LGBTQ+ and transphobic, homophobic comments in the city= Perm Ban

[Katelyn West]

Good evening,

Please bear with me throughout this report as this is a SENSATIVE RULE suggestion.

Throughout my time in the city i have witnessed alot of Homophobic and transphobic comments by players in the city and ive seen what these comments can do to people! The comments i am hearing on a daily basis to players in the city relating to "is there a penis under that dress" "oh thats a man such a deep voice" "what a tranny fuck" "kill that disgusting tranny" "trannies deserve to die" "oh look that officer is a faggot" "gay twat" "adams apple jokes to"

I have had to speak with people who are visably upset from these attacks and whilst players think this is funny and entertaining the reality is for the victim alot more serious and could lead to issues. This is genuinly like compared to racism it should be ZERO tolerance rule and resulting in a perm ban like rule (C1.2) , Now i am aware that homophobia etc is covered under that rule but i have read so many reports that have been denied as staff genuinly have to follow the evidence and rules provided which we can understand. I feel the topic LGBTQ+ Hate crime needs to be a rule in itself like alot of other RP communities. 

I mean the list simply goes on and on as a former IRL Royal Navy LGBTQ+ counsellor and advocate i can strongly say this could lead to people becoming depressed, feeling like the community is unsafe for them to play in and in severe extreme cases could lead to suicides. Which i have seen the results to all of the above with my time in the Navy and it genuinly is enough to destroy someone.

I know staff try there best to combat this but it really needs to be ZERO tolerance on this as the comments are not funny and should not be entertained. 

Further to this i would volunteer and dedicate my own personal time (which i have alot of)  and support to a new role within the discord server for supporting any LGBTQ+ persons who may need someone to chat with! If not me then it would be nice to just get someone in that type of role. It would just be reassuring to people in the LGBTQ+ community to know there was someone they could chat to comfortably and someone to listen.

Maybe even a seperate chat in the server LGBTQ+ so everyone can mingle and it can be inclusive

Again ive noticed LGBTQ+ comments getting more and more common and hence with my past experiance in the Navy combatting it i feel something needs to be said. Alot of Transgender and gay players in the city feel like nothing will be done and i assure them staff do take this kind of reports serious. 

So on behalf of all LGBTQ+ players in the city i ask for this to be seriously considered!

Thanks to the Staff and developers for reviewing this and i look forward to feedback below!

Enjoy a picture from the bridge of my warship  Again a huge thanks for reviewing this!

 

[Nikolai]

Admittingly C1.2 does already cover this whole thing as you stated yourself, most of the time this is situational based, and it always have been on fivem due to the nature of the game and it's 18+ aspect of it, ofc. repeated behaviour and obvious targetting towards trans members should be a perm ban, someone calling someone "gay twat" and being perm banned from it may be a bit of a stretch about how big of a guardian angel we should be to everyone, IMO.

feeling like the community is unsafe for them to play in and in severe extreme cases could lead to suicides.

sadly this does also happen, and my condolences to anyone who has had a family member/friend commit suicide over being discriminated on, but there is also other stuff ingame that could possibly lead to the same outcome if done incorrectly, IE. Rape RP(which is also being suggested to be banned, respectively elsewhere), 

Further to this i would volunteer and dedicate my own personal time (which i have alot of)  and support to a new role within the discord server for supporting any LGBTQ+ persons who may need someone to chat with! If not me then it would be nice to just get someone in that type of role. It would just be reassuring to people in the LGBTQ+ community to know there was someone they could chat to comfortably and someone to listen.

We do kinda have this, if you feel that you as a person have been discriminated in some sort of way and don't feel comfortable making a report on the forums, tickets are sometimes able to be used(Note: this is situational based, but we'll always have a look before turning you away as we want you all to feel safe aswell), i don't' think a role specific to LGBTQ+ Helpers(?) is needed, throw yourself out there, state you're willing to chat if needs be and go from there, undoubtly there's probably someone that need a chat, and who knows they may not even be apart of LGBTQ+.

Maybe even a seperate chat in the server LGBTQ+ so everyone can mingle and it can be inclusive

sorry, don't see how this is inclusive by locking people away because of them not being apart of LGBTQ+


before i finish, this is obviously my personal opinion and not of staff, and i'm open to also talk about why and whatever elsewhere, my dms are open basically anywhere.

 

[emi]

I have also seen the reports you have mentioned in your topic regarding people saying derogatory words, everything in RP is circumstantial. This is what Roleplay is I seen white people play as black people in a group and they were using a derogatory word however they were not doing this to troll around, they have built a player arc on that character it has a story, a personality, a character; basically it is a separate being. People who use these words while trolling and those who are not here for roleplay already get banned from the community.

When in roleplay you can make a female character and once you create that character and select it to go in game with that character, you the player then can identify as a woman or a member of the LGBTQ+ community or what ever you want to be. This is where Roleplay shines in my opinion, the ability to be who ever you want, what ever you want and act however you want with a proper character arc. I despise derogatory RP, rape RP or something similar however just because I don't like them I don't believe they should be cancelled or banned(if done with a proper character arc and with consent).

I wish to state if you feel uncomfortable playing with someone who uses these words on repeat, and if you offended by them I would assume you may be able to take similar steps mentioned in a detailed answer by TinyBigJacko in the topic "Rape should be fully banned". Again I assume, I am not a staff and this is personally my opinion. This is a game and we are all here to have fun.

I seen people reporting for C1.2 when the offender apologies for the word they used when the person who get offended stated to offender.

Currently, all other forms of roleplay are 'fair game', because we are a Serious Roleplay server and community, and we aim to allow all sorts of 'high drama' as well as violent conflict. If you have a problem with that, or are at risk of being traumatised by such topics, you should not be here. You will most likely encounter various forms of violent activity, either received or given, and almost all of them are most definitely 'illegal out of the city', but we roleplay them here. It's what we do. We are acting in an interactive movie/TV Show/videogame artform.

 

[Raz]

I agree with what Nikolai has stated above as most of us is dealt under C1.2. To add more to this, 

urther to this i would volunteer and dedicate my own personal time (which i have alot of)  and support to a new role within the discord server for supporting any LGBTQ+ persons who may need someone to chat with! If not me then it would be nice to just get someone in that type of role. It would just be reassuring to people in the LGBTQ+ community to know there was someone they could chat to comfortably and someone to listen.

Maybe even a seperate chat in the server LGBTQ+ so everyone can mingle and it can be inclusive

I don't see why this has to be a thing, as this is a roleplay server on FiveM. Adding this would mean adding roles for all types of people that play on the server and catering everyone. As far as the forum reports go, I've been here for a while and if someone does cross a line, he gets punished by a perm. Saying something along the lines of as Nikolai mentioned above "gay tw*t" shouldn't warrant a perm, as you are playing on an 18+ server in a game like GTA. If that is something you are offended by then you shouldn't be on the server anyway. 

 

[Albert Winsford]

While I fully understand the LGBTQ movement, I can also be very ignorant of it at times, but not in a negative aspect. I respect the hard work done within the community and your line of work, but my ignorance has me thinking... if the LGBTQ community want to feel inclusive, then why are they segregating themselves in to a whole category and not just being part of the RPUK community as a whole instead of throwing a label on it for a specific group.

There should be no discrimination of gender, race or sexual preference and anyone who targets people for being the way they are should be dealt with accordingly. I must also stress this is a roleplay server, ive played characters that hate foreigners, i've roleplayed with homophobic religious characters but i know out of character that these people should respect all genders/race/ages/sexual preference and not just sit there discriminating folk and i would say the majority of these people I have met understand this. I honestly feel like we're just stripping back the freedom of roleplay in an adult community with more, as some would see it, "snowflake" rules.

 

[Yelanis]

While I fully understand the LGBTQ movement, I can also be very ignorant of it at times, but not in a negative aspect. I respect the hard work done within the community and your line of work, but my ignorance has me thinking... if the LGBTQ community want to feel inclusive, then why are they segregating themselves in to a whole category and not just being part of the RPUK community as a whole instead of throwing a label on it for a specific group.

There should be no discrimination of gender, race or sexual prefrence and anyone who targets people for being the way they are should be dealt with accordingly. I must also stress this is a roleplay server, ive played characters that hate foreigners, i've roleplayed with homophobic religous characters but i know out of character that these people should respect all genders/race/ages/sexual preference and not just sit there discriminating folk and i would say the majority of these people I have met . I honestly feel like we're just stripping back the freedom of roleplay in an adult community with more, as some would see it, "snowflake" rules.

+1 with Albert 

Don't really need to add anymore to it

 

[JackJohnson]

While I fully understand the LGBTQ movement, I can also be very ignorant of it at times, but not in a negative aspect. I respect the hard work done within the community and your line of work, but my ignorance has me thinking... if the LGBTQ community want to feel inclusive, then why are they segregating themselves in to a whole category and not just being part of the RPUK community as a whole instead of throwing a label on it for a specific group.

There should be no discrimination of gender, race or sexual preference and anyone who targets people for being the way they are should be dealt with accordingly. I must also stress this is a roleplay server, ive played characters that hate foreigners, i've roleplayed with homophobic religious characters but i know out of character that these people should respect all genders/race/ages/sexual preference and not just sit there discriminating folk and i would say the majority of these people I have met and understand this. I honestly feel like we're just stripping back the freedom of roleplay in an adult community with more, as some would see it, "snowflake" rules.

+1 on this - plus there is already rules in place that cover this subject. 

 

[James Travers]

This all comes down to a case-by-case basis. If abuse is hurled towards a player here with malicious intent it will be and always has been dealt with accordingly. I'm all for inclusion, as are all of us, however, to be issuing on the spot permanent bans to players as a result of them splurting out a dimwitted thick comment like "your car is gay" goes far beyond the realms of what I consider to be malicious. In my personal opinion, the vast majority of these comments made within Roleplay are completely innocuous, for example, "Is there a penis under that dress", this would not insinuate me to believe that the player stating this is a raging homophobe. I can completely agree that having comments such as those mentioned is not nice, but, neither is being stabbed, shot, ran over, beaten half to death, raped, and all the other various tragedies which occur within Roleplay. However I must stress that there is a line that is not to be crossed, and most know where to draw the line. Those who don't either quickly learn where it is or win themselves an early ticket out of here. 

As for a specific community role in terms of counseling or anything of that sort of nature I would have to strongly disagree with that. We must remember that at the end of the day, this is a gaming community, as was mentioned by Nikolai we do have a report system, ticket system, and plenty of members of the Staff Team to look into both of those things. Yet again this is only a personal opinion of mine and I cannot speak for the entire staff team. That being said, I believe that if someone is genuinely in a state of depression or are suicidal as is mentioned above, they should seek professional advice in an appropriate setting. Whilst I appreciate and admire the fact that you are a professional in that particular field of work, I would be hard-pressed to believe that discussing these issues on a Grand Theft Auto community would be the best course of action.

Lastly, a separate LGBTQ+ chat on Discord would surely have the opposite effect of inclusion. Everyone in this community should feel welcome anywhere, be it on discord, in-game, TeamSpeak, within their factions, gangs, friend groups, and every other nook and cranny of this community. Separate chats for people who have different sexual orientations, Religion, Race, Nationality, Age, etc just segregates the community, something which I can't say I'd be excited about.

These are only my personal opinions and do not have any correlation with the opinion of the Staff Team collectively.

 

[Custard Cream *left*]

I genuinely dont understand all the down-votes this is a fair and pretty constructive post that could help a lot of people, myself included. I do agree that complete perm bans for some things used out of context like someone made about "Your car is gay" Shouldn't result in a perm ban as yes its pretty immature but its probably the most British thing ever said. Now using a term for people in the LGBTQ+ as a form of insult onto a person or inanimate object such as "Gay" Isn't always malicious, and is just part of a lot of peoples vocabulary and that is a very very hard thing to say. I hate it but even I do it to the point i start to think im being a prick.

Moving away from the sexuality insult side of things and moving onto the top of trans people being insulted I do agree that when its done even with the slight bit of malice that a zero tolerance method of approach is a good one. RPUK has been a place ive came to play on and relax on for a very very long time and since its moved away from arma and onto GTA RP the trans community has became a lot more "Public?" Sorry im not good with words. And with this has came the insults. A lot of us Brits have grew up saying "gay" and "Faggot" as part of just a general insult vocabulary and I dont believe a large portion of people saying it, mean it to be malicious. Kinda like calling your friend a dickhead when your having a laugh. But when it comes to transphobic comments every person making it "In my own opinion" is doing it with intent to be malicious and insulting to said person. And honestly there is no room for it anywhere. It can turn someone who has finally became accepting and open to who they are to someone who has to hide out of fear of being insulted and judged and honestly it really can lead to suicide and long term depression. The LGBTQ+ And trans community are only going to become more active and to protect the people who are just trying to be themselves and be happy shouldn't even be a debate. We dont debate people being racist we dont debate people shaming on people with disabilities so why should this one be a thing.

Staff have got a good thing going with the bans they are imposing on people who are being malicious with these comments. However like in real life sometimes just locking someone away normally does more bad than good. Talking to people and educating them on what they have been doing when its something minor is a much better solution to just removing them and can do much more good later on down the line and actually start to build up a form of respect.

I do not agree with a private chat for people within the LGBTQ+ community as that segregates us and makes me personally feel like an odd one out and i really hate to be labelled. 

 

[ricosky]

My concern is, how exactly would you vet someone as being LGBTQ? What's stopping someone from saying they are and then using it to troll the chat?

 

[Katelyn West]

Read all feedback and i do agree. I have personally not been attacked i just support the LGBTQ+ and with my previous role IRL its something i hold close. 

Thanks for all your feedback and comments

-Katelyn

In suppose my overall view is yes i agree there is a rule in place, and yeah people should record and report. Its just frustrating to see innocent players being randomly targetted with abuse. Like example when my other character PC Chrissie Brown was in the police there was another officer there who was trans and was instantly abused and name called for no apparent reason.

But yeah i see all points above

-Katelyn

 

[Hektor Armstrong]

My concern is, how exactly would you vet someone as being LGBTQ? What's stopping someone from saying they are and then using it to troll the chat?

I don't see the need to "vet" people within the LGBTQ community, if someone directly makes a homophobic/transphobic comment towards someone, they are in direct violation of (C1.2) and that results in a permanent ban.


Those who say there isn't a problem of homophobic/transphobic comments within the city are more than likely white straight men, quite the presumption but you aren't going to see the problem if it isn't going to affect you. It is the same for racism, a white person is less likely to experience racism than someone who isn't white, it's straightforward. 


Read below what Norman has said on this situation and its pretty clear. 



I personally feel that anyone that abuses someone due to their sexuality should be banned, it should not be welcome whatsoever and should be punished harshly. 

Of course, I dont expect everyone to be banned for the smallest of comments, but certainly educated/reminded on the severity of homophobia. This is certainly a case-by-case issue as opposed to all comments result in a permanent ban. 

 

[Katelyn West]

I don't see the need to "vet" people within the LGBTQ community, if someone directly makes a homophobic/transphobic comment towards someone, they are in direct violation of (C1.2) and that results in a permanent ban.


Those who say there isn't a problem of homophobic/transphobic comments within the city are more than likely white straight men, quite the presumption but you aren't going to see the problem if it isn't going to affect you. It is the same for racism, a white person is less likely to experience racism than someone who isn't white, it's straightforward. 


Read below what Norman has said on this situation and its pretty clear. View attachment 19452



I personally feel that anyone that abuses someone due to their sexuality should be banned, it should not be welcome whatsoever and should be punished harshly. 

Of course, I dont expect everyone to be banned for the smallest of comments, but certainly educated/reminded on the severity of homophobia. This is certainly a case-by-case issue as opposed to all comments result in a permanent ban. 

This is a statement i feel explains it the best! 

-Katelyn

 

[Albert Winsford]

Those who say there isn't a problem of homophobic/transphobic comments within the city are more than likely white straight men, quite the presumption but you aren't going to see the problem if it isn't going to affect you. It is the same for racism, a white person is less likely to experience racism than someone who isn't white, it's straightforward. 
 

There's definitely an issue with homophobic and transphobic comments within the city, just like there's issue with it all over the world, but to direct it to more than likely straight white men defeats the stance of equality and inclusiveness for everyone. The last transphobic/homophobic person I experienced within the city that i honestly felt had a real hatred towards people of colour and of sexual preference who was no longer just playing a character was actually a female in prison who was upset over G6 corruption and she absolutely flew off the handle.

 

[Katelyn West]

There's definitely an issue with homophobic and transphobic comments within the city, just like there's issue with it all over the world, but to direct it to more than likely straight white men defeats the stance of equality and inclusiveness for everyone. The last transphobic/homophobic person I experienced within the city that i honestly felt had a real hatred towards people of colour and of sexual preference who was no longer just playing a character was actually a female in prison who was upset over G6 corruption and she absolutely flew off the handle.

Just to be crystal clear, this suggestion aint saying ban people for one word things. Its more if they are persisting after being asked to stop etc. I chill with my ingame daughter cynthia who constantly has people making unwanted comments to her  

So just wanted to be clear this aint a suggestion of oh he said "penis" lets ban him  

 

[ricosky]

I don't see the need to "vet" people within the LGBTQ community, if someone directly makes a homophobic/transphobic comment towards someone, they are in direct violation of (C1.2) and that results in a permanent ban.


Those who say there isn't a problem of homophobic/transphobic comments within the city are more than likely white straight men, quite the presumption but you aren't going to see the problem if it isn't going to affect you. It is the same for racism, a white person is less likely to experience racism than someone who isn't white, it's straightforward. 


Read below what Norman has said on this situation and its pretty clear. View attachment 19452



I personally feel that anyone that abuses someone due to their sexuality should be banned, it should not be welcome whatsoever and should be punished harshly. 

Of course, I dont expect everyone to be banned for the smallest of comments, but certainly educated/reminded on the severity of homophobia. This is certainly a case-by-case issue as opposed to all comments result in a permanent ban. 

My response was directed specifically at the part about LGBTQ having an exclusive space within the community