empathy towards fellow man? Who said i was a man? and why lack of empathy? Idc tbh. I couldn’t care less if i’m called “bias” for an opinion I have on MY relation to a character and how it makes ME feel?
…nobody said you were a man.
“Fellow man” is an expression to refer to other human beings.
Empathy is about your ability to understand someone from outside your own viewpoint, but instead their pov. By saying you can’t relate to characters different than yourself and the things you like, you’re saying you don’t have empathy for gay characters.
Which is a bias worth examining, imo.
3 Likes
So just cause this made me feel alienated to the character and reduced our similarities I have no empathy? Yea ok. Cool.
I liked Tracer(generally i like all the OW Characters) her being gay ADDED to my like. Sorry you like her less because of it but really, in the words of Spider-man, you should reexamine your personal biases. I mean, what happens when a real life person you may like/respect and feel a connection(maybe said person is the same ethnicity/gender as you) suddenly says they are gay? Are you gonna respect them less?
If we say we like her because she is our favorite gay character or whatever, it is due to the fact gay characters are that rare. At best bisexual characters are probably more popular due to the fact you could ignore the bisexual part in you head.
1 Like
Ok so i’m a girl right? If you mean SMASHING the hell out of tracer is the problem here? no. It’s not bias. im just saying i relate less to her god damn. Why are you people taking it out of context?
You relate less, other people relate more. A segment of the population who generally has few if any characters tailored to them. Ultimately making her gay was a good decision and Symbolises the best Overwatch can be. Sorry you are colateral damage but until the world is alot fairer for LGBT+ be glad this is the worse you can end up feeling over the matter.
3 Likes
You also got to understand. That is not that you get no representation. It’s just that you guys are a REALLY small minority. and that is not because the world isn’t fair. It’s just that more people that are straight bought the game so it’s expected for them to relate less. But again i used to model and for marketing I had to “fake” being gay. And I felt trapped. Maybe that’s a bit why I hate that they did this cause I related so much and this just reminds me of that and it’s like “It’s hunting me down” feeling. Plus i wish some people would just be glad and say thanks and stop rubbing it down straight peoples faces. (I know it’s not all of you guys of course) but when i went in twitter it was full of people like that.
Lets assume only 0.01%(beyond conservative)of the entire world is Gay. At 6 billion(conservative) people that comes out to 60 million people, larger than the population of some of the countries of the world.
So? The number of Haitians who bought the game are probably less than that and yet I dont see you making a fuss over them having an OW hero.
You assume that someone lgbt asked you to do that. If anything you should direct your ire at straight executives who would ask you to do that.
5 Likes
Considering empathy is about your ability to relate to the character, and you have said you can’t, yes. You don’t have empathy for the character because she’s gay and you’re not. And that’s causing you to make threads asking for the limiting of the creativity of the authors and trying to take away a type of hero reveal that was very meaningful for a lot of players.
From reading your other replies it sounds like you’re projecting your frustrations about your past onto these characters. I won’t touch that with a ten foot pole other than to suggesr that you ask yourself if you’re maybe being a bit unfair towards gay characters because of that experience. And try to put yourself in the shoes of the gay people, or the writers, when they see what you’re saying.
6 Likes
Bisexuality isn’t “half-straight/half-gay, pick the part you like.” It’s its own distinct sexuality with its own distinct issues and specific situations that a bisexual person goes through during their lifetime. This idea that everything can be solved by just shoving the bi label onto every character is biphobia. It’s complete lack of understanding what bisexuality is, it’s completely devaluing it as its own sexuality that causes literal harm to bisexual people and it’s just plain ignorant.
You have an issue with women who love women. That’s a problem you should solve unless you want to continue appearing bigoted.
You’re projecting your trauma onto people that have nothing to do with that trauma.
I’m sorry this happened to you, as it’s absolutely awful and probably falls under sexual harassment by your employers. For your own good, I recommend that you work on dealing with that trauma in whatever way you can and I sincerely hope that you’ll work through that successfully. Otherwise you’re not only hurting yourself, you’re putting others at risk as well (what if your best friend comes out as gay one day? Or your own child? Would you not “relate” to them anymore?). Traumas suck, but they can and should be dealt with, primarily for your own sake.
12 Likes
It’s not ire. I don’t hate anyone. And what I stated previously was my response to you saying the world is unfair to LGBTQ people which is not, is just that there are not a lot of you guys. and there are a GOOD amount of LGBT characters in media. But of course you won’t completely take my words and listen to what im actually trying to say. I won’t continue this if this is the case with you.
You have entire countries ready to kill you just for not being straight. And many others who dont immediately want to kill you would do their best to margnalize you and not give you right/the same dignity they would show others.
No one said their arent. But the numbers are few and far between. Hell, I can count on one hand how many lesbian characters are the main protagonist in a video game. And that includes tracer(who technically is not the lead of OW)
6 Likes
there aren’t that many of us bc str8s keep killing us either with things like murder and many people that would b open are afraid of it bc of family or the fact in most countries around the world it’s either explicitly illegal or implicitly illegal bc there aren’t protections that prevent the homophobic population from acting on homophobia.
In 1990, nearly twice as many Americans had died of AIDS as had died in the Vietnam War. AIDS, the disease previously known as the one as “gay cancer” or the more formal term, “gay-related immune deficiency” or GRID. The fact that it primarily impacted gay men was the sole reason why then-president of the United States didn’t even breathe a word of the pandemic in his own country. That sounds like it wasn’t very fair to gay people, but that’s not now, is it? That’s back in the 80’s and 90’s.
What about how in the 90s and early 2000s, Clinton and Bush added all sorts of explicitly anti-gay policies, either in DOMA or in don’t ask don’t tell, when we were young. Things we heard about when we were kids, that had us associate the word gay with being bad, abnormal, and wrong? But that’s then and this is now, right? we’re fair to gay people now right?
Are we really so few? We’re missing a generation of gay people, half a million deaths to a disease that disproportionately impacted gay men, and many are closeted to their loved ones, in denial, or wouldn’t report such a thing. The youngest generation reports that it’s far more common to be not-straight and not-cis than to be both.
Are we really that fair to gay people? Even in the US, there are no explicit nationwide protections so that landlords can’t kick you out for being gay. That you can’t be denied service for being gay. There are parties trying to remove protections, humiliating bathroom bills targeting the most vulnerable parts of our communities, trans kids in school. There’s a case going to the supreme court now, to be able to fire gay people on the basis of being gay. are we fair to gay people?
I hope that the courts will say yeah. but my gut worries.
4 Likes
I’m sorry you feel this way, but also, if you find it hard to relate/ have empathy for someone else who was revealed to be gay… I think you’ve got some issues that are more personal, and not so much the design team’s fault lmao.
6 Likes
I’m sorry… but what is personal bias, if not how you feel personally about something?
Also, the inability to relate to someone else is pretty much lack of empathy, or apathy, because you cannot put yourself in their shoes. So your post does suggest a lack of empathy for people different to you.
People are picking up on what you posted, reading your words you gave us, and responding to what you said. We don’t know what you left out, but we are responding to what you did say and what is there.
1 Like
If it’s based on numbers I guess the game gotta add A LOT of chinese heroes. We lack a bunch of indians too.
It’s good to live in a country where this kind of subject is well accepted, but a good deal of countries have it very different. Specially countries that are very religious make it very hard for the LGBT community.
This kind of representation is very important for those minorities (and not only when it comes to sexuality, but ethnicity, disorders and others.) It helps people to be more open to their point of view since they have “someone” they know in this position and to relate to.
Of course, I’m against when for example they change the original source for the sake of it (like have been happening a lot in movies), but in OW this is the official.
It’s not that you lost your representation (which I’m guessing of being British), it’s just another portion of the community that got some representation too.
3 Likes
Agreed.
Also, interesting side note: Heard a statistic recently, but I don’t have the source and I don’t know how legit it is. But it said that given a couple of decades, there will be more PC Gamers in China than the amount of people that live in the USA. Funny to think about! I do know currently that there is a huge market in China for gaming.
1 Like
(Sorry, I meant for my post I just made to be a reply to this post. Whoops!)
im not saying they should change her, im just expressing how it made me feel. That’s it.
Nice troll post about something that happened almost 3 years ago lmaooo you had me there for a moment I will admit!