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Antihumanist Critiques of Gender

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As the sole female protagonist of the three, Kara provided an opportinity for what could have been a far more subverssive or progressive arc and characterization than she was ultimately given. Although througout the narrative there are many times Kara stands out as strong, fearless, or overall badass, she is still tied to an extremely gender normative of arc about motherhood. Where Markus faces an internal struggle whether to fight for android liberation in a peaceful or violent matter and Connor fights himself on whether or not he is "just a machine" or side with the deviants and fight for liberation, Kara's biggest dilemna as outlined by the narrative is whether or not she can accept Alice for being an android. An attempt to ask does it matter if a person is what or who we think they are as long as that love is true, becomes a completely nonsensical thought experiment due to the fact it makes no sense that Kara, an android, would suddenly push Alice away because they are the same instead of different like originally portrayed. Especially if at this point your companion Luther is still alive as he is also an android. 

The game does provide a more nuanced take on android sexuality than traditional media, but we see itmore in the world building or during Connor's arc than Kara's. Starting with the first magazine you can find on The Eden Club and subsequent trip as Connor, the game does try to give us an idea of how our current views of androids would extend into this fictional future. For example, the Eden Club is allowed to exist because since the android are not legally human the establishment nor the acts taking place count as prosititutuion. It is during this trip that we meet the first love story of Detroit, between the two Tracies. Tired of the abuse of working at the Eden club Tracy is forced to run when another android defends themself from a client which turns fatal, hence Connor's investigation. Only wanting to live free with her love, another Tracy, the two attempt to escape. This is where another of Connor's tests of humanity happen as you're asked to shoot or let them go. Hank's response to this is very telling of how the game wants you to see these two. "Those two girls, they just wanted to be together. They really seemed...in love." Which coming from the one that hates androids at the beginning of the game this is a big concession for him.

The concept of androids and similar entities has been proven by posthumanist authors to be a tool to imagine outside our gender binaries and imagine worlds with different gender identities and boundaries. Although the game does touch on some of the issues behind the inherent sexualization of humanoid androids, it does not go far enough to question the need to give such androids a humanist image especially one with genders often shown through synthetic genitalia. The concept of gender is not questioned in why it is also applied to androids. Nor is it questioned the fact that since only some androids have genitals, and none of them are made with reproductive functions, should traditional ideas of sexuality, love, and gender be mapped onto the android. The use of two female coded androids as a love story may be one way the game tried to tackle this question but ultimately it plays too much into not only gender binaries but overall humanist assumptions of gender and sexuality. 
 

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