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. Eliza Gauger, or possibly Gayger

Gay video game player survey [In Newsweekly]

The details are the same, if you're already sick of this. But what The Washington Post did manage to nail (and very well) was the human side of the story, by closely and sympathetically examining the life of Sara Andrews, the transsexual who founded the GLBF guild.

We'll quote the conclusion of the piece, since it eloquently states a problem about the maturity and intolerance inherent in gaming which bothers us:

Sara Andrews, the transsexual showgirl, grew up in foster homes in and around Cookeville, Tenn., 80 miles east of Nashville. Biologically a boy, she realized she was gay at 14, started dressing as a girl at 18, and, for years, has been living out her fantasy to be a girl in video games and comic books. She always played Storm — the mutant goddess in "The X-Men" who controls the weather — in the playground at school. She plays Storm in "X-Men: Age of Apocalypse" on her PlayStation 2 in the living room.

She's a fan of fantasy, but she stopped playing "WoW" a few weeks back.

"Maybe it's not a very good escape from the real world, playing a game online and dealing with a bunch of other people," says Andrews. "It's like escaping the real world and finding what you don't like about it — the slurs, the homophobia — in the online world."

Sara, it would be a shame if you didn't play games like WoW anymore because of what's happened. But — like it or not — you can't expect the fourteen year old boys who dominate the pastime to express mature viewpoints about "taboo" issues like homosexuality. Most of these kids haven't seen a vagina since they spurted out of one in a muscusy, post-natal horror show; consequently, we feel it's safe to say that you can take their opinions about acceptable adult sexuality with a grain of salt.

We realize it's hard to go from a world where, more often than not, the status quo is to look upon a transsexual as a freak to an online world where almost every female is played by a guy (and therefore a polygonal transsexual), yet everyone's calling everyone else a fag. But it doesn't have the same meaning in an online game — most of the time, people aren't trying to persecute you, but because it's gaming's de rigeur insult. Hell, we're all gay in World of Warcraft...

Sara, it would be a shame if you let the experience get to you. After all, games need more freaks and weirdos and fags in them, if only to dilute the pool of illiterate sexless virgins.

For Gay Gamers, A Virtual Reality Check [Washington Post]