Identifying Yourself As A Lesbian Gets You Banned On XBOX Live

[Ioo]

http://kotaku.com/5160595/xbox-live-sadly-no-place-for-lesbian-gamers

(Former) Xbox Live gamer Teresa found herself on the receiving end of a ban from the service for a surprising reason. She identified herself as a lesbian in her Live profile.

That resulted in a ban from the service after her Xbox Live peers complained about her profile, according to a letter to the Consumerist.

It's not like we haven't heard this before. Microsoft has issued bans to players in the past for expressing their sexual preferences in Gamertags, but this is the first we've heard of profile info at the root cause of being kicked off Live.

Microsoft has gone on record in the past about its policy, saying that it's not limited to Gamertags of homosexual nature.

"Yes 'TheStraighterGamer' or 'TheHeterosexualgamer' would have gotten the same treatment and would have been found to be in violation and forced to be changed," wrote Microsoft reps following previous incidents.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. I don't think that's a fair assessment of the policy.

Lazy perhaps, but they don't want to have to pay people to monitor people using it as an insult, which is far more likely to occur. The policy is likely more protective rather than homophobic.

On edit: Unless there are clear cases where Microsoft hasn't taken similar action against vanilla assertions of straight sexuality. Then its discriminatory.

[eyesroll]

2. I do have to wonder if "JaneWifeOfBob" would be prohibited.

It's not a blanket assertion of straight sexuality, but it still telegraphs some orientation detail.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Well, I doubt "JaneWifeOfCindy" would get filtered either.

They're likely relying on two things: 1) Autofiltering of key words, such as "sex" "gay" "lesbian" etc. and 2) Player reporting. So if you want to, you can probably report "JaneWifeOfBob" and I would hope that under this policy they would do the same as if "JaneWifeofCindy" got reported. I would think that with regard to player reporting, however, there would be some discretion and the line would be to ensure that you're not harassing other players.

[sui generis]

4. oh geez

so mymomsalesbiansoImhalflesbian has some sexual innuendo even if I don't have one of those and wouldn't know what to do with one?