The Arkh Project is so Queer!
… and I love it. <3
The Arkh Project is an ambitious effort to create an RPG in which people of color and LGBTQA folks will be the focus, rather than the odd exception. Huzzah! The project is headed by Kia and Erin, a Black queer woman and a Japanese woman, who want to create a game for people who are marginalized and who are usually only represented in such games as tokens or little hand-outs to different communities, usually so the developers and point at them and cry, “LOOK, LOOK! WE ACCEPT YOU AND YOUR DIFFERENCES!” and so politicians can either decry their inclusion as sinful and socially destructive or simply “decline comment”. Personally, I think this is an awesome idea.
As a queer man, it’s nice to see something being developed at doesn’t include my identity as a sort of joke, especially from a subculture typically ridden with sexism, racism, cissexism, and homophobia. Granted, in my position I get by rather easily. I’m not readily identifiable as queer, I’m dating a woman, I’m white, and I’m cis gendered. If I keep my mouth shut, I skate by under the most conservative of radars. That said, even people like me (quite a few of whom I’m sure even the straightest of you are close to, even if you don’t know it) could use a game like this.
What I’m tired of seeing is the kind of shit storm that gets flung up every time a game is released which involves a gay character or which gives the player the option of having a gay relationship with an NPC. It’s the kind of thing that should be no big deal. Imagine if the game focused on LGBTQA and non-white communities, including trans people (apologies if I got that wrong, I’m still learning the proper terms so please bear with me), and that game got the kind of attention Fable did for letting players marry NPC’s of the same gender! I wonder what Santorum would say. I hope this project does get that far. I hope they release a kick-ass game that gets huge attention both from the gaming community and from the media. I hope people see a shining example of so many people coming together and giving one big goddamn finger in the air to everyone who participates in marginalizing them.
Anyone interested can donate to The Arkh Project by following the link.
Tags: bisexual, gay, lesbian, lgbt, LGBTQA, queer, role playing game, rpg, the arkh project, trans, transgender
January 22nd, 2012 at 5:02 am
Also stoked about this project (albeit skeptical that it’ll reach its funding goals). I think it’s particularly cool that the main character seems to be in that “could easily pass as a non-queer” space as well!* Ain is genderqueer, but seems to be FAAB and favor a feminine presentation, and also seems to navigate multiple identities (in letting Haruka call them they or she, Ain or Aina, yet preferring them/Ain in general, and having gender be a journey an’ all that).
(*Other people might think this is less cool because it seems to indicate more normative = better, but at some point you have to step back and think, “Hey, is this really a perpetuation of a systematic bias, or is it simply a representation of another, sometimes similarly, sometimes differently marginalized identity?”)
The reason I decided to comment rather than simply skim your blog and move on – you wrote “I’m not readily identifiable as queer, I’m dating a woman, I’m white, and I’m cis gendered. If I keep my mouth shut, I skate by under the most conservative of radars.” It reminded me that I’m afraid of presumably straight people in general and presumably non-queer men in particular–yet often I’m in the presence of queers of various sorts and just don’t know it because it isn’t obvious. I tend to get read as “feminist” or “art/gender studies/English student” (actually math, computer science, and environmental studies) rather than “variously queer genderfluid sort,” myself. (Not that I’m not a feminist. It’s just awkward when a professor looks at me when mentioning something about feminism, which I’m not actively involved in beyond a vague supportive attitude and living my own life, and ignores the lipstick-wearing activists that might well be in the room around me.) Anyway, if you feel like answering–how do you deal with the flip side of invisibility, where queer people/women don’t know you’re safe even as bigots don’t necessarily realize you’re not on their side? How can someone who’s been burned by heterosexist/cissexist men in the past tell when one’s safe, other than taking a wild leap into the unknown and testing them on it? I’d like to stop having that slight edge of fear–and silence–around acquaintances who I think/know are straight or lack the experience of being female or genderqueer–even when I know that plenty of people do turn out to be educated, thoughtful, and/or queer themselves. And since it is absolutely ridiculous to ask one random stranger on the internet to speak to such a broad and charged question, take this as the rambling musings of an internet addict.
January 24th, 2012 at 4:47 am
“If I feel like answering.” Pff. I love my readers. You’ll always get an answer from me.
Anyway, in answer to your first question, when women/LGBTQAetc folks don’t know I’m safe and act as if they feel unsafe around me, I let it go. When I realize they feel unsafe, I don’t start talking about how awful it is that while LG folks can serve openly in the military, trans* people still face horrific discrimination and abuse; I don’t start talking about how dangerous it is for women on my university campus to party with the lacrosse team (a few of whom I had the displeasure of living with and overhearing how rapey they are); I make no reference to my feminist or queer leanings at all unless they come up naturally in conversation. I know that, on one hand, this doesn’t let them know I’m safe and by extension doesn’t help, but I don’t want to immediately jump down someone’s throat like this: “OH NO you can totally feel safe around me! I’m all about feminism and LGBTQA rights and blahblahblah!” It feels like that would make me seem either like someone who practiced a line to get someone to let their guard down or someone who had no idea what he was talking about. This way, if they want to get away from me, they can and I put as little pressure on them as possible. I guess a simpler way to put it is this: “To help them feel safe, I let them be safe.”
As for letting bigots know I’m not on their side, I tell ‘em. Just yesterday a coworker of mine essentially said that “real men” all watch football, but that she was meeting more men who didn’t like sports at all than she expected. I simply told her that society tells men to like sports, so they consume sports, and that if we weren’t socialized that way a lot more men wouldn’t even know the rules of football. She didn’t get it. I’m not sure she was really being “bigoted”, but that’s one example. Oh! You might wonder what I overheard from the UMD lacrosse guys? Well, as I was settling in one night in the dorms, I heard them come back from a party and, as they were talking about what they all did, one of them said, “I’m gonna finger that pussy whether you like it or not!” There were no discernibly female voices with them, and I knew if I went out there the night would end with the police called and blood all over the walls and ceiling, so I stayed put. The next day, I just asked who said it, got no answer, gave them all a scathing glare and told them it was, “disgusting, stupid, and beyond fucked-up.” They didn’t understand.
On your second question, how to know whether someone is safe, I’m not really equipped to help. As a cis male, I haven’t had to learn to spot the warning signs that women and trans* folks need to be able to look for in order to stay safe. I’d say a good bet is to listen to the humor he uses with you versus around cis males. If he keeps things clean with you or with (other?) women, but tells a lot of “kitchen” and “make me a sandwich” jokes to his buds, steer clear. Any hint, regardless of its humorous intentions, that this guy fails to respect women is a red flag that should be carefully looked at before taking any risks (being alone with him, getting a ride home from work, etc).
Wow, this is long. If you’d like to keep talking, please reply to this comment and I’ll shoot you an email at the address you provided to leave your comment, if that’s alright.
Take care.