I just stumbled across your site while looking up information about apophenia (I seem to hear music whenever a white-noise machine is turned on, strangely enough). As it happens, I play WoW as well, but hadn’t heard anything about this controversy, being several weeks behind in my quaint old-fashioned newspaper-reading. I’m still working on a definite opinion of my own, but in the meantwhile, thanks for the serendipitous information and analysis!

Have you ever had someone throw something at you and your wife while walking down the street for being atheists? Have you been sent to the hospital for being an atheist? This is not “raised eyebrows” and “uncomfortable situations.” We are talking about cut off from you family for the rest of your life, people showing up at your funeral to celebrate your death with placards, attacks, beatings, hatred, and murder. Imagine being told your love is the not the same, is not good enough, is sick. You may have forgone the religious ceremony, but you got married. Would you have forgone the religious ceremony if it meant that you would not have been able to get married at all (keeping in mind the legal benefits of being married)? Would you be open about being an atheist if it meant you would never visit your family again?

My parents are loving people, politically liberal, and not religious. I was relatively lucky- my dad did not talk to me for six months when I came out, but ultimately, he moved on. My mother still makes jokes about breaking up my relationships, and sometimes she warns me that she has not told a friend of hers “about me.” I feel fortunate, because many people I know were not so lucky. This is not the 16th century, nor am I talking about people from pre-Stonewall era. People in their 20s from liberal towns. A good friend of mine was cut off financially while she was in school, even when she had a brain tumor and needed surgery because she was with a woman. I could list story after story after story. And it would be a drop in the ocean.

Even when it is not so extreme, being gay is a daily fight that wears at your soul. Homophobes are not red-eyed monsters foaming at the mouth. They are your neighbors, your coworkers, and sometimes, your friends. Which is why being gay can be so frightening. I live in one of the most liberal and gay-friendly cities in the U.S. (Seattle), and we had a gay bashing on Pride two years ago. They tore into his torso with a vodka bottle. Why? Because they saw him as they drove by, and his was too gay. We are never safe. We have to fight constantly to retain and gain rights, because a large group wants us to be so afraid that we will simply go away. If you have felt anything like this being atheist, then perhaps I am wrong, and the two experiences are similar. Nevertheless, atheists tend not to stir up the same levels of hatred that homosexuals do- perhaps your soul is still worth saving.

There are days when I read the news and see another state pass a law against homosexual marriage, a soldier is expelled from the military for being gay, or we loose another vote for equal rights, that I get so angry I cannot see through the tears. The body cannot sustain that level of rage for long. Most days I shake my head, and keep moving through my life. What choice do I have? What choice do any of us have?

For a long time, I was actively atheist, and now I consider myself to be non-theistic, although I am a little obsessed with religions- my undergrad is in Religion, and I am preparing to jump into an M.A./Ph.D. in religion and cultural studies Honestly, being gay is nothing like being atheist. The reason why you cannot think of much oppression for being atheist is that there is relatively little, except in a few areas of the U.S., thanks to the First Amendment.

I think you framed the reason it is misguided very well. Our sexual orientation is tied to our interactions with others, and it comes out in our day to day interactions with the opposite sex, or the same sex. The fact that I’m reduced to a blubbering idiot in front of a woman that I’m attracted to is an example of this. The end result then is that in order to conceal your orientation you have to all act the same way, namely heterosexual. You’re asking a subset of the population to conceal part of themselves, but not asking the same of everyone else.

However misguided it may be I wouldn’t consider it malicious. The fact that Blizzard didn’t want its online game to frame a debate between people who want to pretend homosexuality doesn’t exist, or assert that it’s immoral, and people who don’t want to conceal an aspect of themselves is understandable. In the same vein doubt the military’s goal was specifically to oppress gay people, their position, as a whole, was probably more that they wanted to meet their recruiting numbers and didn’t really want to discuss sexuality.

I wouldn’t necessarily take fact that Blizzard was willing to change its position, once the reasonable objections to their position were laid out before them, as a sign that they’re more liberal now than they were. Their goal with the original decision was probably to make the most people happy for most of the time, regardless of what the position. The fact that they changed it just shows that they felt a new decision was going to make more people happy.

An interesting side-note: World of Warcraft currently has a “festival” of sorts going on in-game that equates to Valentines Day. If you wear perfume you can give “love tokens” to male non-player characters and get a gift, and if you wear cologne you can get gifts from female NPC’s. This is regardless of the sex of your character. That doesn’t sound to me like a game that is written by a company with something against same-sex romance.

… So, I’ll see you on level ONE!

a.

And for the commentor who claims that war games are dangerous so why would someone want a safe environment in which to play them, even as a Devil’s Advocate-type statement, that is a completely inane statement. These are table and/or computer games, not rugby, and they should be accompanied by safe environments when and where desired. Just because they are “war games” is no excuse for the utter worst of testosterone-fueled behavior to emerge.

And because most of the others are targetting a younger, less ‘PC’ (for want of a better term) market, they have even less clue about the social impact of their rules. So MMORPGs are now solidifying as yet another space with a pressure towards conformity and little acceptance for the odd kids.

Now that Blizzard are doing the right thing, how about turning some of that anger and curiosity on the rest of the MMORPG world?

You are very excited.

I think there needs to be more space between the two sentences quoted below. It’s not right for one to follow the other. They are of different ilk.

“We are still read as women when we walk in the door, whether we like it or not.”

“We live in a sexist culture and pretending sexism doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away.”

looking forward to more stuff in the future, good job

Chris – there are two types of oppression that queer people face – individual and systemic. Individual oppression occurs when individuals demoralize the queer person on a regular basis. (Not surprisingly, the queer suicide rate is painfully high.) Individual oppression is experienced as ostracization, alienation… all of the worst of anomie. Systemic oppression is being barred from rights and privileges in society simply because of your identity. In this way, queer people are barred from the right to visit their partner in the hospital, the privilege of marriage, etc.

What you experienced is certainly ostracization from your family, yet not from society as a whole. Of course, those same beliefs resulted in many people being drowned a few hundred years ago for being witches… we’ve come a long way wrt religious tolerance (and in some ways, we’re reverting).

Does that make more sense?