#0 - Jan. 31, 2010, 5:09 p.m.
This really shocked me and took me aback, both as something ignorant and deeply offensive.
I began doing my research about Blizzard and their background in dealing with the GLBTQ community. I know a TON of gay people who play WoW, and my guild is extremely GLBTQ-friendly. We often joke about how fabulous it would be to have a gay pride day holiday event programmed into the game.
Among the many things I found: an article about Blizzard originally restricting players from advertising that they even *HAD* a GLBTQ-friendly guild! (Which they later apologized for and ceased.) At the time, Blizzard's explanation was that they wanted to keep players from being harassed based on their orientation.
Well...that's just offensive. The real-world parallel to that would be to tell GLBTQ people to stay in the closet for the rest of their lives in order to prevent themselves from being discriminated against. Honestly, this is the type of thinking that GLBTQ people have been fighting against since the 1960's when the slogan "SILENCE=DEATH" was created.
I then found a wow.com article ("He Said, She Said") that was essentially a man and woman having a "conversation" about male blood elves and the stereotype that they are "gay". The entire thing is from this painfully heterosexist point of view, and it's glaringly obvious these two people have no business talking about gay stereotypes. (The male makes such enlightened points as saying that male belfs don't seem gay because they're muscular.) Frankly I've always felt that Male belfs are far more a parody of the classic narcissistic alpha-male type, with that sexually-appealing edge that makes their orientation almost unimportant ("I'm so damned fine, ANYONE can come ride THIS ride...")
But what I didn't find was anyone really talking about this "no sexual orientation in a toon name" policy.
So what I'd really like to hear, straight from the horses's mouth, is an explanation. WHY does Blizz have this policy?
I'm imagining the various potential replies that Blizz might have, and none of them makes any sense to me. Of course there's the old-fallback, that they're trying to prevent potential harassment. I've already explained why that doesn't pan-out. Blizz also seems to lump sexual orientation into the category of "real world sensitive issues", which is equally offensive. When someone starts talking about their views on abortion, that's a real world "issue" that they are opening up. When someone makes a toon name that indicates sexual orientation, that's an expression of who they are (or who the toon is.) It's as inherent as gender. Making your male toon name "BoyBelfLover" is not forcing anyone to have a chat with you about gays in the military.
Whether you're a supporter of gay rights or not, we all know that there is a prevalence of the use of "gay" and "f*g" in game chat; and those of us who really, really dislike that also know that spending our time trying to report every instance of it is fruitless. The sad fact is that if people were blasting trade chat with "The N word", people would be hitting the "complaint" button all day long. But people just don't care about defamatory language towards GLBTQ people.
I'm putting this post in the Customer Service Forum because I would legitimately like to hear the response Blizzard has. I'm also forwarding a copy of this post to several GLBTQ related organizations including The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Human Rights Campaign, The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and The American Civil Liberties Union. It's my hope that a dialog can be started to get Blizzard to understand why this policy is offensive and discriminatory.
