"Progressive about judging people" is ironically kind of a nice way of describin🌳g the tensions in this piece that undermine its argument. Identification is typically a pretty one-sided process--or a judgement about someone else--rather than a process in which the person being judged just gets to tell you who they think they are. Instead of that dialogue, we invariably get online debates about how to "judge" whether one belongs to x, y, or z group, which often just reads as weirdly stereotypical and restrictive to me.

The article is some🐷times overly prescriptive and cynical, which really seems at odd with what I think the author ultimately wants: a much more open and humane way of depicting and understanding sexuality and gender.

On one hand, the author wants to encourage depictions of identity that are less stereotypical. Relatedly, I also read the author as arguing that they'd prefer depictions of gender and sexuality that are not designed solely for satisfying consumer markets. To be honest, I'm not certain they make that second point because their allusion to Cyberpunk as representing transsexuality as a "commodity" didn't really explain how the game commodified trans people or why that was a problem. I'm not arguing that the author is wrong in their objections to commodification. I just don't know what they mean because just using the term itself isn't really an explanation. Is it about intentionality? If CD Projekt Red included more trans 🔴oriented sex scenes because they thought it'd be profitable, would that decision be contrary to what the author finds objectionable in commodifying gender or sexuality? I don't really know.

And on the other hand, the whole thrust of the article--their major complaint--is that the game doesn't depict gender and sexuality by the narrow standards preferred by the author. We learn that Astarian should have been gay because their behavior was "coded" as such--and I dare the author to describe what "gay coded" means without reference to stereotypes--even though it has been well established that from the start Astarian was intimate with people across l💃ines of gender. Ironically, the author attributes this "erasure" of Astarian's sexuality as a cynical effort to appeal to a straight female fanbase (why only that population though?) even as the author advocate for changes of their own in accordance wit🍸h their preferences.

I'd �🧔�like to see the author elaborate more on their claims about pansexuality in games.