Not sure how much to hammer the point home since most of the notes on this post agree with me here, but I can try.
The queer game is not singled out for being queer. The queer game is singled out for being explicitly political, explicitly saying queer is political and political is queer, and having a narrow view of what both queer and political mean.
Except it's not singled out. There are two more "queer" versions of Cards Against Humanity (not of Apples to Apples, I mean CAH), and this is the worst of them. A "safer" version of Cards Against Humanity is just Apples to Apples.
In Cards Against Humanity you can say:
The favourite dish of [Valdimir Putin] is [Hot Pockets] filled with [Foreskin].
If you are en experienced player, you may ponder for a minute if it wouldn't be better to say:
The favourite dish of [Valdimir Putin] is [Foreskin] filled with [Hot Pockets].
Now compare with the response cards in the picture. They are one of
- self-deprecating, or
- "empowering" with identity labels
- therapyspeak/pop-psych jargon
They are all rather centred around "the self".
They are also clearly aimed at being "relatable". That's a problem if you aren't in the target group, which I am not, but it's not unfunny because I'm not a nonbinary bisexual disaster who can't fix a sink or change tyres. It's unfunny because the humour doesn't work. It doesn't stem from the juxtaposition of prompts and words to fill the blanks in with.
If you are going for "which is the most relatable", then fine. If you are going for "which is the funniest", then maybe add [Hot Pockets] back in. There could be a card that says [Aries], or a card that says [T4T couples that are able to conceive naturally].
I'm not just saying this game is cringe and unfunny. I am saying it is cringe and unfunny as political praxis. It's self-deprecating without being self-aware. It eschews the concept of a joke or a punch line and markets the absence of jokes an an absence of islamophobia/racism/transphobia. Is it funny if after [Magic Mushrooms] you experience [Ego Death]?
It's sanitised, but at the same time, it's not sanitised enough. [Fucking all my friends] ended your relationship? It's not funny, just sad.
Try these on for size: My relationship was ended by [Hot Pockets]. Too random? My relationship was ended by [Foreskin]? Too close to home? My relationship was ended by [Vladimir Putin]? Too dark? My relationship was ended by [Passing Transvestites]? Maybe queer, but too problematic.
At the same time, [Gay Panic], [Consent], and [Land Acknowledgements] are punch lines. Heh, in Cards Against Humanity, gay panic is a punch line, too!
These cards are raunchy, but sanitised, overtly political, but ultimately not saying anything or letting you say anything, they have the structure of jokes, but the cleverness is replaced by a laugh track.
So why is all the blowback about the queer one? Because all the other knock-off were either ingroupy expansions for Cards Against Humanity, or they were cranking up the shock value and outrageous black humour.
This one is the Nanette of card games. That makes me want to channel Vito Gesualdi and shout "Jokes are funny!" just to see who responds "No, they're not!"