on february 15, kotaku ran a “feature” on dani bunten. i’m not linking it – you can find it pretty easily if you want – because it’s disrespectful in a way that, as a transgendered woman, makes me cringe. the article, written by luke plunkett, perpetuates a misinformed attitude about trans people that is downright dangerous in a culture in which we’re already as marginalized as we are.
specifically, the kotaku article is rooted in the idea that a transgendered woman lives a dual-gender identity, that she “was male” prior to her transition. the article opens with a photo of a trans game designer pre-transition, and goes on to refer to her by her given (birth) name and male pronouns. halfway through the article, it springs her gender identity upon the reader like a plot twist, finally showing us a picture of her post-transition and using her chosen name and pronouns. if a feature on me called me by my birth name and had a picture of me with a beard, i would shit myself and then the author.
as a transgendered woman, let me DISPEL SOME MYTHS.
transition is not some BEFORE / AFTER DIET PILL AD. a transgender woman isn’t a man before she A) chooses to identify as a woman or B) has her genitals operated on. and the latter is in fact irrelevant to the former: i identify as a woman, but i have no plans for surgery. when you are born into this society, you’re assigned a gender. i was assigned “male.” but though i spent many years struggling to fit myself into a male identity that doesn’t mean i consider myself to ever have been a boy or man. i had not yet come to terms with my identity as a woman.
identity is a complicated thing, one that every person, trans or otherwise, experiences differently, and i can’t claim to speak on the late dani bunten’s behalf. but i can speak as a trans woman who deals with transphobia on a daily basis, especially in spaces related to videogames. and i can tell you on authority: if someone identifies as a woman, you call her a woman. if she internalizes female pronouns, you use female pronouns to refer to her. if she tells you her name, you use that name and not one that was chosen without her consent. oh, she expressed regret once about leaping into surgery she might not have needed to get? doesn’t invalidate her identity.
transphobia is rampant in games culture: it’s dangerous to all transgendered people and all women. it’s dangerous to everyone who participates in this culture. i remember a tigsource thread on “girl game designers” where someone said: “if you go on a blind date with a female indie game designer, you have a 50% chance of ending with a dick in your a**” (i think the word the poster dared not type is supposed to be “ass.”) to perpetuate incorrect myths about trans people and our identities is grossly irresponsible for a site like kotaku.
i posted on twitter about the article this morning, angrily, because I WAS FUCKING ANGRY. stephen totilo, who currently runs kotaku, reacted defensively, calling the article an “earnest tribute” and that he thought the “word choice” was “valid.” he didn’t say this to me, of course. i don’t know whether he blocked me or was simply ignoring me, but he refused to engage me, tweeting his responses to my concerns at courtney stanton, who i think was retweeting my tweets so that he could see them. while i was writing this post he finally buckled under the pressure of piles of tweets from trans people and allies, and changed the pronouns in the article and announced plans to change the top photo, but that doesn’t address the fact that the article – whose title includes the words “transgender video gaming pioneer” – is more about the novelty of bunten’s transition (“the narrative,” as totilo put it) than her actual contributions to videogames.
so let me tell you about dani bunten and how much we all owe her. she was one of the earliest voices in games to recognize that videogames were becoming solitary experiences, and that they had tremendous potential as interpersonal, social experiences that they were failing to actualize. “no one ever said on their deathbed, ‘gee, i wish I had spent more time alone with my computer,’” is the quote most often attributed to her. her digital game design was strongly informed by that of board games, which has been really good at this interpersonal dynamic thing for quite a while – her best-known game, m.u.l.e., adapts a number of traditional board game ideas, like auctions, to videogame contexts. and if you can’t see how this is relevant to my work in 2012, you haven’t been reading my blog.
84 comments
Somebody lend the dude a copy of the AP style manual. Last I checked the guidelines for referring to trans folks were real clear and simple.
kotaku are really great at the “one step forward, a dozen steps back” school of activism. while it’s great that they’re actually acknowledging minority viewpoints in gaming now – rather than making them completely invisible, as most sites do – they’re doing it in such a privileged, ignorant and condescending fashion that it’s absolutely infuriating.
thanks for this post. you’re awesome.
Yo Anna!
This might sound like some annoying gotcha! comment, but it’s not. Genuinely interested in your opinion on Brenda Laurel’s narrative of Dani’s coming out at the 1993 CGDC. It’s in Utopian Entrepreneur pp.54-58 (I tried finding a link to this but could only find 2 pages of it in Google Books). I always found this passage touching, but that might be because I’m not well-versed in gender identity.
There are some differences and similarities here: Laurel only shows a picture of Dani post-transition in the passage, but she does spring the story of her transition on the reader like a surprise twist (even continuing to use “him” during a physical description of Dani in what Laurel initially thought was just drag play). What I’m wondering is whether this treatment is more appropriate given that 1) it’s a story about the moment of Dani’s transition and 2) it’s a story told by a person who was a close friend and colleague of Dani.
I don’t know why I’m worried about the answer to this, maybe because I always liked this passage or maybe because I wouldn’t want to make mistakes like this if I ever wrote a similar story.
Blah, sorry, didn’t mean “the moment of transition” but “moment of coming out.”
Just pointing out to no one in particular that people with two gendered identities think of themselves as bigender (including e.g. some transvestic performers), which is an entirely different kind of identity than that of transgenders.
i would be interested in reading that article if anyone can find it!
kotaku is really good at posting mostly condescending articles on queers, women and trans folk while simultaneously apologizing for them and assuring their white male nerd audience that they haven’t changed and are still the kotaku they know and love.
and yes, i didn’t mean to imply that bi- or multi-gendered people don’t exist (nor genderqueer or any other non-binary gender identities), just that people who don’t explicitly identify as such shouldn’t be treated as such. that is, identifying as a trans woman doesn’t make me part woman, part man.
This is losing some of the context of Laurel’s book because she plays with typography and background photos a lot, but:
“The second year of the conference, I nominated Dan Bunten to give the after-dinner keynote. I genuinely admired Dan’s work. His football gam didn’t interest me, although I was often told it was the best in the business, but I was a great fan of Seven Cities of Gold and M.U.L.E., the first truly cooperative videogame. The fact that he created these games inside the belly of the boy-game beast–Electronic Arts–made him a hero to me. He was tell, red-haired, soft-spoken, with a luscious Arkansas drawl that made me want to curl up and purr. I finally got to spend some time with Dan after his talk in 1990. Although he was an outrageous flirt, underneath the surface was a shy and thoughtful person with a wonderful sense of humor.
By 1993 the Computer Game Developers’ Conference had quadrupled in attendance and had moved upscale to the Sheraton in San Jose. The dinner event was always a masquerade, and that year I had decided to show up as my fictitious brother, Chuck. Chuck is a Vietnam veteran, longtime hippie denizen of Humboldt County, where he pursues illicit agriculture and computer game design. Under his own label of AlterEgo, Chuck had been working on a game involving fractals for about seven years. The story we pout out was that Chuck came to the CGDC to fill in for me as an award presenter during the dinner, as I had a family emergency. I was really looking forward to introducing Chuck to Dan Bunten.
It took me about three hours to make Chuck’s beard, hair by hair with spirit gum, as I had learned in acting school. Chuck wore tattered jeans an sported a stringy brown ponytail. My friend (now husband) Rob Tow helped me invent Chuck and hold up his identity at the conference. Rob took a Polaroid photo and made him a laminated AlterEgo badge, which he wore clipped to this army jacket. Rob and I were shocked to discover that Chuck is one ugly guy. He is even shorter than I am, and his bone structure is all wrong.
Chuck does not know how to behave appropriately in public. During the pre-dinner reception, he got into a loud argument about the redwoods in Humboldt with an old friend of mine who did not recognize me at a distance of sixteen inches. Chuck flirted crassly with the few women in attendance. By the time he walked into the banquet room, he was alarmingly obnoxious. He swaggered impatiently from table to table, looking for Dan. What he found brought him to a full stop.
(new page, picture of Dani on that night on the right) Dan was in drag, too–impressively realistic drag. His hair was shoulder-length and redder than usual; his clothing came from the pages of Ladies’ Home Journal. He was wearing glasses with big, pinkish frames. His nails were done. He wasn’t kidding. Dan had had a sex change, and Danielle was coming out among friends–the thousand or so game designers who had always been her community.
She rose to embrace Chuck, a full foot taller than he in her heels. She was gracious. I felt increasingly idiotic as her sincerity and bravery sank in. Chuck fumbled through the rest of the program, retired to his room early, and never attended the conference again. Back in my own persona, I had a nightcap with Danielle. I asked her how the community was handling her transformation. Judging from the adolescent, sometimes sneering portrayal of females in the games of the time, one might have expected some ridicule or sniggering. Instead, she was being treated with a kind of gentle protectiveness. In their support for Danielle, I saw yet another reason why I love game designers. The next day, I made Danielle a present of one of my most precious possessions, my grandmother’s favorite rhinestone earrings. I wanted to welcome her to the sisterhood.
A few months later, as I was struggling with the germ of the idea of emotional navigation as an interface to a computer game for girls, it occurred to me to call Danielle and ask her to collaborate with me. She was the most accomplished and innovative game designer I knew. David Liddle agreed that I needed “a playmate my own age” and Dani was hired as a consultant.
She swept into Interval in a crisp white shirt and jeans, curly red hair flying, excited as a little kid at a party. Over the six months that we worked together, Dani and I became close friends–girlfriends. We talked about feminism, fashion, psychotherapy, empathy, and self-esteem. Dan had been a friend of mine, too, but to both of us, he was another person from another time.
I told her about my idea for emotional navigation–that is, getting around in a game on the basis of how the character is feeling.
We hit upon the shorthand of “mad-sad-glad.” Dani was inspired by Lucille Ball to cook up a game concept called “Dinner is Ruined” with which we could try out the interface. The idea was based on playing house, where emotions led to different outcomes in the kitchen. Fooling around with her Hypercard prototype, we realized that playing house was too young for our target audience. I came up with the alternative of being the new kid in school. The new kid could focus on peer relationships, which are center stage for preteen girls. Dani went home to Little Rock to work with the concept.
When she returned a few weeks later, she said she needed to have a serious talk with me. We went out into the courtyard at Internval. She lit a cigarette and started to cry. “I can’t do this Brenda,” she said. “I just don’t have the right experiences. I didn’t grow up a girl.”
Despite all my arguments, she was determined to resign. Although she assured me that the concept was great, she believed that she had taken the project as far as she could. I would have to find new collaborators to go the rest of the distance.
We kept in touch over the next few years and got together whenever she was in town. She went on to do more wonderful inventing for M-Path, one of the first companies to address the idea of multiplayer gaming over the internet. She came to the wedding when Rob and I were married in 1994. Hilary was seriously pissed when Dani caught the bouquet. “It’s not fair!” Hilary whined. “She’s six feet tall!”
In 1997 Danielle was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died in early 1998. I dedicated Purple Moon’s first two games to her. She was a great lady.”
(Brenda Laura, Utopian Entrepreneur, 2001, pp 54-58)
so yeah the tone of that is really gross and condescending in a lot of ways: calling a trans women a drag queen, “welcoming her to the sisterhood.” she does to an extent acknowledge her privilege when she talks about her “chuck” persona, but although this piece does seem to come from a place of sincerity it’s really privileged in a way that’s all too familiar to me.
“she was a great lady.” LET ME, AS AN AUTHORITY ON FEMALENESS, REMIND YOU THAT I HAVE BEEN GRACIOUS ENOUGH TO ACCEPT DANI’S REQUEST TO BE ADMITTED INTO THE SISTERHOOD.
that brenda laura passage simon posted might be slightly misinformed, but it was made with a great deal of respect and admiration from someone who obviously cared about dani and i (as a trans person) actually found it touching. i think evaluating it just as a reflection of privilege is missing the overall tone of respect that surrounds that whole passage.
Does the dating of the piece kind of explain the condescension though? Were trans women caught up in naive 90s girl power more likely to accept and enjoy the matronage of cis women? If this is a history lesson that’s best handled with a link just tell me.
probably it partly does? trans folk have a political momentum today that wasn’t there when dani transitioned. but even though i appreciate that brenda laura has a lot of respect for dani, she’s still trying to justify her identity as a non-trans person to a non-trans audience and it makes me kind of uncomfortable.
i’m not trying to set myself up as THE AUTHORITY ABOUT WHAT’S OKAY TO SAY ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE though. i don’t think finding something touching or moving about brenda laura’s piece is WRONG.
simon: dani was definitely part of a different generation that understood trans people even less, so i’m sure that accounts for a lot of it. though honestly every trans person has different motives and its so much of a person-to-person thing that i have to say that someone who was a close personal friend of dani’s probably would know a little better than me if dani liked being thought as part of a “sisterhood” or whatever.
I totally screwed up the spelling of Laurel’s name in the quote at the end because I’d just exited transcription autopilot brain.
Thank you for explaining your opinion on this Anna (and Liz)! I guess the problem is compounded by the fact that Dani had passed before this was written so Brenda couldn’t check with her to see if she agreed with the transition narrative or the sisterhood stuff. In which case it seems obvious that even though you’re not The Authority, your guidelines are solid for any non-trans person writing a tribute to a trans person who’s passed and can’t speak for him- or herself to personally approve the diction.
heehee. i thought brenda laura was a funny name
This isn’t really relevant to the Kotaku piece, but I think it’s quite difficult to find pronouns for Bunten, given that she sort of repudiated her transition toward the end of her life. If she wasn’t clear on whether she was male or female, it doesn’t seem like we can expect journalists to go uniformly for ‘she/her’ instead of ‘he/him/his’.
thank you for talking at length about the problems with the article. its disgusting yet wholly unsurprising that authors like luke plunkett cant bring their head out of their ass for the few moments it takes to consider respect for another person.
raymond: that’s true, but from what dani wrote on the subject at the end of her life (here http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html), and from what her friends have said, it’s pretty clear that she did see herself as female. the problems she had were that her transition led to her being ostracized by friends/family/coworkers and feeling incredible self-doubt, leading to her feeling like dealing with that pain just wasn’t worth it. i know this feeling, and i don’t think she was ever able to make peace with it. it also had to do with her going through genital reassignment surgery, and that she was led to believe that that was the only real path to her being herself. given that i’ve had trans friends who’ve had unpleasant complications from the surgery now, and that i’m sure it wasn’t nearly as reliable 20+ years ago, i completely understand where she was coming from. not to mention that there’s much more representation in the trans community now for people who don’t want surgery/are genderqueer/whatever else than there was when she transitioned.
ugh, that link is supposed to be http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html
Liz, ah, thanks for that link. The interview that’s usually quoted gives a different sort of impression. Obviously having second thoughts about surgery is a very different thing than repudiating your entire transition.
basically our society places so much gender importance on genitals that a lot of trans people feel like their genitals conflict with their gender identity in a big way, and there’s a lot of social pressure to get them changed. and when dani bunten transitioned, there was even less visibility of trans people than there is now, and surgery was presented as the fulcrum of the transgender experience. i can easily imagine her feeling pressured into having surgery and regretting it later, upon deciding that maybe her original genitals didn’t invalidate her gender identity after all? or for a million other reasons. like liz said, i don’t think her regret was about her identity as much as the things she probably felt pressured to do to legitimize it.
(a) The kotaku thing: I think I read the edited/retracted/whatever version, but there’s a paragraph that says “Then things went off the rails! In the same year, her marriage fell apart, and she underwent gender surgery etc.” I don’t care how heartfelt a tribute or whatever they think they’re making; if you tie together the end of a marriage with gender transition you’re doing some scumbag stuff, and reinforcing that with the off the rails thing is pretty low down. Fuck them people
(b) The Brenda Laura thing hits home in a lot of ways, and I kind of like the “welcome to the sisterhood” thing. I look forward to the day when it isn’t necessary because the world isn’t like OBSESSED WITH GENDER and we don’t need these gestures of like welcoming someone into our camp, but in a world where there are such camps and people are obsessed with them — way moreso in 1993 than now, my god — I like the idea that this person is trying to somehow communicate that Dani’s welcome in her camp. Obvs it’s problematic but so is Bob Dylan singing about Hattie Carrol as this like infinitely suffering martyr whose purpose in life is to die so we can all learn stuff about racism — at the time, even in 2001 when this was published, it was pretty useful and I can’t get mad at it.
(c) Saddest thing about the article is Dani Bunten quitting work on what sounds like it would have been a totally neat game because she “didn’t grow up as a girl” — it bums me out that we’re like just now at the point where it’s even thinkable to acknowledge en masse that yeah trans people did grow up as girls, just girls with wildly unorthodox backgrounds. It bums me out that someone so wicked smart, ambitious, and skilled could get to the point where she doesn’t think she’s like worthy of telling the story of a young girl. And it’s completely insidious and I remember thinking similar shit and I’m glad I live in THE FUTURE and it’s a lot easier to get over thinking similar shit.
I wanted to thank you for this. Where I live and grew up transgender isn’t common or accepted in any way. Often, because of that isolated experience, I find myself at a loss to know, as a private individual who judges no one and doesn’t wish to offend, exactly how people who are transgender (and many in similar situations as poorly understood minorities) want to or should be spoken of. I think a key problem is that uniqueness can create ‘novelty’ which isn’t a form of respect. I’m glad you spoke out on the article, and I enjoyed reading your perspective.
Thanks again,
Kevin
A guy who read this on Zite.
i’m of the tempermant as whatever one wants to be considered as i consider them — it’s the polite thing to do and it’s way more fun, anyway :3
Anyone has the right to self-identify as they want to. But no one, be they a woman or a man or a ts or an androgyne has the right to expect someone else who apparently self-identifies as a similar symbol to automatically share in experiences, what is true, what isn’t true, etc etc. Not all women are women, not all men are men, not all ts are ts, etc etc. They are mere words, mere symbols for a complex and changeable reality.
or something like that :3
As an essentially amoral person, I have difficulty fully understanding and identifying the modern moral standpoint that considers conferred status as “bad” and respected self-identification as “good.”
what, do you have a hard time saying “please” and “thank you” too? do you regularly walk into people’s houses and take their televisions with you? is it sometimes confusing why you should ask for someone’s permission before having sex with them?
if you can’t see how it’s oppressive to choose someone’s identity for them rather than allow them to choose for themselves, you’re very confused and i hope it’s starting to make sense. if you can see how it’s oppressive and still do it, you’re a total fuck. move to the trash can.
Actually I just read you choosing Dani’s identity for them. That’s what’s confusing me.
uh maybe you wanna reread then? dani bunten self-identified as a woman and i said that i was only speaking for her in my capacity as a fellow trans woman.
What’s more you’re using your moral certitude as a privileged cudgel to beat other people over the head with and reassert your opinion of an ideal reality. You’re very much fighting fire with more fire.
Saying you can’t claim to speak on Dani’s behalf doesn’t mean you didn’t do just that.
asking folks to respect people’s identities is PRIVILEGED CUDGELLING. how’s freshman philosophy working out for you, dude?
jake, you are the worst troll. you don’t have to be moral to respect a person’s individual decisions over externally projected identifiers. that’s just like. class inheritance.
except in your case ’cause you got no class
also in what cartoonish world would an ideal reality consist of concentrated harassment + prejudice against one’s chosen identity
i mean really
Philosophy intro time, dude.
Humans are in the unique position of being able to choose their own ontologies. There are people out there, right now, who believe that they aren’t men but women, aren’t humans but foxes, and are really, actually married to Sephiroth.
And guess what?
If I call that fox-person a human, I’m asserting my reality over his. (This is, in actuality, the cudgel in question.) If I use whatever pronoun he wants, it’s not asserting a damned thing. It’s just *agreeing*.
Now, take this and generalize it to everyone. Using what people assert about themselves = good. Using what you assert about others = ‘privileged cudgeling’. This is not actually that complicated.
I got this sneaking suspicion that jake is alex from microwaving.net for some reason
he sure microwaved his head
I recall reading about Dani Bunten in the Scratchware Manifesto, where the author mentioned her gender identity only after praising her accomplishments as a game creator. Aside from the Kotaku article in question and the Scratchware Manifesto, I havw never really read much about her. I’m happy to see her getting more attention now, though I wish it were outside the context of Kotaku making her gender identity the focus of an entire feature. Maybe they should try again, and do a big followup piece? Or would they just fuck it up again?
im not jake and also why did you delete my comment
we already know you think i’m fat and ugly. say something new. i know you can do it, find it within yourself!
Hi everyone,
There is lots of good discussion here, but I suspect our article on Dani Bunten seems a lot more horrible when it’s not linked to and when it is misquoted in the comments.
The article is right here: http://kotaku.com/5885546/a-salute-to-dani-bunten-a-transgender-video-gaming-pioneer
We are, unfortunately, still without a picture of Dani post-transition atop the article, because we’ve yet to find one that fits our layout. We liked the image that’s up top as it shows Dani in the context of making games, yet I understand why a post-operation one would be preferable. We have always had one in the body of the story.
Auntie, I did not engage with you much on Twitter because you were cursing out my writer and yelling about a tribute that I know my writer wrote with the utmost enthusiasm for celebrating Dani’s life and work.
We did judge incorrectly about the hurt that would be caused by using male pronouns in the course of telling the narrative of Dani’s life prior to her transition. It was only ever intended to not confuse the reader. But when the amount of feedback I got made it clear that it was being viewed as a sign of disrespect, we added a clarifying note to the story and changed the pronouns.
It’s easy to assume the worst about writers and outlets, and there is surely baggage that Kotaku has from prior to when I assumed the role of editor-in-chief in January. That doesn’t make this degree of criticism, in my opinion unfair and perhaps even a willfull misreading of what is actually happening around this piece.
I can live with making an error in judgment and then correcting it swiftly based on honest feedback. What I find distressing is the rush to condemn, the rush to assume that what we labeled a “salute” was really some sort of transphobic essay made to disparage Dani Bunten or misrepresent her life. Reading the criticism of our story here would lead one to think that the article didn’t include lots of information about her work and praise of it. It does. It always has.
We made an error while writing a positive piece. I wish that didn’t ignite this kind of condemnation.
-Stephen
as i think like a million people already tweeted at you, having GOOD INTENTIONS does not mean something can’t be DISRESPECTFUL.
if your writer had “enthusiasm about dani’s work” maybe he would have actually written about it instead of focusing entirely on her transition? christine love related a story about talking to someone who had read plunkett’s article: when she mentioned M.U.L.E., her friend had no idea what she was talking about!
and you “couldn’t find a photo of dani post-transition that fits your layout?” do you not understand how to resize images in photoshop? it’s really obvious that you guys were trying to position her gender as some kind of PLOT TWIST with her pre-transition photo at the top and her post photo halfway down at THE BIG REVEAL.
couldn’t find a big enough photo for your header? HERE’S AN IDEA: use a picture of one of her games! this article’s supposed to be about her work, right? right?!
“This was a positive piece about an honorable darky, one of the good ones, celebrating the many wonderful accomplishments of those ebony sons of africa. Why are people offended!??!”
If you totally fuck up and write an article co-opting trans issues in a wholly inappropriate way, the absolute worst, worst thing you can do is accuse your detractors of ‘just wanting to be angry.’
Pro-tip: if you don’t know why people are angry, don’t assume it’s because they’re irrational or out to pick a fight; assume it’s because you’re so woefully undereducated on the topic that you can’t even appropriately express yourself. It’s very much the wrong time to attempt to write on the subject as a journalist.
WE DIDNT WANT TO CONFUSE OUR READERS BY USING CORRECT PRONOUNS
Something I havent seen brought up yet is that for some allies of trans people, and trans people themselves, the reaction was extremely negative against the article for another reason:
The article caused a bit of rage and fear for some trans game developers that are still living and working in the game industry.
Many trans people keep their trans status a quiet and personal matter and dont talk about it because of personal safety issues and very real job discrimination issues that still exist even in an industry that is generally very open and accepting to LGBTQ.
After Stephens post I believe his apology to be sincere. I hope that kotaku and any other game journalism sites understand that the story format of the Dani Bunten article if applied to a trans developer that is *still living* and done without their consent would be considered extremely dangerous, hostile and potentially life endangering.
Here’s a quote from the article:
“That was something kind of visionary of his: that he kind of saw the day when games wouldn’t just be for hardcore gamers,” says Civilization creator Sid Meier, a friend of Bunten through thick and thin. “People would play more casual games – people playing together, people playing on networks, people cooperating instead of being competitive. He kind of saw this evolution of gaming that was still pretty far off in the future.”
They didn’t correct the pronouns here. An example of how to do that properly:
“That was something kind of visionary of [hers]: that [she] kind of saw the day when games wouldn’t just be for hardcore gamers.”
I am available for production editing.
Anna,
It’s as if you’re not actually reading the story. It actually does talk about her work. Throughout the piece. The story is about her and her work. I fail to see why it’s some sort of foul to write about a person and their work. One is out of bounds and the other isn’t? Come on.
I know that good intentions don’t excuse a mistake. Hence the apology for the mistake in judgment about the pronoun usage.
Now you’re accusing me of playing the victim card. No. I’m just amazed that you can’t refrain from being nasty about this, that you can’t accept the possibility that this piece is a tribute, that you maintain that the only possible reading is that we wrote about Dani to make a garish spectacle of her, that you pretend that the article doesn’t have a lot of information and commentary about her work, that the fact that someone read the article and somehow missed the discussion of MULE in it is proof that her work was not treated seriously and clearly.
You’ve said that Kotaku is “really good at posting mostly condescending articles on queers, women and trans folk while simultaneously apologizing for them”. They are not intended to be condescending and I don’t believe they are. I do not apologize for them. I am proud to run them. I apologize only for a mistake, an error of judgment.
Our work must speak for itself. Hopefully it does and that your opinion of it will improve to the extent that the work merits.
-Stephen
Chris,
I never said that the detractors of our piece were “just wanting to be angry.” Where’d you get that quote?
-Stephen
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH as usual the way people try and defend awful shit riles me up even worse than the original awful shit. I mean I could have just kept assuming Luke Plinkett was just clueless and I mean hey he probably was, but then STEPHEN TOTILO, you admit you made a mistake but also wish people wouldn’t call you out on it?
TOO BAD
Anna’s last ONE PARAGRAPH there ACTUALLY TELLS ME what Dani is known for! Plinkett’s article if you look, only mentions Dani’s games to mention HOW WELL THEY SOLD.
SOME TRIBUTE.
FUCK.
Also: HEY GUYS maybe the DYING OF LUNG CANCER part is more tragic than the operation?
FUCK.
And the only thing that alludes even a little to what her legacy IS was quoting Sid Meier using “he” a bunch of times???
FUCK yes people are gonna condemn it! Turns out Stephen Totilo isn’t the authority on what kind of tribute to Dani Berry people should like!
FUCK!
Mike,
I don’t wish people didn’t call us out on the mistake. I’m glad that they did. I learned from an error in judgment.
There are lots of other references in the article to the specialness of Dani’s work than the Meier quote.
Anna’s paragraph on Dani is great, I agree. There’s also lots about what was special about Dani’s games in the piece. Sales were mentioned to explain the nature of her influence which was more of a peer-admiration and cult-favorite thing than it was a mass-appeal thing. Why in the world do I have to explain that here? The article couldn’t be more clear about that.
-Stephen
stephen: thanks for coming and trying to clear the air here, it’s appreciated.
I understand that you want an image for kotaku that’s more progressive and female/GLBT friendly than how it’s usually seen (a haven for jerky, sexist straight male gamers). The problem is that it comes off to a lot of queer/female/etc people that kotaku is just publishing that article to have the appearance of being more progressive, without really coming from a position of understanding and empathy for what you’re writing about. In other words, it comes off as kind of a novelty or exploitation piece (even if that’s not what’s intended). The fact that the article led with a pre-transition picture of Dani Bunten kind of confirms this. Whether a good photo didn’t fit your format or not, it wasn’t in good taste, and had that article been written by someone with a little more of an understanding of trans people and their struggles, they would have understood that.
Obviously you can’t get everything right, or write things that someone won’t object to. Me and Anna are both transwomen with similar opinions about a lot of things, and we had wildly different opinions of the Brenda Lauren piece here, for example. But kotaku could do much more to be sensitive and understanding about these kinds of issues, especially when you’re articles are as widely read as they are. You have an even bigger obligation than most to be as truthful and understanding of what you’re writing about is possible. That you’ve come here to try and start a dialogue is much appreciated, but that’s only the first step.
Liz,
Thank you. I asked Twitter readers for a better top picture a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, none came in right away. We still haven’t gotten any. I was able to get back to focusing on this story today, which is how I discovered this piece and thread. And so now I’m addressing the image issue.
In lieu of getting the kind of image I was hoping for, I’ve just changed things using images from the web that I believe are fair to use.
I think we’re good now. It was just a factor of time and the general lack of shots of Dani.
As for what Kotaku’s up to, we’re not running pieces that somehow involve non-straight-white-male topics as a novelty, but that will only be proven if we stick with it. There weren’t zero stories like that in the past, but, yeah, we’ve run a lot more recently. This one wasn’t even intended to be that kind of progressive-minded story (“Obviously!” many people who are readers of this site would say). In this case, Luke writes gaming history articles on most weekdays and he wanted to write about Dani and her games that day.
I appreciate having space here to chat with folks who didn’t like the story. Some criticism rings true and I can learn from it; not all of it does. It’s like anything else. I’d be a fool to dismiss criticism out of hand.
-Stephen
:)
Maybe they could compromise and use no pronouns. Just always refer to her as “DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE” no matter what the context?
“It’s a shame, then, that so few can name DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE of the all-time greats, DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE.
Or, as DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE was known before 1992, DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE.
DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE born as DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE in 1949 is important to video games for any number of reasons, some trivial, some vital to the progression of the entire medium.
DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE’s first game (yes, DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE’s first game, we’ll get to that), 1978′s Wheeler Dealers, was the first ever PC game to be sold in a printed box instead of a sleeve or plastic bag, a necessity born of the game’s inclusion of a custom controller.
In 1983, DANI BUNTEN CREATOR OF MULE’s Ozark Softscape released one of the first games for Electronic Arts, and also one of the greatest cult hits in the history of the PC, MULE. A multiplayer…economic strategy…thing, MULE wasn’t a big seller, but it was very influential amongst developers, and retains a fanbase and community site even to this day.”
or they could just use the fucking pronouns that she chose to be called by.
“Our work must speak for itself.”
Don’t you worry none, Stephen. It does.
Stephen Totilo,
i think you did an alright job and i congratulate you in willing to communicate with people :3
i think the only one who has the moral right to comment on the article in question is Dani.
i think that what you are experiencing here is a movement (religion?) where the adherents’ have their social norms (which includes their own sense of what is blasphemous and what is sacred) and who can tend to try to force those on others as part of the belief system. it’s easier to scapegoat feelings on to some outside source than it is to examine where they are generated and how they progress — that tends to be a human trait, i find.
that does not mean that their efforts do not have effects — there can be real power in internet shunning; loss of web traffic, loss of sales, etc.
that said, argument can be good for the soul — engaging and life-affirming :3
You’re taking the piss, right?
the real oppressed group are nerds being asked to respect someone else’s identity.
Saddened to see Jake relegated to “a total fuck” after one comment which, though provocative, was not so pointed as the way it seems to have been recieved.
I don’t discount the reality of oppression and suffering of those who identify outside of the conservatively-established norms for gender identity, but nor do I think Jake does.
I am saddened to see this completely unironic tirade of what Jake rightly points out as “fighting fire with fire.” I see a lot of vitriol and anger on display here and not a lot of reasoned thought or the tolerance (a terrible word- ‘understanding’ is a more hopeful word) that LGBT have fought hard to secure for themselves in places like Canada.
I’d like to see an elevated dialogue on a subject that is actually not a question of “first-year philosophy” for many people- it continues to be a complex and nuanced problematic.
Unfortunately, living in Toronto and moving in bohemian circles where this conversation often crops up, it’s too often that I see blunt, infantile, outbursts of (genuine, but ill-placed) anger and resentment instead of elevated dialogue.
If someone “self-identifies” as a capitalist or a scientologist I will respect them to the degree that common etiquette ascribes, but I’m not bound to respect their “identity” just because they have identified with it. It is possible to disagree respectfully. When one behaves with such unbridled arrogance, however,it does nothing for their cause.
Remember that our right to “identity” was not solely secured by the politics of civil rights, but also by a politics derived from capitalist consumer culture–we are all entitled to (consume according to) our chosen identity (or what is cynically called “lifestyle”) insofar as this fits nicely with the requisites of our capitalist consumer economy. I would be wary of aligning an actual politics of anti-oppression with the ideological tools invented or otherwise appropriated by those very forces of power and oppression. We may find one day that all our political causes have been absorbed and sterilized by an arrogant, entitled, culture of identity-consumerism. This cannot be allowed to happen.
I also see a possible problem with the ideology of victimhood which is very much wielded as a “cudgel” to shut down critical or questioning voices- leaving only the choir of an insular consensus. The State of Israel and the US following 9/11 used precisely these methods to justify aggressive and unilateral attitudes instead of engaging directly in diplomacy and dialogue. Pretending like the dialogue is ancient history (or first year philosophy) is either incredibly naive or the worst kind of cynicism.
In any case, I for one would like to see a more open, amicable, and elevated conversation taking place instead of all this adolescent anger.
Looking forward to checking out Auntie’s work at forallgamerssake this week in T.O.!
“i think that what you are experiencing here is a movement (religion?) where the adherents’ have their social norms (which includes their own sense of what is blasphemous and what is sacred) and who can tend to try to force those on others as part of the belief system.”
Hereby nominating Anna as first girlpope of the holy mother church of transgender whoz with me
eben. dude.
i feel like i’ve been explaining this a lot lately, but i’m going to explain it again.
I HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ANGRY.
MY ANGER IS VALID. EXPRESSING MY ANGER IS VALID.
ANGER DOES NOT CONTRADICT OR INVALIDATE MY CONCERNS. IN FACT, I FEEL LIKE IN MANY SITUATIONS, THIS ONE INCLUDED, ANGER IS A MORE EFFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL TOOL THAN CALMLY EXPLAINING TO SOMEONE HOW THEY ARE BEING TRANSPHOBIC, FOR FEAR OF HURTING THEIR FEELINGS.
voices from the margins have to shout to be heard.
HEY STEPHEN TOTILO. I used to be a BOOK EDITOR and I got to thinking about exactly why I was dubious about your assertion that this article was a “tribute.” So I went ahead and edited it to make it into a tribute and left some comments on the stuff that I thought was kinda objectionable. Where information on MULE was lacking I stole the last paragraph of Anna’s post because you said you liked it and generally agreed with what it said about Dani Bunten Berry, so WHY NOT?
If you want to talk about the article “standing or falling on its own merits,” and if you do think it’s important to make Kotaku into a place that’s more inclusive than Kotaku before your time, then would you do this for me? Would you download the doc:
http://fictioncircus.com/Jeanne/bunten.docx
And would you read the edits and comments, and let me know what you think would be so wrong with maybe doing it this way? And does this maybe show you why the article is causing A Stink and what’s still problematic about it and the way it presents DBB’s life, especially when you’re calling it “a tribute?”
Thaaaaanks, jeanne
This whole conversation and the rather hamhanded tribute which sparked it makes me wish we could actually talk about Dani Bunten’s life, gender and legacy in ways that could honor the complexity of the choices she made in life and all the factors that affected those choices.
Dani Bunten was an incredible pioneer of multiplayer digital gaming in a time where “solo gaming” ran rampant in the commercial sector and the internet was like a precambrian tidepool just beginning to form the molecules of text-based multiplayer worlds.
Dani Bunten was also a transgender woman who transitioned at a time when the discourse around the possibilities of gender identity and expression were starkly different than they are now, 20 years later. She wrote about her conflicts over re-embodiment and surgery, and it seems likely that if she had been born decades later, her life path probably would have looked quite different simply due to different ways that we talk about being trans, whether surgery is THE definitive choice for all trans people — not to mention how differently her family, friends, and colleagues might have treated her transition in 2012 rather than 1992.
She has a legacy as a pioneering game designer and a legacy from her odyssey as a trans person who eventually ended up memorialized in a warning on Lynn Conway’s infamous “TURN BACK YE FETISHISTS” web page. Both of those things are of inestimable importance to me, and I’d find a life story that focused on one or the other sadly incomplete.
Unfortunately, the latter topic is incredibly fraught, and to do it justice would require a sensitive touch and a nuanced understanding of the subjects involved that the top-paid journalists in the world can’t seem to get quite right for the complex tragedy of say, the life of Michael Jackson. I’m not surprised that game journalists can’t create the tribute that Dani Bunten Berry deserves, especially while surrounded by a drooling horde of commenters who scream bloody murder about how articles shouldn’t be written just because someone is gay, trans, a woman, etc.
Here’s hoping that things continue to improve from our present dismal state of affairs. Thankfully, they have since the days when Dani left the industry. Slàinte.
“Remember that our right to “identity” was not solely secured by the politics of civil rights, but also by a politics derived from capitalist consumer culture–we are all entitled to (consume according to) our chosen identity (or what is cynically called “lifestyle”) insofar as this fits nicely with the requisites of our capitalist consumer economy. I would be wary of aligning an actual politics of anti-oppression with the ideological tools invented or otherwise appropriated by those very forces of power and oppression. We may find one day that all our political causes have been absorbed and sterilized by an arrogant, entitled, culture of identity-consumerism. This cannot be allowed to happen.”
I feel bad sometimes that I don’t write all of that out, but sheer cynicism and my ability to see what Anna and co’s inevitable response will be tends to cause me to be concise.
I’m quoting the shit outta that, though.
Since when does being transgendered fit nicely with the requisites of our capitalist consumer economy? If it did fit nicely with such requisites I would be able to find more clothes that fit me nicely and wouldn’t have to wear the same fucking pair of boots literally every day of my life.
What you’re saying sounds like it could easily equate to “Affluent mainstream gay people are part of the problem now,” and I guess rampant consumerism that DIVIDES US INTO TRIBES is a marginally better problem to have than dehumanization. One leads to THE CAPITALIST MONOCULTURE WHERE EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE and the other leads to people being dragged to death behind trucks in the heartland. Or “tributes” like this one!
I guess if you’re not trans you should shut up when trans people say “Hey, you’re writing about us in an insulting way.” If you are trans, then dude, what are you doing with this anti-oedipus crap?
blah blah blah blah blah blah. this is what i read from your article. just because you think that something is disrespectful doesn’t mean it really is. today’s world is really annoying, everyone is complaining and discussing about bullshit. there are more interesting things than to read about who you are, or who you want to be. And tigsource was right.
gosh todays world is so annoying! PEOPLE ARE HAVING DISCUSSIONS i liked the old world where no one said anything ever *pisses on xboxlive headset* SHUT UP WORLD STOP POISONING MY MIND WITH IDEAS
The “if you’re not trans then shut up” line is really cute. If you’re not white or male, you should shut up. If you don’t hate communists, then shut up. If you don’t support christianity in America, then shut the hell up.
Like I said, fighting fire with yet more fire.
Does anyone have a archived link of the original unedited story?
I just found all this today, and so far all I’ve been able to gather about what was changed was the top picture and the pronouns. While I definitely these two things were important errors, reading these comments makes it sound like there were other significant differences between the currently available version and the original.
The article seems pretty clear about Dani’s accomplishments as a developer, but based on some of the comments here it seems like some of that was missing.
And just to keep the comment flamewar going…
Anna, I recognize that your anger over mistreatment/ignorance of these issues is completely justified, but is it productive? You certainly are not obligated to champion the topic, but people are obviously interested in what you say. I don’t mean to impose a responsibility to censor yourself, I just feel like you could affect more positive change.
Either way, I’m glad that you are keeping these topic visible, and calling people on their bullshit.
Jake, the line was “if you’re not trans you should shut up when trans people say ‘Hey, you’re writing about us in an insulting way.’” Because trans people are more likely to understand the ways in which they’re oppressed than non-trans people.
Analogizing this to “if you’re not white or male than you should shut up” is bullshit, because white people and male people are not oppressed as a group, so it’s not like other folks have trouble understanding our plight. As Douglas Adams said, “It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them,” but not vice versa.
And it’s not like the injunction was for non-trans people to shut up completely. We can still talk all we want about every subject except how much better we understand trans people than they do! In fact we can even talk about that, because comments like Jeanne’s never actually seem to stop anybody from talking.
You missed my point.
Equality doesn’t even invite the possibility of anyone telling anyone else to shut up about anything, knowledged or not. Only the politics of oppression and division does that. Until we as people start moving past the idea that there can only be the oppressed and the oppressor, there will continue only to be the oppressed and the oppressor.
Case in point: it’s absurd to imply that belonging to a certain group of people necessitates any sort of experience. Is the straight white male cosmetic surgeon unqualified to comment on trans issues despite devoting his life’s work to gender reconstruction? Is the autogynophiliac who only has passing experience with trans pornography more qualified than him based on their self identification as “a woman inside”? How trans do you have to be offended or not offended? Is genderfluidity trans? How about those who don’t think gender exists? You’ve instantly turned an inclusive group into an exclusive one simply by ascribing them special powers of commentary on a subject.
Fighting fire with fiiiiire.
Hahaha that is such fucking bullshit. “Until we as people start moving past the idea that there can only be the oppressed and the oppressor, there will continue only to be the oppressed and the oppressor.” Yes, if only we close our eyes and pretend oppression doesn’t exist, it will go away!
No one is saying anyone is unqualified to talk about trans issues. It’s just that, if you’re a straight cis guy like me and trans people are saying that you aren’t understanding their experience, maybe consider the possibility that they’re right and you’re wrong?
The true threat to equality is that some trans people have told a cis guy that he doesn’t understand their experience! Won’t anyone think of the plastic surgeons?
“Case in point: it’s absurd to imply that belonging to a certain group of people necessitates any sort of experience.”
(a) It’s not absurd and I’m curious as to why you think it’s absurd, unless you’ve LITERALLY NEVER IMAGINED WHAT IT MIGHT LIKE TO BE IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES THAN YOUR OWN.
(b) Usually when people say “case in point,” they’re providing an example that proves their case in a pretty sound and commonsense way — as if the entire situation can be meaningfully encapsulated in a single point of data. This is not what you have done here! Can you see why?
And you can only move beyond the paradigm of oppressed/oppressor I guess when such power relations don’t exist. If you’re in the position of the oppressor you have the luxury of ignoring them, otherwise you don’t. Is this controversial? I mean do you get why your “shut up” is logically different from mine in this case? I am saying “you can’t comment usefully on how I as a trans person feel in this situation, therefore shut up.” You are saying “I’m sick of hearing about identity politics, therefore shut up.” I mean seriously do you see how that’s different
hsahahahahahahaha did you just say a surgeon has more experience being trans than someone who is trans whoaaaaaaaaaa
also putting more “i”s into your misguided fire analogy doesnt magically make it true, it makes it look like you’re plugging your ears and screaming FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE over and over while everyone tries to explain trans politics to you
i just want to congratulate xtc/Ante Flixelante on a successful blog, where all us freaks can get our freak on and express our silly and absurd and glamorous little peeves and desires and follies.
When I refer to someone’s gender I mean the gender they physically are, is this a terrible thing?
gender isn’t physical, dude. gender is an identity.
True, but, hm. A better question might be, if I don’t know someone’s identity (either by not knowing them well enough, or at all), is it a terrible thing to refer to someone as what they appear to be?
then you say sorry for making the mistake and use the pronoun they tell you to use
You are called “Sir” because you aren’t a woman, you are a man. If you want to be both, then you should continue to be treated as both. Where do you get the audacity to think you can “Go into a womans bathroom, while being a male…”
i had read this article a little while ago and had a bit of trouble really getting it. i mean i understood it and it makes complete sense, but i didn’t really feel it. had i read the kotaku article previous to yours i wouldn’t have found anything wrong with it. i have a lot of privileges and i am aware that i can be very insensitive in many ways that i’m privileged. anyway, i just finished reading part of a zine (“Shut Up & Love the Rain” by Robnoxious) and he’s explaining how his dad (he still refers to her as his dad) came out as transgender and throughout this story (and all the other times he speaks of his dad) he always refers to her with female pronouns. and somehow reading this it just kinda clicked for me. so yeah, if anyone is maybe having trouble with understanding the difference, try reading something written how it should be, with the person consistently referred to as their chosen gender; it might click for you.
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