“Gender essentialism is cringe”: Brazilian and Ukrainian queer players’ strategies for queering character interactions

This article presents the strategies that Brazilian transgender and gender diverse (TGD) players use to queer character interactions and accommodate diverse gender identities into video games, and aims to show the differences in queering strategies between Brazilian and Ukrainian players. Reflexive thematic analysis was used on survey data gathered from Brazilian and Ukrainian players. The main finding reveals the strategies for queering character interactions distinguished in Brazilian players’ responses, namely, (1) playing with an idealised self, (2) queering binary player characters, and (3) rejecting non-queerness. The results show similar ways of approaching gender binaries and treating them as queer (able), with coinciding reasoning behind. Brazilian respondents also reflected on the significance of player characters as “additional” or “alternative” bodies to experiment with, which differed from Ukrainian players seeking queerness while doubting the potential of video game spaces to accommodate their identities. The results highlight the need for further culturally informed and geographically diverse research on TGD players’ experiences in video games. The findings reflect a similar approach to gender binaries in Brazilian and Ukrainian TGD players’ experience that differs from previous research. It is also shown how bodily focused Brazilian culture makes their experiences more focused on in-game bodies.