Pride Month Picks: Where Are Gaming's Trans Women Heroes?

thegamer.com:

This article is part of Pride Month Picks, a collection of pieces that aim to highlight queer representation across games, television, film, books, and more throughout June.

Trans characters in gaming have come a long way in the past decade. They exist, for one thing. Progress has been steady and hopeful, but we're still a long way off where we should be. For all the games that have featured trans characters in notable ways - and there aren't a great deal - only one has really explored the idea of transness as a concept: Tell Me Why. This Pride month, it's worth looking back on and reflecting on how far we've come, and where we still need to go.

While Tyler Ronan, star of Tell Me Why, is the trans character I think of most frequently, for the majority of players it would be Lev from The Last of Us Part 2. TLOU2 is a significantly more popular game than Tell Me Why, and Lev a fan favourite character to boot. It's worth noting that I think Lev is fantastic. I've said before that he is 'imperfectly important' - this is the biggest stage trans characters have ever gotten in games, and that he has been so beloved despite the lurking anti-trans sentiment is an obvious net win. He is deadnamed once via background noise, and like most video games they point-blank refuse to use the word 'transgender' but it's a start. Given the insistence by some that being trans is just a phase or trend that kids will go out of, the fact Lev is a young teenage boy cannot be overlooked either.

Related: If We Want To Talk About Diversity In Gaming, We Need To Be Intersectional

Krem in Dragon Age Inquisition and Janeva in Horizon Zero Dawn are two other frequent examples offered. Both have minor tertiary roles (although you can interact with Krem