That Dude With A Face said:
As far as nature goes, I don't mean "The Wild". I mean the natural order and behavior of things.
I thought that was quaint. Terribly without merit, but quaint.
The problem lies within the hyper-masculinized world of gaming, and the desire to "pwn" someone. The reason people associate all online idiots with pre and teen males is because this is the stem of such behaviour. Why do you think there's always so much stress in the media about video games and violence (male violence by the way, i don't think anyone's worried that players of the imagine series are going to wake up one morning and throttle their parents.) Excuse the outsiders point of view, but america does present itself as a highly polarized gender society, where men should be masculine and play football and drink beer, and women should be at home, cooking a turkey and being (desperate) housewives. This is EXTREMELY generalized, so don't jump on my back about the truth of it, but it's certainly the way america externally presents itself through media (movies, video games, music)... Because of the high-proportion of american gamers online, and the huge problem in america with ingrained homophobia, it tends to be that the problem in gaming comes down to one of homophobia. And because a huge number of gamers are male, and the engrained homophobia in america comes down not to disassociation but abuse, there's a huge amount of homophobic abuse in online gaming.
If the offending abusers could stop the abuse (when you kill someone, you don't have to insult them as well... really!!), the there might not be a need for these conferences. But as long as it continues, this type of conference can only help the gaming industry.
The argument of "gay doesn't mean gay anymore" falls flat because it's not about what you intend it to mean, it's about the social stigma attached to the term. Nobody uses the "n" word anymore without knowing that it will cause a problem. If someone wants to cause a problem and be racist, they use it or something equally as bad. The term used for self-identification by homosexual men (and many homosexual women) is being used as a insult term, pure and simple, and any use of that term in a derogatory fashion by a person who is not an in-group member is offensive. Don't try and justify it's use by lack of intention, because if someone started going around using the "n" word, because it now means "left-handed", would be hung, drawn and quartered by the first african-descended person who heard them.
For all people advocating the "don't tell" policy, that you shouldn't say anything because "you'll know what's coming"... THAT is part of the problem. That it is acceptable within the community that homosexual players be abused on the basis of their orientation is discrimination. As a hypothetical, how well do you think it would work if games companies banned all references to "chicks" having "great tits"... Because, frankly, that's shoving heterosexuality down other peoples throats. It wouldn't work, why, because it's the opinion of the majority. It's still discrimination, the sexual objectification of women. But it's been institutionalised in the western world, that it's "ok" for women to be nothing but objects for the sexual pleasure of men. Anybody out there who owns Red Alert 3 should just open up the manual and have a look at the cast for the game. I don't think the ladies were hired for their acting ability. My point... It's not about the idea of the majority being right. A gamer should be able to advocate who or what he or she is, in any aspect, wherever they want. If someone starts going into detailed retellings of their latest sexual escapade, then that's pretty inappropriate in most settings, whether heterosexual or homosexual, but to simply be proud of who they are is not something worthy of abuse. Basically, for those of you saying "it's not wrong, but you should've expected what you get", that's institutionalising the discrimination, which leads to it being accepted. Anyone with half a brain knows that discrimination is wrong. And that is what this is fighting against.
Whatever anyone's personal view on homosexuality is, it doesn't make it right to be the accepted insult of online gaming. It makes it a very uncomfortable place for LGBT gamers to even approach, and there's a fair amount of us out there.
If YOU don't want gaming to involve political, religious or other opinionated discussions, then YOU stay away from it (that "you" is directed at anyone who agrees with the statement, not towards any posters on this thread). Video gaming will stay in this dark ages if it doesn't accept opinions and ideas that challenge and promote growth. Imagine if nobody had injected challenging ideas into films. Or books. Art forms and expressive media can only grow when the audience is challenged. Sure, there are always various exemplars of media of which some have artistic value and literary merit, and some which don't. But keeping ideas out of video games means we'll be playing Call of Duty 37 sometime soon, and it will STILL be reliving WWII.
