Homophobia in roleplay needs to cease

Argent Dawn
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As of late, I have noticed a concerning and frankly disappointing trend across a number of roleplayers on the server from both factions. Having in-character attitudes that look down negatively upon LGBT+ characters is frankly unwarranted and, during this month in which everyone ralleis together to support their local and online LGBT communities, I would like to see a greater effort towards lessening these behaviours.

Now threre’s a number of arguements in-favour of characters behaving in this manner that I’d like to adress in brief.

“It’s just in-character, it’s a character-to-character interaction, and it’s just how my character would behave.”

Frankly I find this arguement flimsy at best and insulting at worst. So you are telling me that in the game-universe of Warcraft, your character grew up with a dislike for people who have sexualities different to their own, despite that never having been a thing in any established society within lore, and that everyone should just simply run with it with no justification other than ‘It’s just what he/she does’? I think not.

Furthermore, change sexuality to something else that we as an online community would find ourselves against. Would you still stand by the viewpoint of your character hating the other gender, or hating other skin colours?

“Well it’s still just in-character, and it’s not my fault if somebody takes in-character remarks out-of-character.”

While usually this is a sentiment I fully stand behind, in this instance I simply cannot. There are people who play this game who roleplay LGBT+ characters because they, in real life, relate to that sexuality or perhaps are that sexuality entirely. There are many places in the world that do not accept people for their sexuality, who would see them belittled, harassed, assaulted, or even killed. Consider the possibility that such people only have Warcraft as a means of expressing who they really are, and then consider how your character’s actions, using slurs, stigma, and negativity could affect the person on the other side of the screen.

Generally I have personally always felt welcomed on Argent Dawn. My sexuality is understood and accepted by those I roleplay with, other issues that plague me on a near-daily basis are treated with respect and compassion, and I am eternally grateful for the environment that I have at my disposal whenever I choose to play my characters.

And other roleplayers absolutely deserve that environment too.

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People will only react if there are consequences. Reporting is your safest bet this will stop at some point.

Unfortunately being garbage is part of some people’s nature and nothing will stop that.

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While I do unfortunately have to agree that there are some people who are hateful, mean-spirited, and will only act in negative fashions regardless of what anyone tells them or does towards them, we can absoulutely control the situation in some degree. We can ask them to stop, and if not, we can start to disassociate ourselves from such people, cease inviting them to events, and let them know that their behaviour is neither wanted nor accepted.

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@Xulshák-argent-dawn

“I don’t employ ______”

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This is sadly most likley cases of OOC opinions bleeding through to IC as some sort of justification, and I agree that it should stop and not just be there.

WoW itself has tended to avoid showcasing any negativity towards sexual identity or prefference, and instead given us a few(very few) either hints or characters showcased to be interest or in same-sex relationships. The only real discriminatory subject WoW has tackled otherwise is racism, with the characters more often displayed as flawed or villians for these believes. (While still in other cases using really questionable/tasteless stereotypes they seem to fail to notice)

And yeah, people can argue that “it’s just roleplaying and make characters more immersive”, but we’re still just doing roleplay for fun in the end, as a thing we all and enjoy and as a hobby. Do we really need some extremly uncomfortable homophobia portrayed just for the sake of it? I don’t think so, all it adds is to make some people feel even more unaccepted or miserable due to already perhaps facing difficulties in real life.

In short, yeah this is bad and should just stop.

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I’ve always found this argument weird. You’re in a fantasy universe where you can roleplay anything you want, and you RP a homophobe? :thinking:

If we want a lore argument; there’s zero, zero, evidence of homophobia being a thing in WoW’s lore, just as human-on-human racism isn’t a thing. Roleplaying a character that engages in either isn’t “edgy” or “real”; it’s deeply unsettling, and makes me question the person behind the character.

Whilst it was IC to have someone say to me IC, “Aren’t you a bit dark to be a Kul Tiran, lad?”, it still shows a misunderstanding of WoW’s lore and a disregard for the fact roleplay can, and does, reflect real life. People play characters that they themselves resonate with, and there’s no need at all to portray a character that engages in degenerative fascist attitudes in a 12+ game.

Queer characters exist in the setting, and roleplay communities will always attract a lot of queer individuals who will play their character as such. It doesn’t imply we’re ERPers, or fetishizing, by simply existing. Suggesting such only reinforces dangerous stereotypes of LGBTQ+ people being deviants, and that needs to stay buried.

Happy Pride @OP, you can always hmu to vent.

EDIT: Wranduin is canon for all of June. :dragon: :prince:

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If a player comes out with either of these excuses to defend their use of homophobic rhetoric and attitudes in roleplay, I can absolutely guarantee you that they are a homophobe and are using their character as a vehicle to repeat the bigotry that they’re too afraid to espouse in their personal lives.

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I appreciate this a whole lot. I’m thankful that I have not been in a position where this sort of poor-taste roleplay has directly affected me, however I have seen it negatively effect others time and again. I implore both you, and anybody else who’d support this thread, to support their LGBT+ RPers, and RPers as a whole. The world is a cruel enough place as-is. Let’s not bring that cruelty to people’s means of escaping it.

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It strikes me with the similliarities to when the burning of teldrassil happened storywise and I saw people legitimatly badmouthing “refugees” IC like it was from a really agressive Trump rally.

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It’s okay to be a douchewad IC but LGBT hits harder than most because it can be very close to you IRL.

Everyone agrees that a murderer is bad, everywhere, so if you RP one there’s probably no agenda involved. Meanwhile anti-LGBT sentiments are depressingly common IRL and therefore hit harder to be exposed to in the game as well.

I long for the day when society has shed off such sentiments entirely, and anti-LGBT characters are simply seen as just another villain.

Which probably won’t happen in our lifetimes, so yeah. Use decency and tact, people.

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I must say I am very lucky that I have met some very awesome and supportive people in wow and through rp, that held me above water when my irl situation in regards to this topic was pretty much drowning me.

It is really disgusting to see people brush off their homophobic tendencies as “It is IC” when there is none of such a thing in lore of Warcraft. I can only hope that these people will either come to see how wrong their are given time or will be shunned into oblivion and not bring others down with their hatred for simply for existing.

Thanks for bringing this topic up OP, it surely is a topic that should be discussed even if I wish there was no need for it by now.

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With this, WoW has seen a trend from time to time(its been up again lately) where apparantly if you make a character homophobic, racist and just as unlikeable as possible, it’s seen good character development by some people.

And it’s…not.

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The thing I love to do personally is find WoW characters that never showed any romantic interest, and headcanon them as queer. Garrosh was an orc who repeatedly idolized big, strong orc men and upheld a belief that beefy orc men are above all else. H m m m.

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You will quickly find out that no one wants to RP with it in the end.

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From my experience, the kind of homophobia that you’ll typically encounter is very similar to what I saw and encountered when I was still in highschool. It’s based on toxic masculinity, where characters must be as rough and manly as possible – and they equate homosexuality with femininity (god that word’s a tongue-twister) and softness.

It’s incredibly immature and poorly-conceived, applying a real world stereotype to their roleplay. It’s reductive thinking, assuming that heterosexual men have to be strong and masculine, whereas homosexual men have to be soft and feminine. You’d expect an adult to have grown out of that thinking by now.

You tend to see it fairly regularly – or did, my experience was years ago now – among Horde roleplayers, directed at Blood Elves. Because the race is less freakishly muscular and barbaric, there’s a huge amount of homophobic rhetoric about “princesses” and “fairies” that’s applied to them; this even comes from Blizzard at times.

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‘There are no male blood elves’ is a depressingly common meme to this day, even though I am pretty sure the people who propagate it are in way worse shape than the athletic males they mock.

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Yeah really. And with good reasons. A villian or a flawed or “bad” character can be super fun to RP with. But not that.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXAiBpIz2_I

Chad’gar Bloodfist behind the monitor, as he rips on “weak” blood elves.

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What about if your character is very pragmatic and simply dislikes the fact that homosexual couples don’t contribute kids (new soldiers) to their faction in the wake of several world/cosmic wars? To clarify, they don’t necessarily dislike the sexual orientation itself. Would you consider it homophobic?

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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoliticallyCorrectVillain
My absolute favourite trope is a villain that’ll kill, pillage, torture - but always chastises anyone using racism/homophobia as a tactic.

1 Like