Ghost of Tsushima Pushes LGBT Agendas Erasing Actual Tolerance in the Process

There was an accusation levied a few days ago that if one recognizes a game isn’t historically accurate they must hate it. This is absurd as unless the game boasts historical accuracy, it hardly matters if a game is historically accurate. Ghost of Tsushima kicked off its marketing boasting how historically accurate the game would be. Leaving people quite excited right up until they showcased an untrained female fighting a samurai as if his equal.

Just setting aside the fact male muscle tissue is twice as dense as female, the pure skill gap alone should have rendered that a very short-lived fight. It was fairly evident at that juncture Sucker Punch had little interest in being historically accurate, which by and large was fine.

Overall, Ghost of Tsushima is a fantastic game. One that was wise to abandon the pretense of historic accuracy going into its launch. Sadly this is a Sony game, so that means at a certain point I was bound to run into something beyond the standard gender equal representation that fills the game. Producing at times some pretty amazing characters and at others eye-rolling “yeah that’s not going to happen” moments.

Eventually, the game slips in LGBT representation. At first, there was an unnamed NPC that hinted they were lovers with a dead man whose grave they visited every night because they missed him terribly. In solitude, he mourned, for he could not tell the man’s family what they were up to. Next, Masako reveals one of the targets on the list of people who betrayed her family was her lesbian lover. With tact, she claims she loved her husband, but also loved this other woman. Yet had to keep it a secret, because of the social stigma.

The problem is that social stigma didn’t exist in Japan. In fact, only in the modern era has Japan develop any stigma regarding homosexuality. Owing in large part to its westernization. For the rest of Japan’s history, while tolerance varied from regime to regime, person to person, the general attitude was provided a person upheld their obligations to society, no one really cared what you had on the side.

During the 13^th century when the Mongols were invading Japan, homosexual partnerships on the side were not stigmatized. There would be zero reasons for either character to feel shame or have to hide what they were doing as there would be no repercussions from people knowing. Outside than fact either act could be considered infidelity, there just won’t be that much blowback. If there was any at all. In the first instance, his wife might not have handled the news well, but they could have bounded over how they cared about her husband. In Masako’s case, her family has been wiped out, and during this war no one has the time, resources, or energy to scoff at a woman going Rambo on her family’s murderers.

Now it is important to distinguish the difference between western homosexuality and Japanese Homosexuality. In Japanese history, it was carried out with considerably more class than what pervades modern western society. People tended to have a single long term partner rather than between 20-106 partners per year, as seen in the west. Relationships were encouraged to be treated no differently than one would have with a woman. Essentially meaning sleeping around was highly frowned upon.

Though it was more tolerated, it is also important to note it was not common either. Homosexuals make up only 2% of the population in modern times and are projected to have made up considerably fewer in ancient times. Owing in large part to the lack of antibiotics and other medications that would be required to treat diseases prevalent in the community. The probability of running into not one, but two homosexual relations during a trip across Tsushima would be highly improbably. Further, they would not be acting the same as modern homosexuals owing to the cultural and period differences.

This is sadly atypical from western developers, often ignorant of the very concepts they are utilizing in their creativity deprived works. God of War took Odin a god who mastered what was considered feminine arts to gain ultimate power and turned him into a strawman for toxic masculinity. Ghosts of Tsushima equally erases the numerous positive roles women played during the period to promote the idea that the time period overflowed with warrior woman from planet Amazon.

At least Sucker Punch’s developers can turn to twitter and boast how they interjected intersectionality into their product.