I'm a Gaymer and it doesn't offend me.

I've been out as gay in the online community for several years now. One of the common questions I get when people find out I am gay is how I feel about how often gaming communities use derogatory terms such as "gay" and "fag." The general answer is that it depends on context.

Words can be powerful things, but they are just expressions of intent by the person who said or typed them. I feel that a lot of times when people say "gay" or "fag" in a gaming context, their intent isn't to insult gay people, but more to reuse a pejorative word they've already heard in that context. It may have also developed from personal stigmas for certain curse words; i.e., my mom says I can't say "fuck" but I can say "fag" and she won't get as mad.

Interestingly, I've also run across occurances of racism in online games. I've heard people using the terms "nigger" and "spic" in games. Racism seems to be just as much of an issue as homophobia. It seems there's a general desire to be as offensive as possible to some other anonymous person when they are either defeating you or doing something else to ruin your online game experience. My guess is that people who generally find racism distasteful in their daily lives wouldn't use a racial epithet such as "nigger" when playing online, but may not think too much of using "fag" as they may not have had such a personal social stigma about intolerance towards homosexuality.

I think that a major part of the explanation for the use of such offensive epithets is Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Basically, the anonymity of the internet-- and of online games in particular—lets people escape from the usual social conventions for saying things in a normal public context that would be considered rude. They can say "fag" online because no one is going to cause a social scene because of it.



Unfortunately, I think games like Halo can be breeding grounds for this sort of behavior. There is very little punishment for offenses so if you play a lot online and keep hearing your opponents calling you a "fag" or "nigger" its not hard to start using those words yourself when you want to berate them. This can be a larger issue for younger players online who encounter such offensive language and don’t have the knowledge of how offensive it is. I know of kids these days that have never encountered much racism in their daily lives, and thus don't really understand how offensive a word such as "nigger" is. I think that also extends to homophobia, but there may be reinforcement of homophobia from direct social interaction--kids are still using the word "fag" in schools whereas most racial name calling has been curbed due to social progress.

When people interact with me online and accidentally call something "gay" before realizing I can hear them, they sometimes apologize to me without being asked. I appreciate the thought, since these people are a bit more sensitive to the feelings of others, but it’s not entirely necessary. I usually know that the intent behind the epithet wasn’t meant as an offense, but was just something they heard and are repeating in a pejorative context.

Calling something "gay" doesn't really bother me personally. My reasoning is based on the word’s etymology . Gay, of course, was originally a word that meant "carefree" or "happy" and became commonly associated with homosexuality in the early 20th century. I'm not that upset if people are calling something "happy" when they exclaim "That's gay!" in an online game.

The word "fag" on the other hand does bother me somewhat. There is some debate on the word's origin, but in all cases it’s clearly meant solely as a pejorative term.

Homophobia is really one of the last permissible prejudices. I think that’s a part of why people use these terms in semi-anonymous contexts. It's not okay to be a racist anymore, but you can still hate the gays! There has been an enormous amount of social change with respect to homosexuality-- even in just the last few years. But a lot of discrimination still occurs based on sexuality. We're only now starting to see laws passed that include sexual orientation as something that cannot be discriminated against in the workplace and other social areas.

I think as our society advances and homosexuality becomes a more commonly accepted social norm, we'll start to see a reduction in homophobic epithets online.

But there's always going to be that fuckwad who will say anything to offend you.