Regular readers will remember my post a couple of weeks ago about feeling bruised after confronting a sexist comment in Sports Interactive's MMO soccer management sim "Football Manager Live".
Well, I'm back feeling bruised again. This time I had the temerity to suggest that it's not okay to use "gay" to mean "bad", "offensive", "annoying" or "wrong". Well, briefly I thought I was scoring well on that (at least, this time I wasn't the only one to say it's not okay) but the full gamut of "justifications" came out as well (culminating in the classic, "oh, you're just too sensitive, stop sounding so ANGRY and CHILL OUT!"). I identified as bi there, even though the eagle-eyed will notice it's not one of the words in my "sexual orientation" box in the sidebar there - I figured it's easier than explaining what I mean by heteroflexible, peoplesexual, and the various gender-expression terms there!
Technically, I suppose, I still won - the terms&conditions for the game include a clause saying players are not allowed to use 'gay' as a pejorative term and the mods stepped in to point this out. I still wanted to explain just why it's not okay to use the term that way (especially when someone said "but most gay people are totally comfortable with the term!" - yes, I chalked that one on the bingo card as well!) but the mods then turned around and slapped me down saying "this issue has been dealt with, don't start it up again." And I suppose I can see their point - it's supposed to be a game, not a teaching seminar about het privilege and queer rights activism (it didn't help that the game's forums auto-censor bleeped out "queer" and "sexual" in my comment!) But still, that added to the bruised feeling, like I'd been slapped down for explaining why I felt someone else was being a jerk.
I've understood this stuff on an intellectual level a lot, but rarely get to experience it first-hand (regular readers will have noticed the recent post where I talk about experiencing an incident of homophobic street harassment). I've got quite a lot of privilege when you add it up: white, male, mostly het (although technically bi, as mentioned already I don't strongly identify that way) - a lot of the time I get to keep my head below the parapet if I choose to do so. People don't often read my genderqueer, bi etc side so they don't target me directly. And so often it's just easier to duck down when the casual stuff catches me. But today I got full in the face what feminists and womanists talk about experiencing all the time. Now I know it at a gut level why women (and gay folk, and trans folk, and non-White folk) end up abandoning some online spaces. It's good that the SI terms&conditions, and the FML mods, are working towards making the game a safer space (although casual sexism still seems to go unchecked there) but lots of spaces aren't that good.
The Steel Cross Gyrls will continue to fly the flag for LGBTQ activism, though how much direct action/talking back I'll have the energy to make is uncertain (and likely to be small, alas).
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