LGBT in Overwatch Mega(y)thread šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ

This thread is like 90% LGBT people. When you look at the general populationā€¦

Also, the LGBT characters have been handled pretty poorly. If they wonā€™t add more, then they need to do something with Soldier being gay, and Tracerā€™s relationship. You donā€™t get to make an announcement and leave it at that.

And FURTHERMORE, nobody gives a rats buttocks about percentages and numbersā€¦ until conveniently it comes to gay people. Just love to show all these receipts about how many gay people there are in the world approximately.

And everyone who just LOOOOOVES percentages, never applies the same rule to media that doesnā€™t feature ANY LGBT characters. ā€˜ā€™ Oh, this game, tv shows, whatever has 0% LGBT characters despite the world having around 5% LGBT people? Thatā€™s fine! BUT THAT VIDEO GAME HAS MORE THAN 5% LGBT CHARACTERS, THAT IS AN AGENDA, ITā€™S NOT NORMAL, THINK OF THE GENERAL POPULATION! THE PERCENTAGES, THINK OF THE PERCENTAGES!!! ā€˜ā€™

I just. Okay. Yeah. Woo.

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Biggest pet peeve. It literally never comes up unless itā€™s about gay people (sometimes about minorities in one specific country). Suddenly everyone is a statistician and knows the exact numbers for identities that have historically notoriously been subdued, ignored and erased. Those statistics sure are relevant!

Good catch, I never consciously noticed this, but yes, this exactly. Media has no LGBT characters? Doesnā€™t matter. People whining about statistics will never show up and say itā€™s unrealistic. This is especially a pet peeve of mine when it comes to certain historical media. Your antiquity is all white and straight? Hm. Resident statisticians are nowhere to be found. On the contrary, they rear their heads with their elementary school textbooks from 1957 and claim itā€™s forced pandering. I legit once saw someone complaining about a gay couple in the TV show Spartacus. Jinkies.

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Itā€™s just dumb.

Combine this percentages bullocks with people saying ā€˜ā€™ why do gay people need gay characters, I can personally relate to any character ever, doesnā€™t matter what sexuality or gender, why canā€™t gay people do that too! ā€˜ā€™ it just gets so much worse. ā€˜ā€™ I can relate to anything, except a fictional world where there are more than one or two LGBT characters present ā€˜ā€™

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Yep.

Not to mention, weā€™ve already learned to relate to non-gay characters. Like, I can relate to any person on Earth because representation according to my exact specifications is virtually non-existent. I hate this idea that gay people are just incapable of watching things without gay people in it when weā€™ve been doing it for decades. Our point is that weā€™d like this to change so weā€™re also included.

Itā€™s not that difficult to understand.

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All of us grew up with watching soap operas with straight romances, animations with straight couples, video games with straight characters. And we still do it to this date.

But now that we are older, and a lot of us have accepted ourselves, we seek for something different, especially as itā€™s much more relevant to our lives now. The lack of content that speaks directly to us is so minimal though, so we want more obviously. That doesnā€™t mean we canā€™t empathize with straight people or straight romances, just that the constant stream of heteronormativity is actually not that great, and we can now see why it isnā€™t so.

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i think its a pity gays get all the attention what about bisexuals i.e people who arnā€™t so bloody picky :stuck_out_tongue:

:woman_shrugging:

I think you should think about this post once more if you want to present a legitimate concern.

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my point is Gays get suprisingly over represented in media while you hardly see any bisexuals like everā€¦ except for captain Jack Harknessā€¦

Thatā€™s about the only example i can think ofā€¦
Iā€™d also argue that bisexuals are probably more common as i think a lot are somewhere between gay and straightā€¦ i.e making them very much bi

Iā€™m guessing itā€™s just much easier to represent the idea of LGBT with monosexual gay characters, because I think it all boils down to seeing same sex relationships in media, not specific orientations.

I also think thereā€™s the stereotype and stigma of a bisexual being unable to be content with just one gender or partner, like a character canā€™t be bisexual unless they date both genders in whatever franchise they are in, and thatā€™s definitely a shame.

But, you say that bisexuality is more common. I can see that that might be true, but itā€™s also factually researched that a clear majority of bisexual people date the opposite sex. So on that regard, would I be happy with majority of LGBT representation being bisexual people in opposite sex relationships? Hell to the effing no.

When you say that bisexuals need representation, which they do, Iā€™m extremely vary of companies, writers, artists, cashing in on ā€˜ā€™ progressiveness ā€˜ā€™ by adding bisexuals to their products
a) who donā€™t ever have same sex relationships and never imply having had them
b) who do have or had same sex relationships but they arenā€™t anywhere on par with their opposite sex relationships in terms of importance and functionality
c) who donā€™t even mention their attraction to the same sex anywhere in the product, but their writers announce their bisexuality regardless of that

Iā€™m not trying to erase someoneā€™s sexuality, but Iā€™m still vary of this kind of phenomenon happening. And I think a lot of writers acknowledge these things they need to look out for when writing bisexuals, and opt out from writing bisexuals, especially if they are characters whom they have a specific love interest for, instead of several.

All in all I think itā€™s a mix of outdated stereotypes and stigmas, as well as the ease of representing same sex relationships with monosexual characters.

But I have to say, that you imply that gays are overrepresented, I donā€™t really see it. When saying gays are overrepresented, you say we donā€™t need more, and that we should be content. I donā€™t like that. I think itā€™s more fair to say we need more bisexual representation, not less gay representation.

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i meant in the LGBT representation that exist not generally.
Also i like shamelessly flirty bisexual characters.

as for representation in general in media i think companies should not try to be progressive or anythingā€¦ they should just look at the black and white fact about the actual statistics about gender identity and have exactly as many gays and bi heroā€™s as you would statistically expect no more no less but no pressure to specifically have a hero be one orientation just to meet that quote more slot them in as time goes when it makes narrative sense to do soā€¦

corporations should really stay the h-e-hocky-sticks out of politics all roundā€¦

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Oh, itā€™s another one who loves percentages and statistics. Well I hate math so I donā€™t.

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i just think its a good rule of thumb for them to be inclusive without needing to make it political.

Basically if the game is based on the real world then it should follow real worlds trends unless you have a specific narrative reason for it not tooā€¦

I am not particularly enamored by statistics i just find them handy in this case.

Also now i am starting to think about that gay bomb the US military researched lol X3 (the fact that this was a thing tells you all you want to know about US military spending(also that hte people in charge had never headt of alexander the great))

A game can be based on the real world in itā€™s world setting, but thereā€™s no rule in which it needs to be based on real life statistics. I mean come on thereā€™s weird japanese dragon magic, a talking gorilla andā€¦ you know what, this should be clear enough.

Gay characters arenā€™t political by default, either.

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there are narative explinations for most of thatā€¦ the gay bomb could be a narrative explenation if you wanted a game with unnaturally many gaysā€¦ assuming the soviet union had the same bizzar idea and there was an arms race lolā€¦

Or if you did want a world without gays possibly someone could have made a virus tarteing a gay gene (which ironically would have proven that it was a born in thing making their bigotry kinda pointless)

my point is that you if you represent a world without gays at all then youā€™ve made a choice to hide them away and pretend they dont existā€¦ and that is politicalā€¦

But you can have a narrative where they dont exist if you have a good narrative reason why

I donā€™t really get the concept of unnaturally many gays. I think we should probably leave from this thread because there are so many gays here it upsets the balance of everything. I think we need to spread to other threads so us gays donā€™t occupy more than 5% of something, not more, not less. Otherwise itā€™s POLITICAL OH FUK.

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statistically diffrent from a world where the US and USSR did not gay bomb each others i meanā€¦ i took that as a example of a wierd narrative where you could deviate from the statistical likely rate you find verious sexual orientationsā€¦

as it is now overwatch has the expected number for the ammount of heros it has currently.

unless your going to have some fraction of a hero be gay X3

what baffles me is where they even get the 5% number from. Itā€™s impossible to have an accurate census on how much of the human population is LGBTQ, and even if it were, in the alternate universe where being LGBTQ wasnā€™t stigmatized in general and outright criminalized in other countries, thereā€™s the gaping problem of the fact that the LGBTQ population took a huge hit because of AIDS and therefore have a huge likelihood of being underrepresented in affected age ranges.

So even assuming that statistics was from a reputable survey (already an amusing assumption on the forums) there are going to be problems with the resulting data (closeted due to stigma, dead due to poverty, alcoholism/drug addiction, domestic violence, AIDS, all problems which more heavily impact the LGBTQ community).

Numbers arenā€™t perfect, and theyā€™re not infallible, and again, why are some numbers so important (as others have pointed out) while others are negligible. Europe only accounts for about 10% of the worldā€™s population but there are way more than 3 europeans in the game of overwatch, arenā€™t there? the US has less than 5% of the total world population and there are 4 americans in the game, not one or two.

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the concentration of Americans in overwatch is explainableā€¦ i mean if you look at the us military it dwarfs everything else so if they did back overwatch they would likely want a big involvement.

Also i agree the statistics are a bit tricky but the point is to try to more ore less get the world right without having any intentional dependency but not go totally over board just to appeal to SJW types or any some such crap.

Just at least a reasonable approximation of what you would normally see in real life.

The that is how you stay politically neutral which i think is where companies should stay.

No pandering to either side, no bribing politicans with camptaing donations or offers of work after their political career or what everā€¦

Just normality where they dont specifically name a narative choice to move away from normalityā€¦

they can even had a world without gays but then they would have to have a pretty damn good reason why that was in the narrative.

I am not saying ayone needs to be limited in their story telling but companies risk much by overly representing peopleā€¦

To little and frankly it comes of as a statementā€¦ to much as it feels like virtue signaling and corporations donā€™t have virtuesā€¦ they are inherently psychopathicā€¦ they care for profit nothing else and when they try to pretend to be your friend that is pure deceptionā€¦ fiduciary responsibility leaves no room for friendshipā€¦

Blizzard is not your friend or ally they are a company whoā€™s services and product you enjoyā€¦ we must never forget that

Also companies are and have never been people other then in a purely legalistic fashion that relates to liability and suchā€¦

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What an odd thing to say. It just shows how weā€™re not really viewed as a ā€œrealā€ thing. Instead, weā€™re just percentages people read about in articles.

Truth is, first of all, taking a random sample of 30 people from all over the world could have zero LGBT people and it could also have 30 LGBT people. The randomness factor is natural. It could be any number of LGBT people in a group of 30 and not a single number of it would be ā€œunnatural,ā€ unless you went out to specifically include exact percentages (and harmicist already explained why itā€™s impossible to really tell how many LGBT people there are).

Second of all, LGBT flock together. Even unconsciously. Personal anecdotal evidence, but in my smaller circle of best friends (people Iā€™ve known for 8+ years), thereā€™s 8 people total (me included) and 6 of them are various letters of LGBT. When we became friends, nobody knew anyoneā€™s sexuality.

In my wider circle of friends and acquaintances, thereā€™s around 7-8 more people and around 4-5 more LGBT individuals (that I am currently aware of, at least). This isnā€™t an exception either, as much as it is anecdotal evidence.

So basically, any number of LGBT heroes in the Overwatch roster is completely acceptable and thereā€™s nothing unnatural in it. No matter how you spin it, no matter which excuses and percentages you take, it can be any number because of the factor of randomness, a varied cast of heroes from all over the world, many of which are simply ā€œrandomā€ and also a futuristic SF setting where things obviously arenā€™t as they are right now.

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