A discussion on inclusivity

I want to preface this post with three notes. The first is that I will be using racial stereotypes and insults in this post purely for the sake of discussion and as a comparison, so that people may better understand what makes a statement harmful. The second is that I beg of you to read this post with an open mind; you are welcome to maintain your own beliefs, but please try for a moment to consider an alternate perspective. The final is that this will be a bit of a long read; I apologize I could not make these points in fewer words, but I ask you nonetheless to please take a moment to read them anyways. Thank you for your time.

Racism, homophobia, and sexism are all well established struggles, even worldwide. While all three exist in disappointingly overt ways around the world, most people in this community have no problems accepting that discriminating and insulting people based off of race, sexual preference, or gender is incredibly hurtful. There is a bit of a disconnect in extending this same level of empathy to transgender and non-binary issues, however.

It’s become clear to me recently that many people in this community do not recognize the identities of transgender and non-binary people as legitimate. This is, in itself, not necessarily problematic. The struggle with self-identity is relatively new in our zeitgeist and it’s understandable for most people to be either unaware, uninformed, or even apathetic to these issues. If someone begins this post thinking to themselves “you are the gender you were born as, and that’s that,” that is okay. That’s how you were raised and educated, and there was no reason for you to change your worldview.

However, I would like you to try to take a different approach, one based in empathy if nothing else. Just because something is not important to you, does not mean it is not important to someone else. In many parts of the world, the term “n*gga” does not have the racist connotation that it does, say, in the U.S. People in some countries will refer to their friends casually as “my n*ggas” and this is considered culturally acceptable, and has no racial connotation involved. However if those same people were to use such terms in the U.S., or even here on ML, it would be considered racist hate speech. We ask players around to world to avoid using certain slurs or slang, regardless of how those terms might be viewed in different native cultures, because in some cultures they are considered offensive. I applaud this effort; we hold everyone to the same standard, not because we want to force everyone to think and act a certain way, but because we recognize that some terms are hurtful to some people.

The same can be said for the act of misgendering, albeit it likely affects a much smaller minority of our server. Misgendering is when you intentionally or unintentionally refer to a person, relate to a person, or use language to describe a person that doesn’t align with their affirmed gender. Most misgendering, from personal experience, is unintentional. Either you don’t realize someone is transgender/non-binary, or have a momentary mental lapse and forget. In many of these cases, it’s not considered harmful, and no offense is taken, as long as the offending party recognizes they made a mistake and makes effort to correct themselves in the future.

Now, many of you may be asking yourself, why is misgendering harmful? Who cares about what gender someone is? I don’t care when someone calls me the wrong gender, so why should someone else? This goes back to my point about empathy. Just because this matter, and your gender, are not important to you, doesn’t mean that it’s not important to someone else. For many people, their identity is a struggle, negatively affective their self-esteem. According to a 2014 study of transgender people’s experiences being misgendered, 32.8% of them experienced feeling very stigmatized when being misgendered.

We have reached a point in many social issues where people can recognize it makes others uncomfortable when people make statements like “oh you’re Japanese? What part of China is that again?” or “bro did you style your hair? That’s pretty gay.” These are statements rooted in ignorance and it’s easy for most people to empathize enough with the recipient to be able to say to themselves “this will probably make that person feel bad, and I shouldn’t say things like that.” I’m hoping we can also eventually reach a point like this with actions such as misgendering.

Regardless what your personal beliefs are, and regardless of how you personally might feel about these terms and actions, I implore you to be able to consider the feelings of others. If you know somebody will have their self-worth negatively impacted by your actions, and it costs you nothing to be supportive, then why not try being supportive? There is no reason to openly say statements like “there are only 2 genders” or “other people can call you whatever gender they believe in” or “I don’t care about what you identify with” unless you are trying to be intentionally callous. Even if you may privately, personally believe these statements, it costs you nothing as an individual to reach out with kindness and empathy and say things like “I recognize your struggles with identity” and “you are free to identify with any gender” and “I do not approve of other people saying things that you find harmful”

When I first joined ML, and for most of my time here afterwards, I believed ML was a welcoming and inclusive community, and I still believe it can be. But recent events have shown me there is still a lot of discrimination in this community and a surprisingly callous lack of both awareness and caring of transgender and non-binary issues, despite there being quite a significant population of such players among us. If we truly believe in inclusivity as a community, it is our duty to stand with all of our members, especially those who are marginalized, and support them against harmful statements, even if we believe them to be trivial and irrelevant.

It costs you nothing to say “I’m sorry you feel hurt. What can I do better?” But it means everything to someone in pain.