What about the queer female gamers?

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KurtzGallahad

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Gay's are just people with differnt interests, I look at both male and female gays in the same way an fps player looks at an rts player, they are often nice people, but not as often as bi'sm actually that's kind of weird, I wonder why hetro's like me are so agro?
 

teh_gunslinger

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Dec 6, 2007
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ryuutchi said:
And you never wish you could read anything with a gay protagonist? Or watch a movie with a gay protagonist? It's not about being a target audience (well, maybe a little) except insofar as everyone should be a target audience.

Hell, I mean, someone mentioned a few pages back that it's sort of insulting to white, straight guys that the market assumes they can't identify with anyone but another white straight guy. Why isn't there more representation? Not only is it good for gay gamers to see characters they/we identify with, but it's good for everyone to have characters of more than one basic type.
I'm a bit hesitant to chip in on this but I'll give it a try. I don't think the issue is solely that gamers like me (straight, white male) can't identify with, for instance a gay protagonist. At least I have no problems in movies and books, but I also know that it would be hard as hell for me to write for a gay (or female or whatever) protagonist. I think (I am probably wrong and naïve) that most mature people are capable of relating to protagonists that are not a copy of themselves. But it's not the same as writing one.

I recently read Making History by Stephen Fry and enjoyed it immensely. It was a good read. As the book ends the protagonist gives up hooking up with his ex girlfriend as he realises that happiness is staring him in the face in the form of a guy called Steve. At first my hetero sense tingled and I thought 'Hey man, your girl was pretty sweet and clever. What are you doing?'. Then I thought further that he should of course do what ever he wanted to be happy and it made the book stand in a new light. Had it been clear from the outset that the guy was a gay I would have had no objections but this revelation at the end made me squirm a bit until I thought about it. (Which I think is awesome in a book when it happens)

I seem to recall that Stephen Fry is gay (and also my hero!) so it felt "right", the way it was described. I couldn't have written that as I can't relate to the situation. I think that was my point. This was a bit meandering and I'm not sure I actually got it across properly. If not I'd be happy to explain further.
 

Hamster at Dawn

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Mar 19, 2008
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ryuutchi said:
Hamster at Dawn said:
Stop acting like your sexual preference makes you superior. I don't give a shit what your sexuality is unless I want to know if you're flirting with me or not. We should all be trying to live together, not start wars. FYI, the articles are about LGBT. Check it. They use that specific acronym. Any idea what that stands for?
Sure I do! But when the articles only cover gay men, non-gender-normative men, and mtf transwomen, I think I can be forgiven for pointing out that although the articles are supposed to cover the LGBT community, they're sort of neglecting the L there.
Wow, I was honestly expecting more of a troll response. Sorry if I was a bit rude before. I do agree with you to some extent that there was a greater focus on men but I don't think they were talking exclusively about men, they were talking mostly in general terms with examples that may not have included lesbian women but were still applicable. I should also point out that I feel that there is a lot more homophobia towards men in online games. You would probably know more about that than me so I could be wrong but that's just the general impression that I get.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Alex_P said:
Therumancer said:
All we're going to do is retread old territory and accomplish nothing while generating hundreds of responses.
If you're going to post the same "gay men are rapists" thing every time homosexuality comes up, the least he can do is post the exact same response every time. Y'know, for balance.

-- Alex
Well that's pretty much the reason why I don't bother to respond. His answers are so far out there that it's really not worth the time to argue with him.


For one last time (for any neutral observers that could hypothetically exist)

His general "well maybe it's a problem with men and not with male homosexuals" is inherantly rididculous for a number of reasons. Foremost of course being the way in which he makes an absurd arguement given that we need heterosexual sex and reproduction to continue the species. So when all is said and done that pretty much trumps anything. Homosexuals by their nature do not reproduce so can be targeted to reduce a problem without hurting our species at all. Anything you target reducing the overall problem.

Plus a lot of it revolves around pre-sexual humans as I've made clear. While there are exceptions to every rule, in general when dealing with a hetero rapist or "child molestor" your dealing with someone going after teens and generally physically capable children. Someone like a Roman Polanski (going after 13 year old jailbait) being the quintessential example, along with various cases of teachers and high school students, etc... In comparison in cases when your hear about like 6-8 year old kids being sexually assaulted the perpetrator is a gay man.

Even when looking at porn, when it comes to heterosexuals your mostly looking at jailbait, for the real little kids it's *almost* universally gay porn.

As I have explained before, any kind of "child molestation" is wrong but there is a differance on the "evil meter". 30 year olds do not have sex with like 13-15 year olds not because it's physically dangerous, but for social, psychological, and societal reasons. Well on top of that it's kind of gross too. It's generally accepted that sexual attraction exists there to some extent (including teens having crushs on adults), but we are not animals and can control such urges for the sake of what's good for society. That said it borders on being acceptable due to movies like "Porky's", "American Pie", and other "teen experience" movies where you see teenagers on their "great quest to get some" and oftentimes getting involved in situations that would be illegal. Not to mention shows like "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" where you had a 15-16 year old protaganist getting it on with a physically late 20s/early 30s vampire who was a couple of centuries old in reality. This being accepted because your dealing with a super-hero, a protaganist totally out of context with society's laws and possessing a level of maturity/responsibility beyond anything in reality.

On the other hand when you have cases of someone having sex on like an 8 year old, in the majority of cases it's a male homosexual. This is not to say heterosexuals have not done it, it's just far, far less common.

Such is my case and my general "answer" to Cheeze. I'm not going to respond to this any further because really we've done the dance before and nothing is going to get resolved. I just stopped it early. He responds to this, I respond to what he says, and we go around and around in circles. It's the bloody internet nothing is going to get resolved, and nobody here sets social policy anyway. Once the opinions have been epressed that's pretty much the end of it.
 

Sindaine

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Dec 29, 2008
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What I want to know is exactly WHY the sexuality of the protagonist should matter that much. It's a videogame, not real life.
 

Ares Tyr

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Sindaine said:
What I want to know is exactly WHY the sexuality of the protagonist should matter that much. It's a videogame, not real life.

Because like every work of fiction, a video game's main protagonist should connect with the audience, or atleast, be an interesting, complex individual. That is mainly concerning the protagonist of story-driven games. Of course, we don't really care about the silent character you play in a multiplayer match, or the orientation of a character like, say, Master Chief who is pretty dehumanized (not necessarily in a bad way).

That's like saying "why do we care about the orientation of Aragorn or Luke Skywalker". It makes up part of the character, and what audience would identify with that character. By a stand-point of "marketability", a homosexual main character may push away its target audience. Could you imagine if, say, in Star Wars, instead of the Han/Leia romance we had a Han/Luke romance? It changes alot in that minute detail, because there are still ALOT of people out there who are unwilling to relate to or accept a homosexual protagonist.
 

Sindaine

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But what if people just really don't CARE who the protaganist likes to sleep with, as it has no bearing at all on the story?
Personally, I don't care at all about Aragorn's orientation or Luke Skywalker's. I don't really see how having these things brought up wou;ld change the story at all. Whoever or whatever they think about while jerking it, they're still badass characters.
 

Ares Tyr

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Sindaine said:
But what if people just really don't CARE who the protaganist likes to sleep with, as it has no bearing at all on the story?


In video games, it would be like Mario was Maria, a lady plummer searching for Princess Peach.

Link as a female, searching for Princess Zelda.

If Dom from Gears of War was searching for his lost husband.

If Tidus and Wakka were lovers in Final Fantasy X.

I mean, like I said, for all we all know, Master Chief could be gay or Samus Aran could be a lesbian. It doesn't matter in the story, because their love life isn't a point in the story. So, then it could be said you dont' care. But if the individuals love interest is involved in the story, then it does make a difference. I would still find the stories compelling gay or straight, but alot of people are still prejuidiced about it.

Imagine the shit storm should a game be released to a popular audience, like, say, a big Gears of War/Halo type shooter that everybody loves, only midway through the story, the main big, macho badass main character falls in love with another man. While I wouldn't mind it, the average gamer probably would (as would the parents of said gamer as well). We still live in a time where people are stuck on homophobia. It's unfortunate.
 

Sindaine

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Would any of those somehow make the game less fun or something? I just don't get it.....and isn't it kind of demeaning to imply that making one of the guys gay is like making him a woman?
 

Ares Tyr

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Sindaine said:
Wpuld any of those somehow make the game less fun or something? I just don't get it.....
Not at all. It wouldn't matter to me at all. But there are still alot of people out there who would take issue with it regardless of how good the game was. Remember the big Mass Effect controversy over the possible homosexual content? Now imagine if that was a major plot point, or if there was no choice, and it was a homosexual relationship written into the story (and not an optional choice).

People would take issue. Again, I wouldn't, but pregudice and intolerance is still out there. It is very demeaning that characters would be deamed that way by the majority of the public. It's wrong. We still have some progress that needs to be made as a society.
 

Susan Arendt

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Jan 9, 2007
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ryuutchi said:
As glad as I am that the Escapist's topic this month focused on gays in the gaming community, I found it both interesting and a little depressing that "gays in gaming" apparently means "gay men in gaming". And beyond that, the focus on non-gender-normative male characters seems a little odd for the topic-- non-gender-normative men aren't necessarily gay (and I found Robert Yang's focus on "I'm not making you do girly things when you're being gay" a little off-putting because not only does it derogate gay men who like feminine activities, it derogates straight men, and women of all sexual orientations who do enjoy those activities.)

General critique over, what about the gay women? We're not represented either, except insofar as some guys want to watch two women make out (for the men's pleasure, natch, conventionally attractive women only, please). When do we get long-winded articles about the lack of representation?
If you wanted to see gay women represented in this issue, why not pitch an idea for an article? If you think something needs to be said, the surest way to make sure it is is to say it yourself.
 

Desert Tiger

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I don't get it.

We're all gamers; why do we feel the need to segregate ourselves into different sub-groups? Do we really need to classify ourselves as a different type of gamer? If they made an article about Brazillian gamers, would I then request an article on English gamers? Would a Belgian then expect a well-written piece on gaming from a Belgian perspective?

But this is it. This is the reason why minorities and different sexualities aren't represented well in games.

The single white straight male demographic.

The single white straight male is the absolute bullseye for a (western, at least) gaming company. If they can't hit this target audience, then they have failed, and they probably go bankrupt. So, it would make sense to have characters your main audience can identify with. There are many more single white straight males than say, single white gay females, or married hispanic gay males.

It's how it works and sadly, it's just business following societies' lead.
 

EeveeElectro

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Aug 3, 2008
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If we set them aside from everyone else, they'd complain about discrimination.
We're all blummin' people, lets just leave it at that.
 

ryuutchi

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Susan Arendt said:
If you wanted to see gay women represented in this issue, why not pitch an idea for an article? If you think something needs to be said, the surest way to make sure it is is to say it yourself.
Until this thread, I hadn't realized that The Escapist entertained unsolicited articles, so I hadn't even known the topic was coming up. I don't know if my writing is up to snuff, but I might pitch something for a later issue.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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By never before implicitly stating that the articles were directed towards heterosexual men (or women), the Escapist has done everyone some justice. At the end of the day we are all radically different people who happen to share a common interest - that is we all play video games. By reporting specifically regarding genders or lifestyles that are often overlooked, we find that we are no longer talking about gamers as an inclusive community, but rather the exclusive sub groups within the community. Smiply put, when the Escapist momentarily noted that other groups do not get the coverage they should, they have immedeately labeled all past content as excluding the groups. Or, to put it another way, by recognizing a group as a group, we have inherently excluded them from the wider community.
 

Samurai Goomba

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Cheeze_Pavilion said:
How does banning gay marriage advance any of those goals? Shouldn't you prefer homosexual teachers to work with girls and restrict heterosexual teachers to working with boys? In other words, to me, it seems you haven't thought out how your opposition to gay rights will actually solve the problem you use as your justification for your stance. Which again is why to me, even if what you're saying isn't homophobic, is misogynist.
Just wanted to say that implementing this plan would be hilarious and ultimately futile. Given near-constant contact with young boys and no contact with women, I suspect many "hetero" men would switch teams. And vice versa for the gay men. I'm not saying that everybody would switch, because they most definitely would not. But it'd be kind of like prison, you know? Deny somebody something for long enough, and they'll take what they can get.

Also, I think we'd probably have a lot more rape cases. You know, since there's really no way to effectively segregate straight men from women.
 

Phoenix Arrow

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Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Phoenix Arrow said:
You could win a Miss World pagent with that last paragraph. xD
watch me break and watch me burn [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trnAPsouye0] ;-D
I'm Miss World, somebody kill me.
Kill me pills. Noone cares my friend.
<3
Adding you as a friend based on that alone. Anyone who replies to a post I make with a Hole song is a friend for life.