socialjusticeviv: Video game news site The Escapist has fired some of its more liberal staff (while others had already left) and hired two new people. One of those people, Liz F, has written for MRA websites that are classified by the SPLC as hate sites. Iām sure a quick search would provide a long list of horrifying posts on those sites. The Escapist also hired Brandon Morse, a libertarian. What do these two have in common? Endorsement of GamerGate. However, rather than make yet another post about how awful GamerGate is, I wanna talk about something else that makes the hiring of Brandon Morse indefensible. Morse is vocally transphobic. Heās even gone so far as to accuse trans people of āpretendingā, and when pointed to evidence of the reality of trans identities simply ignored them. His defenders argue that thereās nothing wrong with transphobia or that it somehow wonāt affect the perspective he writes from. Frankly, thatās impossible. There are a number of well known trans women who develop or write about games. Will he write about trans folks in news posts or will he ignore our accomplishments? Will he be able to avoid misgendering us and deadnaming us in his articles? After all, he considers our identities false, so why should we trust heāll suddenly respect them when writing about us. You can keep going with this too. Will Morse write about and respect trans gamers? What about trans characters? Will he write vitriolic editorials about how we donāt belong in games / gaming / the games industry? We canāt trust The Escapist to actually hold Morse to an editorial standard of not being transphobic in his posts, seeing as that site has hosted Yahtzee Croshawās transphobia, his defense of his own transphobia, and even had the word ātrannyā in its header image at one point. Hiring Morse after their history of transphobia is a sign that either The Escapist just doesnāt care about transphobia or actively supports it. Either way, theyāre giving it a potential platform. So, why is it such a big deal that a well known game site is hiring a transphobe and giving transphobia a platform in doing so? Because transphobia kills. Regardless of whether Morse himself would attack or murder a trans person, the views he so proudly shares are those same ones that lead people to kill us.Ā Morseās views being given a platform will reinforce transphobia in others. Just as Fox News pushes its audience to become more and more right wing and reactionary, Morseās audience will likely become MORE transphobic for having read his work, and that puts trans lives at risk. Thatās just directly murdering us, too. Transphobia kills us in another way, too. The lack of support and acceptance drives many trans people to suicide. This year alone Iāve already heard of two trans teens committing suicide, and Iām sure there were many others of which weāre unaware. After all, when a trans person commits suicide, their family tends to erase their transness. The more that transphobia is given a platform, the more we feel under attack, without support, alone, and doomed. To give voice to transphobia is to directly contribute to trans suicides. More trans people have been murdered this year than thereāve been weeks in the year yet. (This list has not yet added Joyce Akira, a Brazilian trans woman who was recently murdered.) And I remind that this is just the known murders. How many more trans people have already died this year that we will never know about? In short: By hiring Brandon Morse, The Escapist has given platform to a man whose ideology directly contributes to the murder and suicide of trans folks. This is beyond any sort of defense. If you continue to support The Escapist, it doesnāt matter how much you might claim you are against transphobia, youāve made your choice and that choice was to side with our killers. If you are a game developer or are part of gaming in any capacity, donāt send review copies to the Escapist. Donāt interview with the Escapist. Donāt enable them in any way. If you do, I want nothing to do with you.
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