{"id":431,"date":"2002-12-29T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2002-12-30T04:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=431"},"modified":"2002-12-29T22:45:00","modified_gmt":"2002-12-30T04:45:00","slug":"xbl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=431","title":{"rendered":"xbl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Homophobia rears its ugly head again, this time on Xbox Live. Of course, anywhere you go, people are going to be using &#8220;faggot&#8221; and &#8220;homo&#8221; as insults and it just blows my mind. The urge to start calling people &#8220;straight&#8221; and &#8220;hetero bastards&#8221; is overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s just get it out of the way though: I&#8217;m not gay. (Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that.)<\/p>\n<p>It just really angers me when people say &#8220;That&#8217;s the gayest game ever&#8221; or &#8220;You&#8217;re gay&#8221; or whatever and intend it as a an insulting remark. To me, it&#8217;s the same as racism, the same kind of bullshit that just doesn&#8217;t&#8230;.make sense.<\/p>\n<p>First of all: what people do on their own time is their own business.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly: Sexual preference is the most ridiculous thing to use as an insult. Call someone a dumbass who couldn&#8217;t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Seriously, that should be more effective. Calling someone who&#8217;s not gay a faggot&#8230;. Well, it doesn&#8217;t bother me (except conceptually and in the bigger picture that I&#8217;m describing here) because what difference does it make if I&#8217;m gay or not? But if you call a moron a moron then you&#8217;re starting to cut closer to home.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to reconcile too, the fact that I&#8217;m playing with some of these people on my own team that are using this tactic of the lowest level of name calling. I mute them immediately so I don&#8217;t have to hear it, but then how does it reflect on me and blah blah blah. I have become the morality police of this little group and I just wish it wasn&#8217;t necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Someone saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m wearing a t-shirt that says &#8216;I hate gay people&#8217;.&#8221; What the fuck? Why&#8230;? I&#8217;m not&#8230;.. I just don&#8217;t follow. Why not say, &#8220;I&#8217;m wearing a shirt that says, &#8216;I hate Cubans'&#8221;? What&#8217;s the difference? How is his gayness hurting you any more than your Cuban-ness is hurting me (which is none at all, unless that&#8217;s what turned you into a intolerant so-and-so.)<\/p>\n<p>If you argue that the fact that you&#8217;re Cuban is something you were born into and the gay person made a choice, not only are you wrong, you&#8217;re also missing the point. A lot.<\/p>\n<p>And so, another day dealing with the cross-section of America that makes me realize I&#8217;m lucky for the following reasons:<\/p>\n<p>\t&#8211; I have sensitive, tolerant, thoughtful, and intelligent parents<br \/>\n\t&#8211; I grew up in a relatively tolerant, mixed, integrated area<br \/>\n\t&#8211; I have been able to turn into a relatively sensitive, tolerant, thoughtful and intelligent adult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Homophobia rears its ugly head again, this time on Xbox Live. Of course, anywhere you go, people are going to be using &#8220;faggot&#8221; and &#8220;homo&#8221; as insults and it just blows my mind. The urge to start calling people &#8220;straight&#8221; and &#8220;hetero bastards&#8221; is overwhelming. Let&#8217;s just get it out of the way though: I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}