While the rest of the country is making an effort to overcome homophobia, it appears the geeks in Redmond haven’t gotten the word.
Earlier this week, a rather disturbing story surfaced on The Consumerist. Xbox Live community member Ryan Grant discovered his gamertag had been flagged by community members as being offensive; as a result, he was informed that he had to change his tag from “theGAYERgamer” to something more acceptable.
According to a letter Grant sent to The Consumerist: “…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.”
It’s a little surreal to read about this, partially because it occurred in the same week that California’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, but also because it wasn’t that long ago when Major Nelson made a point of condemning homophobic behavior on Xbox Live. Not only that, but Microsoft’s response doesn’t really seem to hold water: online communities are certainly allowed to report things they deem offensive, but it’s the moderators who have the final say about what’s appropriate and what’s not. Of course, this isn’t the first time that members of Xbox Live have demonstrated a lack of tolerance towards openly gay members of the service. (Source)
Gays have finally started speaking out in society to let others know that they will no longer accept 2nd class citizen status. Now is the time to start doing the same online. Are you a gay blogger, gamer, webmaster, forum moderator? Announce yourself, let people know that sexual preference, especially on the web, is not something to be discriminated against. It’s nonsensical, it’s offensive and it’s no longer going to be accepted.
Vacuum says:
At this point, only a portion of the human race has socially evolved to the next level. Not everyone is open minded; in fact, some only accept things they are personally familiar with. There is never going to be a point in time where everyone is “on the same page”, because the gray areas of current topics will be replaced with the gray areas of future topics. The only way this could happen is if advancement (in every sense) stopped.
19th May 2008 at 7:48 pm