Regressive Progressivism and Fallout 4

There's a Bush and a Clinton fighting for the white house. Jurrasic Park is killing it at the box office. Mortal Kombat is being blamed for a massacre and DOOM is getting heat from cultural critics for its violence. I feel so very old and so very young at the same time.

The outrage du jour following E3 this year was accusations that Fallout 4 is 'transmisogynistic.' A word I don't understand (and that spellcheck doesn't recognize, but then spellcheck doesn't recognize spellcheck either), and I'll explain why later. All of this sparked over a second-long part of a clip of combat and features in Fallout 4, previewed at the pants-darkeningly exciting Bethesda event, their first ever major showing at the yearly trade show.


The clip, as you can see, features a man wearing a dress. This is big news for several reasons:

1. Just taking into account the last couple of Fallout games, there were some really excellent outfits and armor sets that were gender-specific: The Merc Charmer outfit, for example, had a bulky steel collar and coat for male players, but placing it on a female character it had a miniskirt and leggings. Similarly, the Stylish Gambler's hat in New Vegas for men was a replica of Indiana Jones's fedora (found on a skeleton in a 50s-style refrigerator) for men, but for women it was an ugly veiled pillbox hat. 
2. The appearance of a man in a dress in Fallout 4's trailer signifies that you are no longer restricted by gender as to what clothing you wish to wear. For immersion and gameplay, this should be a huge step forward. You would think progressive-minded folk with a penchant for gender activism would be celebrating this. You would even think they'd go so far as to realize that you can now play as one biological sex that identifies as another gender.

But no. The logic is that Bethesda was using the imagery to express 'lol man in a dress is funny.' Nearly the exact words.  Meanwhile, actual trans people are pretty happy about this. (For example, the editrix of this blog. -- Erin)

And even if we're looking at this as just 'man in a dress,' one of the more irritating aspects of this particular outrage is that activists have a habit of erasing the progress that the drag queen/transvestite community has had in making things like breaking gender roles, homosexuality, and transgender more acceptable to the mainstream. Back in my teenage and early 20s, I had friends in the drag community, both gay and straight, and I saw the shit they put up with from ignorant and bigoted people, and it seriously rubs me the wrong way when people claiming the moral high ground shit upon them from a very great height.

And transmisogynistic? To borrow a phrase of theirs, the word itself is problematic. I believe this should (theoretically) fall under 'transphobic', as the word transmisogynistic a) excludes female-to-male transition and b) smacks of one ideology co-opting another group's concerns for their own. That's right, hashtagtivists, I speak your language. Fluently. I'd tell you to check your privilege, if I were capable of doing it with a straight face.

But it comes down to this: Fallout did it first. Those same slacktivists throwing a ticker-tape parade over Fire Emblem having same-sex marriage? Fallout 2 had same-sex marriage. A gay character? Go talk to Arcade Gannon in New Vegas or Carol and Greta the Lesbian ghouls in Fallout 3. Or Flak (and possibly Shrapnel) in Rivet City. I'm only surprised it took so long to ditch gender-specific clothing, and I'm happy it has, as there are some snazzy suits that Justine will look totally badass wearing. 

Fallout has a long history of being open to new ideas, and attacking it for making progress in an area like this isn't progressive, it's regressive.

Also, as a sidenote: I'm sick of hearing about flags, too.

Boots in the Dust

     There's a chill in the late autumn air, a wind carrying a warning of a coming bitter cold, of unnatural creature and desperate men. My boots crunch on the blasted gravel and dust of the hillside. I shift my rifle's weight from one shoulder to the other, adjusting the uncomfortable metal plate of my leather vest. Cresting the hill, I sit for a moment on a shattered piece of concrete, grimacing at the foul taste of the dirty water, choking back a momentary wave of nausea. Probably mild radiation poisoning. Have to get some meds for that in the next town, otherwise I could grow a third breast or fingers on my leg. At least, that's what the overseer always told us.
     Behind me, there's a shifting noise. I tense up, my rife falling from its sling on my shoulder as I drop to one knee, taking aim at the hill I just climbed and blowing the hair from my eyes. The safety catch releases as a silhouette comes into view and my finger approaches the trigger...




     I've been visiting some old stomping grounds recently. The Fallout series and I have some history, as most old school gamers do with it. I played the old games off and on, probably never actually finishing any of them, but spending plenty of time wandering about in them. Fallout 3 is a touchy subject for me, though. It was an outstanding game, a revelation in gaming even, as it was basically an Elder Scrolls game that wasn't about swords and sorcery. For those of us who wanted that kind of an experience but had no interest in the D&D type worlds, this was our world. All vacuum tubes faux-Leave it to Beaver and nuclear age paranoia.

     Fallout 3, though, was a difficult game. Due to the sheer size of the world and all the tiny little details of it, it was an incredibly unstable game. Even after fan patches, official patches, and countless mods, I still can't run it. I've rage quit the game twice, once the first time I ever tried to play it and once only six or seven months ago when I tried to play it again. Only after playing its quasi-sequel Fallout: New Vegas did I force myself through the game despite its  crashes, but for some reason or another it just flat-out will not play anymore on my system.

     Then I found the Tale of Two Wastelands mod. The entirety of Fallout 3, imported into Fallout New Vegas's more stable, improved, and more moddable engine. I'm about 5 or 6 hours back in now, just long enough to reach the second major settlement, Rivet City (a massive  aircraft carrier beached in a dried riverbed in Washington, DC) and it's a joy to be back. I have every intention of playing these two games to their conclusion yet again, even if it takes another 200 hours.

     I sincerely recommend the DC and Mojave wastelands as vacation spots for anyone that wants to chill at their games console or computer and get lost for hours and hours at a time. Don't be surprised if you start getting attached to certain things, too; thinking of Megaton as a home, or sharing quiet moments on a hillside with Rose of Sharon (don't call her Whiskey Rose) Cassidy. There's a kind of serene, broken beauty to be seen, and tiny stories to be told in graffiti left on buildings or the remains  of people huddled together in abandoned houses. I thought I'd had my fill of it, but this place will probably never not feel like home.

     Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are both available on Steam for cheap (and probably cheaper come the Winter Sale in late December).