My bad, I got the mary sue mixed up with jezebel.

I'll be happy when Gawker dies since they're one of the founders of the 'social justice blogging masquerading as journalism' trend.

It doesn't need variety in it's identity. It's identity is that it's Zelda. How does slicing off Link's penis, and twisting it's vestages into a fake, plastic vagina do anything to alter said identity anyway? Will it come up in dialog? Be incorperated into the mythos? Seriously, nobody is playing this due to the sexual orientation of the character to begin with, so why graft this nonsense onto it? Less than pointless.

edit- That may be a bit agro on my part, I just really don't care for the idea, or the person who's it's source of origin.

Making Link transgender would go completely against the whole idea that people who are transgender are simply naturally that way (which, incidentally, I agree with).

Better to have a new character that is transgender, rather than changing an existing character. And yes, I'm aware that most of the time, Link isn't literally the same person... but it's the same soul reborn each time, it's the same character. Making Link transgender would be changing Link's character, not just the specific instance of it.

At least, that's my view when it comes to the idea of "making Link transgender". It's worth noting that Link's genetic sex isn't ever really established. Many people notice that he has an effeminate appearance. Who's to say that Link hasn't been transgender this whole time? After all, if the Triforce Universe is more accepting of transgenderism, perhaps everyone identifies Link as male because he has chosen to identify as male, despite being genetically female. How would you be able to tell the difference? And ultimately, that's a far better message to send than "we made Link transgender, so now keep an eye out for all of the references we put in to make it clear that he's transgender".

To put it another way - if Link is transgender, how should that change the game? Should other characters treat him differently? What kind of message would that send? If it's purely about the background story, though, why bother having that at all? None of the others speak about Link being born male.

As for the argument that it would send a message about the "white male"... if Link is transgender, then either way you cast it will cause issues. If Link is genetically female, then it's "even when they're genetically female, they have to become male to be a hero". If Link is genetically male, then it's "even if they're transgender, they still have to be genetically male to be the hero". Wrong message either way.

If they want to be more inclusive, they should include Linkle as an optional substitute for Link, and otherwise never mention whether they were born male or female. Let them be the link between the player and the game, and so those who are transgender (or anyone else, really) can view Link or Linkle as being transgender like them. Being transgender shouldn't change anything in-game, anyway, if it's about inclusiveness.

I would like to see a new franchise where the lead is transgender officially, though. Again, if the message is supposed to be a good one, then there should be no way to really tell within the game, as they're treated no differently from others of their "chosen" (for lack of a better term) gender. Perhaps design the character to have slightly more of a body shape resembling that of the genetic sex (so if it's a transgendered male, perhaps they have broader hips and a narrower chest than typical males).

How do you know they're male? Seems to me that you're imposing your own stereotypes on the game. The characters are all in robotic exoshells. How could you possibly tell that they aren't all like Samus - gender hidden until the very end, but they're female? Or not even human?

Stop with the stereotyping.

Like 95% certain OP is trolling. Probably best to just not give him anything to work with.

On the contrary, Link needs a lumberjack beard and flannel.

First I was like "Okay, that could be reasonable. Let's see the reasoning" and then I see the authors name and I was like "Yup. The article is going to be full of shit, isn't it?". After reading it my opinion on it didn't change at all. The reasoning was pretty much "Cause why not!?", but the fact that Anita just calls Nintendo of having patriarchal stances for the last few months is fucking laughable. The supposed Nintendo fan says that, Nintendo, has had a patriarchal stance, even though they have been censoring their games most likely due to these whiners like Anita Sarkeesian.
Maybe Anita should have spend her almost one million dollars on a video game that had a transgender main character, rather than just playing the victim and not making the video series she was supposed to.

...unless I'm missing something quite obvious here, as far as I can tell, the article OP mentioned does not exist. It's a prank. So...yes, I suppose it would be expected that your opinion would not change after reading a non-existant article.

All SJWs, feminists and the games media are doing is making more enemies within the video game community every time they try to make a show of force.  Every time they do it, all they do is open more eyes to how screwed up, hypocritical, militant and totalitarian they really are.  What frustrates me the most is that they always attack Nintendo -- I guess they see them as the baddest dude in the prison yard and if they can make Nintendo their bitch then all the other game developers/publishers will fall into line.