If you ask me, signing in to ANY game (especially halo) as xxxGAYBOYxxx will get you ridiculed. I find this to be a biased example. If they were ridiculing him solely on his voice or actions, then I would understand. But in this instance they are provoking the teams to insult the player.
You can't make everybody accept gays. You just can't. Look how far the African Americans have come, and people STILL hate them to this day for pretty much nothing. If you're going to get so pissed off about slurs, think about what the African Americans have gone through. They STILL get discriminated against. It will ALWAYS be that way. People will always hate each other, and hate what's different. It's a fact of life. Even if you somehow pass a bill saying that gay people have to be accepted into service and undiscriminated against, it will still happen.
People will also blindly follow religion, and hate you because being gay is a "sin", even though it really doesn't specify anywhere in the bible... and the bible is not a very prime example of good human behavior-isms in the first place.
I support the gay community with my full support and best intentions, but I am being realistic.
The Issue and Consequence of Homophobia in MMOs
Frequent homophobic slurs among the Xbox Live community prompted Microsoft to reevaluate its policies last year. Now advocacy groups like GLAAD are turning their attention toward other virtual communities.
Cole reminds readers that the data was collected more than three years ago, in an industry that gets bigger every year. "The problem is only getting worse and needs to be addressed with comprehensive and sustainable solutions," he wrote. "That's why GLAAD has announced an initiative to do just that […]"
The initiative that Cole was referring to was video panel discussion, "The Project on Homophobia and Virtual Communities," which took place on July 18, 2009 at the Electronic Arts campus (visit the link to watch all the video segments of panel discussion on GLADD's site). Panelists included Flynn DeMarco, founder of GayGamer.net, Caryl Shaw, a Senior Producer at EA (The Sims, Spore), Cyn Skyberg, VP of Customer Relations at Linden Lab (Second Life) and more.
What does all this mean for MMOs? The steps taken by GLAAD and other public-awareness organizations throughout 2009 are paving the way for education, at the very least. We're not so blindly idealistic as to wait with bated breath for a utopian MMO experience, where people of all sexual orientations are equally respected. If it hasn't happened in the real world yet, we sure as hell won't be seeing it in online gaming anytime soon.
But sometimes even the smallest and most sporadic changes can have a positive impact on players, at a personal level. By the same token, we learned just how powerfully the "smallest" examples of discrimination and ignorance can affect a single person; MMO fan "Shiba" offered some insight about what it means to be a WoW player in the LGBT community:
"I would say that there are hurtful words directed towards players almost every half hour in trade [channel]," he said. "In instances and groups you'll hear quite often things like 'let's get this faggot out of here, boot him.' For me, it's hard because I still am not out, because of my relationship…so coming here to get away from it just hurts and makes me think more about it.
"People come to games to escape and relax and have a good time," he said, continuing. "They aren't here for the pains they might be experiencing in life already. It's not fair for everyone else to have a good in-game experience, but not us—we all have something in common, we love this game. We are all humans and love is love; we all have faces and we shouldn't have to worry about showing ours."
Tags: Editorial, WorldofWarcraft
