You know what? I actually have agreed with this. I don't like the Humanity trait as it was written in the rulebook.
But where Transhumanity is all about "This is how technology can make you better", Cyberpunk is "This is how technology will make things worse". The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. You have to cut out your parts to compete for jobs, etc and so on.
So why do I insist that it's likely going to remain a core part of the game? Because that's what cyberpunk is for me. That old '80s holdover, when people were scared that Technology was going to replace all humanity (jobs lost to robots), and that we would have to replace our human parts to keep working. I like the dystopia setting, even if I dislike the rule set not allowing you to go full 'Ghost in the Shell' with upgrades.
Like the world of REPO: The Genetic Opera, or Eclipse Phase, that type of setting.
But you can have a dystopia, while also saying "technology can make things better".
Indeed, if you should
show how technology can make things better - by allowing people to express their true selves, by allowing them to reach greater equality, by just making their lives more fun - but then restrict that to just a few individuals, and create a society that heavily limits all of that, and throw in all the limitations such as societal norms and corporate greed. Because that would create a far more compelling dystopia than one where everything is just bleak all the time, because constrast is far better for illustrating.
And that's why Cyberpunk uses people who live on the fringe of society as it's protagonists. But, why are they outcasts?
The unfortunate staple here is the criminal, often hired by corporations for their dirty jobs. It's Shadowruns entire premise, and it shows up plenty in Cyberpunk 2022 as well. It works, but there should be far more.
Political activism should be another - the genre is called Cyber
punk after all. Fighting for individual freedom and against the establishment can easily push you to the fringes of society.
But what personal freedoms? Well, what if society still frowns on some things that would be enabled by technology, but if you do it you'll be at it's fringes?
And that last bit brings us around to real-life trans people.
Because todays medical technology allows us to alter and modify our bodies to fit our gender. And that bodymodification is often frowned upon - people disrespect us for it, make jokes about it, physically attack us, won't hire us, argue that the whole process makes us an abomination and is just "fake", and so on and so forth. Does any of that sound familiar, and like it'd fit into a cyberpunk story?
Now I'm not saying trans women and trans men should still receive the same treatment in your cyberpunk world. Hopefully, there'll be more acceptance by then. But why not instead take another group, one that can not currently benefit from body modification, and put them in our place? Non-binary people, people who would be more comfortable in a non-human body, there's a lot of possibilities.
And of course your game does not then have to be based entirely around that group of people. No, you can still have your criminals, and your activists, and your spoiled rich kids who ran away from home because it's cool to make people who are uncomfortable with politics comfortable. But leaving out the queer people just leaves out what should be the heart of cyberpunk.
