Thursday 28 November 2002

Pic of the day: Guess who's played by a male! (Scandinavian in-joke. "Hespetre" is a Norwegian insult that means roughly "ugly bitch".)

That's, like, soo gay!

I may be desensitized by hanging around in the furry fan community online. For historical reasons, it seems that this milieu has had a fairly high number of gays. It is unclear whether these were originally furry fans or just came to the conventions to get hugs. Anyway, the whole community has kind of accepted the gay minority as just part of life. You certainly don't need to be gay to dress up as a panda, but you don't need to be straight either. Given how weird these people already are, homophilia is not something that causes much worry. I mean, there are people who seriously claim to be a dragon trapped in a human body. Most common deviation pale in comparison.

You would expect a similar effect to hold true in a role playing game such as Dark Age of Camelot. I mean, people play at being a troll, or a dwarf, or an elf, or a lurikeen (basically miniature elves, 2-3 foot high). Casting spells is the order of the day, as well as fighting all sort of supernatural critters. What's an itsy bitsy X or Y chromosome in comparison?

By and large, it seems the players realize that male players play most female characters, and females play some male characters. But evidently some people still get the "eww!" reaction. This came to the fore on the Usenet group for the game (alt.games.dark-age-of-camelot). I had written a short report on the new cooperative server, and commented that I expected it to attract more female players. (Experience from other games show that women are more likely to prefer cooperative play over competitive, while with men it is the other way around. Hence the success of The Sims and EverQuest.) My innocent comment made one of the players complain bitterly about guys playing female characters. "It is gay!" And in later explanation of what was his problem: "Gays are gays, and should be shot."

That's just so wrong. The Holy Bible makes it clear that gays should not be shot, but taken outside town and pelted with stones till they die. The Holy Bible also makes it clear that he who is without sin can throw the first stone. Of course this does not just mean without homosexuality, but at the very least any of the sexual offenses, like coveting other people's wives and servants and such. Which raises the question why this person would be so upset over the female characters not being so female after all. What designs did he have on them since he even found this out? I usually never get to know the gender of the players, much less whether they are gay or bi or poly or furry. Highly suspicious! Perhaps we should take him outside town and pelt him with stones. Or at least pebbles. Or tomatoes.

***

On a vaguely related note, I have found that some of the players exclaim "That's so gay!" when something goes against them. Like when their class is not able to do something that another class can. It does not seem to have anything to do with sex at all, but is an expression of general annoyance. Instead of saying "That's so annoying!" they say "That's so gay!". This is doubly weird for us who are old enough to remember the original meaning of "gay": Happy, joyous, festive, elated. "The banquet hall was decorated in gay colors." Certainly you will find this meaning of the word if you read some of the older literature on Camelot.

On the other hand, in the old chivalry literature, women were not armswomen or paladins or mercenaries. Oh, it did happen that a woman posed as a man and did some bravery, but it was very exceptional and caused quite a stir. (Joan of Arc anyone?) The casual mingling of male and female soldiers in modern role playing games is completely out of character for the time period. Gender roles were strictly defined. Women stayed at home and embroidered scarves and such while the knights jousted and fought the occasional war. A woman in breeches was an abomination, and a knight would never fight a woman. Well, perhaps the occasional sorceress, but only if innocent lives depended on it.

Our society has seen a breakdown of traditional gender roles. In particular women become doctors, lawyers, even soldiers. Some churches even have female priests (priestesses?), God help us all. But there has not been so much of a movement the other way. Male home makers and for that matter nurses are still shunned because "it is so gay". It just goes to show the truth of the old saying: "Man is the measure of all things."

I guess I should count myself lucky to be born with the superior gender, even if I don't have a woman here to lord over... Being single is so gay! (Just kidding! ^_^*)