Gaymers

Thank of any category at all -
There are are gay people that fall into it.

Yes, it does, even gayness is gay now

We fought long and hard for that recognition, too.

I completely agree! Gamers are gamers, we should all treat each other with some amount of respect for others we are sharing this hobby with and have some moderation of our own language.

Will misogyny, gay bashing, racism, and etc go away overnight? No. But we can try toward making it better.

Within the *male* community? I know you aren't being mean or purposefully shortsighted with your explanation. But I do think you maybe nailed the "sad but true" thing by accident. There's no 'sad fact' of indelible learned behavior; it's unfair to say that all straight boys resort to homophobic bullying in lieu of trash talk, because it simply isn't true. On the contrary: I think the sad fact is the seeming majority belief -- not a misconception, but rather the assumption and belief among some members of the gaming community -- that everyone in that community is straight and male.

Because there *isn't* a misconception, not really. Many or most straight male gamers know there are plenty of straight female gamers, too, and plenty of gay male gamers, maybe even gay female gamers, perhaps also gamers who are even less sexually binary. At this point, they know these things aren't anomalous, they know they're around. There's no misconception. Instead, there's the *belief* that those 'other' gamers will never be accepted by that community -- wherein "that community" means 'your' community, the straight, male one.

But with the gamer gender-split getting close to 50/50, for instance, it's getting tough to acknowledge an insular, straight male gaming culture as the only real community anymore. I think, for those straight white males who subscribe to the belief that they should be the understood 'norm', this idea is totally scary. If there are other gaming communities forming, they're probably playing by other rulebooks, other social norms! And so then that weird territoriality begins, wherein one group might flood the 'safe spaces' of another group in an attempt to exert their own community's norms in whatever way they can. I think the video did a really good job of expressing this idea in not so many words. People use threatening speech -- hate speech, even -- when they themselves feel their own spaces and sense of cultural values are being threatened.

And that doesn't sound like boys-will-be-boys trash talk. It sounds like good ol' fashioned prejudice, complete with all the 'isms.

My god you said alot so where to begin........first off I was commenting more on the over all male community.....not just the male gamer community. I was aiming more at the point that a male coming at another male with a homophobic attack is something that is not only accepted most of the time between males, but in many cases isn't even thought about. Infact, it's sometimes strangely used as a form of indearment between buddies. Example: The 40 year old Virgin film with the joke "You know how I know your gay"....most guys did not analyze that joke as "Wow, thats really insensitive to the gay community", instead they looked at it more like "Ha, me and my friends are exactly like that, thats funny!"

Secondly, I have yet to notice the gamer community having trouble accepting anyone. Infact I think it's one of the most accepting communities out there. It's a community completely based on skill and competition instead of social issues. Being that it is based on skill and competition trash talking, as I'm sure you are aware of, comes with the territory. Therefore I don't believe most gamers go into it with any assumptions other then "I need to kick this persons ass at this game."

And lastly, it's incredibly rude to call someone shortsighted just because you don't agree with their assessment of something. Thats a very shortsighted thing to do.

Hi again! Ugh, I know I must sound completely nuts to you, but it is subject matter I feel strongly about. I want you to know that I don't mean to attack anyone in particular. But I do think it's important to tackle certain ideas. I really want to reply to each of your points in order, because I think they're valuable and worth replying to. When you say you want to comment on an overall male community, though, I can't help but feel that such a Herculean task would be impossible. Because there's no such thing, no matter what Judd Apatow movies suggest. (For the record, I like Judd Apatow a lot. But Kevin Smith? Not even remotely true-to-life. Ugh.) My point is, a guy (or girl!) might share the same sense of humor or social attitudes as his or her friends -- but not those attitudes of every other guy or girl ever. It's humanly impossible.

A quick aside, since you included it as part of your example of having a different overall community or culture: even though I'm a girl, I do know the 'endearment' humor you mean. It's off-color, but it isn't overtly malicious. I might say to a friend, "Whatever, skank." I obviously don't think my friends are skanks. So when I talk about online hate speech and bullying, I really don't mean that.

I think it's good that you feel accepted by your community of gamer friends. The people in the video who game and congregate together feel that way, too. I feel really accepted by my own gamer community, too. But my gamer community isn't really based on skill or competition -- if I had to pick one thing it's based on, I'd say it's founded on beer, actually. But we avoid conflict, choosing instead to play Crackdown (all co-op, no competitive play), Guitar Hero in cooperative mode, or Rock Band. Sometimes we play Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and it's just us versus zombies. With my friends who prefer retro games -- and they really are a separate group of friends -- we might pass the controller around. What I'm saying is, there's more than one community of gamers. My crowd rolls differently than yours. That doesn't make us 'not gamers.' We're not 'less serious.' I totally yell in frustration, all of that. But if I were to hop onto MLB 2K8 to chill out after work, and the person on the other team used some kind of slur (and not in a teasing way), from my vantage point, I wouldn't hear, "He must really need to kick my ass at this game." I'd hear, "Oh, my god, this person totally hates me." Maybe my anonymous competitor might start getting really annoyed because I'm not taking the game seriously enough for him, or not competent enough for him, or I'd start getting angry because he's way too serious. We aren't part of the same community, exactly -- we're both gamers, but we're staring at each other across a sort of cultural divide, and we each feel threatened by the other. It happens! And right there, that's a different set of priorities, different social values. That's why I say there isn't only one community, and that the entire gaming community isn't based on trash-talking. For me, and for the people like me, it just isn't.

With all this said, here's where I was coming from originally, and I know I did a poor job with it before: I get so upset when it seems like we dismiss optimism on the grounds that our culture will always remain prejudiced or phobic in whatever way. It self-perpetuates: people who hear horror stories and are reluctant to hop onto XBL also assume hate language is the whole online game culture, with no room left for them. That isn't right. And the best way to fight that idea is to keep popping up in groups, as a reminder that the community of gamers isn't all this or all that.

I see what your getting at jennatar but I can promise you that the division of male and female gamers (in consoles) is nowehere near 50/50 despite what you might hear.

Having worked for a massive game company the issues arise out of what the mob deem to be acceptable behaviour. Guitar Hero, SingStar and LittleBigPlanet are never likely to get the trash talking in the same way as a first person shooter.

Sadly in the competitive male world homophobic trash talking is common. That doesn't mean we should accept it but you would find it hard to get a group of straight guys to object (usually through some childish fear of having the accusing finger pointed at them). The reality is that games companies have a responsibility to iradicate this behaviour or empower the communities to take a lead. Bring out the ban hammer and start suspending people from PSN or Live and you would soon see a shift in attitudes.

Hiya, friend, and thanks for your reply. I know that in a lot of ways I've gotten away talking about the video, but I think these points are important. And believe me, I completely understand where you're coming from. I understand that those demographic metrics are contentious in the industry because the number of female gamers is 'bloated' thanks to casual games, mobile and handheld games, point-and-click adventure games, and online sites like Pogo, all of which are most popular with women who, they themselves, do not identify as gamers. It's also easy to say these aren't 'real' games, despite the fact that they're great gateway games -- what Pogo player wouldn't want to buy a system specifically to play Geometry Wars? (Disclosure: I bought a 360 just so I could play Geometry Wars.) I think a lot of female DS/Wii owners -- who ARE console owners -- and who enjoy puzzle and sim games, also are consistently sidelined.

These groups are enormous, and they're also very fragmented and tough to identify as a valid group, because there isn't a safe space for them to congregate. In a lot of minds, these women aren't gamers, not by any stretch, because we in this industry collectively chooses to agree upon a mainstream definition (straight, white, young, male), and develop games for those. Or perhaps a big game reviews website, for instance, will deliberately choose to sidestep those orphan demographics, and limit their coverage. To me, though, this is still more 'other-izing.' It's also frustrating to be told that, in spite of your group's large numbers, you are still somehow anomalous. Or when your numbers seep into demographic surveys, someone tosses those numbers aside because, for whatever reasons, they 'don't count.'

As I intimated, I understand the argument against those numbers. Like you, I have worked in the industry and I am frequently reminded what kind of games to target and, therein, the kind of gamer I am targeting. More recently I worked at a major video games reviews site with a strong community backbone. To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, as that company's CM, I worked to promote community, underscoring that everyone had a place to belong. It was my job to help gamers of all stripes know they were welcome and safe. Obviously I had to work against, and with, a lot of mob mentality. Given that, I consider 'other-izing' a kind of abuse. I also believe that, if you use your husband's special edition Halo 360 to download Puzzle Fighter, someone should tell you that your enthusiasm for gaming is no less valid than your husband's, and that you shouldn't feel like you have to unplug the headset.

I stress this last point because, if, in growing numbers, these 'other-ized' people who I strongly consider a legitimate part of gaming also were bolder in identifying themselves as such, and felt strong enough to put the headset on and play among strangers, yes, absolutely, the notoriously hostile Xbox Live environment would change.