Short: Why is everyone so against soldier being gay

Story Discussion
41

As I said, I understand that point, but it just isn’t a one that should be in the first place. It never should be seen differently, and btw that’s also by nature, nothing unnatural

42

And thus those people should be completely ignored because their opinions stem from homophobia and ignorance.

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43

Why do you care if he’s gay?

44

Nah, you can only change things with dialogue. The problem is they are not used to it and see It as strange and unnatural. It’s a change, no one likes changes :grin:

45

Not how it works. If we only allowed “qualified” people to voice their opinion it would be an echo chamber.

46

Exactly, still it’s not a problem blizzard did this, and actually I don’t think they did it for pr. It’s hurting more then helping :joy:

47

Of course we can attempt to educate them, but some people are too stubborn. Those people should not have any value attached to their ignorant ideologies.

We can allow them perfectly fine. But we shouldn’t listen to them, because they have nothing of substance to say.

48

Even if we assume people are telling the truth when they say they don’t care that a hero’s gay (“It just seems so forced!”), what they were looking for wasn’t a real-life representation of a homosexual. They wanted a caricature they could point at and say, “THAT’S gay.”

Making Soldier gay doesn’t give them that. In fact it challenges their perception of the real world as it is: Gay people are just as normal as anybody else. This goes against preconceived notions that gay men must be effeminate or “un-manly”, or have some sort of clear identifier… Which, let’s face it, simply doesn’t exist in real life. If anything it really highlights the sheer ignorance in society in regards to human sexuality as a whole.

A lot of people want to hide behind the visage of “It seems so forced!”, but this is a red herring and an easy double-bind: The red herring obviously being that it doesn’t have anything to do with his sexuality at all, but still wants to latch on to something to criticize regardless of whether or not that reason itself is actually credible. The double-bind being that there is literally no way to introduce this character’s sexuality without it, in some way, being “forced” as sexuality itself is typically irrelevant to the plot. The simple logic of it is this: If Soldier’s sexuality is irrelevant to the plot and is never announced, he is therefore presumed to be straight… The conclusion to be drawn here is simple: People can’t be happy with a gay character unless they never know that he’s gay… In essence, they want homosexuality to remain invisible.

It’s very easy to tie Soldier’s sexuality to the plot, however: One could argue that Ana, Torb or Widow being straight is relevant, and that’s true: Torb and Ana have children that are relevant to the game, and Widow’s past relationship is relevant to the plot. There is a very clear, relevant link to Soldier that ties his sexuality to this plot as well: He’s a Soldier who is solemnly looking back on a past he’s struggling to overcome, and his professional life as a soldier isn’t the only part of his identity. He is, and always has been, human. He had a personal life just like anybody else could be expected to, and it’s perfectly sensible that he grieves that loss in a very similar way to how he grieves the loss of his career as a soldier. It makes perfect sense that he can look back on, and mourn, the life he used to have. Past lovers included.

The simple fact of the matter is that people want to use “It seems so forced!” as a convenient rationale for their anger, but it’s a blatant lie. How do I know? Because the only difference between Soldier looking at a photo of a woman and a photo of a man is merely your expectation… and can you honestly say you would be reacting this way if it were a woman?

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49

That’s exactly my point in 1 post, just different written. The people don’t accept others being gay but not different to them

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50

So now that he is Gay, is it still “Dad” or “Daddy”?

51

It was daddy before, so

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53

There were some pretty strong hints that Ana and 76 were/might’ve been a thing. Now it’s all a “Uh, nevermind”.

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54

The reason people are mad about it has nothing to do with “homophobia.” They think (whether they are right or wrong we don’t know) that blizzard is just trying to use the LGBT community as a way to get more popularity because Overwatch is dying. I’m not saying they’re right, I just think this is what most people think.

One relevant example is that when xQc saw that they made soldier gay, a gay guy donated to him and said he hated that Blizzard would do this because he didn’t think they actually cared about the LGBT community and that they were just using it as a PR stunt to gain popularity.

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55

Show me them. I always thought it was more of a really good friends thing. You know women and men don’t always need to love eachother :joy:

56

Even though it seemingly came out of nowhere, I like that he’s gay because it shows that you don’t have to have the stereotypical “gay personality” to be gay. It’s only pushing an agenda, in my opinion, when they make characters for the sole purpose of being gay.

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57

Its not your fault that some very vocal gay people play the victim and make the whole LGBTQ+ community look bad. We like people like you, we don’t like the “mUh InClUsIoN” people.

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58

S’called hints for a reason :stuck_out_tongue:

59

I could care less who is banging who. I am against wasting time on something so trial when the games lore is in the current state.

If I am only going to get 20 pages of lore a year please don’t waste one of those pages to tell me Mercy is banging Genji. There is more important information I want to know

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60

That’s nice from you, sadly the majority thinks differently

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61

I would say that it shouldn’t matter … it does. Being a person who is a member of the LGBT community is very much outside of “normal”. Certainly not bad or lesser than anyone else, but definitely not normal. In the US, statistical reporting has less than 5% of the population identifying outside of heterosexual normative values. It is very much outside of the normal parameters for commonly discussed and understood sexuality. It is very much a deviance from what the majority of this games community would expect. It is very much something that feels like it was inserted into the game, less as character growth, as pandering to people starving for appropriate representation.

People of all orientations, races, religions need to have the chance to be represented. There are ways not to do it. I’d argue that doing it in such a way that it generates quantifiable animosity and anger is not the way to do it. Don’t pull rugs from people (rightfully or not) and act confused when they’re mad they fell.

3 Likes