As kids, my friends and I would often sit in a semicircle around the Nintendo 64. My eyes always quickly scanned the screen for the woman in a video game’s character selection menu. Friends asked why I always chose “the girl,” and I answered anxiously that their skills were the best fit for my playstyle. Of course I was a brutal liar. Picking “the girl” was just my way of dealing with it. As a gay man, it felt more authentic to select the less frequently chosen (and often underestimated) character from the busy list of aggressively heterosexual men; an experience I could relate to.
In 1996, a certain leading lady in gaming stole my heart forever: Jill Valentine. The Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance’s Special Operations Agent (say that three times fast) made her debut in the original Resident Evil game, as one of two playable characters. Her counterpart, Chris Redfield, had the complexity of a salty cracker. But Jill was unique. True, only in the sense that she was a woman. Still, she seemed like a more seductive fantasy to explore.
The game (which featured lots of zombies, monsters, and other flammable nightmare fuel) scared me, but I felt braver and more confident exploring the horrors of the Spencer mansion as Jill. I think it’s because women felt more related and more comfortable in my day-to-day life; either as friends, teachers or bioterrorist agents. In the real world, women generally supported me for my eccentricities, while men teased me. Choosing Jill also raised the stakes of the game as I felt more connected and desperately wanted to keep her alive.
For me, Jill’s part was in-game in the horror genre’s “last girl” trope (when the female lead outlives all the others and is often left to confront the killer), which I’ve always loved, and — to be a strange and possibly twisted reason — over fantasized. There was always something about women that got the better of men that I appreciated, as women and gay men are often underestimated when physically challenged. Watching a woman triumph was always a “go, girl!” moment for me, and I always wanted to feel that confirmation for myself. The game also felt much more interesting (and rarer) to be told from a woman’s perspective.
At no point in the game does Jill’s gender hinder her or play on stereotypes. While many video games may make the female character faster and weaker compared to males, Jill was just as capable physically and mentally as Chris. Lucky for me, Jill has appeared in countless Resident Evil titles since her debut, and has even been a playable character in other popular game franchises (including Fortnite and Dead in daylight). I am grateful for that and will gladly spend the money for any opportunity to be in her company. It’s like being reunited with an old friend.
Like me, Jeff Brutlag, a writer and popular Twitch streamer, was attracted to female characters in games. Brutlag is most enamored with Nintendo’s Umbra Witch, Bayonetta. “She does everything so stylishly, and she’s witty in a way that leaves men speechless. She has an allure I’ve always dreamed of,” they explain. “She’s also incredibly powerful, both feminine and overtly sexual, which feels like a huge fuck you to the patriarchy.”
Bayonetta and other female characters have told a lot about Brutlag’s non-binary identity – as children they explored their gender through the fantasy genre. The fire emblem series (which have become explicitly queer in recent years) have a special influence. “I’ve always pictured myself as the beautiful dancers or spellcasters who may have looked graceful and frail, but with just a few short words of an incantation, the big, burly men would go up in flames,” they say. “It showed me that masculinity was definitely not the only way to be strong and capable.”
“I will rarely play a video game where a female lead isn’t an option. I’m just not interested.”
In gaming, the typical male dominance of playable characters was something that individuals like Brutlag could never relate to, making it harder for them to feel immersed in that world. I still feel that way today: to be honest, I’ll rarely play a video game where a female lead isn’t an option. I’m just not interested.
Like Brutlag and I, Sofia Perez, a 26-year-old web developer, found that video games allowed her to explore her sexuality and gender identity while alone and in a safe space. Perez, a trans woman, used gaming to discover the life she longed for, using video game’s customizable character options, to choose the body type, hair, clothes, names, and pronouns she dreamed of having in the real world.
“It allowed me to experiment with different aspects of my identity without fear of judgment or rejection,” says Perez. “Gaming has helped me develop the confidence to come to my family and friends as trans.”
The character who had a particular influence on Perez was Cortana, the standout AI construct from the Halo series. “She is strong, beautiful, independent and able to take care of herself,” explains Perez. “I also appreciate that she’s not defined by her relationship with the male lead, Master Chief. Instead, she is her own person with her own goals and objectives.”
For Perez, playing online as a female character also provided an escape from transphobia and discrimination. Coming out as trans to her loved ones in real life had the potential to lead to painful rejection. “But if I tell any anonymous gamer online that I’m trans, it’s okay because they don’t know who I am and I’ll never see them again. This aspect helped me to be open about my identity with others online.”
When Perez shared her gender identity while gaming, her peers accepted remarkably. It gave her the courage to tell people in her real life. “Without the anonymity of gaming, I may never have had the chance to discover my trans identity in a safe, low-risk environment,” she says.
Gaming isn’t perfect, of course: plots are still plagued by heteronormativity, and queer characters and relationships are still relatively scarce. Admittedly, progress is being made. For example: this year The Sims 4 introduced modifiable non-binary pronouns, and Apex Legends, a popular online battle royale, has a cast in which six of its 17 characters are openly gay or bisexual and 50 percent are non-white. However, a recent analysis of the best-selling video games from 2017 to 2022 shows that we still have a long way to go. The results showed that 80 percent of the main characters in video games are male and 54 percent are white.
For many queer and trans players, female characters remain our window into another world, through which we feel wanted and experience male relationships, love and affection, while exploring the nuances of female desire from the male gaze. These experiences often occur when we were most curious and perhaps most fearful of our sexuality. Only these women know our secret.
“I remember playing minigames in the original god of war so Kratos could have sex with the woman who beckoned him over and thought, ‘I wish that was me,’ says Brutlag. “Looking back, those roles were dated and reductive, but for a gay kid coming into their sexuality, it was incredibly formative.”
In a world that suppresses the growth of our community and condemns our desires, gaming is a place where we can finally be ourselves. By choosing to play as these women, we enter our identity in a small way, flirting with gender and sexual identity at a distance in a context that is as safe as empowerment. It was an honor to learn through them.
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