An observation on sexual perception

[Zephyr190]

This is just something I noticed during a discussion about gaming, but the more I look at it, the more I see it applies to a whole host of things. It started with something very simple, as is common among many gaming forums it was in an argument about Call of Duty. This one specifically was about the characters in Call of Duty, during which many people said the characters weren't diverse enough. Admittedly there aren't many women in the game, and the majority are white, this is visibly obvious, but another point was that none of them were gay.

This confused me, although it's fair to assume that at least some of the characters had families or lovers, their personal lives never really came up in the story. No one's sexuality was mentioned at all, and from that they assume that all characters were straight. As if the only way for a character to be gay is to stand around talking about it a la Dragon Age. Now, I'll admit that I don't know that many gay people, but with the ones I do know it barely ever comes up. Infact, with the exception of one TMI conversation, I think the only time my bestie mentioned it was when he told me he was gay. Yet in games, films, books, etc. people assume that the only way to be gay is to stand and talk about it.

Am I the only one who notices this, or do others see it too? Is it a fair assumption that people who don't talk about their sexuality are straight, or is this the sort of mentality that's setting us back?

[Dave]

Fully agree with you regarding whether or not there are any gay characters in Call of Duty/Modern Warfare series. How do we know none of then aren't gay? Because they're not flaming fabulous?

Regarding gender diversity, I have to point out a few things. Yes, there is a major lack of women characters in those games, with the notable exception of Modern Warfare 1's female chopper pilot, Cpt. Pelayo, there aren't any female soldiers running around in these games. I don't know how accurate this is when compared to real life numbers of female [url]infantry[/url] combatants in the armed forces (I know there's plenty of women in support roles).

As for racial diversity, I think that there's plenty in these games. Take Modern Warfare 1. I don't know how diverse the British SAS would be, but the Americans have all kinds of Hispanic, black, white, and Asian characters (look at the name of all American soldiers in these games, you'll see clearly Hispanic and Asian surnames popping up all over the place). We may not know the ethnicity of Sgt. Paul Jackson, the US Marine playable character, but his superior officers were Lt. Vasquez, Hispanic, and Staff Sgt. Griggs, as bad-ass a black man as anyone has seen. Modern Warfare 2, when not playing the SAS missions, you were in the shoes of US Army Ranger James Ramirez. That name sounds pretty Hispanic to me. Your commanding officer is Sgt Foley, clearly a black man. From what I can recall in Modern Warfare 3, you don't always know the ethnicity of your character when playing the Americans, but I do recall seeing plenty of non-white characters when playing as the Americans. The tank driver you ride (and later fight along side) with is black. Asian and Hispanic surnames pop up all over the place. About the only time I saw all white was when playing as Yuri, a Russian, and then all I saw were Russian surnames.

About the only thing that Call of Duty/Modern Warfare series can do now is put you in the shoes of an Asian soldier to undoubtedly claim racial diversity.

[Zephyr190]

I've just been a hollering on the Google, and discovered that the UK has a much lower percentage of non-white population than the USA. On top of that, due to less class-race marginalization and a more generous benefits system, our military has an even lower non-white proportion than would be expected (I think that means that in America there's more non-whites that join the military because they're poor) which could explain why the SAS missions are mostly white.

As for women, through no fault of there own there just aren't that many, most SAS feed in from Royal Marine Commandos and paras, which have very low numbers of women in anyway. Whether it's through advertising, reputation, or whatever else it might be, those are the regiments with the fewest women.

Interesting stuff actually, what did we do before Google? Also, how I managed to forget just how many non-white characters were in the American missions is beyond me. Probably something to do with associative memory or something, the hispanic population in the UK is virtually non-existent.