HETEROSEXUAL = MAN + QUESTIONING: A mobile game review

The mobile game LGBT+ Flags Merge defines heterosexual as a combination of man and questioning. That is not an out-of-context reading, nor a conjecture at the game's innermost worldview — it says so in the simplest way possible. LGBT+ Flags Merge is a Little-Alchemy-style game where you start with two flags (man and woman) and create new flags by merging them two at a time: for example, man + man = gay, man + woman = bisexual, gay + woman = twink, and so on. There are 171 flags representing sexualities and genders (by comparison, there were 151 original Pokemon). And it just so happens that when you combine the questioning flag and the man flag (but not questioning and woman), you get heterosexual. This is, I think, a perfect moment. At once the flag for man stands for both masculinity and for the psychosexual aspect of oppression; at the drop of a hat, questioning is mined for the way it seems to negate queerness. In a bizarre reversal of "It's just a phase" rhetoric, we get to view…