Kotaku
In Newsweekly, companion website to In Newsweekly, New England's largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender news and entertainment weekly, has posted a story on a new survey meant specifically for GLBT gamers, or "gaymers" as the article so coyly quotates.
The whole piece stinks of two things I hate: splitting an already disadvantaged minority (gamers) into potentially conflicting factions; and assigning previously-constructed stereotypes to the new group.
First we need to prove that homosexual gamers even exist. Yeah it sounds ridiculous, but that's where you have to start on something like this. This survey is an attempt to quantify the existence of an invisible minority.
I think this minority is invisible because who a gamer likes to boink has no practical application here, except possibly as a marketing tool. It's the same issue I have with the constant barrage of "women in games" crowing: the longer we tell each other that a gamer girl is a rare and mysterious thing, the longer she will remain so.
I'm with Dan Savage on this issue. Let homosexuality be normal. True tolerance isn't making special recognitions of your fellow gamers' differences, but simply not caring in the first place.
As a possibly self-defeating aside, I once got warned by Blizzard for saying "hey it's okay to be gay" in Barrens Chat. Amid an ocean of "stfu fagget". So now I say it every chance I get.
Gay video game player survey [In Newsweekly]
