An Assassin's Creed side-character & historical accuracy

[Neon Streak]

Not sure if anyone's done a thread about this, but I thought I'd do one anyway.

Now I've never played any of the Assassin's Creed games, nor am I an avid fan, but one thing I do know is that each game takes place in a certain historical timeline and the guys at Ubisoft try their best to make those settings as historically accurate as possible...but there's one game that has me scratching my head in confusion.

I read over on a  GameFAQs forum that Assassin's Creed: Syndicate features a side-character that is (apparently) a FTM transgender. But since the game takes place in 19th century London, I have one question:

Did transgenders even exist in the 1800's?

[Kosheh]

honestly, who are you trying to discredit here? the individuals themselves? the developers? or the journalists reporting on this?

sorry if i'm goin a little hard here but you can't handle these kinda issues as aloof as discussing the whereabouts of luigi in mario 64

Not sure if anyone's done a thread about this, but I thought I'd do one anyway.

Now I've never played any of the Assassin's Creed games, nor am I an avid fan, but one thing I do know is that each game takes place in a certain historical timeline and the guys at Ubisoft try their best to make those settings as historically accurate as possible...but there's one game that has me scratching my head in confusion.

I read over on a  GameFAQs forum that Assassin's Creed: Syndicate features a side-character that is (apparently) a FTM transgender. But since the game takes place in 19th century London, I have one question:

Did transgenders even exist in the 1800's?

well,

yeah

Dr. James Barry earned a degree at Edinburgh Medical School, and joined the British Army in 1813 and became the Surgeon General. Their biological sex was discovered after their death in 1865.

The thing is that the "transgender" idea is a relatively new, modern concept - so it's a bit hamhanded of the gaming press to outright say "Yeah, this character is definitely transgender", because we don't really know enough of the character's history to fairly make this call. However, do consider that women didn't have a whole lot of political power during that time due to England's view on women in society, so it'd make perfect sense to assume the identity of a man to try to get leeway amongst the [male-dominated] populace. It's entirely plausible though that there were men AND women who experienced gender dysphoria since a young age and once they were considered an independent began living out their life assuming the roles of the gender opposite the ones they were assigned at birth (since we have documented history of this dating waaaay back) but there's probably many, many more undocumented cases as these people may have had to live a very closeted transgender life due to the social repercussions (ostracization, legal repercussions, etc.) We, as a general consensus in our society, don't know though for sure because as I mentioned, the gender identity movement is a relatively new one and we didn't even start using the term in the mainstream not even 10 years ago.
But yeah - there were a quite a few women who assumed the roles of men in society. Before we knew about the real breadth of gender identity, we just kind of assumed people crossdressed.

http://www.historyofwomen.org/crossdressers.html

...so I mean if it helps stop your neon hooves from clacking around at night I guess you could assume that Ned is crossdressing to conceal their identity from the English government, and that the protagonist doesn't question their gender because he's working amongst England's underworld and asking trivial things like that would have you bound for some kind of retribution. Remember the story of Fa Mulan? Same idea

because yeah, unfortunately the press and Ubisoft playing this up makes Ned seem like an anachronism, which is sorta gross on Ubisoft's part because it feels like they, one of the least PC companies, are trying to shoehorn equality into their titles. but hey neither of us were alive back then, so who are we to judge historical accuracy in this scenario, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

short answer: yes. "transgenders existed" since ancient Egypt even, but somebody wants that Politically Correct Money and is desperately trying to (poorly) twist a narrative in their favor for the sake of page clicks and game sales. While equal representation is healthy, it's certainly not when it's shoehorned in

---

oh i've been punk'd i just realized this user like never replies to their posts and just makes topics for Net Cred

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

do you really care about historical accuracy in a game about victorian english ninjas fighting jack the ripper with batman gadgets or are you really just upset that ubisoft included a character that makes you uncomfortable

[miyabi95_]

i don't think he's upset about it, just curious.
but same, it's like that whole thing that happened after the creator of metroid joked around about samus being trans. then people took him seriously (cuz they just got lost in translation i guess) and came up with some crazy game theories. all due respect to transgenders, but the arguments that arise from those kinds of discussions tend to get pretty ridiculous. but quite frankly i'm glad overwatch fans are overall supportive of tracer being homosexual - i say it's best to discover these kinds of things through the story rather than interviews with the creators.

[Zero Kirby]

By all means it's cool that video games are becoming more inclusive but like stated above it seems to be like doing the right thing for the wrong reasons

Just not drawing attention to doing it is nice

Have the character, have them be gay/trans/attackhelicopter, but don't stick a neon sign over their heads saying "BEE-TEE-DUBS TOTES TRANS YO CHECK IT OUT"

(I also agree with Ubisoft kinda being not-all-there-in-the-head what with their "we're super inclusive a [insert group likely to be offended here] person probably worked on this game so it's okay" disclaimers at the start of their games)

Same issue I had with Freedom Planet a while back being all "check out our TOTALLY UNIQUE AND INTERESTING FEMALE PROTAGONISTS" I think we can all tell they are female and if you have to tell us they are unique and interesting I get a suspicious feeling they're not

Let us discover things through visuals and inference, video games are partially a visual and storytelling medium, after all

It'd be like if Metroid suddenly decided to spend an entire game drawing attention to the fact that Samus is female-



... Video games aren't much for subtlety anymore, are they

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

other m isnt a bad game because it's about how samus is a woman, it's a bad game because what kind of woman it made her out to be that's the problem. there are dozens of games where femininity or a characters womanhood are front and center themes

[Zero Kirby]

other m isnt a bad game because it's about how samus is a woman, it's a bad game because what kind of woman it made her out to be that's the problem. there are dozens of games where femininity or a characters womanhood are front and center themes

This is also true but to be honest, I'm not sure how well a game emphasizing Samus' femininity would work in the first place, y'know?

Then again I liked the Prime games which treat her being female as nothing special, so perhaps I just don't get it. That's more on me than anything. But Fusion was a really good story-intensive Metroid and Samus' femininity wasn't really drawn attention to. I just don't know if it fits her character.

EDIT: Changed from "to be fair" to "to be honest" since, well, saying pretty much "NO IT WOULDN'T WORK ARGLE BLARGL BLUH" isn't really being fair

Also fixed up in general since originally posted from phone