“Online, you can get rid of all the baggage of real life."

Reading between the lines: Online gaming communities and transgender identification

Surreal that there's a totally different article in here — with all the same quotes and facts — that's less about "finding freedom" and connecting with your "true self" and more about sowing bodily dissociation and grooming kids into becoming lifelong medical patients:

• Dissociation: “Online, you can get rid of all the baggage of real life."

• Homophobic bullying: "Homophobic comments made by her secondary school friends deterred her from broaching the topic."

• Ripley and Hannah "have observed that the current cohort of people questioning their gender online are younger."

• Grooming: Two-thirds of players are under age 17! (That also means one-third are adults, interacting with kids...) LGBTQ+ boards draw up to 250,000 members to "learn about queer issues" -- clear from elsewhere in article that this includes encouragement to get on puberty blockers early.

• "Hannah has taken on a mentoring role in her Discord groups, describing herself as a “mother” to her community. “So many of them struggle coming out, and I know what that’s like – how it feels to be scared,” she says. She advises them to explore their options early..."