There has been a lot of talk about the cyberpunk genre, lately, and its more troubling aspects, all stemming from a series of problematic revelations about the 'Cyberpunk 2077' video game being developped by 'CD Projekt Red'. What particularly caught my attention is an accusation that cyberpunk, a largely techno-phobic genre, is ableist in its condemnation of people using cybernetics to enhance themselves, and potentially transphobic for similar views on gender reassignment surgery. That is a great observation worth exploring.
Note that I am not talking about the video game 'Cyberpunk 2077'. The video game has some very troubling elements that read as transphobic and racist. But, come on, this is from the same studio that created a "collect women as sex trading cards" minigame in one of their titles. We shouldn't be this surprised and we certainly shouldn't be treating them as if they've earned the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway. I am henceforth talking about cyberpunk as a genre of fiction.
And I am going to explore it through Shadowrun, because it is the expression of cyberpunk I like the most and can speak the most about. It is also a super popular version of cyberpunk, having been around for 30 years in RPGs, novels, and video games. It's big enough and has been around long enough that I feel it's safe to call it an influential franchise within the genre. So, for the purpose of discussion, let's examine Shadowrun as a stand-in for cyberpunk more broadly, while ignoring the fantasy elements that are not applicable to the genre as a whole.
Is cyberpunk technophobic? Yes.
More broadly, cyberpunk is future-phobic. The conditions that birthed the cyberpunk genre are 1980s counter-culture that looked with trepidation at the economic and political reality of the world: a dawning digital age of right wing (read: socially conservative, economically liberal) economics and politics in which the global power was shifting to east Asia. And all of that meant alienation. Corporate domination would alienate us from our personal lives, an Asia dominated economy would alienate us from our national (read: western) roots, and technology would alienate us from our humanity. Thus was born the tropes of wage slaves corp drones, Japanese mega-corporations (or megacorps), and cybernetic augmentation. Cyberpunk does not want you to put pieces of metal into your body.
Is that ableist? Is its view of surgical transformation transphobic?
Well, let's begin with gender expression. How does the cyberpunk genre feel about your gender expression, or, for that matter, however else you want to express yourself? Well, as a genre that takes half its name from a counter-culture and aesthetic (punk) that was big at the time, and on the whole radical and transgressive, it should come as no surprise that cyberpunk does not care how you dress, what colour your hair is, how you style it, whether you've got piercings, and it sure as hell doesn't care what pronouns you go by (in fact, cyberpunk thinks gendered pronouns are boring and you should be using slick street slang like "chummer" to address people) or your sexual preferences. The only thing it does care about is your coming down on others and trying to force conformity on them. That's the punk in cyberpunk. Its identity politics are radically liberal.
Now let's hone in on the question of cybernetics. In the 5th edition rules of Shadowrun, the alienation that comes from altering your body with technology is represented in a mechanic called essence. You start with 6, and every augment takes it down a bit. Computer in your head? Maybe 0.5 essence. Flamethrower implanted in your arm? Maybe 1 whole essence. Replace your nervous system with wires? Like, 3 essence.
Gender reassignment surgery? None. In fact, most simple cosmetic surgery (basically anything you can get done today) is 0. Even metatype reassignment, essentially race change surgery, is 0 cost to your essence. If all you're doing is trying to make the human you feel like become the human you look like, cyberpunk doesn't care.
What about a new heart? A new arm? A replacement foot? So, it's a little less clear but again, if what you want is a replacement functioning piece of yourself, that's also 0 cost. If you're in an accident and lose your arm, you can have a genetic copy custom made to replace it and you lose none of your "humanity" score. What we would just call medicine gets really no judgement from cyberpunk. Cyberpunk does not think you should die because you have a bad heart or failing liver. Oh, and modern prosthetic are basically not mentioned, nor are external assistant devices like wheelchairs. They are not relevant.
(Quick aside: within Shadowrun, you can get cheaper medical surgeries done to fix or replace limbs and organs with universal "off the shelf" bioware and this does cost essence which does cloud the issue a little. This is arguably because class warfare is of more interest to Shadowrun than transhumanist questions, especially in its most recent years. Either way, nobody is saying it's perfect.)
Where cyberpunk takes issue is in the technology of enhancement. You don't lose essence for seeking medical treatment, you lose essence for saying "Hey, I'd like to have somebody chop my arm off and replace it with a metal arm with gold plates and neon lights and transforms into a machine gun because that'd be awesome and fashion means more to me than my humanaity." Cyberpunk sees that as alienating you from your humanity because you are, in the genre's terms, literally transforming yourself into something inhuman. This is frequently compounded with the notion that augmentations will make you more valuable to corporations because they make you a better worker. And again, those megacorps are alienating you from yourself. Johnny Mneumonic (to use a non-shadowrun example) cuts out a piece of his head and his memories of childhood for his job as a data courier. Technology meets corporate greed and destroys the human individual, deprives him of a part of himself.
The trope of "cyberpsychosis" where you replace so much of yourself with machine that you go crazy is the extreme expression of this anxiety at the heart of the genre.
So, on examination, I'm not sure the argument that cyberpunk is an inherently transphobic or ableist genre pans out. Cyberpunk has no interest in condemning you for trying to be the best version of you, the version of you that you are comfortable being, the version of you that can live the most fulfilling life you can, but that's on the basis that if you go beyond what is human to become part meat, part super advanced machine, you're no longer being you. Be complete, just be completely human, says Shadowrun.
And you can disagree with that. You can be in favour of transhumanism and think "human" means a lot more than flesh. That's not really cyberpunk, though. It might look cyberpunk, but cyberpunk is more than an aesthetic. Star Trek sometimes includes transhumanist elements and it is even positive on them, but it's not cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk questions transhumanism, it is cautious of it, it sees the potential of abuse and alienation in technology. To be critical of cyberpunk and to be fair about your critical analysis, I argue that you need to engage with cyberpunk beyond individual pieces. And in that way, I'm not convinced that cyberpunk, as a genre, when looked at as a whole, has anything much to say at at all about gender or medical prosthesis, let alone condemnation.
Note that I am not talking about the video game 'Cyberpunk 2077'. The video game has some very troubling elements that read as transphobic and racist. But, come on, this is from the same studio that created a "collect women as sex trading cards" minigame in one of their titles. We shouldn't be this surprised and we certainly shouldn't be treating them as if they've earned the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway. I am henceforth talking about cyberpunk as a genre of fiction.
And I am going to explore it through Shadowrun, because it is the expression of cyberpunk I like the most and can speak the most about. It is also a super popular version of cyberpunk, having been around for 30 years in RPGs, novels, and video games. It's big enough and has been around long enough that I feel it's safe to call it an influential franchise within the genre. So, for the purpose of discussion, let's examine Shadowrun as a stand-in for cyberpunk more broadly, while ignoring the fantasy elements that are not applicable to the genre as a whole.
Is cyberpunk technophobic? Yes.
More broadly, cyberpunk is future-phobic. The conditions that birthed the cyberpunk genre are 1980s counter-culture that looked with trepidation at the economic and political reality of the world: a dawning digital age of right wing (read: socially conservative, economically liberal) economics and politics in which the global power was shifting to east Asia. And all of that meant alienation. Corporate domination would alienate us from our personal lives, an Asia dominated economy would alienate us from our national (read: western) roots, and technology would alienate us from our humanity. Thus was born the tropes of wage slaves corp drones, Japanese mega-corporations (or megacorps), and cybernetic augmentation. Cyberpunk does not want you to put pieces of metal into your body.
Is that ableist? Is its view of surgical transformation transphobic?
Well, let's begin with gender expression. How does the cyberpunk genre feel about your gender expression, or, for that matter, however else you want to express yourself? Well, as a genre that takes half its name from a counter-culture and aesthetic (punk) that was big at the time, and on the whole radical and transgressive, it should come as no surprise that cyberpunk does not care how you dress, what colour your hair is, how you style it, whether you've got piercings, and it sure as hell doesn't care what pronouns you go by (in fact, cyberpunk thinks gendered pronouns are boring and you should be using slick street slang like "chummer" to address people) or your sexual preferences. The only thing it does care about is your coming down on others and trying to force conformity on them. That's the punk in cyberpunk. Its identity politics are radically liberal.
Now let's hone in on the question of cybernetics. In the 5th edition rules of Shadowrun, the alienation that comes from altering your body with technology is represented in a mechanic called essence. You start with 6, and every augment takes it down a bit. Computer in your head? Maybe 0.5 essence. Flamethrower implanted in your arm? Maybe 1 whole essence. Replace your nervous system with wires? Like, 3 essence.
Gender reassignment surgery? None. In fact, most simple cosmetic surgery (basically anything you can get done today) is 0. Even metatype reassignment, essentially race change surgery, is 0 cost to your essence. If all you're doing is trying to make the human you feel like become the human you look like, cyberpunk doesn't care.
What about a new heart? A new arm? A replacement foot? So, it's a little less clear but again, if what you want is a replacement functioning piece of yourself, that's also 0 cost. If you're in an accident and lose your arm, you can have a genetic copy custom made to replace it and you lose none of your "humanity" score. What we would just call medicine gets really no judgement from cyberpunk. Cyberpunk does not think you should die because you have a bad heart or failing liver. Oh, and modern prosthetic are basically not mentioned, nor are external assistant devices like wheelchairs. They are not relevant.
(Quick aside: within Shadowrun, you can get cheaper medical surgeries done to fix or replace limbs and organs with universal "off the shelf" bioware and this does cost essence which does cloud the issue a little. This is arguably because class warfare is of more interest to Shadowrun than transhumanist questions, especially in its most recent years. Either way, nobody is saying it's perfect.)
Where cyberpunk takes issue is in the technology of enhancement. You don't lose essence for seeking medical treatment, you lose essence for saying "Hey, I'd like to have somebody chop my arm off and replace it with a metal arm with gold plates and neon lights and transforms into a machine gun because that'd be awesome and fashion means more to me than my humanaity." Cyberpunk sees that as alienating you from your humanity because you are, in the genre's terms, literally transforming yourself into something inhuman. This is frequently compounded with the notion that augmentations will make you more valuable to corporations because they make you a better worker. And again, those megacorps are alienating you from yourself. Johnny Mneumonic (to use a non-shadowrun example) cuts out a piece of his head and his memories of childhood for his job as a data courier. Technology meets corporate greed and destroys the human individual, deprives him of a part of himself.
The trope of "cyberpsychosis" where you replace so much of yourself with machine that you go crazy is the extreme expression of this anxiety at the heart of the genre.
So, on examination, I'm not sure the argument that cyberpunk is an inherently transphobic or ableist genre pans out. Cyberpunk has no interest in condemning you for trying to be the best version of you, the version of you that you are comfortable being, the version of you that can live the most fulfilling life you can, but that's on the basis that if you go beyond what is human to become part meat, part super advanced machine, you're no longer being you. Be complete, just be completely human, says Shadowrun.
And you can disagree with that. You can be in favour of transhumanism and think "human" means a lot more than flesh. That's not really cyberpunk, though. It might look cyberpunk, but cyberpunk is more than an aesthetic. Star Trek sometimes includes transhumanist elements and it is even positive on them, but it's not cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk questions transhumanism, it is cautious of it, it sees the potential of abuse and alienation in technology. To be critical of cyberpunk and to be fair about your critical analysis, I argue that you need to engage with cyberpunk beyond individual pieces. And in that way, I'm not convinced that cyberpunk, as a genre, when looked at as a whole, has anything much to say at at all about gender or medical prosthesis, let alone condemnation.
1 comment:
I pretty much agree with this. I don't think that as a genre, it's transphobic or ableist - it's just often written that way or run that way by people who haven't thought beyond their bubble of "I don't have to deal with these things so they don't exist to me", which is a shame.
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