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[Silas Vitalia]

Right.

My point being developed characters with interesting personalities will trump any tropes. 

With Katrina specifically I've always seen her as a person first, with amorous relationships being a part of the character, not the relationships being the focal point of the character.   Space pilot that does many things, one of those things happens to be a relationship with another female.  Not LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LETS GET SEXY and nothing else going on.

[Synthia]

For most characters that happen to be lesbian, I have to have it pointed out for me to be aware of the fact.

[Aria Jenneth]

Wait. Andreus' player isn't actually Gay?

You know, I have no idea? If I ever did know, I've long forgotten.

Also, I'm not sure if you're just doing some light trolling or not, but we are posting in a thread Titled after the pejorative term for Fake Lesbians in RP. People are always judged for playing a gender they're not in RL, for playing a sexual orientation they're not in RL, and for doing both it's worse.

Not trolling. My sense of the issue is/was that "space lesbian" as a category was its own particular thing to a high degree for reasons discussed above. I play a female character in spite of the mild grief I occasionally get for doing so, and it hadn't really occurred to me that sexual orientation could be used to produce a sort of double gender-bend-- or, if it did, that that would be a cause for the bestowing of additional grief.

Interesting. I'm not sure it's that simple, but it could certainly be an ingredient. I'd need to think it over.

Do you think a woman playing a gay male would come in for the same kind of criticism? I'm not sure she would.

... RPers tend to treat lgbtq characters with a certain condescending "I think you're immature for playing your character like that. Why can't you play a Normal person like the rest of the adults?" attitude.
They assume that people aren't actually LGBTQ, and are just doing it for the ERP/attention/edginess/futuristic-Captain-Jack-Harkness characterization.

Just so.

The actual OOC homophobia doesn't bother me so much because the harder you hit on them, the funnier they get. (And then you blow them up.) Unlike with Roleplayers (with whom I am trying to have at least a semi-meaningful interaction), I don't give a fuck about talking with real homophobes. If they scream at me for being a cocksucking faggot, I just shrug and continue camping them into station or whatever. With RPers, it rankles, because you'll be having a conversation about ~stuff~ and in the back of your mind you know they're treating your character with far less respect than s/he probably deserves.

And also are making rotten assumptions. Yes, I can see how that would get on one's nerves.

...Actually, a lot of RPers do similar things with Goons, TESTies, and low/null pvpers who try to get into Role Play. It's a very similar "you're not a genuine character, you're someone's flight of fancy. Just a vessel for momentary entertainment. Kindly leave so that the REAL RPers can do their thing", whether the issue is LGBTQ or coming from Something Awful/Reddit/Amamake.

Yes, yes they do. I'm ambivalent about that, as well: the Goons, in particular, have historically made it a kind of policy to hold roleplayers in contempt. If they're unwelcome, it's because their cohorts have made a long-standing practice of disruptive behavior, trolling, and mockery.

A community under attack will raise barricades.

That doesn't mean that some, even many, might not have a genuine interest in RP, but the well's been poisoned. Perhaps that will change with time.

I've absolutely no idea if this is a critique of your earlier posts because reading through them, I've no idea why you and Katrina are disagreeing.

In terms of content, I think we're mostly not. The issue, as I see it (and I'm making an educated guess since she's bowed out, and I admire the willingness to do so), is that Katrina doesn't feel that the critics have a leg to stand on-- that the criticism of lesbian RP is invalid regardless of the reasoning behind it and should be denounced as such.

In declining to do so, I tread too close to taking their side.

[Silas Vitalia]

is that Katrina doesn't feel that the critics have a leg to stand on-- that the criticism of lesbian RP is invalid regardless of the reasoning behind it and should be denounced as such.

It depends entirely where the criticism is coming from.

It's not because they are playing gay characters. I could give a shit who they are involved with IC. There are many examples of well written characters in hetero and homosexual relationships that bring a lot to the table.

It's because this particular cross section of player characters (the capital Space Lesbian), are generally attention-seeking slashfic horndogs who shoe-horn their desire for erotic roleplay into any and all situations regardless of circumstance. IMO this deserves ridicule. 

Somone: "Hey how's it going, having a good day?"

/spacelesbian54419 whips their erotic lesbian lover slave pet into a frenzy and begins a vigerous makeout session in the public channel

[Aria Jenneth]

Silas, I think that it can be pretty well agreed by most that characters (heterosexual, homosexual, makes no difference) who go and get all exhibitionist with their sexuality in the rest of our faces are ... well, I'll leave the editorializing on the subject to you. Let's assume for the moment that a capitalized Space Lesbian fits into this category.

Reasonable minds can maybe differ on how best to approach Space Lesbians, but most of the complaints, here, are coming from people who are tired of having their characters, who are lesbian capsuleers, hence lesbians in space, treated as though they were Space Lesbians.

Even if we assume that rough treatment of Space Lesbians is fully justified, there's still an issue of unreliable pattern recognition (not necessarily yours, mind you) leading to blurry aim and justifiably angry players.

[Silas Vitalia]

Good points,

I think people unfairly in those cross-hairs should tell their critics ooc to take a long walk out of a short airlock. 

[Creep]

Do you think a woman playing a gay male would come in for the same kind of criticism? I'm not sure she would.

There's definitely the potential.

There's a phenomenon very similar to the male fetishization of lesbians that exists in some women (and is made veeeeery obvious on the internet, particularly in miscellaneous Fan Fiction and on Tumblr), which is that a number of women find gay men (particularly the effeminate ones) to be absolutely adorable, which can go from a sort of "lookit the fuzzy kitten" fascination, to "now I want him to do things with that guy, sans clothing" sexualization. (Of a particularly creepy note was the discovery that some of these women do this with men they know in real life, going so far as to imagine relationships for them with other men, and take pictures on the sly of these men together. ~tumblr~)

This makes the perception of being "SpaceGay" (a woman using a homosexual male character for sexual fantasies) a very plausible counterpart to SpaceLesbians.

...On the other hand they may just stick to writing erotic "slash" fanfiction starring Roden and Heth, so who knows?

[Makkal]

Even if half the female players picked gay male character, you wouldn't have as many of them as Space Lesbians though. The female population of EVE is just too small.

That being said people who don't spend that time and effort to develop themselves and appear out of thin air to wave their desires for space lesbian sexychats in everyone's face uninvited will be met with ridicule ammunition on full broadside from me.

Muchas gracias.

[Morwen Lagann]

For most characters that happen to be lesbian, I have to have it pointed out for me to be aware of the fact.

Morwen outed herself to Makkal the other day.

She didn't even blink an eye. She just closed them both and passed out without even noticing.

[Creep]

Even if half the female players picked gay male character, you wouldn't have as many of them as Space Lesbians though. The female population of EVE is just too small.

Hence why I said Potential. I did encounter the one, though, and I admit that I was the one who sneered from behind the computer screen and edged her male character out of the on-going discussion (In my defense, the character kept doing that squealing thing that people do in mangas/japanese anime.).

[BloodBird]

I believe this refers to the all common space virus which turns 95% of all female Eve RPers into lesbians.  Unless there's something in the water of New Eden its at a rate and level as to imply nearly the entire capsuleer female population is gay.

Which is super fine, but we'd imagine more of a balance perhaps. I'd imagine most of these cultures are past caring about  that sort of thing, of course.


If I had to put my finger on it I'd say it stems from the mostly male players behind female characters generally not interested in sexychats with other male characters, but rather other female characters.  I'd imagine if I'm a hetero man RPing a relationship I'd prefer to think about a space lady than some space man's dong in my face.   So to speak.

To each their own though of course!

Also the term is generally tossed about often when a 'new' female character shows up, is extremely sexual from the start, is a lesbian, and generally doesn't have much else going on beyond cruising for love in the chats, etc etc.

Wanted to chime in and add my own 0.02 isk, but I don't have to, it would be more-or-less a carbon-copy of the above. And such is basically what I've viewed 'space lesbos' as being - a derogatory term utilized for the type of characters that exist solely to run out some cyber-fantasy, to put it simple. Beyond that I could not care less who sleeps with who in an IC or OOC manner as it's none of my concern. I also avoid the topic in regards to my own characters by way of having my main married to an NPC (albeit a dead one at this point) and my other main getting her desires dealt with in her own way. (I have not actaully fleshed out what this is yet due to laziness in making the char-sheet.)

At least there isn't a massive proliferation of futas.

*shudder*

This can be arranged.

And I love the explanation Silas gave on straight males not wanting to ERP with males. Sounds pretty logical indeed.

In the same vein, it'd be 'logical' to assume that those people that make a fuss about 'space lesbians' have a problem with assertive, male-ish females that would pose a thread to them scoring or somesuch.

Elaborate. Are you saying that because someone fusses about 'Space lesbians' they are men insecure about themselves to the point of finding females portrayed as anything but squimish girls to be threatening, or that a lesbian is automatically are 'stronger' for being lesbians? Because that is a huge can of worms, as far as I'm concerned.

Also is Eve rp all about sex?

No, but when you observed the kind of wide-spread 'space lesbianism' that was described earlier (plenty of female toons being sexually engaged with other females to the point of seriously outnumbering any straight relationships, and treating their relationships as the only defining points of their toons) you might get the impression that EVE RP was just a huge load of cybering. Nothing could be further from the truth, obviously.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Elaborate. Are you saying that because someone fusses about 'Space lesbians' they are men insecure about themselves to the point of finding females portrayed as anything but squimish girls to be threatening, or that a lesbian is automatically are 'stronger' for being lesbians? Because that is a huge can of worms, as far as I'm concerned.

Neither nor. I'm saying if you hold it to be the 'logical' explanation that 'space lesbians' exist is that male players don't want a "space man's dong in [their] face", then it's just as 'logical' to say males that are complaining about space lesbians have a problem with strong, assertive females.

Which is to say, neither follows by any form of formal logic, at least. It's both a 'commonsense psychological' explanation at it's best and probably something worse.

[BloodBird]

• I want to have something nice to look at while I play my game. (yay women reduced to sex objects)

Somewhat out of context here but are you honestly saying that any male player that makes a female toon think like this? Or is it merely your assumption on the part of those who in your words want to play lesbians straight out of a porn flick?

95% of players are male.

Not true. I don't recall where I got it from, but there was apparently a study checking up on this that sat the bar more along the lines of 55% male 45% female for gamers in general. Assuming the same goes for EVE (I see no reason why it should not) then barely over half off all EVE players are male.

As for the rest, good post.

The thing is, as a recipient of the benefits of white and cisgender privilege, when someone points out that a term or phrase is offensive to them, I stop using it.  I might not 'comprehend what all the fuss is about' beforehand, but being informed that it's offensive is enough for me.  It does puzzle me when people (and this is more in reference to the sort of culture Jade raised rather than in reference to this thread) refuse to acknowledge that their language is offensive, demeaning and exclusionary, and insist on continuing to use it.

We don't only control our own reaction to things: we also control our own speech and behavior. 

'Getting offended' may not change anything: but informing others that we have been offended is a different matter. It puts out in the open the offensive nature of some language choices, which the possessors of privilege might not have considered.

Of course, that's no guarantee they'll stop using them: but it certainly removes any excuse of ignorance, and makes perfectly clear the attitudes of those who continue to choose to use terms they now know are offensive, hurtful, and exclusionary.

Agreed. People may be ignorant of the fact that their actions can be considered offensive, but once this is pointed out, they have no excuse not to take action. They might ignore it and move on, or they might do something about it.

As an example, some years ago I was on vacation with my kin in Thailand. We visited a religious site tended by a group of monks, among other places. A poster respectfully asked that we mind the beliefs of the monks and do simple things like cover our heads, etc. We did. In doing this we were in the minority among the tourist that were there at the time. We wondered why they didn't bother to do so, but mostly came to the consensus that it was not a very respectful thing to do.

I consider such a thing as being along the same lines as visiting someone's home, being asked to do or refrain from a specific action we might otherwise do, like going outside for our smoking-needs instead of inside, then ignoring the request anyway. It tends to speak badly of the one doing it.

Pardon moi for Necroing

Funny, I got the impression mostly that it was the low-sec pirates with their UNSTOPPABLE RAPE-TRAINSPWN-BUSSES that enforced the horny homo-men theme. I spent half a year in a merc-corp where the standard was a bit of harmless homo-related jokes mostly as self-defaming devices ala "the happy space men" jokes. Interestingly enough many of the members made a corp named just that after said corp stopped being active. We fought plenty of low-sec pirates in our time and this theme was rather prevalent. Regardless, I get what you mean. Least I think I do.

Elaborate. Are you saying that because someone fusses about 'Space lesbians' they are men insecure about themselves to the point of finding females portrayed as anything but squimish girls to be threatening, or that a lesbian is automatically are 'stronger' for being lesbians? Because that is a huge can of worms, as far as I'm concerned.

Neither nor. I'm saying if you hold it to be the 'logical' explanation that 'space lesbians' exist is that male players don't want a "space man's dong in [their] face", then it's just as 'logical' to say males that are complaining about space lesbians have a problem with strong, assertive females.

Which is to say, neither follows by any form of formal logic, at least. It's both a 'commonsense psychological' explanation at it's best and probably something worse.

Now I get you. I think :O
[/list]

[Aria Jenneth]

95% of players are male.

Not true. I don't recall where I got it from, but there was apparently a study checking up on this that sat the bar more along the lines of 55% male 45% female for gamers in general. Assuming the same goes for EVE (I see no reason why it should not) then barely over half off all EVE players are male.

Um. Your assumption, sadly, is in error. Jade's statistic is correct as of a couple years back, anyway. I remember seeing something about the proportion increasing, however.

I've introduced Eve to a couple of women I've known, including my wife. They've found it either too cutthroat (culture) or counter-intuitive and bothersome (interface) (this is what put my wife off; she loves the culture), and chose not to stick around; all the Eve players I know locally are guys.

[Iwan Terpalen]

The more PvP-focused games tend to be boys' clubs almost exclusively. The last I heard, for example, 96% of LoL players are male. From what I've seen personally, we might be a little better off, but certainly not by much.