A very sincere little game we have here from Anna Anthropy
(a.k.a. Auntie Pixelante). It's like an interactive storybook! What's the
story, you ask? Well, it's about hormone therapy. It's an autobiographical interactive video-story about hormone therapy. And
it's super cute and colourful and engaging.
Although there's a spoiler right at the very beginning
(something along the lines of "this is an autobiographical story about my
experience with hormone replacement therapy), you don't really know what you're
in for. It's no puzzle-solving, code-breaking, shoot-em-up thriller—it's really
very intuitive and easy to play. It's the ideas that are challenging.
Maybe play the game through once before reading the next
stuff. (It doesn't take very long, I swear!):
Anna Anthropy is a transgendered activist game designer, and
this is a game about the 6 months she spent on estrogen-replacement therapy.
She started designing the game mid-therapy, and didn't know what direction her
game—or her life—was going to take. Luckily, it's a happy ending!
But the first time I played the game, I honestly didn't have
a clue who Anna Anthropy was. I didn't know she was transgendered. It made me
sad to think people feel the need to go through hormone-replacement therapy in
order to look like one of the two polar sexes society has deemed acceptable.
Learning that Auntie Pixelantie is trans changed my reaction
to the game, but it still had my brain churning. Yes, it does make sense that
if you are a woman you would want to
look like a woman. But that just got
me thinking: why do we all (think we) know what it means to "look like a
woman?" I mean, what does that
mean? That you don't have hair on your face? That you have big tits and a small
waist? That you have narrow shoulders and wide hips? That your hair and your
fingernails are long? I want to be careful here: I'm not saying that it's wrong
to have any of these traits. I'm just saying that it's not concretely right! There are TONS of women who don't look like any of that, and that's not wrong either.
So even though it was a happy ending for Auntie P., it was
difficult going to get there. The game shows that it's pretty darned taboo to
be obviously in between the gender poles (and let's face it, to be on one of
those poles is like hitting a bull’s-eye). And that made me rather sad and
troubled. I mean, it's one thing to want to look a certain way for personal
reasons, and another thing to feel socially stigmatized until you look that
certain way.
Cool game. The graphics are really cute. The little people
are funny are lovely and wonky. The sounds are great! Like womp and zoop and
tick and waaaa. And it makes you think! Or it makes me think. And think and
think and think and think and think and think and...
I could..
A. Have played
that game about jumping elephants, but instead I learned something.
B. Take it.
C. Leave it.
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