for years now but I've never, ever played another character other than beowulf. Does that make me less trans or something? Cause ever since I was 12 I've had this feeling of being wrong, something wrong with my body.

I'm AFAB, and I've been playing games nearly my whole life. The first game I remember playing and owning myself was Pokemon Gold or Silver back when they came out when i was about 6 or 7. I never really played games other than pokemon and non real-time games until a few years ago. (will comment more as I finish the video)

Really good job on this video I loved it

in the most roundabout way, this video has helped me realize why people love fighting games so much. i could never get into them before hand but now it completely makes sense.

holy shit that ram gameplay has me quaking in my boots and wanting to learn so much more about the character (casual ram here)

Video games have allowed me to express myself in a way that I can’t irl currently. I have a relatively supportive family, they’re cool with me being Trans and have said that regardless of who I am that I’m still their child. Neither of then address me by how I identify however. My Dad says to him it’d be “forcing a burden onto him” to ask him to call me his daughter, but my Mom at least helps me express my femininity in any way she can despite not addressing me by how I identify. They do at least call me by the name I go by but they won’t call me she or their daughter. I’m not too particularly bothered by it considering both my parents grew up in INCREDIBLY conservative households but it does get frustrating from time to time, especially with my Dad. Back to the topic of the video though. Video games, especially FF14 have allowed me to create a character that I see as truly me and have allowed me to be who I am without having to worry about being harassed or attacked for my identity. I have noticed that people in FF14 are some of the most LGBTQ+ friendly people that I’ve ever met in any game and it’s honestly nice to see there’s plenty of people who accept me for who I am despite all the stuff happening online that is… less than pleasant to see. Celeste really is what helped me break out of my shell once I realized after beating Farewell that Madeline is a Trans Woman. I had been identifying as Genderfluid for a time when I originally picked up the game but it really helped me realize I was just Trans. I absolutely love to speedrun the game as well because of the lack of anything random in the speedrun making it a game entirely about skill rather than relying on luck to get a good time. Madeline as a character really resonates with me because not only is she Trans but she has struggles with Anxiety and Depression which are also struggles that I face on a daily basis, Anxiety far more than Depression for me. As well, the challenges Madeline faces and overcomes has been a constant motivator for me to set new and harder goals for myself, because if there’s anything I’ve learned from Madeline, you can overcome any challenge no matter how difficult it is.

Just reconciled myself with the fact that my disconnect with gender goes past apathy and that I’ve been agender all along and took my sweet time getting there. For me it was games that had character creation that could be finessed into giving a muted gender presentation. Didn’t realize why my characters always came out androgynous for ages but now I do. I’m curious though any other agender players out there do you lean towards male (as in option selection) characters especially in fantasy games as well? Basically good luck finding top tier gear for a female character that isn’t VERY highly sexualized and as a result reads as super femme.

hearing aye nako in a video essay just brought me so much joy

It’s funny that our expression in video games is so subtle. I spent a lot of my adolescence hating myself, I couldn’t ever engage in anything feminine or I felt too much euphoria and would direct it into self loathing, especially playing female characters it took me forever to figure out why I had an avoidance to it. #justeggthings

Really enjoyed the video. I'd like to mention the competitive gaming scene that allowed me to be openly trans - Splatoon. For some reason, Splatoon seems to be much more queer friendly *and* have more queer people in general than any other team-based competitive game I've played. I first joined a competitive team when I was in the middle of questioning my gender, and when my egg cracked I had overwhelming support from teammates I barely knew. I went on to make lots of online trans friends and even meet my trans partner who I'm now living with. The splatoon community was also very much a safe space for him to explore his gender. So to any trans people who want a team-based competitive experience, Splatoon 3 is a great game for it (and also just a wonderful game in general with lots of depth when you reach the ranked modes!)

God, FFXIV was huge for me.... I wasn't even that hugely active in social settings, but after a while I did stop to think "Huh... yeah.... I've Fantasia'd this character so many times. I've fussed over their exact appearance and outfits for literally hours at this point. This is something I have 100% complete control over....... So why do I keep feeling compelled to make them a girl......?" As soon as my egg cracked, that realization hit me hard. I remember I was posting in an Egg reddit thread at the time and through literal tears I was posting stuff like "This is why my FFXIV character is like this, I just really want to give them a hug. I want to spend a lot more time with them."

I know I'm late, but I'm naturally kind of androgynous The amount of people think I'm trans masc has surprised me

I'll always remember growing up playing RPGs and I'd always have one girl and one guy file "to see the whole game." It's just a coincidence that I always lost interest in the guy. >.>

Thats why I'm a big fan of rpgs fighters and tf2. Because it lets me experience things the real world often made too scary. Like how persona is set in high school i never went to that level i had to get a ged, so it's social links bit was cathartic.

to be honest i just play FPS games (mainly valorant nowadays) And in my experience everyone just calls each other by their agent or Color (counter strike) like "Sage i hope you die" or "blue come over cover me"

had an experience very similar to your FFXIV experience while playing WoW. Just doing world quests and a guy starts helping me, we chat a bit and he keeps calling me she and a girl and stuff. Shattered my egg in an instant.

i am trans and when i was younger I would always choose the opposite gender character and would get upset when either i was told no or something else along those lines

i realy like this video and i can relate a lot of this video pd: you sound a lot like melody nounsurname

Note to self: Trans people are better gamers

not part of the community but the video was really cool. Nice to see how much video games can be a huge part of all of us and somehow make us a little bit more confortable with ourselves.

great video! the background at 13:46 is a bit hard on the eyes though (yes I know that this video's a year old but I just felt like it would be good to point that out just in case it may come up again if that's alright)

This came up in my recommended vids, and I'm really glad it did. But damnit, I was driving while listening to it and I got weepy at the end lol 🥹 seriously though, thanks for putting it into words.

I feel like life simulation games like Animal Crossing are also huge safe spaces for trans people. Like, when I, a transgender man, played Animal Crossing; New Leaf as child, (which was by far one of my favorite video games growing up, (I had at least over 500 hours in that game alone). I remember even though I chose the female gender option, I experimented with clothing and accessories at Able Sisters, and different hairstyles at Shampoodle.

I loved your video and identified with a lot of your point. I've always been a gamer girl, I'm still a baby trans, but I'll get to the top of the mountain. I didn't know Celeste's main character was trans, I want to play it even more than ever before ! I think I have it on one of my gaming plateforms I believe...