World Of Warcraft Elves, Gay Stereotypes?
An interesting little WOW discussion post has gone up on WOWInsider asking one question. "Has Blizzard gone out of their way to make male elves gay?"
Amanda: The media regularly exaggerates masculinity and femininity. I'm mostly disturbed by feminine male elves and the insinuation that they're gay. The Blood Elf males seem to make a joke of gender with emotes like, "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" Blizzard has played on some stereotypes that I believe are inappropriate and possibly damaging.
The crux of the discussion may lie with the player base. David and Amanda, the intrepid WOWInsider writers, discuss the issue, and how player perceptions affect the way they react.
David: The way that some men (and women?) impose their idea of gayness on to the Blood Elves and Night Elves is coming from themselves. Just as they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," this use of "gay" and "f*g" is in the eye of the insulter too. Those men who use these words as an insult are latching on to the closest tool they have at hand to demean other people. If there were no elves in the game, they would use some other race, such as humans or gnomes in the same way.
Blizzard has taken a very... vague... approach to dealing with gay issues. You may recall a brouhaha some time ago about a gay guild getting busted for recruiting by advertising they were a, well, a gay guild. I've always gotten the impression that Blizzard is of the opinion that gays should be seen and not heard, as it were. IE, they don't mind having us around, but "Don't let the straight people know you're here, they'll freak out".
And they do, on occasion. Aside from the occasionally rampant jokes/insults that can get dished out, (mostly in the barrens, of course), I've had people go out of their way to try to 'cure' my Warlock of "Teh Gay". I never know if I should just brush that sort of thing off as a tasteless joke or if I should be insulted.
So is Blizzard trying to sneak the issue in without having to have full-blown sexuality in the game? Or are they just making jokes they think are funny and we're just perceiving it as gay? Read the full article for more dialog on the topic, but I have some Warlocking to do.
He said, she said: Does Blizzard support homosexual stereotyping? [WOWInsider]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Video Games on 31 March 2008
· Comments (22)
Other stuff like this: Blizzard, gay, mmos
Aren't the male Blood Elves voiced by openly gay voice actor Cam Clarke?
Talk about a he said/she said... I like that idea!
Anyway, I kinda hate to say this but I can't agree with david on some of his points... But i also do not agree with miss Amanda here. I agree with some points in the comments section.
David doesn't really do a good approach but, however, i do agree that the "Hot like me" joke isn't as offensive as Amanda is trying to pull. Now, i'm no expert in Joke tellin' but i can't see the offense here... and i'm gay!
I also really like how the blood elves looked like in the end. They are not sloppy, macho, beef steak eatin' football crazed man, just a regular snobbish good lookin' person! Like any teenage heroes in 80's movies! In fact i call them the average joes! And that's progress!
And also, Who ever saw elves to be gay? That's just like saying every men is a homosexual! I just really want to love one that's all... I'm a lonely nerd.
And that david guy better say somethin' about that "offensive for children" gay guild business! grrr! What a cliffhanger!
But what i really hate about this discussion is how Amanda makes herself the empress of the gay males, come on! I raise my fist at you, Amanda, I raise that fist!
...Though i do agree with her on the "gay became an insult" issue... and the gay guild trouble...
Can't wait for a he said/She said part 2: Amanda's Reckoning!
They way they did it was just distasteful IMO... they made them whiny, superficial, and snotty pretty boys.... basically made them stereotypical gay men.
"I could really use a scrunchy"
"Don't you wish your girlfriend were hot like me?"
"You know what I love about your eyes, when I look deep enough, I can see my own reflection."
"You look almost as good as I do."
"Hey, why don't you come over here and... WATCH THE HAIR!"
"Want to see my good side? Hahaha, that was a trick question, all I have are good sides."
I HATED the BE males. I tried making a BE male pally but I was so frustrated with the mannerisms of the character that I deleted him and made a BE female pally... and then ended up quitting Warcrack a little bit later.
Almost all of those quotes just sound narcissistic. That's the way my brother acted when we were younger, and he's the straight one. I was a gay slob. My brother spent forty minutes feathering his hair (it was the 80's, people).
The only line that sounds gay at all is the girlfriend line. I'm having a hard time finding a context for that one.
But you know, I think the whole notion of fantasy "races" reeks of essentialism, biological determinism and racialism to begin with. The idea that whole groups of people - species, no less - would share common mannerisms, strengths, weaknesses, interests...
It's fundamentally fucked up from the beginning. And I think it hails back to earlier decades when human races were actually thought to be different species or subspecies, and to have innate qualities unique to them. And of course they were ranked by white scientists according to their level of "civilization" with whites being - what else - the top of the ladder, and Indians and Negroes at the bottom, labeled as "savages".
A misunderstanding of human biology and evolution that was still around when Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth, which suffers from the same problematic assumptions and judgments, but which almost all modern sword & sorcery fantasy is based on.
Until we stop creating works of fiction where entire groups or races are all assumed to share inherent personality traits, stereotypes are going to keep being a major problem.
Personally I don't take offense to it. Sure, they may have been trying to emulate a stereotype, but I think they were aiming more for just good-ol' fashioned narcissism. I've seen plenty of characterizations like this in my life and there's just as likely a chance their straight as they are gay.
If you're immediately pointing the male blood elf out and saying "That's making fun of gay people," I see it as you assuming that all gay people are these pretty boy types, since that's what is really being portrayed. So really, someone being offended at the perceived over-the-top stereotype is actually just showing off their own views on stereotypes. I guess.
In other words, it's like being offended that Orc's represent black people because orc's do the Super-Bowl shuffle and foot ball players are often black... Do you see the sort of reverse logic here? I hope I'm explaining this clearly enough, it's always so hard to tell... I'm not trying to be offensive, I swear!
'Sides, I like me some Orc's are way hotter than blood elves. What of it?
You know, that guy does have a point. Often people will see what they want to see. I don't really have a side, nor do I know much about it since I don't play WOW but people always latch onto something to be offended by. Everyone seems to find something offensive.
Even if the elves are flaming, whoever thinks that it is a purposefully derogatory attack on gays is incredibly over sensitive and making an issue out of a non issue.
Personally anyway, and being gay, I don't find anything offensive about it at all and in this specific instance I agree with what that David guy said about it.
a number of things going on here, and both are problematic:
One, there seems to be a really troubling linkage between effeminacy and gayness, as if they're somehow linked. Eg rather then just being an effeminate man, it's somehow magically converted into being gay.
Two, there's a distinct undercurrent of a kind of transphobia present, whereas gayness is perhaps OK, as long as it exists in normal masculine/male, feminine /female terms but hell having men act as feminine is just plain wrong.
Actually also, three, certain attributes/actions, such as vanity and shallowness are being coded as feminine. Why? These are supposed to be vacuous arrogant men, why is that then read as being camp/feminine?
Amanda takes gayness as effeminacy and I'm not sure what she's arguing, that there should be no non gender conforming references in the game, or that if there are gay references they shouldnt be stereotypical, ergo must be heavy masculine gay men or something, which is a stereotype in itself too now.
I have to side with David on this one. I think Amanda was looking too deep into the characters to find them as stereotypical gay men. You could use her argument with some of the other races (especially Troll and Orc).
Yes male BEs are narcissistic but does that make them gay? No, it's going along with the story of their culture. The female BEs act the exact same way because their culture is one that treasured beauty but because of this ended up somewhat narcissitic and shallow. Their society is one of deacence where many "manly" activities were not participated in. It's basically the same argument that metrosexuals should be gay.
That being said, when I played WoW my guild members did make comments that the BE males seemed gay. It was never really a put down and one of my other gay guild mates and I probably didn't help it with our naked sword fights (no armor, sword only duels). It is worth mentioning the BEs became the most played race and many were males because people didn't care about their mannerisms.
And, yes, male BEs were voiced by Cam who is an openly gay actor. And a total side note, wow that picutre looks like my old BE. Rawr... sexy. The beefing up did them good. ;)
Blizzard's responses to issues of homophobias are my biggest problem with continuing to pay for WoW and planning to buy future releases, and I've read gay watch-dog groups' reports that Vivendi is very bad about equal rights, but. . .I find what Amanda is saying to be a bit offensive, too. What we should be viewing as wrong is that so many people see a man who isn't beefy and doesn't quite stand straight as effeminate, and if they're moron teenagers or "Christian" Republicans gay, and if they're upstanding, open-minded bloggers, just the wrong kind of gay.
I'll joke to my friends that my male blood elf paladin is gay (he's a healer who lets people die because he wants to go pick a flower!) the same way that I'll joke any two men in Ace Attorney obviously have the hots for each other, but actually debating whether or not the Blood Elves were meant to be gay--when there's so little evidence other than them being the least macho of the male models, after the gnomes of course--only supports the idea that effeminate man shouldn't exist and rather than being a valid personality/gender combination, they're just a sign of a bad stereotype.
On the one hand, I can see the point; elves do seem very slightly stereotypically effeminate. On the other hand, that's true of the way elves are portrayed across huge portions of fantasy lit, as well, so I'm just not sure it's *out of character*.
Besides, it's not like you spend your time in LBRS looking up at Nefarian's crotch and wishing you could go down for the crown.
Alternately, huge numbers of straight-acting elements within World of Warcraft could be gay. They're straight-acting. How would you know? Maybe we only notice the camp ones.
Compared to the ridiculously proportioned human males, anything would look effeminate.
I think it's only fair that, since the nonhuman races had to have its females sexied up to the point of not resembling the male half at all, at least one race can have a pretty male half.
Of course, a sexualized male generally translates as homoerotic, so there's our problem.
I seem to remember them acctually beefing the belf males up
Stuff like this makes me glad I have never, and shall never have a WoW account. That I think it's a terrible game is beside the point, even if I didn't I think stuff like this would make me seek online RPGs elsewhere.
I really don't see what the drama is about. The Blood Elves are a massively egotistical, vain and self-absorbed race and this is reflected in their emotes. If people associate the above qualities as typically homosexual, then that really says more about them than it does WoW, as several people have already stated. I'm not even slightly offended by any of it and had a good chuckle when I first heard them in game.
well, if they are trying to make the male blood elves are gay, then the joke's on them -- i play a gay HUMAN character.
: )
on valentine's day, i made sure to run the quests so that i had to gather love notes from the male NPCs, and during winterveil i always blew kisses to the male NPCs to get the mistletoe.
There's a lot of interesting commentary on this already, but I think Amanda does make a good point or two. As gay men and gay friendly people, we know there's FAR more to a person than the identity they project. Its really not completley possible to "detect" gayness from expressive behavior, but since the McCarthy era it hasn't stopped society from trying... the stereotypes at play here are in and of themselves ridiculous. My concern is, given the fanbase and target audience of the WoW franchise...is the only dialouge about this going to be "LoLs look at the (insert f-bomb)"? By connecting the idea of "pretty" or "effiminate men" with this level of hyper-vanity, or homosexuality through those utterly stupid quotes it does in part trivialize the overall concept of homosexuality. These sort of images and concepts within an already popular media COULD be used as a positive talking point deconstructing really narrow ideas on gender and sexuality...but from what I'm reading on the company behind it...I really doubt that will happen (which is a downer). I don't think this Amanda is making herself the "Empress of the gays" by merely raising a talking point on the subject of gender within the game. More power to her.
-G
I think the blood elves are just, as another poster said, narcissistic. And if you review Warcraft history, they are very full of themselves and feel they are better than everyone else. They're only a part of the Horde by default. Are they gay? I'll admit as a gay player I love playing my blood elf (who runs around shirtless I might add); but the only reason we think the blood elves are gay is because we apply our stereotype to that character. Blood elves, I hate to say it, exude the typical twink or gay man attitude and/or look.
Night elves I've never thought to be gay.
D
Maybe it's because I'm an emote whore and I used /silly and /flirt often, it just spawned a distaste for the BE males because everything that came out of their mouths were about how great they were. However, it was nice to have a non ugly race as horde.
Also, it's most likely I just didn't understand the BE's because I didn't read the lore before today... all I knew was that they were like tainted NE who chose a different path to power. If the whole race was all about vanity and narcissism, then it isn't quite as big of a problem.
WoW is full of stereotypes.
I don't have a problem with it because I don't think it's done in a malicious manner...
The Tauren's also have some joke that they're not gay... I forget how it goes now but along the lines of there's nothing homo-gonized about him. I was like .... oh is that so. And haven't played a Tauren again. The BE men are a little... over the top. The original design of them were skinnier too (look around the internet, you'll see some beta pics of them for compairison).
Personally I have a soft spot for the Trolls. :D
Draco, you are correct. The Blood Elf males were entirely redesigned because the original design was too effeminate.
While the BEs were beefed up, it really was not that much. If you compare the old pictures (or stand near the guards in Silvermoon) you can see the difference is not that great. Plus it solved the problem where the skeleton (or whatever) occasionally went through the skin of the old models. They are still the second slightest race, only falling behing the decaying undead.
Of course, my opinion might be biased. I like the current model of the BEs more than the older model. It fits the game better (look at humans, orcs, and Tauren) and is just plain sexy, imho.