The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is hosting a talk about homophobia online and in video games this weekend. Xbox Live’s head of policy and enforcement, Stephen Toulouse, will be on hand to hear what they have to say.
Toulouse is going to the talk at Electronic Arts, hoping to help Microsoft figure out what the hell to do about their orientation policy. As it is now, gamers aren’t allowed to list any information regarding orientation in their Gamertag or their profile. Toulouse is open aboutthe fact that it’s not the best policy in the world.
“The overall policy we have today is that the expression of sexual orientation in a Gamertag or text field is not allowed,” he told Kotaku. “That doesn’t matter what the orientation is.”
From that you might think he supports the policybut he’s since had a change of heart.
“We recognize that the policy is not just, that some communities feel like they are being targeted. Our challenge is how [to fix that]. We are working on that now.”
Toulouse’s team found that 98 percent of the uses of the word “gay” on Live was pejorative. How shocking.
The best part of the whole thing is that Toulouse’s team is trying to find a way for LGBT folks to identify themselves without encouraging hate speech. I don’t know when they were last online, but certain racially themed hate speech type words get thrown around a lot.
“I don’t know what shape or form it will take,” Toulouse said, “but yes we will go back and figure out how to make it work.” I sure hope so, buy realistically speaking, I don’t think this one has a clean fix.
Source: Kotaku
