"Now, none of these criticisms individually proves that somebody hates women. You can hate Lucia as a character. You can prefer male protagonists. You can think a female character is unrealistically strong. You can hate girl boss writing. None of that automatically makes you misogynistic. But when every woman is too powerful, every female character is DEI, every man who respects a woman is emasculated, every female developer is responsible for something becoming worse, and every piece of media that starts appealing to women has been taken over. I’m allowed to notice the pattern. And maybe I’m more sensitive to this because I’ve spent my entire life and career in gaming.

When I started making gaming content, this space was overwhelmingly male. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I decided to make this channel. Women have always played games. There were just fewer of us, and the culture wasn’t always particularly welcoming when we did show up. We were called fake gamers. We only played games to get attention. The games we did like weren’t real games. We weren’t funny. We weren’t good enough. If we were successful, it was because men watched us because we were women. And things did feel like they got better for a little while. But lately, I feel like this is all coming back into mainstream internet culture,
just using different vocabulary. Now, you’re not saying women don’t belong here. You’re saying DEI ruin this. You’re not saying I don’t want a female protagonist, or maybe some of you are. You’re saying I’m tired of girl bosses. You’re not saying women shouldn’t have power. You’re saying they’re emasculating the male characters. And sometimes those criticisms are legitimate, but sometimes it’s just resentment toward women, just with some better branding now. And I think women like myself need to start being willing to say that out loud, even if it’s scary.

Like, I’ll be honest, I’ve been terrified to make this video. I’ve been scripting it for over a week because I know some of the kinds of people that it’s going to attract into my comment section, but I am so so tired of just standing by and letting these other just ragebait voices be amplified because we’ve built an internet economy where telling young men that women are ruining their lives and telling women that all men are horrible gets clicks. So, here’s my question to all of those people who said that GTA 6 looks like feminist slop already:

What kind of woman in gaming are you actually okay with?

Lucia is weaker than Jason, less important than Jason, less assertive than Jason, would that be acceptable? Because if that’s the only kind of female character you’re comfortable with, then we’re not debating character development anymore. We’re debating where women belong. And I’m not interested in negotiating that. Women don’t need to make ourselves feel smaller so that men can feel masculine. A woman succeeding doesn’t mean a man failed. A woman being strong doesn’t make a man weak. A woman having power isn’t inherently feminist propaganda. And a man loving, respecting, or compromising with a woman doesn’t make him less of a man. If your masculinity requires the woman standing next to you to either have less power than you or to not exist at all there, she isn’t the one making you look weak. So maybe GTA 6 comes out and Lucia is the worst character. Maybe Jason is the worst character. Maybe Rockstar completely ruins GTA. I don’t need Lucia to be a good character because she’s a woman. I just want her to be a good character so the game is fun. But I’m also not going to sit here and pretend the reaction that we’re seeing exists entirely because everybody has suddenly become deeply concerned with rock stars writing."