From the psychological point of view if the kids feel free of constrains (biological and material) and they can experience "freedom" in the realm of FANTASY (without being point it out or shame or criticism) and those two aspects are what make these video games so appealing to individuals with gender desphory...we can deduced from this that we are facing children and young persons who cannot adjust to reality and we have to find out why and we will find out solutions. The answer is never TRANGENDERISM, actually is the most stupid and corrosive idea that somebody (I wonder who) came with. Maybe the reality is to empty of meaning (when we raised our children to persue material things only), maybe is too harsh (when we raised our children to believe they are entitled, they are special or we protect them too much and become too sensitive and when the first disappointment happens to them they cannot cope with it) maybe we enable them in their fantasies or maybe we allow them to explore their narcissistic tendencies, when as parents we need to shape and give form and correct what it is wrong, lead and guide as when a child heard somewhere that he can became something else, we as parent tell them the truth, that is not possible to change the nature of things, for instance we cannot change a head into a hand, or a rock into milk or a cow into a horse. We must teach our children also the value of life and that we are sacred as we are, we can also do things that make us better and a change of gender doesn't make us better people or better persons. We must install in our children the awareness of the disadvantages of other people and a sense of charity and compassion and that is the best way to fight back our narcissistic tendencies and those of our children so they don't focus so much in themselves but in serve others. Harder say than do, I know because our society's values are the wrong ones. The Kardashians success is a proof of that, what can be more boring that to watch a bunch of family members talk about surgeries, sex, money and having kids like buying LB purses? When you turn on the TV and you see the kind of shows we have you understand the shape or states of affairs of a society, its core values and its expectations and that is why our children are so sick. Humans are made to florish inside and out, to wonder, to love, to hope and look for beauty not the fake and plastic beauty but the natural beauty of the world around, also they need challenges to prove themselves and break their own barriers, and to know themselves. Children nowadays are starving, their souls and their intellects cannot find satisfaction in the materialistic, plastic and superficial society we have let to happen (others created for their own economic interest but we let that happen before our faces, and our parents are also responsable) we are going backwards in the most of the aspects of the human dimension but we can reverse that, we can stop, take a breath of fresh air or otherwise and change paths, and we have to start saying NO and turning off our screens and get out to nature and to our community, the people who live around us and learn how to share again without a cellphone in the middle. It has to be done!
There's a whole documentary about trans-identified people (mostly autogynephilic men) who discovered their "trans" identity through gaming, it's called TransGeek: https://youtu.be/gYmMjPY-uss
I’m not sure what to make of it. My son used to play dungeons & dragons but he never hid it from us. In fact, he tried to play with us once (his parents) & siblings & was excited to get a campaign going. He was also into anime, but we would talk about that & he would explain how there are many different types. He tried to share an anime movie with me once, to take away the fear…educate me that it wasn’t all harmful
Thank you! My trans identifying 19 year okd has been playing video games for years and especially likes the role playing games ie Far Cry, Sky Rim, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Overwatch etc. I don’t know if these are all role playing games but these are some of the ones she has multiple iterations of.
I do think there's a difference in a lot of computer based gaming versus other areas. There's a lot more emphasis on personality than on winning in the games kids are getting recruited from.
Begging PITT parents for advice: my very hard headed, neuro-diverse, pre-pubescent child desperately wants to play Minecraft on a public server. Knowing many of the stories of the PITT parents - this horrifies me. Playing single player mode is not enough anymore. I supervise constantly and it works with single player, but I'm horrified of having the public server chat option right there in front of him. Are there any safe, child-friendly, for-kids, public Minecraft servers out there? Or is there at least an option to turn the chat option off when playing on a public server?
My advice is, just say no. As your child gets older, he will find more ways around you. These games are not only dangerous to their young minds, they are addictive as well. I would describe these games as "gateway" games which lead to other things on the internet.
Honestly, you're going to need to get a router that you can block that stuff on. Maybe consider paying for a DNS server that you can configure to block basically everything. If it's wifi make the kid use a guest account which you can limit and don't share main password. That way you can shut the guest account off for part of the day and there won't be an easy work around for the kid. If you just mark certain hours for a device but share main password, the kids will 100% work around it.
Thanks for your reply Team Reality, I appreciate it. Could you help me understand what a DNS server is (I Googled and am not too sure I get it) and how it can help in this scenario? Can I block the Minecraft chat option with a DNS server, while still allowing my child to play on a public server?
I should add that his time online as it is, is diligently controlled and limited by me.
Edited to add: web nor screens in general are not accessible without my input
I'm sorry for technobabble. DNS means domain name server. Essentially internet addresses aren't just something like "msn.com" and the DNS translates that to an address that a browser can understand there are free ones that will just block obvious porn sites.
This looked like a decent overview but be aware that most tech organizations operate on the trans people are oppressed and we support them mindset. https://dnsforfamily.com/
I can say the first video game I saw with major trans content was dragon age 2 from 2011.
But the issue with Minecraft is the associated servers and Discord groups. To be fair teens playing Minecraft regularly aren't playing sports, joining clubs at school, going on dates, etc. It's a socially awkward gateway to trans Discord groups. Trans people seem to have an insatiable need for external validation and convincing teens they're trans too is serious validation.
My son is thankfully desisted, and I haven’t wanted to destabilize this by asking where his false identity came from in the first place. But I would bet big money on discord servers associated with online gaming having been the source.
I agree with the main thesis here but differ on most of the details. I would say that first person, realistic video games where you can choose the protagonist's gender, are AGP training systems for males specifically, and generally trans identity trainers. Very similarly to porn, they train the brain to eroticise a certain persona. In fact they eroticise an identity - in the sense it was used before trans, as well as its current sense. If you go back to Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, this is the deliberate eroticisation of male players projecting into an attractive female body, operating it while also voyeuristically observing it. This has been a staple of first person video games ever since. Within a decade or so this type of identification was leaking into porn, first of all edgy and specialised, later becoming mainstream and endemic. From there the fetish broke out into the real world as part of the general mainstreaming of fetish behaviour and porn behaviour. The current gaming world is still filled with male players who erotically connect with sexualised protagonists. This is a huge proportion of male gamers, maybe a majority. Millions of males, maybe tens or hundreds of millions, have been trained to have AGP sexual responses.
I think I got that as a free game with a video card purchase. Thought it was like playing as Jessica Rabbit and it was designed for console. Gave up in less than an hour. Haven't played an online game in three years hate computers. Thanks kid who wants to destroy your health.
I don't know whether your ideas about 'trans' kids and the influence of online games are correct. All I know is that the first time I saw the name, which my son later adopted when he decided he wanted to transition, is the name that I saw on his screen avatar when he was playing Minecraft.
To be a geek for a little bit. The first role playing game was dungeon and dragons. It came about as an add-on for a set of rules for war gaming with lead figures called chainmail.
People in the early 1970s adopted those into additional rulebooks to enable playing games as combat/war gaming with individuals that each player would run as opposed to an army. The idea was to in some ways reenact fantasy stories like Tolkien, or Jack Vance, etc. By the 80s there were dozens of compeitors, and the games shifted more to character development and stories. In modern times people still play with paper and pencil in person but there's a ton of massive multi-player online players and that's a version of social media
Too much of anything is not healthy, including gaming. There are many temptations out in this great big world, and unfortunately we don’t find out which ones are evil until it is too late.
Eh - it’s the old problem of correlation or causation. I suspect video games provide a place for kids who feel awkward, for whatever reason, to both feel valued (I’m at Level 9,431!) and avoid the social pitfalls of the real world.
(My favorite correlation-is-not-causation example: Gene Wilder’s mother and wife both died from ovarian cancer. So did Madeline Kahn, his frequent costar. However, knowing Gene Wilder did not cause their cancer.)
Thank you so much for this! I have been rallying against the capture of right wing youth culture by gamer culture, this provides another solid reason why based young people should find something more productive to do with their time.
There is definitely an opportunity cost, all that time gaming that could be spent interacting with people in real life. That’s how you learn social skills and how to have relationships.
This is very, very interesting, thank you!
From the psychological point of view if the kids feel free of constrains (biological and material) and they can experience "freedom" in the realm of FANTASY (without being point it out or shame or criticism) and those two aspects are what make these video games so appealing to individuals with gender desphory...we can deduced from this that we are facing children and young persons who cannot adjust to reality and we have to find out why and we will find out solutions. The answer is never TRANGENDERISM, actually is the most stupid and corrosive idea that somebody (I wonder who) came with. Maybe the reality is to empty of meaning (when we raised our children to persue material things only), maybe is too harsh (when we raised our children to believe they are entitled, they are special or we protect them too much and become too sensitive and when the first disappointment happens to them they cannot cope with it) maybe we enable them in their fantasies or maybe we allow them to explore their narcissistic tendencies, when as parents we need to shape and give form and correct what it is wrong, lead and guide as when a child heard somewhere that he can became something else, we as parent tell them the truth, that is not possible to change the nature of things, for instance we cannot change a head into a hand, or a rock into milk or a cow into a horse. We must teach our children also the value of life and that we are sacred as we are, we can also do things that make us better and a change of gender doesn't make us better people or better persons. We must install in our children the awareness of the disadvantages of other people and a sense of charity and compassion and that is the best way to fight back our narcissistic tendencies and those of our children so they don't focus so much in themselves but in serve others. Harder say than do, I know because our society's values are the wrong ones. The Kardashians success is a proof of that, what can be more boring that to watch a bunch of family members talk about surgeries, sex, money and having kids like buying LB purses? When you turn on the TV and you see the kind of shows we have you understand the shape or states of affairs of a society, its core values and its expectations and that is why our children are so sick. Humans are made to florish inside and out, to wonder, to love, to hope and look for beauty not the fake and plastic beauty but the natural beauty of the world around, also they need challenges to prove themselves and break their own barriers, and to know themselves. Children nowadays are starving, their souls and their intellects cannot find satisfaction in the materialistic, plastic and superficial society we have let to happen (others created for their own economic interest but we let that happen before our faces, and our parents are also responsable) we are going backwards in the most of the aspects of the human dimension but we can reverse that, we can stop, take a breath of fresh air or otherwise and change paths, and we have to start saying NO and turning off our screens and get out to nature and to our community, the people who live around us and learn how to share again without a cellphone in the middle. It has to be done!
There's a whole documentary about trans-identified people (mostly autogynephilic men) who discovered their "trans" identity through gaming, it's called TransGeek: https://youtu.be/gYmMjPY-uss
If you’re going to blame anything, blame the vast social communities all based around trans identification. Role playing games are a minor correlation
I’m not sure what to make of it. My son used to play dungeons & dragons but he never hid it from us. In fact, he tried to play with us once (his parents) & siblings & was excited to get a campaign going. He was also into anime, but we would talk about that & he would explain how there are many different types. He tried to share an anime movie with me once, to take away the fear…educate me that it wasn’t all harmful
Would like to see the sources. Any chance of listing those?
Thank you! My trans identifying 19 year okd has been playing video games for years and especially likes the role playing games ie Far Cry, Sky Rim, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Overwatch etc. I don’t know if these are all role playing games but these are some of the ones she has multiple iterations of.
I do think there's a difference in a lot of computer based gaming versus other areas. There's a lot more emphasis on personality than on winning in the games kids are getting recruited from.
Begging PITT parents for advice: my very hard headed, neuro-diverse, pre-pubescent child desperately wants to play Minecraft on a public server. Knowing many of the stories of the PITT parents - this horrifies me. Playing single player mode is not enough anymore. I supervise constantly and it works with single player, but I'm horrified of having the public server chat option right there in front of him. Are there any safe, child-friendly, for-kids, public Minecraft servers out there? Or is there at least an option to turn the chat option off when playing on a public server?
My advice is, just say no. As your child gets older, he will find more ways around you. These games are not only dangerous to their young minds, they are addictive as well. I would describe these games as "gateway" games which lead to other things on the internet.
Honestly, you're going to need to get a router that you can block that stuff on. Maybe consider paying for a DNS server that you can configure to block basically everything. If it's wifi make the kid use a guest account which you can limit and don't share main password. That way you can shut the guest account off for part of the day and there won't be an easy work around for the kid. If you just mark certain hours for a device but share main password, the kids will 100% work around it.
Thanks for your reply Team Reality, I appreciate it. Could you help me understand what a DNS server is (I Googled and am not too sure I get it) and how it can help in this scenario? Can I block the Minecraft chat option with a DNS server, while still allowing my child to play on a public server?
I should add that his time online as it is, is diligently controlled and limited by me.
Edited to add: web nor screens in general are not accessible without my input
I'm sorry for technobabble. DNS means domain name server. Essentially internet addresses aren't just something like "msn.com" and the DNS translates that to an address that a browser can understand there are free ones that will just block obvious porn sites.
This looked like a decent overview but be aware that most tech organizations operate on the trans people are oppressed and we support them mindset. https://dnsforfamily.com/
As for Minecraft - no. That's just because everyone plays it.
I can say the first video game I saw with major trans content was dragon age 2 from 2011.
But the issue with Minecraft is the associated servers and Discord groups. To be fair teens playing Minecraft regularly aren't playing sports, joining clubs at school, going on dates, etc. It's a socially awkward gateway to trans Discord groups. Trans people seem to have an insatiable need for external validation and convincing teens they're trans too is serious validation.
My son is thankfully desisted, and I haven’t wanted to destabilize this by asking where his false identity came from in the first place. But I would bet big money on discord servers associated with online gaming having been the source.
Game chat, Discord etc are a kind of backdoor social media that can transmit any social contagion.
I agree with the main thesis here but differ on most of the details. I would say that first person, realistic video games where you can choose the protagonist's gender, are AGP training systems for males specifically, and generally trans identity trainers. Very similarly to porn, they train the brain to eroticise a certain persona. In fact they eroticise an identity - in the sense it was used before trans, as well as its current sense. If you go back to Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, this is the deliberate eroticisation of male players projecting into an attractive female body, operating it while also voyeuristically observing it. This has been a staple of first person video games ever since. Within a decade or so this type of identification was leaking into porn, first of all edgy and specialised, later becoming mainstream and endemic. From there the fetish broke out into the real world as part of the general mainstreaming of fetish behaviour and porn behaviour. The current gaming world is still filled with male players who erotically connect with sexualised protagonists. This is a huge proportion of male gamers, maybe a majority. Millions of males, maybe tens or hundreds of millions, have been trained to have AGP sexual responses.
I think I got that as a free game with a video card purchase. Thought it was like playing as Jessica Rabbit and it was designed for console. Gave up in less than an hour. Haven't played an online game in three years hate computers. Thanks kid who wants to destroy your health.
I don't know whether your ideas about 'trans' kids and the influence of online games are correct. All I know is that the first time I saw the name, which my son later adopted when he decided he wanted to transition, is the name that I saw on his screen avatar when he was playing Minecraft.
We had role-playing games of all kinds for decades before "gender." It's not the games. It's how the kids play with them that has changed.
To be a geek for a little bit. The first role playing game was dungeon and dragons. It came about as an add-on for a set of rules for war gaming with lead figures called chainmail.
People in the early 1970s adopted those into additional rulebooks to enable playing games as combat/war gaming with individuals that each player would run as opposed to an army. The idea was to in some ways reenact fantasy stories like Tolkien, or Jack Vance, etc. By the 80s there were dozens of compeitors, and the games shifted more to character development and stories. In modern times people still play with paper and pencil in person but there's a ton of massive multi-player online players and that's a version of social media
DandD🥰
We used these games to play with our friends. Now kids are playing them to find friends. That inversion makes a huge difference.
Too much of anything is not healthy, including gaming. There are many temptations out in this great big world, and unfortunately we don’t find out which ones are evil until it is too late.
Eh - it’s the old problem of correlation or causation. I suspect video games provide a place for kids who feel awkward, for whatever reason, to both feel valued (I’m at Level 9,431!) and avoid the social pitfalls of the real world.
(My favorite correlation-is-not-causation example: Gene Wilder’s mother and wife both died from ovarian cancer. So did Madeline Kahn, his frequent costar. However, knowing Gene Wilder did not cause their cancer.)
A lot of cope in these comments. Put down your game controllers addicts, and embrace real life.
Thank you so much for this! I have been rallying against the capture of right wing youth culture by gamer culture, this provides another solid reason why based young people should find something more productive to do with their time.
There is definitely an opportunity cost, all that time gaming that could be spent interacting with people in real life. That’s how you learn social skills and how to have relationships.
It’s just pure corporate Gnostic evil.