On Racism, Homophobia, and Misogyny, or: Can We Please Make HCSMP a More Welcoming Community?

Hey, everyone. I'm impulsiveIngenue, and if that name is familiar to you, it probably means you've seen me calling people out in the server chat for a variety of slurs, sexual innuendo, and just plain vile statements. I've also been taking screenshots of pretty much every such instance I see, whether or not I get involved in an argument over it (it's not exactly safe to do so when you're traveling, for instance). I've taken these screenshots, weeded out the mostly irrelevant ones, and cropped the remainder to reduce them to just the text I want to talk about. I’ll put them at the end of the post for the people who want to see just how much this is a problem. They contain slurs, innuendo, and the like, so if those are triggering for you (and if they are how are you even able to play on this server?), you might want to avoid them.

First, I need to talk about myself a bit, to put this into perspective. I care about this issue for a variety of reasons. First, and most obviously, because I'm a woman. The level of misogyny I see in online gaming is frankly appalling, and it makes me feel excluded from basically every community I try to join. I’d say that you’re probably not surprised by this, but you just might be, because odds are you’re a guy and none of it’s directed at you. That’s male privilege, for those keeping score at home.

The level of homophobia and transphobia isn't much better - I'm both trans and bi, and not particularly closeted about either, which has won me all sorts of disgusting insults for having the sheer gall to request a civil discourse in online gaming. Going from presenting as the privileged class (male) to presenting as the excluded class (female) in multiplayer gaming has been an eye-opening experience for me. I’m still leery over using voice chat, because my voice is pretty much the least feminine thing about me. It is not a comforting experience to hear someone who is ostensibly on your side say “Hey, you’re not a girl!” (And, yes, this has happened. Several times.)

To top it off, I've seen more racial slurs in the month I've been on this server than in the last 2 or 3 years previously. At least. It’s really kind of staggering. To put this in perspective, in college I played Counterstrike for at least 8 hours a day (and somehow passed my courses) and I saw less overt racism. Counterstrike, people.

Identifying with marginalized groups isn't the only reason I feel strongly about this, however. Here's the part that you'll probably (hopefully) be able to identify with: I care about these issues because I'm not an asshole. I want the server to be a fun place to play Minecraft and, yes, get into PvP if you want to (not that I particularly do), without having it be full of personal attacks and casual slurs that result in a decidedly uncomfortable experience. I don't think that this is unreasonable, nor do I think that asking a basic level of human decency out of our fellow HCSMPers is some kind of Sisyphean task.

Why, though? Why am I so up in arms about this? Aren’t I just being oversensitive? Aren’t I just arguing on the internet and, therefore, already the loser by default? Here are those images I mentioned, because sometimes you really do just have to see it for yourself. Understand that this is only a selection of my screenshot collection on this subject: It gets fairly repetitive after a while, and one gets tired of staring at it while cropping and arranging it. There is a lot more of this. Again, trigger warning for slurs, general bigotry, and 12 year olds being asshats on the internet.

• One - In Which Some People Just Don’t Get It
• Two - The Saga of sparta417
• Three- Enter mcfluffykins
• Four - In Which mcfluffykins Makes an Even Bigger Ass of Himself
• Five - In Which mcfluffykins Demonstrates a Lack of Knowledge
• Six - In Which Freemanliness Surprises Me
• Seven - In Which Additional People Just Don’t Get It
• The Full Collection as an Album

We need two things if we’re going to make this server a truly welcoming place for people of all genders, races, creeds, sexual orientations, gender identities, and console ownership statuses. The community needs to uphold basic standards of human decency with each other, such as not casually throwing slurs around, calling out those who do, and being willing to correct behavior that’s deeply hurtful and alienating to others. We also need the admins to come down like a ton of bricks on those who can’t or won’t get the message, or delegate that job to mods with the authority to ban people solely for abusive use of the chat. As the people getting banned are likely to be spammers, trolls, and 12-year-olds who think it’s clever, we’re not exactly losing anyone critical to the HCSMP experience. We're already actively banning hackers of all sorts, and this is awesome. I’d just like to see it extended to cover the topics addressed here. Also, I’ve asked, and yes, it turns out that this sort of thing is covered under the server’s Rule #1: Don’t be a dick. Let’s start enforcing it together. Take screenshots and report people - it’s the only way there’s going to be consequences for most of these jokers.

Remember, we’re all here to have fun. Our definitions of fun may not necessarily match, but we are obligated to at least make sure that the things we say don’t make the game stop being fun for others. I really enjoy this server, and I don’t want to have to stop playing (or have others stop playing) just because a small segment of the userbase likes to actively make others miserable.

EDIT: You know, I fully expected downvotes, but could you at least explain why you're downvoting this? The whole point is the discussion.