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."
Someone's been playing a mage, I see.. :p
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!"
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."
Dick Haney: Look out Georgy! Terrorists!
Prezy-Dent: Oh no, protect me Dick Haney!
Dick Haney: Don't worry, I'll blow them up...
And on and on and on. Clear, OBVIOUS, greifing. They were out to do nothing about annoy people. That was within the first half-hour I played the game. If I'm going to play a MMO I want to play a MMO. I don't want nonsense (relative to the game world) about the president of the US, advertising for GLBT guilds, or anything else like that. The game is supposed to be escapist. You want to do all that stuff, go to second life (a sandbox) or invent a virtual world that is supposed to mirror the real world in many ways.
And I wouldn't care if everyone in your guild WAS GLBT. You could advertise yourself outside of WoW as the GLBT guild, but don't drag that kind of stuff into the game. p>While I understand how the person felt with all the "this is gay" (I got sick of it real fast and I'm straight, so I can see how they felt), there is no need to draw that into the game and start a GLBT guild. Just ignore those people, or report it to Blizzard and see if they'll give the person a warning.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
But they're still not free from their addiction to Gay Bacon Lettuce & Tomato sandwiches.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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
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.
Yet at the same time there were plenty of Christian guilds that were not targeted.
If they want to eliminate all guilds with messages from rl, thats fine. But they need to target everyone equally, not just certain ones.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
.... 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!
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
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
Minorities that aren't gay maybe. These same people who claim tolerance do a 180 when it becomes a gay thing. And for each person who has some sign of carrying about minorities there are probably at least 2 (well maybe 1.5) people who have no care at all. Racism and bigotry are alive and well in America, it just has taken on some new names and new victims.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
It's not intrinsically sexual, any more than, say, marriage, which is seen as a perfect topic for family-friendly stuff.
I am trolling
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
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.
Blizzard, by the way, (and this may change but I doubt it will) does not generally police channel speech, and GMs are incredibly slow to respond to even extremely outrageous actions. So "report people using the word gay" is hardly a reasonable answer. Actively attempting to create an environment that is more friendly is a totally acceptable reaction. I've belonged to a guild were were didn't allow trash talk or l33t speak on guild channel. Thats more or less the same thing as the guild in TFA was doing.
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.
It's not intrinsically sexual, any more than, say, marriage, which is seen as a perfect topic for family-friendly stuff.
As a married man, I would like to categorically object to the linking of marriage with sex.
Do you see guilds/factions outright proclaming their heterosexualness out there?
All the time. They're the guys screaming "gay" "fags" etc every 10 seconds. The majority makes their declaration by demonstration.
Only minority groups have to make explicit declarations, in order to notify potential members that they are different from the masses. This works as both an advertisement and a warning.
~Rebecca
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.
You don't always have the right to intrude your "message" into everyone else's consciousness.
Actually, in public places they do. You know... First admentment and whatnot.
But in private places like WoW... Well it is a matter of tresspassing.
Think of it like this...
Your invited to someone's house to play AD&D. During the game, one of the players keeps on going on a diatribe how the other player is oppressing his sexual orientation.
You can of course say "You... You shut the hell up!" or ignore him, but he can go on and on as long as the owner of the house says he can. You as a guest of that house cannot remove the other person or force him to be silent. You can of course take your issue up with the house owner, but you do not have a single right or legal ability to make that other person be silent.
So as long as the owner approves either with consent or non-action, the person making this activist diatribe has the right to implant his agenda into your mind via means of sounds and images (as long as those sounds and images are legal).
You can of course always leave...
However, if it was your house... Then you can remove the guy from your premises, but obviously none of us own the WoW servers.
Even if it is a game, it is not your game. It is Blizzard's game and you have as much rights on their property as they say you do.
If they let people do this to you, then either you need to ignore it, take it up with Blizzard, or quit.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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've never seen a female night-elf dance, have you?
E pluribus unum
But I thought that Starcraft verged on overt racism- the only black characters were the dumb, nose-picking, powerless SCV pilots- basically, the manual laborers. Everyone else is lily-white. Well, OK I think Duran from the expansion was black. And evil.
I don't buy into the concept of political correctness, but I do think that the vision promoted by Starcraft- where there aren't any positive portrayals of non-white humans- was really a step backwards from the vision promoted by Star Trek, where you've got blacks and asians and whatnot serving as equals. It's disappointing that Blizzard seems to be so backwards looking and narrow-minded in the fantasy worlds it creates.
You must be new here.
If you don't care, then why are you so offended by it?
... and then they built the supercollider.