Slashdot Mirror
Sanitizing Expression In Virtual Worlds
1up has a piece looking back at the GLBT guild mixup that happened earlier this year in World of Warcraft. From the article: "'... last summer a friend introduced me to WOW, and I really liked it, though I didn't care for remarks many of the players made, like the fact that everything is apparently so gay when it's bad. So I decided to create my own guild, which would be GLBT friendly.' Sometimes singing, other times slogging her way through WOW's exacting echelons to a formidable level 60, Andrews had big endgame plans for her developing guild--until January 12, 2006, that is, when a note from publisher Blizzard blinkered everything."
Until January 12, 2006, that is, when a note from publisher Blizzard blinkered everything.
Yea I hate it when things blink . . . I always seem to blink things up . . . Oh yea, well blink you too.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
"blinkered"? Gaaaaayyyy
The issue with MMORPG's is that there is NO END, ever, to the game. You can literally play forever and the more time you put in the harder it is to quit because you have to acknowledge all the time you've wasted playing it. Blizzard has finally found a way to get people to end their addiction; homophobic account and guild deletions. :)
Now the GLBT community will can free of the burden of MMORPG addiction.
You don't always have the right to intrude your "message" into everyone else's consciousness.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Thank you.
.. so what do you expect when you create a guild based on sexual activities? The same thing would happen to an S&M guild.
This is funny because I was talking about it only a year ago -- will we see private property rights exist in cyberspace?
I firmly believe that the ability to speak is a protected right directly protected by the right to personal property. I don't believe we need a government to protect our right to speech on our own land. I also believe we can censor whoever we want, as long as we're on our own land. Once we step onto their land, they have the power to control speech.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
That's the point of private property -- attract the customers you want to attract.
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
I'm not anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-transgendered, but I am pro-freedom. I do believe that even in a game freedom is expressed by people who are not looking to harm another person's physical propery, and that when it comes to words, the old phrase is very appropriate:
Sticks and stones might break my bones,
but words will never hurt me.
Person is mad because Blizzard discrimanted againts them discriminating.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, there are people that play WoW that *aren't* homosexual? I don't believe it.
;)
Sometimes singing? Andrews? Her?
"Stop that! Stop that! You're not going into a song while I'm here. Now listen, lass. In twenty levels, you're getting married to a girl whose Tauren father pwns the biggest tracts of open land in all of Kalimdor!"
His problem was with the prevalent anti-gay attitudes displayed in-game. Blizzard hasn't done anything to control that.
If players would form/join guilds based on the player's skill or helpfulness or other such ways that directly affect gameplay, then we wouldn't be having this problem.
Ultimately, who cares? If people weren't such dicks and played the game without resorting to "omg u r a fag gtfo" then people wouldn't feel the need to make these guilds.
Of course, even then it wouldn't go away entirely, as people would form guilds just to try to be different.
My guild consists of men and women of differing ages, races, nationalities, and sexual orientations (really - I'm not joking), and we all have fun and just play the damn game. We don't care if one of our members is gay because IT DOESN'T MATTER. It doesn't give you a stat bonus, it doesn't make you a better player, so who cares?
I say leave the politics out of the game and just HAVE FUN!
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
Slashdot is soooo not the place to go for insight to this issue.
Let's have a civilized discussion about something a little less polemical:
vi is better than emacs.
But its okay that this person has to have the rest of the WoW force their antigay agenda on her?
The GLBT does not for the most part work against individual rights. Some organizations like GLAD grab media time by protesting pop star (fill in the blank)'s new album that contains homophobic lyrics. But for the most part the GLBT community and esspecially the Radical Feminist movement which predates the modern GLBT rights movement are pro-consitutional rights, they just want them universalized.
Also it's incredibly demeaning and in a broader sense racist to tie fundamental human rights like freedom of speech to property rights. Does this mean people without wealth or property shouldn't have rights? If a space is open to public people but owned by a person do they have the right to restrict those rights within their owned space?
Your home is private property, but when you open your restaurant to the public, it becomes a 'public accomodation', and is not private property. This was an issue with a case against the Boy Scouts of America. They were sued because they discriminate against homosexuals. The courts ruled that the Boy Scouts were a private club, not a public accomodation, and that they were free to discriminate.
Some bars and restautants are also run as private clubs (playboy clubs (defunct), bottle clubs, etc). Most are public accomodations, with restricted 'property rights'.
Also, if you hire a person to work in your business, you are bound by labor laws. This includes not creating a 'hostile work environment' and other EEOC restrictions. If you don't like it, don't hire people in America.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Of course, its still blizzards land, so you really can't say anything. You should take your speach somewhere else. Now in a game like second life where you buy land. I guess theoretically it would be a different legal standard wouldn't it?
Our guild doesn't care if you're gay, straight, black, white, democrat, or republican. It just has no place it the game.
However, all the jews are losing 50 DKP tomorrow for killing our Lord and savior. Sorry, but if you nail the son of God to a 2x4, you're not going to get that epic chest piece.
As soon as I saw it had been tagged "gay" I rushed in to make this point.
Hysterical.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
No one was forcing an 'agenda', they were just being impolite.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In all seriousness, I don't want to deal with Christianity in an online game. /ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your Christian agenda on the rest of us.
That battle-axe swings both ways, to coin a phrase.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
.... wait, how is having my own little gay club that you don't have to join 'forcing my gay agenda on you'?
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
And if someone calls something "cool", they're anti-hot? Perhaps it's just a colloquial saying anymore. I don't think of homosexuals when someone says something is "gay" any more than I think of ice when someone says something is "cool". I think it's just people manufacturing a perceived controversy because they see things one way, and everyone else doesn't give two shits.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"everyone else"
Numbers, please. You can't say "nobody cares" when obviously many, many people care without having something to back yourself up.
Unsupported assertions ftl.
I have poured hot grits down my pants. Thank you.
I firmly believe that the ability to speak is a protected right directly protected by the right to personal property. I don't believe we need a government to protect our right to speech on our own land.
Control over property does not give you absolute right of speech within its borders. To pull out the old Supreme Court analogy, by your logic, if you owned a theater, that would give you permission to attend a crowded performance, yell "Fire!" and watch the havoc unfold. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I also believe we can censor whoever we want, as long as we're on our own land.
Sure thing. I'll throw out another analogy. You are a restaurant owner who happens to actively dislike black people. You own the restaurant, and it is your "own land." Does it follow that you can "censor" - e.g., deny access, refuse service, etc. - black people from going to your restaurant? (Hint - read the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
I'm not anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-transgendered, but I am pro-freedom.
Please understand that you being pro-freedom necessarily implies that other people have the right to enjoy their freedoms as well, such as freedom from your asshatted bigotry.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - G.B. Shaw
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
Err, it's not that funny. I think for as much as they've "historically been known to work against individual rights" they've been more known to be working FOR individual rights, namely, that no one from "big government" to anyone else should dictate who they fall in love with or what kind of sex they choose to have and with whom.
Seriously, the person who complained about a guild listing itself as "GLBT-friendly" was being a total ass, and the complaint have been treated accordingly. These guys weren't looking to ban players who casually throw around term "that's so gay", just trying to politely and fairly discretely advertise their group in a coded language to other people who might feel likewise.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
You can turn off all the chat channels in the game. I leave them all off. That way I don't have to hear about Chuck Norris...and how gay he is.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
In order to be as you say you are, pro-freedom, you have to understand what freedom really is. You basically advocate personal anarchy with your views. And as I have explained to many anarchists and libertarians that when people have to be afraid in their everyday lives about certain sentiments negatively affecting them just because of the way they live their lives and when there is no governing authority to protect them...then they aren't truly free. Being free isn't about having the liberty to make someone's life a living hell by discriminating against them for their gender or sexuality.
Without authority and government and inscribed rights and rules and regulations limiting what others do, no one is truly free. Absolute freedom as you advocate for is nothing short of a world of living terror.
And lastly, one one can regulate your speech inside your own home so that was a strawman and you know it. Shame on you.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Right. "Your ignore list is full." anyone? Just because you can ignore someone does not make their behavior acceptable or appropriate.
I am amazed by how much fuzz anything related to sexuality is generating. For crying out loud, you are playing a game in which the basic premise, like in most other games, is to kill and plunder. There are no moral problems with this because you are Good and they are Bad. But if someone say "gay", or starts an LBGT guild - then what an outrage. No more is the game good "family" entertainment, no indeed, it needs to be cleaned up, the little ones need to be protected.
Tor
I really don't want to deal with gays or Christians or Jews or Nazis or accountants or potheads or Chuck Norris in the game, but my /ignore list is limited for no good reason so I have to choose my battles carefully.
New neighbor moves in across the street from Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith immediately detests this family, and wants them gone. He puts up a large sign in his yard that reads "To the Jones family: You are not welcome here. Get the fuck out of our neighborhood and go back to whatever cesspool you crawled out of." When their children are outside, he stands (on his own property, mind you,) and calls across the street to them, telling them that their parents are horrible, horrible people and that they're all going to have their fleshed burned off them in the sulfrous pits of hell. From his own land, he waggles his junk at Mrs. Jones when she comes home from shopping and invites her to perform oral sex on him while he tears her hair out. Mr Smith owns the land that Mr. Jones' employer has been leasing for the past twenty years; as a result, Mr. Smith refuses to let Mr. Jones set foot on his land, and Mr. Jones loses his job.
Should the Jones family have any recourse against Mr. Smith, other than to sell their home and move or go on living under the conditions he creates from his own property? Should Mr. Smith not be allowed to act the way he acts on his own property?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Your post is as confused as pudding. The article says this group wants to advertise their guild, i.e. they want free speech. The guild isn't demanding to restrict what anyone else can and can't say. They simply want to advertise "GLBT" without that being marked as "offensive." Apparently calling a groups of Orcs "fags" or "gay" is fine, but trying to form a guild through honest advertising is not. That's plain stupid and the owner of Blizzard has admitted as much.
I understand your point that Blizzard has a right to call their own shots about speech on what is "their land," but realistically, that's not how law operates and freedom of speech runs both ways in semi-public areas. The idiots can run around calling each other fags, and the real gays should be able to start their own guild without the interference of Blizzard's in-game police.
I finally understand. This is clearly a vast conspiracy of some SGO (sub-governmental organization) to slowly remove words from our vocabulary by making them offensive! First 'retarded', then 'gay'... who knows what word will be get you stared at next?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Were you singing "The internet is for porn..."?
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park
The first point is the horrible usage of certain terms used in a derogatory fashion (ie. Gay, Retarted, etc..). This has gotten bad in today's society and is an unfortunate reality in the world today. Not just the World of Warcraft.
The second point is that the person starting the guild is upset because blizzard pointed out the fact that they are discriminating. Having a group that only allows members that are not gay, bi, or lesbian is equally as discriminating as having a group that explicitly denies members that are gay, bi, or lesbian. By restricting a set of members based solely on sexual preference, it is in fact being discriminating. I'm surpised someone who claims to be a member of an organization such as the GBLT would be so hypocritical and create a guild built on discirmination.
A better action for the person to take would have been to create a guild that was GBLT friendly. That way they will most likely avoid the actions of the first point, while avoiding the hypocracy/discrimination of the second point.
Also it's incredibly demeaning and in a broader sense racist to tie fundamental human rights like freedom of speech to property rights. Does this mean people without wealth or property shouldn't have rights? If a space is open to public people but owned by a person do they have the right to restrict those rights within their owned space?
There's the biggest problem with anarcho-capitalism today: there are so many reasons against it BECAUSE of other reasons against it, it would be hard to put into action without scrapping the lawbooks (which is exactly what we want, hah).
Property rights in an anarcho-capitalist world repudiate the idea of owning land and renting it to someone who is able to maintain the land and make it better with their own labor. Not all anarcho-capitalists believe in this "utopia" but it is something that I believe in. I don't believe that corporations can own land any more than I believe that any one individual could own thousands of acres of land and try to keep it maintained.
The idea of "property" is a huge debate and I'd rather not get into it here because of the usual "he's a troll!" comments that don't want to think about either side of the situation. I believe that in most countries, maybe all, there is enough land to be maintained, and owned, by every individual. I've been all over the world (every continent but Antarctica) and I've yet to see a country with truly minimal land. The big problem is either megacorporations licensed by the State own a lot, or the State itself owns a lot. I am against government owning ANY land, and I believe government would be better suited to be the renter rather than the owner.
In the long run, if someone can't find land close to work, they'll have to find land far from work. For an employer to get people to work, they'll either have to pay them enough to purchase land closer to work, or pay them enough to drive to work. With telecommunications, the issue of living in an urban environment is becoming less and less important. Broadband isn't available in many exurban areas, but that is another government issue: regulations preventing people from running wires where they want.
Again, it is a very intense debate with MANY issues to overcome. Nonetheless, I do believe that a person "renting" land should be able to own the land, and just rent the home (or mortgage it). It is very hard to piece through all the various regulations and paternalism that occurs today that prevents capitalism from taking hold, instead it is replaced by mercantilism that masks itself as a free market.
Don't fool yourself with this circular logic, the majority rules in economy and if people start to get 'turned off' WoW for some reason, Blizzard will try to eliminate it.
I, personally, game to escape the 'real world' and I don't like mixing the two. Why would I want to have the socio-political agenda of other players invade my gaming sphere? If this becomes too much of a hassle for other gamers, (ie. can't use normal/preferred expressions), it too will die.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
Not much to say other than they treat themselves as a public accomodation when they feel like it (such as, utilizing our tax dollars to support the groups) and as a private club when they want to (creating environments of intolerance and the like)
Pretty interesting show, particularly the Mormons "hijacking" the BSA in the 70s.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I guess you could do what they used to do in the real world....on Sat. night, your guild goes out, gets drunk and finds gay guilders to beat up....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So why stop now?
/ignore list back to Ultima4.
Chuck Norris will round house kick your
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I mean, WoW isn't that great, it's way less realistic than say Sims 2, where noone cares what your romantic gender preference is, or even if you're half-alien for that matter.
I'm sorry, but I'm far more worried about the racial slurs I keep hearing whenever I try to play a Blizzard game, and the anti-gay slurs as well.
Just because some people don't swear a lot - which I stopped doing before I made Sergeant in the Army - some people make assumptions about them that are totally lame.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, but it also doesn't mean they can't act that way.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I think it's just people manufacturing a perceived controversy because they see things one way, and everyone else doesn't give two shits.
Perhaps it's because everyone else won't get beaten to death and chained to a fencepost, and then have their funeral picketed by lunatics just for being who they are.
Maybe that's why they see this as controversial.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
she chose to play the game. it's not like blizzard forced her to cough up her credit card to play the game.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Is it wrong of me to not care about the civil rights issue, but instead that she's one very cute nerd!
The problem here is not about free speech, free speech is only free in public, in private you have to obide by what the owners of the private area tell you.
The problem is that Blizzard does not correctly enforce their own policies. This person wanted to create a non-hostile environment for people that get offended by terms like 'man thats gay', or 'shut up fag'. Blizzard's own policies go against that type of speech in the first place, but it would seem impossible to effectivly enforce somthing like that on such a large scale. So instead of reporting every single person that made an offensive comment, why not create a guild that does not allow people to talk in a non-discrimanatory matter, which is what this person tried to do. Blizzard then shuts her down, even though the guild she was creating was in effect trying to do exactly what their policies say.
Blizzard is clearly in the 'morally wrong' here, but not the 'legal wrong'. They are allowed to do what they want in their own 'private club', but they should expect a public backlash when they single out people for trying to create a non-hostile environment in what they perceive as a hostile one.
... Do they roll for need? Greed? Better matches the color of their boots?
Only guilds where you'll see a lvl 60 toting a lvl 20 staff 'cuz it looks cuter.'
I kid.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
However, gay is used in a negative connotation. It does not matter that you are not actively thinking that "This story wants to have intimate relations with a story of the same gender." When you do come across an individual that is actually homosexual, you will most likely have a negative impression of this person, in part because you use a term that they identify with, and you use it negatively.
This is one of the only things you've said that I thought had a grain of sense.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Gay.
/ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your nigger agenda on the rest of us."
Denotation: Happy. Loose or lewd.
Connotation: Homosexual.
So if you use a word which is widely used to label homosexuals, and then use it in the context which means bad, well, you're changing the meaning of the word, and building up an association.
Negroid means having characteristics of a negro. The was slanged up into the form known as nigger.
nigger \nig"ger\, n.
A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation. It is usually
intended and interpreted as highly insulting and vulgar.
So if "gay" is intended or interpreted as highly insulting and vulgar, why is gay more acceptable to use in that way than nigger?
"
If you turn a blind eye to ignorance, you let it grow. Showing these people who seem to think it's acceptable, that such vulgarities are not cool or acceptable, is the perfect response. Do not tollate intellorance, no matter how people will dress it up.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Pfff. Dude, your spelling is gaye.
Opinions about bringing sociopolitical et al. issues into WoW aside, I think the last thing that needs to happen is to have this sent to court.
To have some U.S. court decide what kind of speech is or is not acceptable in privately-run MMORPGs is counterproductive. I don't think it's the kind of thing a court needs to arbitrate, as much as individual game companies do, with customers deciding that if being able to mention Christians, GLBTers, or Bull Moose party members is of paramount importance for the enjoyment of an MMORPG, then 1) It would seem then that the quality of the game is secondary anyway, so 2) they can take their cash and their time to some other game.
And yes, we can crow as idealists about free-as-in-speech and about how this applies, but if the notion of GLBT guild-theming went to court under the challenge of free speech, I bet that no matter the outcome, the vulgar nature of the chat channels would be next.
Then do you know what would happen? Enter a big mess, as legislators take notice of kids above the age of 13 exposed to areas where profanity and sexually suggestive material runs absolutely rampant, "won't somebody save the children" and before we know it, we're force-fed a bunch of new regulations for "open" chat channels that had once been so gleefully populated by homophobes, misogynists, and decent people.
I agree that subscriber action is the best action for situations like this, and that getting courts involved is going to open a can of worms that would make a great big PITA for MMORPGs and MMORPGers.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
Control over property does not give you absolute right of speech within its borders. To pull out the old Supreme Court analogy, by your logic, if you owned a theater, that would give you permission to attend a crowded performance, yell "Fire!" and watch the havoc unfold. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I find it ridiculous that the Supreme Court decided to control what a property owner can control themselves. If I own a theater and someone yells fire, I should just boot them out, maybe put a sign up saying not to curse, yell fire, or sign old Irish melodies. The "fire!" argument is half a strawman in my mind, because it is a ridiculous premise. The property owner just boots the offender. If you hear someone yell "Fire" do you start to run? If you trample someone, it is your foot that did the killing.
Sure thing. I'll throw out another analogy. You are a restaurant owner who happens to actively dislike black people. You own the restaurant, and it is your "own land." Does it follow that you can "censor" - e.g., deny access, refuse service, etc. - black people from going to your restaurant? (Hint - read the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
The Civil Rights Act is a piece of garbage if you read it closely, it did NOTHING to "create" harmony. The big problem with civil rights pre-1964 was that LOCAL governments decided to discriminate -- with the populace following the law. The CVA created a mess of racial harmony as has been shown over and over. Look at the mess of Title IX, and how it destroys individual rights.
Please understand that you being pro-freedom necessarily implies that other people have the right to enjoy their freedoms as well, such as freedom from your asshatted bigotry.
I'm not caucasian and was racially berated through high school, but I never said anything. I just realized that people are idiots, if they want to waste their time slurring my background, that'll just hold them back. Two of the people who "hated" my race the most were people I later had a little control over in real life -- I made it perfectly clear that they'd not get a piece of the contract they bid on. In fact, I would likely be prosecuted for that action based on the pro-litigious race laws that exist.
On top of that, I do believe that everyone has freedoms, they just need to take the steps to belong to a community that shares the same beliefs. I have no problem with communities (not necessarily meaning villages or towns but organizations of people with like apprecations and prejudices) joining together to chat about their beliefs. It is part of freedom. If they come on my land, I am free to tell them to get lost.
I just fail to see an agenda. Are they making you join? Are they forcing you to be gay? Are they forcing you to associate with homosexuals? No, they're not. You don't have to even acknowledge the fact that they've formed an organization (which you don't have to join or associate with in any way) and if you want, you can ignore it altogether! I'm sure they rather you did.
But would you rather say that you're offended by the mere existence of homosexuality? Get over it. Like Werbach's quote from TFA, "With over 5 million users, WOW is the size of Chicago. And like Chicago, it has homosexuals, homophobes, and everything in between."
Get back to me when you're forced to associate with people you don't like.
Thanks you.
...jerks like you running around calling everyone "f4gz". When will people realize that most GLBT groups are not there to push an agenda? They're there to provide an environment in which GLBT people can be comfortable.
People in a GLBT guild can adventure with other people in the guild knowing that they won't have to deal with intolerant remarks from 14 year olds. Oh, the horror! When will this gay agenda stop?
I have no desire to discuss sexual preferences or anything else of a personal nature in an online game. Is that a bad thing? Am I the only one? If you don't tell me, I won't know. If you want to discuss your sexual preferences, there are plenty of appropriate services to do that. An mmorpg is not one of them. By the way, as a matter of equality, could somone advertise a "heterosexual friendly" guild? If not, you've set a double standard.
If someone wants to make a private, enclosed community that's non-discriminatory ("GBLT-friendly" != "GBLT-only,") then why not let them? Why all of the backlash from some /. posters? I thought we were better than this.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Also it's incredibly demeaning and in a broader sense racist to tie fundamental human rights like freedom of speech to property rights.
*sigh* So many people who have utterly no comprehension of what rights and privileges are. *sigh again*
You seem to make a distinction between human rights and property rights, but you fail to grasp that they are very much related. All rights are property rights; human rights are a form of property rights.
Does this mean people without wealth or property shouldn't have rights?
Again you're failing to think critically. Everyone OWNS at least one piece of property: their body. The fact that your body is your property is how we derive human rights. If you have no property, you have no rights, but everyone has basic property (i.e. a body) so everyone has basic rights (i.e. human rights).
Here's the approved guilds:
1) OMG PONIES!!!111!
2) Fans of Mayo on WonderBread Sammiches
3) The Ned Flanders Association of People Who Enjoy Non-threatening Fun
4) Hail Training Wheels!
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
I think it's fair to say that there are WOW male players whose avatars are female, and vice versa. Some of these roleplay. What if someone wanted to roleplay as a gay character? Is that not allowed, and why not? The article mentions that there have been gay MMORPGers for years and they've dealt with this shit, mainly by ignoring it and having a good time anyway - however, they shouldn't have to ignore it. What's wrong with them wanting to belond to an organization where they know they won't have to endure insulting language coming from their supposed 'mates'? Using the word gay as a pejorative is widespread; trolls use it, I occasionally use it and you might use it as well. It's almost impossible not to blurt it out if you grew up in the American education system where it's as entrenched as tater tots and pop quizzes. I understand that. It goes beyond 'just' the word gay, however; it's a seemingly unending wave of dialogue that can only be described as "homophobic" at best and "hate speech" at worst. The argument that it should be kept out of the game because this is supposed to be entertainment is invalid; if game only dialogue were allowed then there'd just be the raid leader screaming and everyone bickering over loot. The fact is that our everyday lives creep into this game as part of the natural draw of MMORPGs: social interaction, not isolation. If you want to keep it game only then don't allow for any player-to-player communication or play Elder Scrolls. Reading any guild's message board will lead you to the conclusion that people enjoy interacting on all levels: WOW has become a big part of some of these people's lives and the mixing of personal and "WOW" life is pretty common from what I've seen. It's silly to say that discussion of one's sexual orientation in a non-insulting manner is not allowed. It's even sillier to say that discussion of one's personal life ought to be left outside of the game, because then you'd have to ban sob stories of boy/girlfriends and bitching about the domestic situation and that's not gonna happen. Just as marriage doesn't seem to be a very sacred institution in America, WOW is permeated throughout with the often banal, sometimes amusing and always personal accounts of one's real life. Why limit that to heterosexuals? Shouldn't gay men and women, and the transgendered, and whatever other group you want to throw in there be just as miserable as the rest of us? Finally, to address that tired old issue: it's a GLBT friendly guild, not a GLBT only guild.
I detected no asshatted bigotry in his statement. You are projecting an attitude on him that's extremely negative when his actual statements were much less negative. This is an ad-hominem attack and is a debating technique to use when you don't have anything more solid.
Also, hauling out the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a defense is kind of silly, because the original poster would probably site that as an example of a broken law. That basically represents an argument by appealing to authority, and is also a debating technique to use when you have no solid facts or reasoning to back you up.
Lastly, your "Fire!" statement, while peripherally addressing the argument, fails to come at it head on. That particular rule could be summarized as "When you say something that you have a reasonable expectation will result in immediate harm to others, that is no longer covered by the first ammendment.". So, if he lead a lynch mob on his property, he could be convicted of murder even though the event is only related to his words and he took no part in any actual kidnapping, beating or murder of the victim.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm not anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-transgendered, but I am pro-freedom.
if i'm not mistaken you just said you're a pro-freedom gay transgendered lesbian.
go you.
It is a civil matter. They can sue.
Other than indecent exposure (still civil, iirc) though I'm not sure anything is technically "wrong". In bad taste, but not against the law. That's the way it is supposed to be though. You have the freedom to express yourself through appropriate channels
...she's a stone fox. Yeah, I know she's transsexual. Still hot.
Let's see, where's that anonymous checkbox?
This is a small jump away from having a ban on a Monastary Guild. Personally i would think that unless you are by definition a "hostile" guild (ie vampire , Nazi , TSCOG or KKK) it should be allowed (after factoring in PvP regs and such). heck i think i would like to see a set of G/L races in one of these MMORPGs.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
No, that is what your group does. Not mine.
Well, the article says that "everything" in WOW is apparently gay. So I'd say that there's an overwhelming majority of people using it and not caring, because I can virtually guarantee you that almost none of those references are actually meant in a derogatory-to-homosexuals connotation. Unless you know, PrinceWanksALot getting an epic mount before CharlizeTheronIsHot is in actuality a homosexual thing.
Nice try though.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Could someone start a GBLT hatefull guild? is not, that IS a double standard.
I perfer GEBLT:
Green Eggs, Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I, personally, game to escape the 'real world' and I don't like mixing the two. Why would I want to have the socio-political agenda of other players invade my gaming sphere? If this becomes too much of a hassle for other gamers, (ie. can't use normal/preferred expressions), it too will die.
That would be a great sentiment, if online games weren't primarily played by 14-25 year old males. It's a locker room mentality where sexism, racism and cruelty runs rampant. And more important, they act and speak like teenage boys, not the wizards and rangers of a fantasy world. "RPG" should be taken out of MMORPG because most people don't actually "role play" at all.
It can be a hateful environment for anyone not used to it-- and the further I get from high school, the less I can stand it. Calling each other "fag" and "cocksucker" can get old fast if you're NOT gay, I would imagine it would only get worse if you were. Saying something like "that's not cool" will only make you a target for gay-bashing yourself.
I've seen guilds and clan leaders in many games that purport to be fair and tolerant and who will punish members for racist slurs. These same guild leaders will jump in and make crude gay insults without a second thought. And if someone were to dare admit they were gay in real life, they would be kicked out-- which is fine, really, a clan is a private club who can admit or kick whoever they want, but at the same time but at the same time those who feel they aren't welcome elsewhere should be allowed to join together and form their own private clubs.
"Gay friendly" doesn't mean she's trying to lure unsuspecting teens to her lifestyle. It doesn't mean she's trying to force everyone else to accept it. It DOES mean she's trying to create a guild where the players can actually enjoy the game, instead of dealing with endless hostility. There's safety and strength in numbers-- which is why guilds are formed in the first place. So a bunch of gay people want to go on dungeon raids together. You probably won't have to interact with them at all, does this really interfere with your game experience in any way?
were they playing WoW on Rosie's cruise?
Nobody in an MMORPG really, honestly cares wether or not you like to stick your dick in another man's ass at night when the lights are out. Nobody really, honestly cares if you like to don a rubber phallus and have a go at another woman. See, the fact that you do / don't do those things have absolute fuck all to do with the game at hand.
Making a GLBT "friendly" guild is fucking dumb. Mind-numbingly idiotic. You are supposed to be in a game making guilds about game-ish things. Once they add the ability to suck another man's cock into WOW, only THEN would a gay guild be justified. Failing that, it's simply a fasion / personal statement.
Again, keep your choices about flesh and sex out of the god damn game. If sombody uses the word "gay" and it offends you, then we're all terribly sorry that a word that describes your sexual orientation has also come to be synonymous with something bad. Maybe you should see a phsychiatrist about that and leave players alone.
What's next, you show sombody a weapon, and they like it, so they say "Oh! thats phat!" then next day you see a dozen guilds pop up like "BBW Big Beautiful Warcraft" or any other made-to-glorify-fat-hog-syndrome-caused-by-your-mc -diet bullshit.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Even as a private owner, if you are a Public Accomendation certia rules apply t o you.
I would even say they were not morally wrong. Just enforcing a rule. If I had been starting a GBLT hatefull group, I am sure I woul;d have been banned for a couple of days. I am also sure they wouldn't change there stance like they did with this person.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is no different between abhorrence of sex between two men or two women and abhorrence of sex between a white person and a black person.
That makes you a racist! Yay!
+++ATH0
So what happens when the "Jesus Freaks" guild attacks the "Rainbow Guild"? If it was the "Black Dragons" attacking the "Iron Tigers" or something like that, the Iron Tigers would understand it is a game and all in fun. But are the "Rainbow Guild" going to complain that they are being discriminated against by the "Jesus Freaks" guild? What happens if the "Bowman of Allah" attack and kill the "Jesus Freaks"? Are the "Jesus Freaks" gonna get in a big huff and cry about it? What happens when the "Republican Ogre League" attacks the "Democrat Swordsmen"? Doesn't anyone see how the whole thing could become a mess really quick?
It is not discriminating against anyone to not allow real world affiliations in a game. Because a game involves violence, you want the victims and perpetrators of violence to be completly fictional groups. If you have real life affiliations like Sex, Race, Religion, Sexual Preference, and it is going to cause all kinds of problems.
I realize that nowadays, politically correct posturing trumps common sense, and so people are going to cry that they are being discriminated against because they can't create a Gay, Bi, Lesbian, Transexual clan... and the threats of lawsuits will probably give them their way. But demanding to be allowed to make a GLBT guild, when all other real world affiliations are banned, is just stupid. GLBT are not discriminated from playing the game, or from starting clans, but they are (or where) banned from bringing real world issues into a totally fantasy escapist game.
Happy has a positive denotation, I don't think all homosexual people are happy and don't automatically have a positive opinion of any 'gay' person.
While I don't use 'gay' to mean 'uncool' or 'crappy' it doesn't have the impact you think it does. Words with multiple definitions do not automatically tie those definitions together.
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here is a general rule of thumb: Anyone can take offence at Anything Anyone says or does.
humans are like that. one person could take offence that there is not GBLT friendly guilds and want something done about it... why should we only cater to one set of whiners needs? what if someone takes offence at a GBLT friendly guild? what do we do about them? how do we make everyone happy?
do we disregard the people who find the GBLT friendly guild offencive and call them biggots? or do we disregard the people who find the lack of GBLT friendly guilds offencive and call them biggots? favoring one thing over another and calling all those who oppose "evil" makes you just as "evil" as they. what people dont understand is that good and evil is not absolute... its relative (to the side you are on).
insults are only insults when they are precieved as one. noone else can MAKE you feel anything, the only person in the universe that can MAKE you feel a certian way is you.
flame me all you want, the only one who is going to care is you.
next time someone says something is gay, say "no, thats hetero!" now you both sound like an idiot and who cares what an idiot says?
*whew* (deep breath) and.... relax.
-ManJerk
-Boycot shampoo! demand real poo!
The real problem pointed out by the article is that Blizzard was being capricious and inconsistent with its approach to "Harrassment--Sexual Discrimination." There's certainly nothing discriminatory about typing the letters LGBT in a public forum (even a privately mediated one like channels in WoW). If someone thinks that it is discrimination to type those letters, well, then they need to get a life. People who are LGBT certainly wouldn't think so. Why should anyone else?
It seems that guilds are precisely the place to support specific groups with specific interests. If you have a gay guild or a christian guild or a cheese-lovers guild the great benefit is that you can easily speak to all your guildies about the interest you share and you don't clog up the public channels with your own interests. All guilds need to be able to recruit though. That is the best way to help everyone find associations that work for them.
Ok, back to building up my Rogue's lockpicking skills...
"players may not transmit or post any content or language which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, is deemed to be offensive,"
What part of that is unclear? Don't like it? Don't give them your money.
You call it censorship? I call it freedom of association.
Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's decision to cave in to the PC police. But you know what? If I *really* didn't like it, I could quit. So I can't say much beyond that, can I? It's their game, they made a business decision (the cost in lost memberships for allowing the practice is, in their opinion LESS THAN the cost of banning it).
-Styopa
...and I could wander down my local high-street slaughtering everyone I saw. Or maybe highjack a plane and fly it into the Whitehouse.
Doesn't mean I should...
Ignorance is not an excuse.
Why would I want to hear what music people are listening, what's happening with their Internet connection, where they live, what games they like or what they think about other MMORPGs? I think you should stick to singleplayer games, because you aren't going to escape the real world in a multiplayer game.
This issue is blown out of proportion anyway. People act like they're being swarmed by GLBT guilds from all directions, unable to escape the constant barrage of homos who want to recruit them. I have never seen a GLBT guild anywhere nor encountered a GLBT player, and I doubt that I ever will.
True freedom can only be exercised by all when it is defined as "Freedom to do what you like as long as it does not restrict or limit the freedom of others."
Otherwise it is not freedom, it is oppression.
This is how the loudness war is killing music.
Well, except for the part about tearing her hair out. That's assault, and is a criminal matter, for which Mr. Smith can be arrested and thrown in jail for a long time.
Up until he got to the "waggles his junk at" bit, everything that had been done would have perfectly legal (although in very bad taste) in the United States.
However, the assault part is definitely illegal, and I would consult a lawyer on the issue of discrimination in who Mr. Smith leases to, as it at best a legal gray area (but almost certainly illegal).
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Substitute your use of the word 'cool' for any of the following:
Black. Chinese. Spanish. Polish. Korean. Mexican. Jewish.
Now substitute any of the known racial epithets for those groups where appropriate. You could not legitimately use any of those epithets and think it's completely innocent.
Just because you're either too ignorant (or too busy not giving a shit) to realize there is really one expected meaning for that word, doesn't mean you can freely use it without pissing people off. The strong implication seems to be that gay == bad, therefore we can use it to mean bad without thinking about what we're actually saying -- I didn't mean it like *that*.
While I could use the somewhat out of use word niggardly to mean
I would ignore how it could be interpreted at my own peril. And while popular culture seems to have far to many white-boys saying *cough* nizzle *cough*, I also make it a point not to do the same myself. Because I find it to be a really offensive word.
Pretending that saying something is "so gay" isn't saying what you claim it isn't is just silly. Like I said, replace that for any racial epithet and you might see what I'm talking about.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There are parts of the country where soda is referred to as 'pop' but that doesn't mean people are asking you for a grandparent or a punch in the jaw when they say "give me a pop". In the same way in my encounters with people saying "that's totally gay" they don't mean "that's totally homosexual" or "I hate that in the same way I hate homosexuals" they in fact mean it as "that's totally stupid/absurd/odd". It is an ALTERNATE SLANG MEANING that has been appropriated by a subset of the culture, just as homosexuals and society re-appropriated the word 'gay' itself about a generation or two ago.
In New England we say 'wicked' to mean 'very', e.g. "The new console is wicked cool". However in this usage it has nothing to do with being evil. In some places in NY people use 'mad' the same way New Englanders use wicked, but they don't mean angry in any way. A word can have two different and unrelated meanings!
To be offended by an alternate use of a word you happen to associate with is silly when it's patently not being used offensively. Could it be used offensively? Has it been? Yes. But this is not one of those examples. And in the case of the word gay itself the argument even becomes hypocrtical since gay already had a different meaning which has been appropriated by today's culture to mean something completely different. Language evolves, and slang is simply a genetic mutation of language, often here today gone tomorrow. If you can't get over that then you're taking yourself way too seriously and need to find a better battle to fight.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
What, exactly, is the "gay agenda" again? I keep forgetting. Wasn't it something about not being treated as second-class citizens for being gay? Yes, they have absolutely no right to insist that we treat like human beings. Or do you mean another agenda, like their plot to take over the world and force all the rest of us to be gay too?
Married het female, if you're wondering. I'm wondering how a comment about with the words gay agenda got modded up. That smacks of anti-gay paranoia.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Where does using a word stop being funny and become hate speech? In the context of the replies here the phrase, "That is sooo gaayyy" merely tries to bring levity to what could be a flame-rife topic. But saying to a complete stranger, "that faggot stole my (insert cool WOW item here)" or "That armor is gay" is offensive. There are far more effective ways of conveying how lame a thing is without going out of your way to offend (such as, "you are a jackass" or "that armor was forged in the fires of useless, just like you").
Calling things "gay" and people "faggot" is just freaking retarded...</sarcasm>
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
Keep your politics, religion, sexual orientation, etc out of the game and play to have fun dammit. I just cannot see basing a guild off of things like that. I joined a guild receantly and they never asked any questions about any thigns like that. What thye wanted to know was if I was a good player, if I liked PvP, and so on. They don't really care who I want to have sex with when I'm not playing, that's my concern.
So ya, Christian, Atheist, Gay, Lesbian, Republican, Democrat, White, Asian, and so on guilds are ALL annoying to me. Why? It's arbitrary shit that has nothing to do with the game itself. I don't find it useful to segregate along those lines. I know people in my guild are a different gender, race, and political alignment than me, I'm sure some of them are different religions, it wouldn't supprise me if a couple were a different sexual orientation. Know what? I don't give a shit. They are good players, and people I get along with. That's all that's needed. To try and divide along arbitrary barries would be stupid.
>> /ignore users that say things you don't want
/ignore people, I am removing myself from participating. I'd rather attack them back than stick my head in the sand.
>>to hear and please don't try to force your Christian
>> agenda on the rest of us.
Not a very good analogy. You don't hear Christians casually insulted in the way gays are. (Have you ever heard anyone say "dude, you are so christian"?)
If I have to
But lets say that they form a "Gay" guild... and I attack them (I don't play MMOs, but if I did, I would like to attack people because I think player vs. player competition is a lot of fun).
Now I have to worry about being called a homophobe or something like that, because I am having fun doing what I like (attacking other players). Could they even charge me with a hate crime, because after all, I am "simulating violence" against a "Gay" group, and could that be interpreted as an endorcement of violence against gays (Here in Canada, people have been arested for simply quoting biblical verses about Homosexuality, so it isn't outlandish that I could be charged with a hate crime)?
Perhaps they won't complain when I attack them... perhaps they will understand it is a game, and I just like player vs. player combat. But the fact that I have to even worry if people are going to interpret my attack in the game as an attack of their group in real life, makes the game not fun.
If gay people want to play the game, that is great! If gay people want to form guilds, that is great! If WoW wants to ban homophobic speech in the game, that is fantastic! Even if players wanted to roleplay homosexual acts in a fantasy context, that is fine by me! I support it 100%! But when they want to blur the line between the real world political groups (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transexual), and the fantasy world (Orcs, Goblins, Elves), it ruins the game.
This is the very definition of a troll post, people. And an AC to boot. Did Slashdot forget how to spot these things?
"...force your gay agenda on the rest of us"?
What an obvious bone toss. The only thing that post lacked was the word "FIGHT!" at the end.
3 Insightful to a Troll AC. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
++Om
Go run those commands and come back and tell us that, again, with a straight face.
/silly.
Particularly on a tauren male with
"Homoginized? Nawww, I like the ladies..." It is a voice emote too. (not applicable in cities, go do it in the wide open countryside)
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
You mean walking talking cows and dragons aren't realistic?! You don't ride a flying gryphon to work every day?
...
Of course not, I walk to work. Sometimes I ride my blue flame skateboard, if it's sunny - sometimes I get on this large smoke-breathing dragon called a bus if it goes by as I'm walking
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think the point is that you are forcing your homophobic agenda on everyone else when you use gay/ghey/ghei/whatever as a deragatory adverb/adjective....
I'm not even homosexual and this annoyed this hell out of me when I was playing EQ and SWG.
Many gay people marry straight women.
However, in some homosexual circles there IS an agenda to get more men to be homosexual, and they recruit in high school and college.
There is no over arching 'gay agenda' that I am aware.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's much like the slashdot crowd's uproar against the media each time they misuse the term "hacker" to mean "someone who writes viruses and breaks into computers and sells stolen data on the black market". No, it doesn't mean they're explicitly equating people who enjoy coding all night long, or making something do a useful thing it wasn't meant to... They're writing out of ignorance, and it's messed up as eventually that link is reenforced by virtue of the same term being used.
:)
For any of you reading this who complain about "hacker" being used as a negative term by the press, but are happy to keep using "gay" as a term of abuse against something negative, ask yourself why you're upset at one but not the other. Is it your inbuilt biases? is it just because it only affects you and you don't give a shit about other groups in the same situation? Do you just not like short words?
Oh, get real. Your argument is like saying I will become accused of assault for attacking another character on a pvp server. Or that I am sexist for attacking a female character.
So that is what those recruiters were for. They told me they were recruiting for the Army, but now I know better.
Thanks for the warning!
Yur nt allowed to roleplay a straight character, either.
Hence the no discussion of sexuality rule.
So, everyone's bi?
Sweet!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The GLBT folks were attempting to make use of space owned by the "big government" but made available as a (limited) public forum. This creates an easement, so to speak, against the hypothetical property rights. Thus, when the "big government" said the use was not acceptable, this makes the rights of Speech and Petition far more central than Property.
I am not a lawyer, but Pruneyard v. Robins and Lloyd v. Tanner sound more relevant than your, er... theories.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I don't know what moron modded you up, but your analogies are terrible.
1) Yes, in fact, you have a right to discriminate on your private property. End of fricking story. Country Clubs, Private Schools, etc, have won court cases about this for years. The only time you don't have this right is when you're running an establishment that is open to the public at large, which is where you're confused. No you can't discriminate if you own a restaraunt where clients walk in off the street, yes, you can discriminate if you make people go though an interview process first, and pay fees, whatever.
2) Yelling "Fire" and yelling "Fag" are two different things, unless you're in a church, where yelling "Fag" may cause a stampede for the exit, creating a public hazard. That is the criteria: you have to be creating a dangerous situation where people could get hurt. If I want to walk around being an insensitive bigot all day long, that's my right. It's called freedomn of speech, and just because it may hurt someone's feelings, doesn't make it illegal. The Klan regularly gets permits to march and spout their crappy ideas, have you never noticed this?
3) Freedom from people being assholes is nowhere guanteed in the consitution. If someone physically harms you, you have recourse, but you only have recouse against bigotry if it gets physical, if you get denied access to otherwise public services, or if it crosses the line to harassment. That's it. End of story. You can't have someone censured by the law just because you don't like their beliefs.
So many fricking hypocrites in this country. Everyone loves freedom of speech, religion, assembly...as long as the only people who are allowed to exercise those freedoms are people that they like. That's not the way it works. Tolerance also means, unfortunately, that you have to tolerate the opinions of people you'd rather see squashed by a truck.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Hmm, so forcing "agendas" is bad, and forcing your personal "agenda" i.e. "i only wanna see the world i wanna see" is just dandy (lol i'll keep the pun!)?! Perhaps re "agendas" you should follow your own advice "ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your ... agenda on the rest of us. (it only needed the smallest of edits after all).
Oh btw in the interest of full(ish) disclosure i don't play WoW, am not gay, do live in the real world, don't have problems with people who do play WoW or who happened to be gay/bisexual (add any other maligned group here).
Well, "spaz" and "watermelon" both qualified in the past 24 hours.
Spaz makes sense, but...watermelon? Is there something I don't know? Is that like fried chicken, or is the throwing the problem? Either way...I defend my right to make political math jokes without having people call me racist...
Oh libertarians, you are so cute. I have to agree with the artical in american conservative..."Libertarians: the marxists of the right". Also, I enjoy Mr. Dada's ridiculous how to be a man blog. A nice insight into how you standard online libertarian thinks.
LOL!!! This is so freaking idiotic. It's a game. A game played by kids. Kids talk trash. If you can't deal with it them cancel you account and uninstall the game. Simple isn't it? We live in an unfair world. It's an ugly fact. So you're gay. How does that come into play in the game? People show quit sharing TMI and just have fun. There is a time and place for everything. During a video game is not the time nor the place for discussing your sexual pref. I don't care what it is. I played WoW for a bit. Yeah the kids in there like to taunt each other. Many I found very irritating. I didn't go off and create a Players Against Other Players Talking Trash (PAOPTT) guild. LOL I just went about my business and played the game. Getting so worked up over this mess is just plain GAY! LOL
Wasn't this covered enough about 3 months ago?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It's the same logic that picks out Gay/Lesbian marriage and adoption as a insideous conspiracy against traditional families while ignoring dual-income families, divorce and adultery as more serious problems.
Honestly, this whole story just shows that some folks have no perspective. In WoW you pick a race and from that point on all members of other races are enemies to be killed on sight. You learn magic spells to kill and curse. You get sent on quests to kill thousands of dumb animals for no particular reason. You are rewarded for picking pockets and making potions. You reincarnate yourself. You really can't advance through the game in a peaceful fashion. You enslave animals and spirits. Hell, warlocks summon up succubus minions dressed in S&M gear. The game is filled with sexual references like "Wirt's third leg."
If you imagine that WoW is or even should be family friendly, you're just completely delusional.
Coincidence? I think not!
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Yeah, I like light-skinned people better than dark-skinned ones, so when I open a restaurant I'm only going to allow the former and not the latter.
Agreed. How about if I just want to play WOW without the vulgar and obscene comments? Whether or not it's GLBT friendly or not?
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Who's modding this insightful? His response to the first of the three points misread the point completely. The example was of the property owner shouting fire which not only would be illegal, it SHOULD be illegal. His other responses are, frankly, gibberish. Someones' moderator privileges need to be reconsidered.
The homophobic tendencies of WoW surely pale in comparison to Runescape. The average age of a Runescaper is around 14. In highschool and juniorhigh, "gay" is a common staple of the vernacular.
Runescape's censor filter automatically blocks the word gay entirely. However, the word "gae" is used so often by the general populace that I usually don't bother to report it. It is always used as a synonym for "bad"..
After some reflection on this story, I will ask the Runescape players saying "gae" to find another or risk being reported for the basic rule violation of intentionally bypassing the censor.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
When people bark that you're making a "political statement" by walking down the street holding hands, one grows quite tired of other people's "politics" and moves simply to ignoring them and getting on with life, but sure as hell not by disappearing into anonymity for your comfort. Don't like it? Don't look.
Reminds me of a comment from a few weeks ago (apologies to babydaddy):
Bonsai Kitten: TNG
Is it to get more men to be homosexual or find and support the boys who already are that way? I know plenty of gay guys who are happy to support confused/bullied young homosexuals, but I have never known or heard of any gay people trying to "recruit" straights. All of the gay guys (and girls, for that matter) that I know seem to hold the belief that if they can't even convince themselves to be straight, the odds of them convincing somebody else to spontaneously become gay are vanishingly slim.
Well, I suppose there are probably some who try, just as there are some straight people who try and "recruit" gays... but unless the victim in question happens to be bisexual, very confused about what love is, or a very good actor, it's unlikely to work very well.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land.
Really? The ones I know just want to be allowed to inherit property from each other.
Yeah, what a god damn intrusion.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Well, presumeably part of the "gay agenda" is to not have to hide one's identity, and instead to be accepted, as gay, as a full first-class member of society.
So by proclaiming that one is gay, and by advertising for a gay guild without being censored by the authorities, you have "forced" people to consider the fact that people playing the game may actually be gay, and that they have the same rights to speech and to association as all other citizens.
That's the logic, such as it is.
All these people keep saying they don't want to hear about it, because they don't care. This is nonsense, they obviously care very much or they'd let it be, instead of feeling like you are imposing on them merely by declaring your existence. What they really mean is that they don't want to hear anything about gay people, so they can pretend everyone is straight. This is why having your own little gay club offends them -- they can no longer pretend that people in that guild are straight, and you have "forced" them to realize that they are sharing a game server with a homosexual.
It's as lame an answer as saying that it's the GLBT groups who brough sexual preference into the game in the first place. No, it's the people using "faggot" as their pejorative of choice that brought the issue of homophobia into the game. A GLBT group is just an attempt to escape from this environment. It's as ludicrous as blaming a black person for bringing race issues into the game when he complains that everyone is tossing "nigger" around with reckless abandon.
Oh, but of course racism is frowned upon by mainstream society, and thus spewing "lol u nigger" would be frowned upon. It's still socially acceptable to be a homophobe, so "i hate teh gheys" is fine, everyday speech and "hey I'm gay that offends me" is bringing up issues that don't belong in the game.
The enemies of Democracy are
You don't have to be an nihilist to be an anarcho-capitalist. Just because people ought to be allowed to do things doesn't mean that they ought to do them. Blizzard ought not to stifle people like this, and people ought to complain about it.
English is easier said than done.
You're thinking of swinging.
nt
You're right, you have the right to say what you wish in the privacy of your own home. Unfortunately, people with those overt attitudes in private, carry them over to the public sphere, where they become covert (passing that dark fellow over for promotion, not inviting that well-dressed, effeminate guy for happy hour after work with the rest of the team, etc.)
You do things that are just as prejudiced, but it's all "undercover" so nobody can prove it, but the effects are just as harmful as if you went around screaming "I hate blacks and gays". Actually more harmful, because you can't be confronted and shut down as easily.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
*cough* night-elf males *cough*
If female characters were really female, then you could probably get accused of being a sexist for attacking female characters. However, you don't have to be a female in real life to be a female in the game - therefore gender is entirely fictional. The "female" character could just as likely be a male as female in real life. There isn't a real world gender significance.
However, the GLBT clan, is REALLY Gay, Lesbian, Bi, or Transexual people, for real in real life. The gayness isn't a fictional character's attribute, it is them in real life! So when I am attacking a GLBT clan, they might percieve it as a personal attack on the real life selves, and not as an attack on their fictional character.
Even if they won't be offended, I am offended. I don't want to attack gays, or Christians, or Muslims, or Democrats, or Americans, or any real world group of people. I want to attack evil magic cults, or goblins, or purely fictional groups of people. If I am going to be attacking other players in a game, I want the line to be clearly drawn so there can be no mistake that it is purely fictional.
>It is a civil matter. They can sue.
Oh my goodness they can do a lot more than that. I don't much care whether you agree with the philosophy of criminalizing Mr Smith's behavior or not, as it doesn't change the real and actual fact that unless they live in some total backwater, it's much more than a civil matter in their jurisdiction.
Virtually all of Smith's behavior is criminal harrassment. Some of it is outright felony meanacing. His junk-waggling would very likely get him deemed a sex offender, and the funny thing about that is that the shoe will be very much on the other foot should Mister Smith decide to move into a new neighborhood.
Oh, and this is to say nothing of federal civil rights laws, which most certainly have teeth in criminal penalties.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I haven't played Warcraft since Warcraft II circa 95. I am going to assume the basic game premise hasn't much changed:
1. Raise an army of trolls
2. Raise hell with army
3. Miss school/work/date and click on peons to hear funny phrases instead.
If this holds true, I fail to see what WoW has to do with homosexuality OR christianity.
However, I am not naive. People will always divide themselves into "groups" and "teams" and "sides". I say, so be it. Let the Christian Orc league do battle with the Elves of NY, let them spend hours destroying one another again and again.
And then, after they spend 10 years at "war", and see it has made NO DIFFERENCE, perhaps they can BOTH shut up and get some opinions of their own.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
as a biologist, i am personally offended by homosexuals. i study the way organisms live, die, and reproduce. if they stop reproducing, well, what's left wont fill a textbook, and without a textbook to write, i can't make the rent.
"'... last summer a friend introduced me to WOW, and I really liked it, though I didn't care for remarks many of the players made, like the fact that everything is apparently so gay when it's bad." Come out from under your rock have you? Welcome to the internet, with its own language. Thats the problem with WoW, all these people who have never before been exposed to 'our' world, are now diving in, and are not liking it.
I was especially disappointed to learn that Blizzard also shut down the Super Adventure Club's guild!
Who's modding this insightful?
Trolls.
Seriously. Dada is the Slashdot answer to Kellie Pickler.
To be precise, Matthew was beaten, chained to a fencepost, and left for 12 hours, and it took him about three days to actually die from having his face and skull smashed in.
About a year later, somebody, nobody seems to know quite whom, kidnapped the mother of one of the two guys who did this to Matt and left her to die in the middle of a field miles from the nearest road in a howling snowstorm.
Wyoming: where you gotta make your own fun (in Annie Proulx's words.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
ok, a few things.
1. the shouting bit, if it was done repeatedly over a long period of time could constitute criminal harrasment and they could press charges. the sign thing could also qualify, but i'm not entirely sure, as that would often depend on local bylaws regarding signs on property, though in my town, that kind of sign would get you a decent fine.
2. the "waggling his junk" bit, they could file indecent exposure charges, or if that persisted, sexual harrassment charges could be filed
3. i'm pretty sure that they can seek recourse over that through civil courts over that.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Here is the Gay Agenda:
7:00 AM : Wake up
7:10 AM : Shower and do hair
8:10 AM : Eat breakfast... something light
8:20 AM : Read newspaper
9:00 AM : Turn on morning talk-shows
12:00 PM: Lunch with Bruce
1:00 PM : Gym work out
2:30 PM : Walk in the park
4:00 PM : Watch Oprah
5:00 PM : Call mom
5:30 PM : Shop for groceries
7:00 PM : Dinner
9:00 PM : Watch CSI
10:00 PM: Watch evening news
11:00 PM: Bed
Blink, blink... Yeah, I am not specifically disagreeing with you and I suppose this is not out of the realm of possibility... It's just that I have never heard of this actually happening before. Could you send us sources or relate stories you heard?
Personally, I find three things offensive - most offensive to least:
1. Censorship 2. Intolerance 3. Bad Smells
Every time I'm forced to change channels because I got tired of trying to figure out what word they were bleeping with the everfucking 1kHz tone I write an angry email. I never watch movies on basic cable (unless it's comedy central's secret stash or I've already seen it) because instead of losing myself in a good story I'm always wondering what I missed to the censor's editing machine.
Somehow, the US culture has managed to accept the axiom: morality == christian values. Why is it tacitly acceptable to offend me and my peers, but if someone of the christian persuasion claims offense people fall all over themselves apologizing?
The religious "right" has followed a homophobic line (not supported by the bible, as far as I can tell - having read the New Testament) for thousands of years and now their opposition has finally made some progress in terms of tolerance. It's probably not directly the "right's" fault that "gay" has become a derogatory term in the last 10 years or so - I blame middle-school kids, personally.
If I were playing WOW, I'm sure I would quickly grow tired of hearing "that's so gay" repeatedly (see offense #2), and the stifling of the GLBT guild would doubtless have pissed me off (offense #1) enough to cancel my subscription or kill off my character. I'm not gay, but I have friends who are - but even if I didn't #2 would still be #2.
So I guess this one hits 2 out of my big 3. I'll probably have to wait for smell-o-vision before I can get the trifecta.
-g
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
People love to accuse gays of "activism" and "recruiting", when what they really mean is, "STFU, so I can pretend you don't exist."
Instead of GLBT, use GBLT or a similar form (maybe even BLT-G if you're feeling gangsta). Everyone loves BLTs (except maybe vegetarians, but they're gay).
I really don't get it. I allways thought that the small attention-span americans claim to have was exagerrated. And now a topic which has been discussed over and over again (News that someone founded a GLBT-friendly guild, news that Blizzard banned them, news that the GLBT-friendly ex-guild was pprotesting, news that blizzard unbanned the GLBT-freindly guild and trained their gamemasters better) (not counting the dupes of these posts).
see it for yourself :Old Stories
That was just a search for GLBT, i'm sure you can find all the other stories with some other keyword.
The last story dealing with this incident was posted March 6th, IT IS EVEN LINKED TO IN THE RELATED STORIES UNDERNEATH THIS POST. (Link for the people too lazy to scroll up
Honestly, what is wrong with you ? My little brother has got a better attention-span, and he's five years old....please remove the insensitive "gay" tag and just put "stupid" like with those april fools stories! oh, wait..
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Yes, definitely...
Well, people have been known to mistake dogs for foxes before...
The parent poster gives the only voice of reason in this stupid God damned debate.
Having been a slashdot reader for years, I suppose I shouldn't be shocked at the lack of insight some of the comments here have shown. Seriously though, comments like "don't take your sexuality/politics to a game" or "words never hurt anyone"... Who do you think you're fooling?
If the controversy had been over a topic involving racism, I wonder if some of you would have been as quick to jump onto the Get-Over-It bandwagon. I will grant that not being gay/bisexual/transgendered, perhaps you are unaware of the daily things which people talk about and seem commonplace for many, yet are not the same for LGBT folks. In a LGBT-friendly guild, you do not have to worry about saying "I am going to the movies with my boyfriend" if you are male.
More to the point, the issue was never Blizzard kept those groups from being around, but that they were not allowed to talk about it. If "words do not hurt" as you put it, then I suppose you are the type of person to refer to your African American friends as n*****s? No? Oh, then I suppose your analogy was incorrect.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
In other words, the freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press. If all presses are owned by a monopoly, there is no true freedom of speech.
It is interesting to note how you would probably very strongly criticise a Communist government that suppresses speech in spaces it "owns" (that is, everywhere), but welcome such acts if they occur in private spaces. There is no essential difference if we assume, for example, that space is owned either by a monopoly or a similar group that seeks to, for example, cater to a possibly biased population or just simply seeks to suppress speech in general in order by "sanitize" the "customer" existence.
A few years back there was a nice experiment conducted by a magazine... they sent a few guys dressed up as (clean) hippies to distribute leftist leaflets in a shopping mall. Within the space of a few minutes, they were escorted out by security. They came back dressed up in suits and gave out cellphone adverts and nothing happened.
This is a worrying trend because over here in Finland malls can be very much a public space especially during the winter months, when conditions outside can be rather nasty. Fortunately according to my understanding, (otherwise legal) expression is protected in mall walkways as they are recognized as a kind of public space. The same does not go for the actual shops. Thus there were no grounds for the removal.
This serves as a good example of how absolute private property rights can destroy all other rights, and how those who are ideologically invested in them at any price are capable of tolerating any consequence that may follow. Fascism is ok, as long as it's voluntary Fascism...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
I was playing a real-time/real-space game in college. It was some fantasy game, low-magic in a medieval setting. The witches' team got hosed. They were infiltrated, set-up, arrested, and burned on the stake. It so happened that two of the players were lesbians both in game and in real-life, and part of the evidence at the trial was that they had committed an abomination.
The story somehow got to the University's administration. It got to the newspaper. The lesbigay groups heard about it. The 'roleplaying' guild got in so much trouble you would not believe it. Some of the activity money was withheld, some of us had to sit and listen to some insane feminazis about how insensitive we were, and the the next few games were reviewed and censored.
Keep in mind that the girls whose characters died on the stake had no complaints. The guild was not accused of harrassment, but of creating a hostile environment, or some similar shit. Now, I can see how Blizzard wants to avoid a similar mess. If you allow gay-friendly guilds, what do you do about White Pride ones? Democrats? Scientologists? Blizzard has a business to run... good call, I say.
No good deed goes unpunished...
He specifically believed public figures should be free to beat the living shit out of journalists that had lied about them.
But I believe If I was Mr. Smiths new neighbor, Mr. Smith would be found bleeding in the middle of the street. The first time he whipped out his junk, he would be found lying in the street next to his junk.
And that is how it should end, cops and courts are'nt needed. Just a good old fashioned ass kicking.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The etymology for the word "chink" as in "chink in his armour" is completely different from the word "Chink" as in Chinese person. They are entirely unrelated words. Similarly, words like "niggardly" and "nigger" (as I understand it).
The issue that many people have with "gay" being used in a derogatory sense is that "gay" as in "bad" does not have an entirely separate etymology from "gay" as in "homosexual". Even if there is no longer any association in the minds of people who use it, originally there was: homosexual == bad, hence gay == bad. The word is tainted by its former use. I don't think anyone would have any problem with it if it could be proven that its new meaning came directly from "gay" as in "happy".
You could argue that it is now an entirely separate word, and its derivation is irrelevant, or that the whole subject is political correctness gone mad (though I would not want to put words in your mouth) but the fact is that there are people who find it offensive. I appreciate that you're not advocating its use, but neither are you condemning it. Most people who use "gay" to mean "bad" are not being homophobic, but I do think they are being rather tactless.
If blizzard wishes to deny someone the right to play their game, they are just exercising a form of speech. Forcing them to allow something, is taking away their freedom. If this was the government, then it would be a completely different situation. BUT this is a PRIVATE ran game and business. Just like how a bar can deny a person entry for whatever reason they deem to be fit, a game can do exactly the same. While we might not view it as being ethical in some form, it is their choice. If they lose business over it, they will probably change their policy. Anyways, way blown out of proportion. It really is jus gay ... er I mean retarded, er ... jewish errr ...
Ah forget it.
Point that is being made, is words evolve. I know people that are homosexual, that use the word gay in that way. Just like how gay use to mean happy, it is now tranforming into meaning stupid or lame or whatever. Just like how nigger evolved from an ok term, to a slur, to a semi-slur when said by certain people.
Almost everyone who uses "gay" in their regular vocabulary as something that is bad, generally has literally never actually met a gay person. I didn't meet one until I got to college! (But I never used the term. I was never much into slang as a child anyway). It's probably not meant to be directly offensive by, oh, 75% of the people who use it. You can't insult someone who isn't there, and they fail to realize that the Internet is a little bigger than their little town in rural America.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
The negative meaning of the word "gay" depends on an underlying ideological assumption that homosexuality is negative. In common American English, it hinges upon the stereotype of gay males as effeminate and so "wimpy," "ineffective," "uninspiring," and "frivolous."
Every time someone uses "gay" as a way of dismissing or derogating something, an ideological link between male homosexuality and reprehensibility is exploited and reinforced. This ideological linkage is more obvious when, for example, someone calls an obviously straight male a "fag." That's how most degrading language works. Think about words like "cocksucker," "cunt," "asshole," etc. None of those are literal. They gather their force from deep cultural beliefs about what is good and bad.
Naming something "gay" to indicate it sucks depends, in American English, on cultural homophobia and, in my opinion, is the sign of a shallow mind.
blog
You must have some pretty deep psychological problems if it angers you that GLBT people don't want you to use bogoted language. How are they creating "negative rights"? They are just asking to be treated with more respect. Just like you have the right to ask people to stop spamming you or calling you an idiot.
... and then they built the supercollider.
"Also, hauling out the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a defense is kind of silly, because the original poster would probably site that as an example of a broken law. That basically represents an argument by appealing to authority, and is also a debating technique to use when you have no solid facts or reasoning to back you up."
His "appeal to authority" was a citation of the equal accommodation promised by the Civil Rights Act. According to American law an American restaurant owner is forbidden from discriminating on the basis of race (even though the restaurant is the owner's property).
Finally, an appeal to authority is only an example of a logical fallacy when the person or source in question is NOT a legitimate authority on the subject. Any sensible person could see that you only bolster your argument by citing an authoritative source. In this case, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is quite clearly a legitimate authority on whether or not an American restaurant owner can discriminate on the basis of race.
So I'd say that there's an overwhelming majority of people using it and not caring, because I can virtually guarantee you that almost none of those references are actually meant in a derogatory-to-homosexuals connotation.
And I can absolutely guarantee you that you're wrong; to begin with, usage of the term "gay" to say that something is not cool absolutely depends upon a "derogatory-to-homosexuals connotation." Calling somebody a "fag" because they're corpse-camping you or doing some other thing to piss you off is entirely dependent upon a "derogatory-to-homosexuals connotation." If the terms didn't have that meaning based upon a negative attitude towards homosexuals, people would not use them in those situations.
But what do I know, apparently you're "insightful." At least according to your fellow passive-aggressive gay bashers.
fuck you.
Dammit I should have refreshed the page before I decided to reply. I just repeated everything you said, but not nearly so eloquently. :(
fuck you.
"like the fact that everything is apparently so gay when it's bad."
It's not gay, it's ghey! Completely different words!
Fraggin' in the name of Christ. Amen!
Or, they're just using it in the older sense of the word; i.e. "Silly". As in: "That's gay!" == "That's silly!"
:)
... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here)
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
The post above is *such* an example of the "arrogant libertarian" version of straight white male privilege...
:-P), or *purposefully* don't use learn and use standard ghetto slang to avoid arguments about "proper english", or *fail* to constantly "act gay" so people won't exclude and insult them... ...
The author has taken his ability to live and act as "just a person" and implicitly, deep down, assumed that the same is true of everyone else on the planet. All the affiliations listed are, in some sense, *chosen* affiliations. Mostly likely because that's the only kind of affiliations that matter to the author.
It can be "just a game" without "any of that PC stuff" for people who never have to think about it because they're already being treated like full humans just they way they are... take away being treated like a full human and see how fast "the game" stops being fun.
I know orientation/queer stuff isn't cleanly biologically heritable (and more specifically the cultural fight is ongoing, rather than having been won decades ago by the progressives rather than the reactionaries) the way racial traits are, but they aren't as trivial as political parties and religions either.
Suppose the Internet was invented in the 1950's and the N-word was getting thrown around so much that it was clear that endemic race hatred couldn't be pragmatically silenced. Suppose further that someone started a "Colorblind" guild to make a tiny little *truly* civil place where, *while trying to have fun*, they could relax and pretend everyone didn't hate them for an immutable trait. Then suppose the adminstrators said that "race issues" were inflamatory and not to be mentioned in the game...
Doesn't it become obvious at that point that the people who object to "race issues being brought up" are really objecting to "you F--king darkies making a stink"? Or in the words of the previous post
"Doesn't anyone see how the whole thing
could become a mess really quick?"
If the situation *were already a stinky mess* for them, wouldn't a person of color begin to suspect that while the stupid teenagers who throw the N-word around are obviously racist, the "powerful polite-seeming liberals" are even worse because they'll stab you in the back for trying to fight the obvious ones because doing so disrupts their placid fantasy that "that PC stuff" can be swept under the rug without hurting anyone? They *ignore your felt pain* as something meaningless with a line like:
"...nowadays, politically correct posturing trumps
common sense, and so people are going to cry that
they are being discriminated against because they
can't create a GBLT clan..."
Of *course* it's just noncommensensical pc posturing that motivates such behavior... how could be *possibly* be something that *matters*...
When you run into this, you (and by "you" I mean "the hypothetical person of color") can hope to convince the blatant ones that "our obvious differences are something we can respect from afar and be civil about"... the necessary framework is there: acknowledgement of differences and belief that "people who matter" shouldn't be insulted. All that needs to happen is to personalize "those people" so they become "someone who matters despite the difference". Voila! Civility.
The people who complain about "those PC issues" being "brought up" *can't* be won over because you can't even get them to admit that *they* *also* have a color and an ethnicity and a sexuality that they "bring up" every time they *fail* to hide their skin (in RL, not online
Which, of course, is why I shouldn't have bothered writing this up... I guess I did it because the above poster
You know what's really gay? People who complain about gay evolving to mean "stupid/absurd". Nothing the fudge-packers say (see, now that's a derogatory term) will change that. Either live with people saying things are gay (as in, stupid) or - well, I dunno. Go to another country and speak another language, I don't care.
Guess what. People used to complain about people using "retarded" to mean stupid. People still say "wow, that's retarded" when refering to stupid decisions. Live with it.
Oh, but of course racism is frowned upon by mainstream society, and thus spewing "lol u nigger" would be frowned upon. It's still socially acceptable to be a homophobe
It's also socially acceptable to pick on fat people and emo people and other people who can change their lives but decide not to. Black people (who aren't Michael Jackson) can't exactly choose to become white. If you choose to participate in a minority culture, be prepared to be separated from the mainstream. Racism involves people born into a given cultural group, and isn't a choice.
I'm sure most of the Slashdot community is used to living outside the mainstream, and almost everyone on Slashot seems to be able to get along in normal life without turning some clear rules infraction into a four-month tirade against the "restrictions of speech" in an online game (particularly one that specifies in the terms of service that are agreed to that they may regulate the speech on their chat channels).
It has nothing to do with hating gays. It has everything to do with the GLBT agenda trying to force their issue into the news (and succeeding, at least at Slashdot) over a supposed slight that was already resolved.
GLBT issues really have no right to be in Slashdot, let alone Azeroth. This repeated "Blizzard censors GLBT guild" thing is getting to be really gay.
I am amazed by how much fuzz anything related to sexuality is generating.
Why? It's the current razor edge of our world's social development. There is always a subject of social controversy about which society is divided. Social topics near that line are highly controversial and create a lot of noise. Subjects far to either side do not generate so much hot air. The effect is polarizing: conservatives will call the new issue "the end of society" and liberals will call it "justice". I tend to agree with the latter in most cases myself, but in any event in 25 years the topic will usually be pretty well accepted and society will move on to a new battle.
Right now, the razor edge is centered (mostly) on issues of sexuality: orientation, stem cells, emergency birth control, abortion.
A generation ago, the controversial edge was on the length of your hair, the substances you imbibed, and premarital sex. Homosexuality was only beginning to show on the radar but racist law was already waning.
Two generations ago, it was skin color and equal rights for racial minorities. Very few people talked about homosexuality at the time, but today equal rights for blacks isn't a very controversial principle. (Which is not to say it has been entirely achieved, but few people openly oppose it anymore). At the time, it was obvious to everyone, even the liberals, that homosexuality and premarital sex weren't okay.
So don't be surprised in WoW or anyplace else. Most of our social debates will be about sex, sex, sex all the time for the next few years until we get it out of our system and move on to the next subject.
What's up next? Hard to say, impossible to predict. Maybe religious tolerance and principles of secular government need to go through the wringer again. Maybe polyamory is up for its' turn (that would feed into the obsession with sex, anyway). Maybe another round over psychoactive substances is due, though I'd guess that's further off in the US at least.
Who knows. Either way, in 25 years people won't talk much about homosexuality at all and one of those other issues will be the source of all the noise. Even in online games.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Gaye? Talk what about GLBT? I always shortened Gaye Bacon Lettus Tomato GBLT
in my part of the US (and at the mall i work in+ the other malls owned by the same company) if you hand out anything and are not a renter in the mall
YOU WILL BE THROWN OUT.[full stop]
The Mall in question is Private Property with its own rules.
We also have a few members of the local PD running around if you want to dispute the "your rights V Their Rights" question.
hint as to which mall: ask yourself Where are Camels(r) born?
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
That real chick in the picture (they never really say who she is, but it's implied it's the person who started the guild) is HAWT. Holy crap, my brain hurts. /would hit it //even if her knees were like knives ///what do you mean, "this isn't Fark"?
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
Your first post was great. There's a very famous quote by Thomas Jefferson (I believe, and I'm probably not 100% accurate): "I despise what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". For a few brief minutes, I respected you.
And then this crap. Have you read the "fire in a theater" decision? Apparently not, since Oliver rWendell Holmes spent a very long time explaining exactly why the government DID have a RESPONSIBILITY to protect against such speech. Why? Because all rights are in tension; the right to say "fire" (1st amendment) is outweighed by everyone else's right to be safe and secure in the possession of his or her life (4th and 14th amendment, due process clause). The government decided any reasonable person would expect that hearing "fire" in a theater meant an emergency, and the risk of a loss of life outweights the minor loss of freedom of not being able to say that word. And the premise is far from ridiculous: people DIED in the era before fire codes mandated evacuation schemes that work.
Libertarianism has a fundamental flaw: it assumes that anyone who should have responsibility exercises that responsibility rationally. If local governments were perfect, the Civil Rights Act would not have been necessary. Did you by chance notice that local governments aren't perfect? And that the whole point of a federal law (imperfect as it may be) was to give those who wanted a better world leverage against reactionary neandrethals who liked the status quo ante bellum?
I have no problem with communities (not necessarily meaning villages or towns but organizations of people with like apprecations and prejudices) joining together to chat about their beliefs.
Fine. This "community" called the United States of America joined together on principles of tolerance and freedom. And I find it rather arrogant that you waltz through claiming the freedoms you desire while dismissing the responsibilities that make those freedoms possible as "not your problem," that you dismiss laws you don't personally agree with as ridiculous and not worth obeying. If you think the Supreme Court and the laws of this country are wrong, then please leave the country.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
WRONG! It is not declaring your existance at all. It is shoving your existance down other peoples throats.
Why is it accepted for people to get pissed off at telemarketers that keep calling them but it is not ok to get pissed off at people advertising their "gay friendly" clans? Thats all it is, advertising. These people in the game do not start up a conversation with another player and then say "Oh yeah I am in clan DKDD we are gay friendly". I would be fine with this. Instead they fill the chat rooms with their advertisements.
Someone who uses WoW to advertise cheap pharmaceuticals to people would be banned. so why is it wrong to ban this girl who is ruining other peoples MMO experience?
That's how the term is being used in this context. Mainly to mean fanciful, and more generally, silly or absurd. It can also mean happy and cheerful, jolly, even Oh yeah. The sex thing too.
In all seriousness, I don't want to deal with homosexuality in an online game. /ignore users that say things you don't want to hear and please don't try to force your gay agenda on the rest of us.
You do realise that this argument works just as much against you, don't you? You too can ignore users that say things you don't want to hear, without having to force an anti-gay agenda on anyone.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
The majority of legislation that GLBT folks want has nothing to do speech. All GLBT groups right now are pushing the right to marry and have their partners receive equal treatment under the law that heterosexual couples receive. The other thing they push are hate crime laws. Hate crime laws simply make it so that if you commit a criminal act against someone and the fact that they are gay/black/whatever was what motivated you to commit that crime, you can serve some extra time. Our legal system takes into account intent when dolling out punishment. The reasoning for this type of law is the same as differentiating between 1st and 2nd degree murder.
Now, are there GLBT folks trying to push stupid laws? Sure. Is that what the majority are focused on? Not really. Most of these groups are just pushing to be allowed to marry, serve in the armed services, and in general be viewed as equals to heterosexuals in the eyes of the government, which they most certainly are not right now. As far as the other stuff like hate speech laws; the civil rights movement didn't ban the KKK or keep the KKK from spewing their bigotry in public, treating GLBT folks like humans too isn't going to strip anyone of their free speech rights either.
[yelling]
That's so fierce(*),
Take it to them honey!
[/yelling]
(*) commonly known gay word
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
On second opinion,
;)
I'd like to see that instead of seeing that dwarf dancing naked on-stage at the AH bridge of Ironforge
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
if we let our children play on WOW with homosexuals the queers and lesbos will probably try to lure the children into being molested.
Ok, so when someone says "That is so lame", that is an insult to people who are actually lame?
.. it's "oh that's not right".
... is it biologically right? No. (unless ofcourse you start thinking whether it's only the human response to overpopulation, in which case it can be dabated :p )
Lame and gay are pretty much the same thing when used in this fashion, both are terms for something inherently 'wrong' with the biological nature of a person. From a biological or evolutionary standpoint this cannot even be argued - the only way the expressions 'gay' and 'lame' become discimitory is from a social standpoint.
I find it really hard to stomach not being able to use whatever language I want to, because people can't seem to grasp that gay and lame are not natural states, and when you refer to something as 'gay', it's a short way of saying just that
Can we accept it, yea
I'm basically gay friendly - doesn't mean I wont use the term, I think it's "their" problem for not understanding the finer points of it.
The interesting thing about the BSA wrt the 'Mormons' (please, say LDS church, it is more accurate) is that now the BSA is in a position where the LDS church and the Catholic church compose the majority of its members. To allow homosexual leaders would instantly alienate both of these groups. The LDS church has recently introduced and modified several programs that would, should the BSA choose or be forced to allow homosexual leaders, allow the church to instantly abandon the BSA wholesale.
Such a move on the part of the LDS (or Catholic) church would most likely sound the death-knell for the BSA. Understandably, the BSA has no interest in this occurring.
Here's my personal take on it as an member of the LDS church--the BSA should be required to allow homosexuals if they wish to continue to recieve tax dollars or other governmental support (such as a Congressional Charter). Since they couldn't reject that money or support (without replacement) and remain solvent, they should either accept the loss of the support of the churches or find an alternative source of funding (such as the churches and other organizations that mostly encourage their young men to join the BSA). I feel that the LDS church and the Catholic church would gladly offer assistance as necessary.
Coming from a religious person, this may sound very odd, but I don't think that it is appropriate for any organization that receives direct assistance from the government to disallow membership or employment based on anything other than ability to do the job. Our public servants should be hired solely on ability, and if your organization is receiving either federal or state tax dollars then you are essentially a public company [unless it is done solely as a business contract--money for rendered services.
If you are religious, of a specific gender, have a skin color, or a specific (or even non-specific) gender/sexual orientation, then you can always expect that there will be some private club or organization which may deny you affiliation. As a male it is unlikely that I will ever be permitted to join Delta Delta Delta Soroirity (grrr), and I can accept that (even though a lot of college guys would really like to). As a white guy it is also unlikely that I would ever be accepted into an organization such as the Congressional Black Caucus (okay, I would need to get into politics first, but that would likely be easier).
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
You've never heard the term "Jesus freak"? I've heard that one used both ways (people are proud of if, people use it as a slur...much like gay).
How about this, just play the fuckin game? I could care less if you're a top or bottom in RL, just swing your sword or cast some spells, talk about the raid/quest you're on and leave it there.
I think Blizzard should have stuck to its guns and not allowed any of this. I don't talk about banging chicks and hooking up while in online games so why exactly does it need to be different for you?
Needing to be part of a sheltered GLBT guild... now, *that* is gay. I don't need a support system to be straight, maybe that is a sign of how lame you folks really are. Give it up, stop force feeding your lifestyle on the rest of us, and do whatever the hell you want to in your bedroom... but leave it there.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
But it is most definitely not a legitimate authority when trying to determine whether or not a restaurant owner should be able to discriminate based on race. The original poster was not claiming that current law did not prohibit this. His argument was that it shouldn't. When arguing about whether or not a law should exist, the law itself is hardly a legitimate authority.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
WRONG! It is not declaring your existance at all. It is shoving your existance down other peoples throats.
Why is it accepted for people to get pissed off at telemarketers that keep calling them but it is not ok to get pissed off at people advertising their "gay friendly" clans? Thats all it is, advertising. These people in the game do not start up a conversation with another player and then say "Oh yeah I am in clan DKDD we are gay friendly". I would be fine with this. Instead they fill the chat rooms with their advertisements.
Thank you, Mr. Example Of Exactly What I'm Talking About.
Do you see other advertising in-game? You talk about telemarketers (who interrupt your life with a ringing phone) but not in-game advertising (which appears in the exact same place as the GLBT guild advertisments). Is the guy who "WTS [Hanzo Sword]" shoving said sword down your throat? Is every lame-ass comment about Chuck Norris that appears in your chat window shoving Chuck Norris down your throat? What about every third line of chat that includes the word "gay" in a derogetory fashion?
No, you don't complain about any of that (and if you did dislike it, you'd just turn off the general and trade channels). So obviously the GLBT groups are different to you. Merely having a pro-gay guild appearing in your chat window amongst all the other drivel is "shoving it down your throat".
It's just like I said: "shut up faggot" is fine, "Hey, I have a GLBT guild where you won't hear that kind of talk" is a direct assault on your ability to pretend homosexuals don't exist and thus offensive to you.
This is entirely your problem.
The enemies of Democracy are
You know what's really gay? People who complain about gay evolving to mean "stupid/absurd". Nothing the fudge-packers say (see, now that's a derogatory term) will change that. Either live with people saying things are gay (as in, stupid) or - well, I dunno. Go to another country and speak another language, I don't care.
Just because the "homosexual == bad" connection is so strong in your head that you can use the terms interchangeably does not mean that you have actually changed the meaning of the word. The fact is that the same people who use "gay" as a generic insult meaning bad or stupid also will use the exact same word as an insult meaning "homosexual", with the exact same negative connotations of undesireability.
"Gay" is only used as an insult because of the notion that being gay is bad and one does not want to be gay; it is a direct outcome of homophobia and gay-bashing. You're trying to claim that you have separated yourself from this etemology, but in fact you have not, you are playing on it more heavily than ever. You have simply spread the usage of the word "gay, meaning deplorable" to a broader spectrum of usage, using the "gay == bad" connotation to impunge upon things that couldn't technically be homosexual.
Guess what. People used to complain about people using "retarded" to mean stupid. People still say "wow, that's retarded" when refering to stupid decisions. Live with it.
You'd have to be mentally retarded to not realize what a bad example that is. Hint: The meaning of this word has not actually changed, other than to be used in a coloquial, non-clinical way. It still means "very stupid, as if resulting from mental retardation".
Which is basically what "gay" means, and using the word "gay" to refer to things that cannot actually be homosexual doesn't change that the foundation of the insult is "gay == bad".
I'm sure most of the Slashdot community is used to living outside the mainstream, and almost everyone on Slashot seems to be able to get along in normal life without turning some clear rules infraction into a four-month tirade against the "restrictions of speech" in an online game (particularly one that specifies in the terms of service that are agreed to that they may regulate the speech on their chat channels).
Remember the kid who got in trouble for breaking the rule against black trenchcoats? Or any of a hundred incidents after Columbine, when everyone "different" was being persecuted with ridiculous regulations? I guess they should have just shut up...
Honestly, I would think that the experiences of "most of the Slashdot comumnity" would make them more sympathetic to a persecuted sub-culture (not that it would even compare with the persecution of homosexuals). But apparently not. I suppose most of those geeks persecuted in high school went on to get jobs and realized that they weren't "geeks" any more, and are now enjoying their privileged positions as middle class straight white males in American society, and looking down on those who have yet to make the leap from ostracized to privileged.
I find that pathetic.
GLBT issues really have no right to be in Slashdot, let alone Azeroth. This repeated "Blizzard censors GLBT guild" thing is getting to be really gay.
No right, eh? Funny you should use those terms. Given all the homophobia present in this very thread, I'd say it has every right, even a need, to be on Slashdot. The fact is that I was right the first time: You're fine with tossing the word "gay" around as long as it means "bad and stupid", but as soon as the word is brought up in a non-derogetory fashion, you're offended and think that kind of usage "has no right to be in Slashdot".
The enemies of Democracy are
I completely agree with you in that I don't want to deal with christianity in a game but I accept the fact that I have to from time to time. I am not a christian and tend to disagree with most everything christians say and I try not to associate with people who are openly christian. However I understand that people want christian and lgbt friendly guilds, fine. But now I want to make a guild that is LGBT/Christian unfriendly and want to make gay and christian slurs all day long in it and insult god regularly. The axe won't swing both ways and the christians/LGBT community will scream up and down how wrong it is and how the guild should be banned. If you can make a LGBT or christian friendly guild and call it "Worshippers of Jesus" or some stupid crap like that and expect me not to complain, then let me make a guild called "God haters" and recruit based on christian unfriendliness and deal with it. If you can't deal with it, then don't make and advertise your christian/glbt friendly guild.
Thanks for explaining the connection between using "gay" as an insult in contexts not obviously related to sexual preference with the underlying "gay is bad" assumption in a better way than I did.
The enemies of Democracy are
While a fairly large amount of the game is based around the RPG/Levelling-grind/tactical-war-game headspace, there are some excellent mainly-Role-Play and Role-Play-only guilds.
It IS a sci-fi based game, rather than a Tolkein-esque fantasy game, so the skins used asre different, but it's good fun.
Check out the Nanomage Liberation Front for a good RP-only guild.
Sig. Measure Twice
you're a mac fag
is the gayest gay article that ever nanced down the front page.
I actually think that should be protected speech. If the idiots in the theatre trample each other in a mad rush from a fire that doesn't even exist, it was their own stupidity and lack of clearheadedness that killed them, not the person shouting fire. If someone tells me there is a fire, I am going to at least look for smoke so I can figure out what direction to flee. But trampling people just to get out when there's no actual fire? Simply because of a panic? I think that's far worse than yelling 'fire'.
But I know I am unique in my opinion AND it has little to do with the conversation. But I think painting speech as potentially physically harmful has a chilling effect: Just look at the whole Cartoon Mohammad thing for an example of that. "Words can hurt, so you can't say words that hurt." Words don't hurt people. People hurt people.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Level 60 LFG Blackrock Spire, BTW I'm transexual
Hahahahaha, you had big end game plans, fuck you lesbo!
Go get a big dick in your ass bitch!
After reading the 1UP article, I felt sick. Not sick in the sense that I felt bad for Andrews, but sick in the sense that the whole thing is retarded and has been blown out of proportion. Do I care if Oz is GLBT? Not really - I'm there to play a game, not to discuss sexual orientation. Do I think Blizzard could have handled the situation better? Yes. Is Blizzard anti-GLBT? Heck no. They just don't want you spazzing out about your sexual orientation, and I all I can say is, word up! It's a game people. The day you lose sight of that is the day you shouldn't be playing anymore games. I, for one, play games to get away from life...people dragging political issues like being gay or transsexual into the game just ruin it for the people who want to sit back, have fun, and try to play enough to justify that $15/month ;)
Great! Let me know where you're opening, so I can open a competing restaurant across the street. After a few interviews with local media neither of us will need to advertize, all the protesters and people on prayer vigils outside your place will need a convienent spot to get lunch (my place), and I could become a local civil rights hero. You meant your post to express bigotry, but all I see is an easy way to get rich, become famous, and at least appear to be a wonderful human being.
In many philosophies, governments don't own public property, the people do. The govenment is just there to act in the people's interest - as in a power of attorney, an executor of a will, or a governing board for a trust or a corperation - and the govenment's purpose is to let us share the use of our group-owned property. I have the right to speak on my own land, and that includes public land (that I partially own), unless it interferes with other people's use. My speech on land I don't own is a completely separate matter.
hippies vs suits
Even if I agreed with most of your post, malls are for shopping. If they want to let people buy and sell but not protest or pass out leflets, I don't see that as any worse than a church that allows prayer vigils but not commerce. Even if they're public spaces, they're public spaces with a specific purpose.
in Finland malls can be very much a public space
So owning a mall means you are required to give people shelter whenever they want it?
Fascism is ok, as long as it's voluntary Fascism.
The whole point of owning something is that you gain contol over it. You have to be insane if you think that there's no difference between a private person not letting the Boy Scouts camp on their farm and the government not letting them camp at a public campground.
FTA: "It should be clear that mentioning that you are gay is no different from mentioning that you are left-handed or short or from the West Coast."
and I just found the perfect name for my new guild........
The Short, Gay, Left-Handed, West Coasters Guild
No sig for you! Come back one year!
However, all the Jews are losing 50 DKP tomorrow for killing our Lord and savior. Sorry, but if you nail the son of God to a 2x4, you're not going to get that epic chest piece.
I'm never going to understand this aspect of the Christian(?) faith. Jesus was a Jew and so were (most of?) his friends. I thought it was the Romans who did the nailing - you could loosely interpret that as Italians. Most Italians are now Roman Catholics... Damn well punish the Vatican then.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
A resounding DUH but they own the game. If you don't like how they run it, cancel your subscription. That's just what we need, more n00bs crying because they are too stupid to realize they should change games. I don't particularly like the fact that on MMO's I have to play with kids but that said, as soon as some game comes out with an adults only server, I'll be there. I'd happily pay an extra fee to have a mature audience to play with. There's a whole group of gamers out there looking for the same thing but the marketers are not seeing it. Other thing is MMO's that allow you to combine groups. I often play with my wife and in order to get a group, we have to split our group or lead. That makes no sense. You might have 100 groups of 3 floating around that could be 50 groups of 6. That = players not playing. Bad move MMOs!