I just watched a video a whole drama surrounding someone I didn't know in an online gaming community I'm not a part of. Just out of curiosity. And it made me think about a lot of things.

First off, I am not going to give any names or whatever. I apologise for the "vague posting" but I don't want to add to potential harassment that the person in question is receiving. Most importantly, who they are don't matter to the point I want to make. Even if you think you figured it out, I am asking you to please not talk about this, it isn't the point.

Here is a quick summary and context behind what I'm going to talk about:

I saw a video about some drama in a gaming community surrounding a particular player.

The long story short is that there is player who has been dominating the charts that game. This player also happens to be a woman. There are allegations that she is in fact a cheater and that "she is actually a man", even linking her to another game account.

As you're probably aware of, I find all of it extremely suspect. Notably how a massive part of the focus of this whole story seems to be focused on this player being "a man faking being a woman". I can't help but finding this incredibly problematic.

Let's pretend that a lot of the allegations in this videos are true and that this person indeed used a previous account that actually was a man. Well... what if they're a trans woman, just trying to distance themselves from their previous online identity?

"She could just have said so", one could say, but: Trans people don't owe you an outing to satisfy your conspiracy theories. So what if both if these accounts owners are one and the same? What does it change to the big scandal of them being an alleged cheater?

Another piece of evidence is that, it's pretty obvious that yes, it seems pretty obvious that this this person uses an AI voice changer. And while I hate AI and don't want to see it used....

I can't help but give a pass to AI voice changers for some people. Not all of us are happy with our voices. One group that imediately comes to my mind, just purely through the empathy of being in that group myself and also having issues with my voice is: Trans people. The voice dysphoria is real, people. And all though I have issues with the ethics behind AI stuff, I completely understand wanting to be able to just exist online with a voice that actually feels like you. If she is trans, or hell, any reason that makes her uncomfortable to expose her actual voice is perfectly understandable.

It's important to point out now that, as far as the world knows: This person is "a woman" and that's it. Cis, trans, we don't know. However, it's also important to give a reminder that, as far as most people outside of themselves are concerned (because gender is complicated but I'm not going to go into that right now otherwise this is going to be even longer): Trans women are women first, trans second. A woman, is a woman. Doesn't matter what class sub-class she chose at character creation.

We can't know for sure if she is a woman or a man, if she is trans or cis and it doesn't, nor should it fucking matter in the first place.

Videos putting an emphasis on calling her "he", just to dunk on her with the allegations bothers the shit out of me. The entire thing just reeks of transphobia, that, even if the person was to come out and say: "Yes. I am actually a man. I scammed you all!" or whatever would still remain disturbing to me.

Because these types of shit have happened before to other people who actually were trans! Accusation of a woman pretending to be a man, and here is her "real identity". All of her backstory being suddendly exposed for the whole internet to see because she dared to not disclaim it herself. We've even seen accusations of being "a man faking to be a trans woman". These things happened before and often. Hell, I can even think of a specific case of the latter as I'm typing this (which again, I won't say because: Leave that person alone)!

I'm also reminded of another accusation of cheating in a popular game which blew up on Twitter a while back, where an openly trans woman playing the game really well got accused of cheating and it became a whole thing that IN A MILLION YEARS would've never been a whole thing if this girl wasn't, well, a girl, and especially if she wasn't trans.

But anyway.

My point is, the story should be:

The number one player of this gaming community is allegedly cheating.

But right now the story is:

This woman that is the number one player in this gaming community is allegedly secretly a man and a cheater.

People talking about this, like the video I watched that introduced me to the topic, are of course bending over backwards to say that this isn't about gender... while spending 70% of the time misgendering a woman and claiming that she isn't a woman but secretly a man pretending to be a woman.

Because it wasn't enough that, according to the accusations, this person is cheating and unfairly witholding the number one spot in that community, no, we had to throw in all of this other shit which shouldn't matter at all! Going as far as to entrap her in a Discord call to try and make her sing, say specific complex series of words and exploiting all of the flaws that an AI voice changer would have to demonstrate that she is using an AI voice changer, when again: Why the fuck does it matter!

The incidious part to me is that: These people don't even realize that they're being deeply and creepily misogynistic and transphobic. I'm watching a documented case of what is essentially "transvestigation" in all but name.  Because they got it in their head that this person is actually a man, they have that as blinders on. So imediately, the whole misoginy thing just magically disappears, even though, no matter what this person """"'"actually is""""", she is claiming to be a woman and so the whole thing becomes profoundly transphobic in the background!

No matter who or what this person is. A woman, a trans woman or even "a man lying to everyone", whatever. It is absolutely shocking to me that for not one god damn second, these people don't realise that "Yes, it is in fact, about gender."

Because let's be honest for just a second here, no one would've ever pulled that shit to someone presenting as a cis (< very important detail here) man, call him a woman pretending to be a man and so on. They would've just focused on the cheating allegations and I guaran-fucking-tee you it wouldn't have been such a big deal in the first place.

Hell, you know what? You want a hear a very cruel irony? If the accusations of this man actually being a woman were to even be brought up, even with absolute and total credibility? A lot of these guys would put a thinking hat on and actually dismiss the whole thing, saying that it's probably to avoid harassment due to being a woman in online gaming spaces.

It's deeply frustrating, because I'm willing to be good faith and bet that a lot of these people would never have any issues gendering a trans woman correctly, too. As despite the deeply rooted transphobia in society and especially in gaming spaces, most people are not absolutely deranged by the existence of a trans girl.

They would probably even call out the harassment that this person would be getting about her gender, saying that "it shouldn't matter if she is trans", that "misgendering her and deadnaming her is absolutely not ok", that they don't want that kind of things from their community and all that. Like we've seen in other case involving a person that was openly trans.

Which would also, without them ever realising it, be sending the message that they don't see trans women as "real women", because to them, a trans woman needs to be openly trans, because they're separate from "women". Because unconsciously, the logic is that trans women owe men an outing, therefore, so long as the person says that she is a woman and only a woman, it's ok to dig into her past and try and prove that she was secretly a man all along. "There is nothing transphobic about that. What even is the link with transphobia, here?" The thought that maybe it could be a trans women trying to distance herself from her past never crosses their minds, because if she was trans, they would know about it. They assume she'd be open about it, they assume that besides, we can always tell.

This whole thing is a massive web of interconnected misogyny and transphobia disguised as a game cheating scandal.

It demonstraste, once more, that the hardest part of fighting these things is that most misogyny, most transphobia and most discriminations in general, is not overt. It takes a special kind of cruel person to go out of their way to actually say the quiet part out loud, and that's because it means grasping an awareness of the deeply rooted biases in themselves, and choosing to double down on them.

For most people and most of the time, these biases – the societal roots of misogyny, transphobia, and all of the other forms of discrimination targetting marginalised group such as racism or ableism – that all of us carry within ourselves, no exceptions, come out in deeper, more subtle forms but most importantly, in a totally unconscious manner on the part of a perpetuator who thinks that they can exclude themselves from these things, that they are somehow, above these kinds of biases.

And they will rationalise how all of this has nothing to do with gender, and within that breath, riding the same train of thought, they will go back to saying: "She is a man, pretending to be a woman."

PAWNOTES:

¹: There is of course a really sad but rich history of accusations made against the womanhood of women in various domains, notably athletic ones, which really fits well with the story I used as an example here.

In recent times, the narrative around these have shifted from "men secretly pretending to be women", to "women secretly being trans women", but the words being different doesn't make the statements any different. In fact, in even more recent times, a lot of people dropped the pretence all together and the phrasing has shifted back to the former. It wasn't misogyny and now it's transphobia, it always was both.

I would also be remissed if I didn't mention that these types of accusations in athletic competitions have disproportionally targeted non-white women as well.

But what I wrote was already long and I didn't want to stray too far away from what I was talking about. I just wanted to say that, yes, the parallel is quite obvious and I'm aware of it.

²: I need to admit that the last paragraph was change to fit with the "title" of this post. It's been flipped around. Originally, it was:

And they will accuse a women of being a man, and within that breath, riding the same train of thought, say: "It's not about gender."

Which I gotta say, is way better and is a really cool note to end on. I'm dropping my mic, and all that. :3

...but alas, "It's not about gender." didn't feel as fitting of a title for this. Oh well.

³: Yup, this Fedi post has footnotes. That's because it's actually a blog post pretending to be a fedi post (hah). But yes. I need to reopen my blog already. I know. I will! And when I do, I'll repost this and some of my big Fedi posts on there!

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