Thursday, May 15, 2008

Gay Gamers Get No Love


Here is an article I found from: that videogame blog today that was interesting:

Anyone who has spent any amount of time playing games on Xbox LIVE knows that it isn’t the friendliest place for gay gamers. The word gay gets thrown around as an insult so often (even by people who don’t think that they’re homophobic) that I don’t know how any gay gamer gets through a match of Halo without being seriously insulted. Now Microsoft has taken it to another level by banning a gay gamer who’s Xbox LIVE Gamertag is ‘theGAYERgamer’. Why? Because of general complaints from the community.

Grant, theGAYERgamer, wrote in to The Consumerist about his experience saying, “I have had a bad morning. Last night when i tried to sign into my xbox live account “thegayergamer” I was told that it had to be changed. I figured that it was just from people reporting it as an offensive name being that the greater Xbox live community isn’t exactly welcome to gay people, i spend a lot of time muting people on Halo3. I assumed that once i called Microsoft they would straighten things out.

“I talked to a supervisor there, Roxy, who told me that she didn’t personally find the fact that my gamer tag had gay in the name offensive, but that the greater Xbox community did, so i would have to change it. I hope I’m not the only person who finds this don’t ask, don’t tell policy disgusting… eek.”

There are two options here. Either everyone thought that Grant was homophobic and chose the nick in order to insult gays, or, the rest of the community is a bunch of idiots and found the fact that the word gay appeared in a Gamertag highly offensive. I wish it was the former but the latter seems far more likely from my experiences over LIVE. That’s fine and dandy really. Those people are entitled to their opinion on gays and, while I strongly disagree with it, they can voice their opinion however they want.

What isn’t right is that Microsoft would react to complaints that are based on hate and bigotry. If it’s an automatic thing after a few complaints come in, why wouldn’t Microsoft give him back his account the second he called in and explained the situation? Grant has every right to have the word gay in his Gamertag, unless I missed something and gay has become a curse word or being gay has become highly offensive.

My Opinion: I believe what happened sucks, but if he didn't want the attention, he should not have created the name. What is the purpose of stating your sexuality in your gamertag in a game that has nothing to do with homosexuality? You can leave that for A4A & BGC! Now everyone is entitled to freedom of speech, and he really wasn't hurting anyone... but at some point do we as gays stop saying. "I'm Here, and I'm Queer" in all venues? On the same token, there should be some kind of censoring, monitoring, or something used in games to keep some of these hateful words out of games, either sexiest or racial. Most gamers are adults, and they act like five year olds! What do you guys think?

  

5 comments:

Soldier said...

This is just crazy !
Xbox LIVE is the home of random insults, crazy nicknames of all sorts, retarded jokes and incresibly mean tricks to win, i dont see how anybody could actually be "offended" by anything in that place

BPS 4.0 : Soul Exposure said...

I agree soldier about how could anyone be "offended". I'm sure everyone has had something negative about them. Doesn't make it right, it just happens.

fuzzy said...

I believe that it is ridiculous! It can either be viewed as sexually suggestive material and that could be why he was asked to remove it or change it or whatever. People have every right to their freedom of speech yes, but would this incident fall under the freedom of speech?

Why do Gays have to announce when they are present? Heyyy I'm Gay, WTF? Just be like everyone else! Gay people have a tendancy to want attention, more than what is needed!

E said...

Those crazy gamers. It is crazy how the word 'gay' is thrown around left and right as an insult. It's surprising folks would be offended by someone having the word 'gay' in their moniker, though.

But I agree with Fuzzy's view on gays always having to announce their presence. I personally don't feel like the whole world needs to know what my sexual preference is.

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.