New Banner and Discord Logo

[Gentoo]

Recently the Site Banner and Discord Logo were changed to (I assume) celebrate Pride Month. While this is a good thing, I think it needs to be reverted for the following reasons:

 

-There are no formal rules to protect players on the servers from homophobia and bigotry. While there are rules in place against harassment, they require it to be reported by s player, or a repeated history of harassment for admins to take action. I have been called a faggot, twink, and glizzy gobbler on the servers with no interjection from admins active on the server.

 

-There is a multitude of openly homophobic and transphobic staff in the community. Staff will openly use homophobic slurs in the discord, on the forums, and make 'gay jokes' that are harmful to the LGBTQ community.

 

-While the community has donated to several causes in charities in the past, not once has an effort been made to raise funds for LGBTQ charities or foundations.

 

For these reasons, it almost appears that the community is merely taking the piss out of Pride Month (or is just tone deaf), which is wildly disrespectful.

[Kieran]

fax

[Euro]

I completely agree but I don't think we should remove the banner but rather do more to address the issues that you've listed 

[Steven.]

While yes there are no formal rules to protect players from any form of homophobia or bigotry against players there would be no way for any admin to know that you were offended by what was being said. I know that if you were to complain about being potentially harassed due to your sexual preferences or identification an admin would step in and handle it properly. 

 

If you have an issue against who is saying openly homophobic remarks and jokes then you are just as responsible for not speaking out against it or trying to take some form of action against the staff by reaching out to any IA+ staff member about your issues you have against what is being said. 

 

If you feel we should do more as a community and try and raise funds for awareness for the LGBTQ+ community then I'm all for it, I suggest reaching out to @Mace and he'll definitely go up the chain and mention it to people who have the ability to do such things. 

I wouldn't necessarily say we're trying to "take the piss out of" Pride Month because of some bad apples, I think just because some douche bags make some remarks doesn't mean we shouldn't change it. I personally don't have an issue with it being changed at all. 

[thuxys]

Can’t believe it took a simple color change of a logo to talk about this serious situation in the community . That’s more of a reason to keep the banner and logo . Thank you gentoo 

[20 scrolls]

Most people who use these "slurs" are not actually homophobic (apart from a few exceptions). There are other ways of showing that we support LGBTQ+, which is what we did with the banners. Don't know why you suddenly started caring after we changed our logo in pride month.

[BoM]

51 minutes ago, Gentoo said:

Recently the Site Banner and Discord Logo were changed to (I assume) celebrate Pride Month. While this is a good thing, I think it needs to be reverted for the following reasons:

 

-There are no formal rules to protect players on the servers from homophobia and bigotry. While there are rules in place against harassment, they require it to be reported by s player, or a repeated history of harassment for admins to take action. I have been called a faggot, twink, and glizzy gobbler on the servers with no interjection from admins active on the server.

 

-There is a multitude of openly homophobic and transphobic staff in the community. Staff will openly use homophobic slurs in the discord, on the forums, and make 'gay jokes' that are harmful to the LGBTQ community.

 

-While the community has donated to several causes in charities in the past, not once has an effort been made to raise funds for LGBTQ charities or foundations.

 

For these reasons, it almost appears that the community is merely taking the piss out of Pride Month (or is just tone deaf), which is wildly disrespectful.

Yeah the banner and logo are not changing for the month of June. End of story. It seems some others have relatively brought up my points, but I'll re-iterate anyways.

 

While there are no rules specifically saying "don't be homophobic", there is the harassment rule which can and has been enforced from multiple different directions numerous times for racism, homophobic statements, sexism, pedophilia, etc etc etc. Any and all harassment will and always has been addressed if its brought up. We have chosen to not outright ban several words that some might find discomforting to try and keep a balance among all players, for example some who don't find 'fag or faggot' to be such a grand insult if its not being used to target someone. Again, this was a past decision that seemed to work with our playerbase, and we don't make changes to ban words lightly and potentially alienate people who simply see it differently, so it is definitely something we can revisit with a lot of community input required.

 

As for your specific situation, there is nothing saying you specifically have to make some formal report to deal with a player harassing you. If you actively are being harassed and telling someone to stop or that you don't like them doing that and they are being socially disruptive (this is important you can't simply say someone is harassing you by existing or playing the gamemode) and an admin is in there they are more than free to act. You are also welcome to message an admin in game or out of it stating that it makes you uncomfortable and they are also free to say something. You were a staff member for a long time so you have some knowledge of this, but maybe you've forgotten it...idrk. Anyways we have plenty of things in place to handle this, and just like real life you pretty well have to speak up for yourself and at least tell someone with authority in order for the gears to start turning. We are not mind readers.

 

I'm going to say one simple thing on any homophobic or transphobic staff members: r e p o r t - t h e m. We don't do hearsay, we don't do public proclamations of wrongdoing, we don't do 3rd party telling of a story. If you think we have this issue among our staff then fucking tell us...we are not all seeing, we (again) are not mind readers. 

 

As for this last part, we've done like 4 charities total I think? and 2 of them were for roux....using this as some sort of point to remove the changes to our logo and banner is absolutely ridiculous.

 

I think you brought up some good points as to things we should absolutely improve around here, but to imply that we should revert the changes because of it is working against the system completely. You're completely right that in the past and even currently we are not perfect and people might say or do things around here that are unwelcoming to the LGBTQ+ community, but it doesn't mean we are unable or unwilling to change. We initially decided to change the discord logo in support of pride month, and subsequently decided we like not only the supporting of those members but also the idea that we could show we are in fact willing to draw that change from the community. We are not tone deaf or blind to what has gone on in the community in the past, and some that still goes on today....so please don't take it as such. That's all I'm going to say on the matter.

 

Some food for thought:

 

 

 

 

 

The way I see it either this whole thread is bullshit, which means I'd be keen to just ban your ass off the forums for a while...or you too are in fact looking to bring change. Hopefully, similarly to your situation...you can understand how our past does not necessarily reflect how we are trying to be and act as we look forward.

 

As I stated previously, the changes made will stay in effect for the month of June, however you guys are free to discuss the situation as a whole as long as it stays civilized and does not devolve into finger pointing. I think this is a healthy discussion to have and exactly what a change like this should bring out from the community.

[Gentoo]

51 minutes ago, balls. said:

 

If you have an issue against who is saying openly homophobic remarks and jokes then you are just as responsible for not speaking out against it or trying to take some form of action against the staff by reaching out to any IA+ staff member about your issues you have against what is being said. 

 

24 minutes ago, BoM said:

I'm going to say one simple thing on any homophobic or transphobic staff members: r e p o r t - t h e m. We don't do hearsay, we don't do public proclamations of wrongdoing, we don't do 3rd party telling of a story. If you think we have this issue among our staff then fucking tell us...we are not all seeing, we (again) are not mind readers.

I appreciate the concern, but as a former manager, I am more than capable of handling a bit of name-calling and resolving disputes on my own. While this behavior is unacceptable, I would hate too see these hard working staff members chastised over what they perceived as a simple joke among friends. I trust that the Board is more than capable of accurately assessing situations and warning these individuals accordingly.

 

29 minutes ago, BoM said:

however you guys are free to discuss the situation as a whole as long as it stays civilized and does not devolve into finger pointing.

Once again, I appreciate it. I see no sense in digging up the past as people are constantly changing and working on themselves. As many of you know, I have turned a new leaf in the past weeks and have made efforts to be a more loving and accepting person. In the past I was a hateful and ignorant person, and for that I am deeply sorry.

 

I think the answer here is fairly cut and dry. In the past, we've made our stance in racism very clear - jokes and teasing are acceptable but slurs and insults are not, and should not be directed towards people. We are all fully aware of what constitutes a hateful slur - these should be strictly forbidden. The staff should be able to compile a rough list if needed 

[sWz]

You'd think someone like you who's played video games for years would understand that people are edgy just for the sake of being edgy and not attempting to actually put their "homophobic/transphobic" views on a pedestal.

 

I can't name a single person I'm familiar with here that I'd actually consider racist/homophobic/bigoted/transphobic etc. Reality is that people make jokes of poor taste and do ludicrous shit online to get attention and reactions and because it's easier to do this to a screen than to a crowd of people or to someone's face. There's definitely a line that's crossed weekly by a staff member or regular, but letting that shit get to you (Online of all places) is giving those people power that you so desperately want them to not have. 

 

To pretend like homophobia/bigotry is not taken as harassment here is absolute horseshit. All harassment here is taken seriously and I believe even goes overboard sometimes, but it's much better safe than sorry.

 

I know it's poetic coming from someone who consistently uses edge to get a laugh out of people, but to suggest that the logo be changed because you feel that people aren't offended enough by the constant edge of a shooting game community is beyond me.

 

Edit: I'd also like to add the charity thing might be the most disgusting thing you've ever said. We've had like 4 charities, as BoM said, 2 for a deceased legend in the community. So because we haven't have a charity for impoverished children in Ethiopia, that means we don't care about them? Fuck off.

 

[kabLe]

I can tell you for sure that anyone who was genuinely offended by homophobic terms within the 15 years I’ve been here have been granted a level of respect and when those terms are slung their way ignorantly, upon being reported the offender was dealt with by the same people who told me they’d bang my mom if my prepubescent ass didn’t shut his filthy mouth.
 

SG has never been a place to allow blatant disrespect and targeted harassment whether it be sexual, racial, pedophiliac, etc