Cyberpunk Is Queer — Just Read The Source Material
Ever since Cyberpunk 2077 came out, we’ve been having discussions about how well it represents the queer community. Now that we have had a chance to play around with it for a month, see its many plotlines, and address the narrative from different angles, it looks like the general conclusion is “not very well.” It’s a shame, because underrepresenting LGBTQ+ characters doesn’t just do a disservice to the community, it does a disservice to the original source material. Yes, Cyberpunk, the original tabletop roleplaying game, has always been unapologetically queer.
So join me fellow nerds as we indulge in the most guilty of nerd pleasures, an in-depth analysis on “why the book was better.” You can imagine me putting on my thick rimmed glasses now.
Queerness has always been baked into the Cyberpunk setting, and not just because they loved drawing pictures of gay and lesbian couples anytime romance came up. The very notion of Cyberpunk is queer because the very notion of Cyberpunk is post-body. Let me explain.
A key aspect of Cyberpunk, both the genre and the original tabletop game, is the ability to use technology to enhance and change the body. You see this in Cyberpunk 2077, since heading to ripperdocs and getting yourself jacked full of cyberware is a main game mechanic. But cyberware isn’t just the computer in your brain, the cameras in your eyes, or the sick vibro blades you hide in your arms. It’s your appearance, your self-expression, and this extends to gender.
This is what I mean by “post body.” The idea of the body as an immutable construct is dead. If you are trans in the world of Cyberpunk, transitioning doesn’t take months of HRT, it takes a back alley stop to the right ripperdoc and a quick transfer of eddies. This is a capitalist apocalypse. As long as you have the money, you can be who you want.
This extends way, WAY past the gender binary. Do you want to have a non-binary expressive body with a mix and match assortment of sex characteristics? You can do that. In fact, that’s why we see the poster in Cyberpunk 2077 of the feminine presenting celebrity with a noticeably large penis. You can even have two penises or three vaginas if you want. They literally sell them on store shelves. Being some form of genderqueer is as easy as changing your clothes, and, in fact, people in the Cyberpunk world do often change aspects of their gender just to experiment much as they would experiment with a new fashion.
And that, my friends, is actually just the tip of the iceberg. There are whole cults of people who decide to get their skin replaced with gold and have technological angel wings grafted to their back. There are sex workers who alter their appearance to be otherworldly beautiful to their patrons, like living works of art with shifting body proportions, hair length and color, and even voices that change at the push of a button. There is a whole subgenre of cyberpunks called “exotics” that use a combination of genetic engineering, lab grown body parts, and traditional cyberware to look like animals. Yes, queer furries are commonplace in the Cyberpunk world and we didn’t see a single one in Cyberpunk 2077.
In a world where you can change who you are and what you look like with a fist full of cash and pocketful of black market drugs, the gender binary has been hacked to pieces at least as often as any given cyberpunk’s body has. That has led to a cultural shift where sexuality has become more loosely defined. This, of course, gave the designers the excuse to create prominent LGBTQ+ NPCs, along with the art to go with them. Over time, these post-body attitudes toward life created post-body attitudes toward sex and sexuality.
You see, the three core rules of what it means to be a Cyberpunk are all side-effects of this post-body way of viewing other people. They are:
1. Style Over Substance – It doesn’t matter how well you do something. It matters how you look while doing it.
2. Attitude is Everything – You aren’t your cool weapons, your social upbringing, your connections, or your cash. You are your attitude, the identity you show other people.
3. Live on the Edge – Life is short and if you play it safe it will pass you by. Risk everything and you stand to make everything. Risk nothing and you will gain nothing.
4. Break the rules
Explains a lot about Johnny Silverhand doesn’t it?
These rules are, in a way, a manifesto for queer, trans, and non-binary people. This whole setting states that who you are right now, and nothing else, matters. The body you were born into does not matter. The class you were born into does not matter. The sick-ass gun you carry does not matter.
The Cyberpunk world is a world where expression is EVERYTHING. The way you dress, the way you act, the way you feel, THAT is who you are. If you want to be someone different, then be that person. If you feel like someone different, then be that person.
It’s not clear that Cyberpunk was written explicitly to be queer. In early editions of Cyberpunk, you can’t help but notice that queerness feels like it is written from the perspective of a cis-het dude. In early editions, for example, most examples of queer romance were all hot lesbians written for the straight male gaze. You can, unfortunately, see some remnants of that point of view surviving in later editions like Cyberpunk Red.
It was, however, written to be explicitly anti-capitalist and that ended up baking in queerness to the Cyberpunk ethos almost as a side effect.
You see, in the Cyberpunk world, corps control everything. They control where the money and power goes. They control what you own. They control the media you watch. They control the police and the government. They basically control every aspect of your life except for two things: who you are and what you do.
That is the Cyberpunk ethos in a nutshell. Attitude matters because it is an act of a rebellion. You are who you are, not because the corps said so, but because you say so. You do what you do not because the law said it was OK, but because you made a choice. Being true to yourself is the ultimate act of rebellion in the Cyberpunk world, and that means being true to your gender, true to your sexuality, and true to your shiny metal robot arm with a flamethrower inside. If you just so happen to burn down a corp HQ on your path to that truth, even better.
This is why Cyberpunk 2077 is so disappointing from a queer perspective, because they tried to have their cake and eat it too. They addressed all the cool aspects of cyberpunk body modification from weapons and superhuman abilities down to appearance modifications for sex workers and yet they STILL danced around content that dealt with gender expression. They tossed a few queer NPCs our way without addressing the fact that sexuality itself has significantly changed on a social level. They took all the queer elements of the Cyberpunk tabletop game and neutered them, trimming them down into a simpler, safer, more easily marketable package.
Then again, they did that with basically every other element of the tabletop game too. I don’t know why I expected the queer elements to fare any better.
If you want to actually explore queerness in a cyberpunk setting, consider picking up Cyberpunk Red and actually giving the source material a read. If you want to take it a step further, there plenty of indie tabletop RPGs explicitly written with a queer cyberpunk focus. I particularly recommend The Queer Cyberpunk’s Guide to Tabletop RPGs which you can pick up in itch.io for five dollars, as well as BLOOD & hormones, which can be picked up on the same platform for free.
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