The thing is, if I were to put on my "woke" hat but had to adhere to facts while doing so, my conclusions would be the opposite of the ones the article arrives at. If anything, as the timeline advanced forward, the game has regressed despite the ramping up of political correctness, if not flat-out because of it.
Not that facts likely matter, but there are some things I feel the need to point out.
Bioessentialism refers specifically to humans and is specifically behavioral. We know full well certain physical features are determined by genetics. Hair color, eye color, etc. It's not a bioessentialist claim to say halflings are much smaller than humans. Nor is it bioessentialist to expect halflings are going to be less strong due to this difference in stature. Note that as far as the 1E PHB goes, racial attribute adjustments are strictly physical. Not behavioral. The exception that proves the rule is Charisma. That the Charisma penalty for Dwarfs and Half-Orcs does not apply when dealing with other members of their own race strongly suggests that this is the physical attractiveness component of Charisma that is being adjusted. Not leadership ability. Not whether or not the character has a winning personality.
I think this was intentional. But I don't think the motive was to shut up a bunch of twerps strangely obsessed with bioessentialism decades after the fact. I think it was to clear the path to allow the players to play their characters any way they saw fit. As time went on and as gamers got more obsessed with "just playin' muh character" we would later see players deferring "playing as they see fit" in favor of some preconceived notions about how the character ought to be played according to its characteristics--among those characteristics being the character's race.
So you could make the case for bioessentialism creep if you wanted to. But to play a character rather than playing yourself in that character's shoes is something that takes additional effort. It's not something automatically inherent to the RPG form. And bioessentialism is explicitly not a part of the old school rules. It would be factually incorrect to claim that the game is rooted in bioessentialism. To the extent it exists in the game, it came later on down the line.
In fact, by 1.5E, Unearthed Arcana provided additional race options for player characters. And some of these did involve adjustments to INT and WIS. I feel it's unfortunate. But it's still pretty minimal. Note that this is where the Drow is introduced as a playable race. And in UA it specifically states the player character drow may be of any alignment. This is another thing the article gets factually incorrect. The biology of drow does not make the character essentially evil. This is spelled out explicitly in the UA rules. There are no alignment dictates on any player character race at this point in the timeline.
Speaking of alignment, I think one of the key lines for how alignment works in 1E is, "Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights." Here you see there is some addressing of the fact that AD&D has non-human creatures that ought to be considered as humans in terms of such ethical concerns. But the rules do not tell us precisely where that line is drawn. Presumably, that will be up to each individual DM.
First, it's worth pointing out that this circles back to the definition of bioessentialism where I had indicated it specifically referred to humans. With this understanding of alignment, it's possible to see clear where bioessentialism can also refer to other creatures in the fantasy world in a way that doesn't render the idea meaningless. But it still wouldn't apply to every and all creatures. Again, it's going to be up to the DM where the line is drawn. If the DM decides orcs are monsters, not on the human side of the line, the question of bioessentialism becomes inapplicable. They would all be evil, and so Lawful Good characters could slay them without any alignment infractions, including women and children prisoners.
Personally, I think the most natural place to draw the line is between PC-playable and non-playable races. I don't use UA. So drows are not playable races in my campaign. Hence they are monsters. Hence, I follow the alignment guidelines from the Fiend Folio. But if I did decide to allow them as a playable race, I would allow PC drow to be of any alignment, per UA rules, and they would be on the human side of the line. Lawful Good characters couldn't just go around killing drow indiscriminately. That would be considered an evil act.
I'm not entirely sure why alignment is so hated by the author. As I describe it, it's not a relative thing. It's not a, "oh, we're the good guys, and those others over there are the bad guys" that could be equally claimed on each side. It's not like the game designer just has to arbitrarily pick a side they like better and define them as good. No. It's specifically tied to respect for "human" rights. Does the author of the article find this idea offensive? Honestly? Maybe. After all, she also sees people of color when she looks at orcs. I could see how any one of these accusations individually come off more like a cheap shot. But when they start stacking up, it starts to look like a pattern rather than a coincidence.
Of course maybe she just doesn't understand alignment. Most people don't. The 1E DMG is where the 9 alignment system is gone over in detail. If you never read another thing about alignment after that, I think alignments are perfectly clear. But every edition that came after kept tweaking and tweaking it, and it got more and more confusing over time. Another fact that fits my theme that the game regressed as the timeline moved forward.
The next factual inaccuracy I want to address is the author's claim that male and female stat adjustments were introduced in 1976 and were not overturned until 1989 with 2E. Of course those of us in the know know that there never were separate stat adjustments for male and female characters. You know what was different in 1989's 2E regarding males and females? That there was a section noting that only masculine pronouns would be used. In core 1E, pronouns were a lot more inclusive using "he or she" "him or her" etc laboriously throughout. This dropped off in late 1E, but there was no announcement. So you go from gender-inclusive 1.0 to mostly masculine-only pronouns in 1.5 to a big announcement in 2.0 saying that masculine-only pronouns would now be the standard and consistent throughout all official publications. Regression. But if you believed sex modifiers became official in 1976, you would get this trend absolutely backwards. Facts matter.
Once you see this trend, you start to see things falling in line. 2E did away with the ranger damage bonus against "giant class" creatures. What did they get instead? A hit bonus against a "hated race."
3E has a barbarian. What's their unique ability? Rage. This is what happens when you don't want to call a berserker a berserker and instead try to make it a generic thing. You end up with a game that suggests indigenous peoples have anger management issues. I can see how that could be taken as offensive in the generic sense. Whereas berserkers going berserk is not.
I should make clear that I'm not saying later editions of the game are hateful or any other such nonsense. I'm just saying that by "woke's" own standards, the facts reveal a pattern that they're screwing everything up even according to their own terms and values. And it's in large part due to their own ignorance. And face it. Incompetent laziness. And unwillingness to wrestle with their own sins, They seem to believe they can instead absolve themselves of those sins by denigrating everything that came before.
And you can see it quite clearly in action. Never forget, the WotC legacy disclaimer was a reaction to bad press WotC got from a disaffected employee of color. Rather than address the issues within their own corporate culture in the here and now, they threw products they never had anything to do with under the bus just to say, "See how good and decent we are, to recognize and denounce this?"
One last thing. I never think to look at the comments, whether it's a blog article or youtube. After reading some of the replies here referencing the comments, I decided to take a look. One hilarious one jumped out at me.
In one of the comments (reply to EpicLevelWizard), the author states, "all my sources are people of color."
Before I'd even read that comment, I had clicked on one of her sources. Rue V. Dickey. Someone who sounded especially ignorant but was hyped up with a stack of credentials. I thought I'd better take a closer look. Got the link right here:
https://ilananight.space/They/he claim they're/he's "Roma-Indigenous-Welsh." You can see their/his photo for yourselves. Looks pretty white to me.
I'm a mix of Slavic, Portuguese, and American Indian. For those who don't know, Slavic apparently was recently added as an honorary people of color due to their impressive track record of being oppressed. Portuguese is considered by a few federal agencies in the US as being a minority group. Sometimes we're categorized as "hispanic" sometimes simply "other." And, yeah, I've got indigenous ancestors, too.
These all combine in such a way that I pretty much pass as white, aside from a few people who clocked me as Native American when I was younger. Must have been that I had long, straight, dark hair at the time. Maybe if I wore a feather in a headband or something, everyone would have noticed. But I've never claimed to be a person of color. I'm not aware of anyone ever discriminating against me for racial reasons. I don't have that lived experience, and it would be wrong of me to claim to be a person of color, especially in the context in which this is coming up.
And I have a hell of a lot more melanin in my skin than Rue.
But all of this author's sources are people of color.