The Gay Geek (May 21, 2008)

They've got style, that's what all those pics say:
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Johanna Draper Carlson was holding a contest for a male version of the Adam Hughes Women of the DC Universe poster that was distributed at the NY Comic Con. Well the entries are in and we have a winner:

First prize went to Jeff Hebert, who I thought nicely mixed personality (though I guess that's the Levitz-era Braniac 5) and sexiness:

Left to right: Oliver Queen, Hal Jordan, Querl Dox, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Wally West, John Stewart

I was most partial to Johnny Zito’s entry, which finished second. By duplicating the "dress white" dynamic of Hughes’ poster, I thought it worked best as a companion piece:

Left to right: John Stewart, Hal Jordan , Ryan Choi, Oliver Queen, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Krypto, Barry Allen, Dick Grayson, John Henry Irons, Arthur Curry

If you liked those, be sure to check out all of the entries and to get to see larger version of the first and second place finishers.

Being a "gay" gamer:
Stories of people describing themselves as "gay" in gaming communities and thereby violating that community’s Terms of Service rules has come in many flavors. World of Warcraft ridiculously found a subscriber in violation of their sexual harassment policies for announcing her LGBT friendly guild. A later, more ambivalence-inspiring situation arose when City of Heroes came in for a bit of controversy because it doesn’t allow character names with “gay” in it. The word “gay” is also zapped by the game’s chat censor to prevent players from using the term in a way that disparages gays.

Now Microsoft is getting into the action, having required an X-Box Live player who played as “theGAYERgamer” to change his gamertag. An X-Box Live representative explained that the tag violates the TOS for “sexual innuendo”, adding that “TheStraighterGamer” and TheHeterosexualgamer” would also be subject to disciplinary action. (Though a commenter at GayGamer.net claims that a "StraightGamer" tag does exist.)

I’m not sure which part of that response infuriates me more. By saying that identifying yourself as gay is a “sexual innuendo” reveals a view that sees homosexuality as just a kinky fetish instead of a part of the human condition (to paraphrase the incredibly well chosen words of Jon Stewart), reminding me of that “rate your blog” webtool that initially declared use of “gay” as adult content.

Meanwhile, the claim that gamertags declaring the player’s heterosexuality would be similarly disciplined strikes me as either disingenuous or clueless to why minorities feel the need to proudly claim ownership of their identity.

I mean, let’s take a look at the Kotaku comment thread on the topic, where you can find comments like these: