Rockstar Games: Is The Ballad Of Gay Tony The Ballad Of Gay Tranny?
While I was perusing the new layout of the Rockstar Games website, I noticed that they had some new, somewhat provocative desktop pictures available for download. The pictures in question are for the upcoming GTA IV DLC, The Ballad of Gay Tony. One image in particular (shown above) really struck me since the "lady" in it seems rather mannish as compared to other GTA IV women. I also not that her décolletage is artfully out of shot and she's carrying that designer handbag not to mention all that pink! Could the Ballad of Gay Tony include some trans characters? Or perhaps Gay Tony himself likes to don a pair of heels and a designer handbag?
Speculation runs wild on what The Ballad of Gay Tony is actually about but that speculation is going to end soon. This Monday, I will be heading to downtown SF to get a preview of Gay Tony myself. I don't know what the embargo will be like on what I see but I can assure you I will be bringing you the full story as soon as I can!
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 27 August 2009
· Comments (7)
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"Tranny"? Really?
I agree with Eshto on this one. "Tranny" is on the same level as "fag" in terms of degrading, nasty terms for LGBT folk.
That is Miss Ancilotti.
I'd bet money on it.
She was the one who you kidnapped for some diamonds.
It's not so much the use of the word "tranny". It's more the fact that every time a transsexual/CD character is mentioned, even on this very site, it's always coupled with terms such as "glammy", "fabulous", "pink", etc. And, obviously, like in this case, "mannish" and "designer handbag".
It's kind of sad, really. Not uncommon in any way, but still sad.
I think it's a brilliant tongue-in-cheek play by Rockstar. Make all the straight idiots use the picture as their wallpaper, let them ogle at it for hours on end, and BAM! Transexual! They'd be none the wiser...
OFC gays prove ignorant by misconstruing their own lexicon.
"Tranny" is an umbrella term that can refer to the following:
transvestite
transgendered
transsexual
crossdresser
female impersonator
drag queen
The main division in thought is that gay men tend to think of "trannies" as fabulous or fierce because that is what drag queens portray. Actual trans people just want to be seen as their real gender so it can be discomforting to be referenced as such.
As a linguist, I can tell you:
1) Despite colossal efforts, you will never be able to fully control the use of terminology from the top-down. For better or for worse, words are messy and take on a life of their own in colloquial language use.
2) Just like the connotation of 'fag' depends on the context and speaker source, so does 'tranny'. Issued forth as it did from the pen (ok 'keyboard') of Fruit Brute, together with the tone of his posting, it fairly strongly indicates, IMHO, his solidarity and encouragement rather than disdain or conscious misuse of a term, which as Luckdragon rightly points out is an umbrella term. This is a normal feature of language. Word definitions have fuzzy, elastic boundaries, which is one reason they often change over time or are appropriated for other uses.
Despite the use of taxonomic ranks in biological classification (e.g. domain, kingdom, phylum), most of us only use terms at selected stages of the pyramid in everyday speech (i.e. 'animal' and 'dog', rather than 'canine' or 'cocker spaniel').