Sanitizing Expression In Virtual Worlds 516
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."
It is supposed to be "family friendly".. (Score:1, Insightful)
Private Property rights exist in virtual worlds? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:2, Insightful)
This shouldn't even be an issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to eliminate all guilds with messages from rl, thats fine. But they need to target everyone equally, not just certain ones.
Re:It is supposed to be "family friendly".. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing self centeredness.
Re:This story is so gay (Score:1, Insightful)
That battle-axe swings both ways, to coin a phrase.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This story is so gay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Private Property rights exist in virtual worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Private Property rights exist in virtual worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It is supposed to be "family friendly".. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This story is so gay (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] just for being who they are.
Maybe that's why they see this as controversial.
The Problem Is Blizzard (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:This shouldn't even be an issue. (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, sure. Everyone should just take their abuse with grace and aplomb. Gotcha.
Re:This story is so gay (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Honestly, people... (Score:2, Insightful)
Soapbox rant of the whale (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This story is so gay (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice try though.
Re:Honestly, people... (Score:2, Insightful)
False. They say that players cannot, and I quote, "insultingly refer to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or other players." 'Insultingly' being the key word.
B) Saying GBLT Friendly is discrimination against people who aren't GBLT friendly.No; it's discrimination against the ideas that those people hold. Discriminating against ideas is okay; discriminating against the people who hold those ideas isn't.
C) It's stoopid and doesn't matter. D) The person (who was NOT discriminated against) is trying to make her violation of the rules into a cause. Which is annoying as hell.
...which are both opinions. GG.
I think it is interesting that people thinking "That is so gay" is negative. If someone is gay, and there first thought is that saying something is gay is negative, what does that say about how they view their lifestyle?
When the person saying, "This is so gay," is using 'gay' to refer to something annoying/idiotic/morally abhorrent, then what is a homosexual person supposed to do? Agree?
Real World Politics in the Game Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cute (Score:2, Insightful)
Admirably open-minded of you to be publicly lusting after a transexual. Good for you!
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Language evolves as does slang, deal with it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This story is so gay (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
And I think it should (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This story is so gay (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
"gay" is like "hacker". (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Language evolves as does slang, deal with it (Score:0, Insightful)
I doubt you could find a self-identified gay man or lesbian who isn't exquisitely aware of this.
Tell you what, why don't you try applying that logic to words like "nigger", "wop", "kike", "chink", and so on. Get on WoW and complain about Blizzard being "jew cheap" about loot. Does the idea make you uncomfortable? It should. It makes me uncomfortable writing about it. But if using "gay" in a derogatory manner doesn't make you just as uncomfortable then you've got a problem.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:1, Insightful)
1. A guild for people who don't want to hear sexuality-related slurs while they play. What exactly is the problem with this?
2. "Bringing gayness into WOW". Characters in WOW come in two sexes. Relationships form online between characters. Sexuality is automatically present - you can't escape from it. Are you trying to say "come play this game, but you have to act straight?"
Re:This story is so gay (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:They gave you your life back (Score:4, Insightful)
You've never seen a female night-elf dance, have you?
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't that pretty much what they did? By stating the guild was GLBT friendly, they were letting prospective recruits know that insulting language like that wouldn't be acceptable. I think Blizzard just had a CR person shoot from the hip, and hopefully it will all be sorted out. The official policies say that insulting language is against the terms of service, and I don't see how advertising a GLBT fiendly guild can possibly be seen as insulting, any more than advertising a guild for people on East Coast (U.S.) time is insulting to someone in Europe.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the word "nigger" IS used in public spaces with great frequency, in in a deeply pejorative sense--by African Americans urbanites. It's only NON-African-Americans who aren't allowed to use it.
The whole "politics of language" is distorted and very illogical--the use typically reflects the agenda of the person in question.
C.f. pretty much any film by Spike Lee.
Re:Language evolves as does slang, deal with it (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, just shooting from the hip aren't you. You just assumed from the start I was trying to advocate the use of gay as a derogatory term. did you even read my whole comment? I specifically said that in the given context not only was it not being used as a derogatory term for homosexuals, but that it had a different meaning altogether unrelated to sexual orientation. Why can't people understand that? I even gave you two examples of other words - 'wicked', and 'mad' - and how regional slang uses them to mean 'very' but without any relation to the other meanings of those words. I was pointing out that in the context it was being used, the term 'gay' meant stupid or perhpas absurd, but not in any relation to someone being gay. Or that the person using it that way thinks gays are stupid or absurd. If you ever encounter someone who says something like "that rule is gay" and you confront them on it they'll always point out they don't mean it as a derogatory homosexual remark, and not because they're just some backpedaling racist, most kids don't even realize someone would take offense at it because to them it's wholly unrelated in their mind. It's unrelated to gays and gay culture! You personally seem to to think that because they use gay to mean 'absurd' they are therefore making some larger political statement that they believe all homosexuals to be absurd, but it's not the case. The racial terms you listed above are purely racial slurs (except for chink, see your other replies). So if I say "there's a chink in your defenses! we will surely destroy you!" Does that mean I am implying there is either an actual asian in your defenses and that is why they are weak, because I believe asians to be weak? You don't concede that it's entirely possible the word could have an alternate non-deragatory meaning? For fuck's sake, I know gay rhode island kids who themselves have exclaimed "that's wicked gay!" and they weren't talking about their boyfriend.
As to the going on WoW and complaing about something being "jew cheap" you're not even giving some alternate meaning of jew there, you're using it as a classic deragatory slur against jews and the falsehood they are miserly, so how does that even work as an example? In addition you're trying to take words which have exclusively been used as slurs (jew, nigger, wop) and sticking them into a context in which they cannot fit because of the huge stigma attached to those words. My point also was based on the fact that gay has been used widely in our recent cultural history with a completely different meaning that has no such stigma. So just because 'gay' or some other word may be transmutable, that doesn't mean any old slur with a history behind it could be. I'm not gay bashing here, I'm not advocating racism, it's stupid and useless and based on utter falsehoods. But for a group of people to change the meaning of a word and use it to represent themselves and somehow think they then have exclusive control over the future evolution of that word is a ludicrous assertion. Language is an amorphus thing, and it will continue to change, it IS POSSIBLE for two words to have DIFFERENT AND UNRELATED meanings.
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:3, Insightful)
The current set up is giving a few people who happen to have some strategically placed capital control a chunk of society. It's never been a good thing.
Yes, people *do* just want to play (Score:3, Insightful)
People love to accuse gays of "activism" and "recruiting", when what they really mean is, "STFU, so I can pretend you don't exist."
Re:Maybe People Just Want to Play (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you see the hypocisy in your comment? You don't want to be harassed or bombarded. That's exactly what the GBLT guild wants - to escape from the harassment.
How does them having a guild where they can play together "harass" you in any way? In contrast, they are the ones being harassed by all the homophobic comments.
If you really wanted to escape from "reality" - then why do the characters even have genders?
Re:I've said it before, I'll say it again. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't care, then why are you so offended by it?
Re:They gave you your life back (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Boy Scouts (Score:3, Insightful)
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).