Slashdot Mirror
Gamer Claims Identifying As a Lesbian Led To Xbox Live Ban
Goatbert writes "I just read on the Consumerist about an XBOX Live user being banned for identifying herself as a lesbian. Despite appeals, Microsoft has stood by its position that merely mentioning that you are gay or lesbian is grounds for terminating your XBOX Live membership."
Of identifying your sexual orientation in your profile anyway? Leave that for your Facebook/Myspace profiles or your blog, or maybe even shut up about your sexual orientation like all of us straight people do about ours. Just a thought anyway.
As long as you get banned from Xbox live for identifying yourself as straight too, I don't see a problem with this...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Exactly. It sounds to me like she wanted to get banned. I'm against banning people for their sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. But if you're some activist who has set out to TRY and piss people off with the purpose of getting banned, that's another story. Getting banned for putting "Allah is great! Christians and Jews are the devil!" in your profile is NOT the same as getting banned for "being a Muslim."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... because they didn't want to see that crap or their kids to see that crap.
Whew, I couldn't agree more! Because it's been scientifically shown that exposures to gay people is what causes one to be gay. But why stop at targeting gays on the XBox? Did you know that your child might be befriending another kid in grade school and your child's friend may be gay and not yet know it? The only safe way out of this is to remove your kid from school--did you know that nearly 100% of homosexuals have gone through school? A frightening figure! You better find a conservative Christian school that teaches your child intolerance and how to properly ostracize and judge other people. That's the only way you can provide for them a pure and clean life.
And if the rest of us are lucky, we'll never have to interact with your kid.
This is not helping the already low low stereotype I have adopted of the users of XBox's online service.
My work here is dung.
This blog post does nothing but reference itself. There are no formal statements from MS and no proof of any kind given. Show me the proof, then I'll side with you. New tag: proveit
Also, I don't hang my hat on being straight - do you really need to point out that you're gay in your xbox profile? I mean... really? I don't think you should be banned for doing it, but I think it's a little odd.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I agree, homophobes definitely are not normal and should be condemned! Calling them "unnatural disgusting animals" does seem a bit extreme, however, even if all humans can technically be considered animals.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Let's say your XBOX live name was "Steve1234" could you get banned for mentioning the following phrase, "My husband is logging on right now, his mage would help us out..."?
Tell me the purpose of having a profile, and I will tell you the purpose of putting "I like [whatever]" in that profile. But for gays and lesbians, the issue is slightly different. 'Coming out' is an important part of the process of self discovery and self acceptance for such people. Yes, many go through a phase where they may be a little strident about it, but that is completely natural in a society with so much homophobia. If allowed to progress through the 'angry gay' stage, most will reach a stage where being gay is just another facet of their identity.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I, too, am quite interested in their native tongue...
My sig can beat up your sig.
The first constitution does not apply to services provided by a company. This woman isn't going to jail, she's been removed from a service provided by a company.
Microsoft isn't really concerned. They aren't going to lose any significant number of customers over this. There isn't going to be a backlash. Nobody is gonna care.
It's just some person wanting express themselves everywhere and realizing that they can't win every battle. If more GLBT would learn this lesson they would probably be perceived better by the general public.
...but I've been on XBox live. The vast (and I mean vast) majority of references to homosexuality in that community are slurs. Really, really ugly ones.
So we have a blanket policy saying, no mentioning of sexual orientation in your profile or gamertag. Period. Because, while it's possible that such a mention in a gamertag/profile is a perfectly true, totally non-offensive statement about an individual's self-identified sexual orientation, the odds more strongly favor it being a nasty, hateful comment (or at best, a tasteless one).
If a given behavior has a 1% chance of being legitimate, and a 99% chance of being a TOS violation, doesn't a ban make sense? I'm not sure I'm willing to blame Microsoft for not wanting to go through thousands upon thousands of gamer profiles for approval on a case-by-case basis.
And yeah, why do you feel it's important to proclaim your sexual orientation on XBox live anyway?
Your playing a video game online with a group of pre-pubescent kids and teenagers who are granted nearly full anonymity without any fear of punishment, what did you expect?
Now, due to the vague explanation of what happened given in the article linked in the story, I'm going to make some assumptions here. I would assume that:
* Some kids on Xbox Live noticed that the gamer identified herself as lesbian.
* Due to ignorance, or just for the "lulz", kids decide to file fake complaints against the gamertag in question to get the account banned.
* Microsoft's fully-automated complaint system receives numerous reports from many people about the gamertag in question, and automatically bans the account.
This just goes to show what a failure Microsoft's disciplinary system is. Microsoft made these game consoles and FREE headsets available to kids and teenagers, as well as adults. So, with that many people using an online service, it's fairly obvious that SOMEONE will abuse the system, break rules, etc.
And yet, Microsoft decides to not only use a centralized network infrastructure for Xbox Live, rather than the infrastructure used by most online PC games, but they even made the disciplinary system fully automated. No human involvement. No one checks the validity of reports. No one is in the games to ban abusers. No way of even verifying weather or not a ban was justified or not when someone calls Microsoft's Tech Support. Such an easy thing to abuse.
By contrast, nearly all servers on PC games are administered properly. There's at least one admin on, admins ban the hackers, cheaters, racist/homophobic people, and maintain their server's rules. Nothing's automated. There's always human involvement.
I don't think Microsoft intentionally banned this person or refused to re-activate the account because the user is lesbian. Live's servers received compliments from a bunch of people, automated system bans the account, with no way of telling weather or not the compliments were legitimate or created fraudulently.
Microsoft seems to be ignoring the lesson here: You can't trust machines to babysit children.
For a real post, this article has insight Mr. Richard Gaywood gets banned
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
From the article:
"As if xbox live is really appropriate for kids anyways!" - Teresa
What gives you the right to determine that? What gives you the right to tell Microsoft "I've decided that your network isn't going to be family friendly"? Video games started largely as an activity of children, and thanks to the Wii, is headed back in that direction. Nintendo has found that it's very profitable to get the whole family involved in games, rather than Sony's approach of just appealing to young adult men. Microsoft isn't stupid. They want to do what Nintendo has done. They're at enough of a disadvantage cost-wise against Nintendo as it is. It makes no sense to turn Xbox Live into a ghetto of adults from 18-25, when they can expand to market to all ages.
Ultimately, its their network, a private entity. If she doesn't like their policies, then go somewhere else.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Never thought a Star Trek TNG quote would apply to anything but...
"When children learn to devalue others, they can devalue anyone - including their parents." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
If there were any evidence whatsoever that someone was banned (or otherwise discriminated against) because of their sexual orientation, that is quite illegal in many states (including California, and Microsoft certainly does have a presence in California).
Though, just to play devil's advocate, I can't help but wonder if this person's self-identity is so tied up in being a lesbian that that's all she sees herself as. Because at that point - and you know people like that, we all do - no matter what she does, it's always "because I'm a lesbian" when people react badly.
I thought it was code for "I'm not going to bother disguising my voice, stop hitting on me."
I love PC gaming too man, but the couch is mighty comfortable.
Because being a Lesbian automatically makes you 100x more attractive to guys. There's no WAY they'd ban a girl.
Furthermore, you know it's bullshit because she says "They followed me into the games and told all the other players to turn me in because they didn't want to see that crap or their kids to see that crap."
People with kids don't play X-Box live. People with kids certainly don't check user profiles. She was either doing something obscene, or that's not why she was banned.
Either way, I find it all fishy.
Do you understand the concept of 'victim blaming'? You're right, we could avoid the issue of people starting fights over other people's sexuality by banning the mention of other sexualities from people's profiles, but why should this policy be enforced across the board? Why can't users choose whether they'd like to closet themselves and avoid conflict or be open?
Also, being gay is not mutually exclusive with being a homophobe--I feel bad that you've convinced yourself that people who make *any mention at all* of their sexuality are giving other gay men and women a bad name.
One piece at a time, like the ram/motherboard/CPU/graphics card. Oh wait.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Typical? Not one of my coworkers is still on his first xbox 360. Some are on their third.
The thing is, most people are going to have some sort of PC anyway. Obviously you do, because you're on the internet. Now, *if* that PC is a desktop (which if it isn't, you already spent enough on it to build a killer gaming desktop), it will cost you about $100 every year or two to be able to play almost any PC game that comes out at fairly high settings, and starting about a year ago they will look better than the console version. For me, that comes out to cheaper than or comparable to a console ($300 up front). And I can play all my old old games any time I want, because they're still compatible, as opposed to being locked out of anything but just the last generation.
YMMV, but just because some people spend thousands of dollars every year on a dick length competition for PC gaming doesn't mean that is required. The vast majority of developers are forced to target people with machines much lower than that - therefore, if you have a machine a bit lower than that, you're fine.
Both consoles and PCs have their strengths and weaknesses, but this money sink weaknesses people seem to project onto PC's is a bit of bullshit.
Words don't always mean just what their roots would imply. For instance, xenophobia means hatred of strangers. There is such a thing as homophobia. And since you bring it up, you may want to look in your latest DSM to see if homosexuality is immoral or abnormal.
You can justify your bigotry any way you like, but it is still bigotry. Southerners had similar justifications for slavery, but now we look back on them as ignorant, backwards and racist. Just like future generations will look back at homophobia.
Just because some dude in a weird outfit claims that some invisible guy in the sky says that something is bad and wrong does not make it so. The only people who think homosexuality is abnormal or immoral are people who's religion or culture told them that. Nobody is born thinking it is wrong. Nobody arrives at that conclusion without coercion from an outside source.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"I'M A LESBIAN! DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?!"
No, but PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!
Besides, if you hate gay people it means you don't like lesbians and are, hence, a faggot. Gay-haters, racists, mysoginists, chauvinists and other lowlifers are LOSERBOY NERDS: we BEAT THEM UP and SHIT ON THEIR FACES.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
IMO, this is more of an indication of the narrow-mindedness of the general Xbox-Live demographic than of Microsoft. Microsoft is a business, so it's likely that this person got banned because of a huge number of complaints from their customer base. They don't want to lose business, so they appeased their customers.
If however they didn't receive all that many complaints (comparatively speaking), then I think someone needs to take serious legal action against them if possible. It may sound a bit hypocritical or contradictory to hold them responsible in this case, but this to me sounds like a problem with the mindset of the general population, and Microsoft can't really be held responsible for that.
XBox Live isn't a place for hook-ups, so sexual preferences should not be listed in your profile. They'd suspend "I like to have sex with women" whether you're a man or woman.
Your tactic here is known as 'poisoning the well.' You want to put a shadow of a doubt out there. You have no proof of any misconduct on this woman's part, but plenty of proof of other's misconduct. People shout 'fag' all the time on Xbox Live. Guys hit on girls all the time there. Yet no one punishes them. You hear this woman's story and immediately begin a propaganda campaign implying, again and again, that she must have done something offensive. Why is that?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton