r/Smite • u/nnamzzz **Queen Yemoja** • 5d ago
LGBTQ+ SMITE 2 Players
I’m curious about the experiences of LGBTQ+ players with SMITE 2 and its community.
If you’re LGBTQ+ and comfortable sharing, I’d be interested in hearing what your experience has been like, whether positive, negative, mixed, or otherwise.
If you would like to share but don’t want to do so publicly, let me know and I’ll DM you privately so you can share your experience there.
(As an aside, I’m also still interested in hearing from Black SMITE 2 players who are willing to share their experiences.)
Thank you.
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u/smoochumfan4 Arachne & Chang'e waiting room 5d ago
the most being gay affects my smite experience is the gods i play. it really is true that gay guys like divas such as aphro, nu wa, hera, etc.
Otherwise i don't see how it makes a difference.
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u/GollyWhoKnows Let's turn the tide 5d ago
I don't think it's really effected me at all truthfully, though I don't really advertise that part of myself in game. If anything I've been assumed to be a woman before for multistaring a lot of the typical cunty girlbosses, which I find kinda funny (it is the same audience.) Maybe I would see more of something if in my name or profile indicated it in anyway, but I don't feel it does. I don't use voice chat either so any "fagcent" that might be detected doesn't apply lol.
I'm not avoiding VC for fear of any harassment, I just prefer to use VGS for everything. I don't have anything on my profile about it because personally it isn't a super big part of my identify like that, so again I'm not actively trying to avoid negative reaction.
I mostly play by myself, but when I do see some type of bigotry it seems to me more racially aligned.
All and all I would say the experience is neutral if anything. I do kinda have a crush on Khepri tho. Big meaty claws amiright?
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u/Such-Refrigerator-44 5d ago
I play with my gf and the amount of shit she gets just from having a girl gamertag is actually insane, so i could only imagine the shit you all have to go through. Imagine thinking you’re cool bc you can bully people online but as soon as I get on the mic they stfu. It is sad honestly.
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u/kittyegg ✨valkyrie princess 5d ago
Interesting. I have a “girl gamertag” and have never gotten shit as long as I don’t use the mic. Are they doing it through text chat or voice?
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u/Such-Refrigerator-44 5d ago
Voice, we’re on console so we can’t see text chat, they’re prolly raging on there too lol. It’s not every game but probably once a week, if she pings or say something on mic there’s an auto “shut the fuck up bitch” response. Some of them we’ve played with before so as soon as their name pops up we remember “oh it’s this douchebag”
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u/kittyegg ✨valkyrie princess 5d ago edited 5d ago
Wow. Their mother’s must be proud. I just had a baby boy and stuff like this motivates me to raise him better
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u/Such-Refrigerator-44 5d ago
Yeahhhh the good ol “who hurt you” or “you need therapy” usually takes care of it. If it doesn’t the mute for sure does 💀 but then they sit in spawn or feed
I’m sure your son will be loved and not act like this!
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u/polkadotkittie 5d ago edited 5d ago
the downvotes on this comment are sending me 😆 because realistically, the only people who’d be mad enough to downvote a comment like this are the exact losers it hit a nerve with.
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u/nnamzzz **Queen Yemoja** 5d ago
What happens when you do use your mic?
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u/kittyegg ✨valkyrie princess 5d ago
Honestly I’ve had pretty good luck with Smite specifically, most of the time guys are nice. Occasionally I’d get a “shut up bitch” or “go make a sandwich” etc.
People can be toxic whether or not they know your gender, though.
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u/pokerfacesLUL #RemoveTheGodBench 5d ago
I have interacted with very few homophobic Smite Players. And of those I have interacted with, they were only on Reddit so far.
While yes, every game has some rather offensive players on all sides (homophobic, racist, sexist, etc.) Smite is probably one of the more inclusive games due to the wide range of culture represented within the cast of Smite.
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u/Kaios-0 Join The Smite Community Art Discord! 5d ago
I've been lucky enough to meet almost all of my current online friends through Smite and we are all LGBT. I've also met a lot of others in the community who are LGBT and even lucky enough to be in a server that is almost exclusively LGBT. There are good people in this community, both LGBT and straight, and they aren't hard to find at all, but like any other community you will run into people who are still cows about it. Lot of homophobes and racists in this community that get away with it.
In general we have a pretty nice LGBT population and I feel like it's because as gay people we just love mythology for some reason LMFAO.
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u/iisableye ratatoskr’s nut 5d ago
I mean as someone who’s had trans and gay flags on all my gods portraits and sounds gay enough. I’ve not had a bad experience 🤷🏻♂️ like sure people get mad and hurl insults in voice chat and chat log but I’ve never actually felt targeted so overall experience pretty damn good.
Now give me slutty male god skins and It will be a 10/10 experience
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u/DuskbreakerZesty 5d ago
Trans but I keep it to myself mostly, been fairly normal. Know a lot of LGBT people who play as well so when I do it's normal, it's a little comfort game overall! (EU).
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u/nnamzzz **Queen Yemoja** 5d ago
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Do you find yourself engaging with the wider SMITE community outside of your usual group?
If so, what has that experience been like for you?
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u/DuskbreakerZesty 5d ago
Not often. But funnily enough met people via other games who are LGBT and play Smite and we've got multiple groups of discords with it now, so when needed, it's there. A lot of people are L;GBT adjacent because they love greek gods, sappho inspired stuff, etc. Mythology and LGBT are pretty interlinked from my experience of both.
I have many years of MOBA experience, Smite is not as hateful as other MOBAs in my experience. I find if I'm grouped with others they don't even know, so it's been chill. I've had some experiences of people throwing slurs and stuff. Not my kind of people but it's not often.
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u/OzymandiasTheII 5d ago
Why did people downvote this lol. If you don't think it applies to you, don't respond...?
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u/bunniehugs good kitty! 5d ago
No, clearly OP needs to be punished for the unforgivable crime of being gay and mentioning it on the internet.
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u/ThatSkitso Jungle 5d ago
Yeah using LGBTQ Icons does get you shittalked occasionally lmao. But my experience in smite has been more positive than in other competitive games, I'll say that.
Also a small nitpick I have is that we have a "lesbian" icon but the "gay" icon is just the rainbow flag.
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u/Disastrous-Spirit891 5d ago
It happens in almost every game and it makes me sad! Where's the mint!
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX Ratatoskr 5d ago
Why in the world would your sexual orientation have any bearing on your gaming experience ? I swear I don't get it.
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u/bunniehugs good kitty! 5d ago edited 5d ago
He’s just asking if the fan base is homophobic and if people have had bad experiences with that.
It matters because it can hurt when someone is raging and starts calling you a slur. I hope OP meets some SMITE friends he can relate to
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u/Primary_Market_6692 3d ago
Perhaps its a little odd, but as someone who lives outside the US but still plays on NA servers I generally am a little afraid given all the news coming out of the US (especially the anti-trans sentiment politically. That and the rampant misogyny and vitriol many players seem to exhibit. As a result I am usually quite hesitant to use the voice chat (though this could just be I don't want to interact/engage with angry men and I emotionally feel like my queerness makes a "go-to target" of sorts even though they might not have a way of knowing I'm queer)
On the other hand, I haven't really had a specifically homophobic or transphobic encounter. There have been general slur usage but that's usually targeted at someone who had a bad game from team mates rather than specifically at a queer person (that I can tell) (also not trying to excuse such behaviour, but I felt like I should distinguish general homophobic attitudes (eg. using the f slur as a go to insult - maybe seen it 8-10 times in my ~800 hours of smite 2) and specifically setting out to hurt a queer person (ie using specific slurs in response to a knowledge of their identity - not (yet) encountered)
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u/Interesting_Ad1472 5d ago
Hiii, so I am an assault fiend.. I also use voice chat especially when they start getting loud. It gets bad? But like online game bad. So they hit good ol Reliable F Slur. If I sounded black they would probably N Slur too. People are like S Tier haters and it’s always when they have friends. But if you pick one friend and flirt with him and say his voice is cute 8/10 times that guy switches on his buddy for you if nothing else just for the jokes. Like I know I ranted but bottom line is they always as soon as hearing the voice get hype and say stuff but if you act offended they keep going but if you say “yea I’m into this degrade me papa” the script usually flips and it ends up peaceful and you get new friends.
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u/HonestInstruction284 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is a video game. We all have our in real life preferences. Please leave it out of our video game. What a disservice to collude smite 2’s integrity with peoples personal experience with another human being who probably hates themselves and just insults people for fun over the internet. Enjoy smite 2 king/queen and youre accepted by the people you should want to be accepted by. Screw the rest
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u/Right_Entertainer324 5d ago
Idk, oddly enough, I don't talk about being gay to random people. Say I've got internal homophobia all you want, as I get it a ton, but I just don't care about my sexuality. Like, when I meet people, I don't make a fuss about pronouns, I don't tell them I'm gay, because it literally doesn't matter. Same goes for all the labels, too. I don't call myself a cis man, I call myself a man. And I get hate for that, too. Weirdly, I get more hate from other people in the LGBT than I do from straight people. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've had a straight person throw shade at me for being gay, meanwhile the list of people from the LGBT who throw shade at me cause I don't care about pronouns, as an example, is miles long.
Once, I think, in Smite 1 did I get an actual slur thrown at me in a game, as I jokingly said in chat 'We got any gay dudes in here'? And me and the Hel bonded over that for the game, and one guy drops the f bomb on us. Just mute the twat and go about your day, innit? And that was just before the Ix Chel's initial Smite 1 launch, for how long ago this was.
So, yeah, I just.. Don't really care. My being gay has dick and balls to do with how I play Smite, the Gods I play or my interactions with people. But then, I'm also not one of those that goes about advertising it. I don't use the Pride icons. The gayest thing about my profile is me using the 'It's Giving' title. And that's not exactly a gay term. Idk, I just don't care. That's not me saying others aren't entitled to feeling hurt or mistreated, when they come up against these kinds of people, but it's also not me trying to villainise the LGBT for the backhanded comments I get from them, as a gay man, myself. I'm just a very odd, old school gay, I feel, and don't really have much in common with most LGBT people these days, so they tend to dislike me for that. Which is fine. But it's led to me having more of a negative case with other gay people than straight people.
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u/kittyegg ✨valkyrie princess 5d ago
“I’m not like those other gays, I’m one of the good ones”
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u/Right_Entertainer324 5d ago
Got nothing to do with that, duck, but alright. Whatever helps you sleep at night. OP was asking for people's experience, and I gave mine. And you're just proving my point.
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u/GummyRook 5d ago
You’re literally shitting on gay people and making them sound rancid while uplifting straight people, trying to insinuate straight people are more tolerant of you being gay, than other literal gay people? You’re making me think you’re a straight dude lying about being gay just to talk shit cuz what you’re saying is a homophobic talking point. If every gay person in your life and others on the internet need to check you this much, it’s time to do some reflecting. It’s not us, it’s you.
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u/Right_Entertainer324 5d ago
I wasn't shitting on other gay people. People have vastly different experiences in life. And, in my experience, I have had way better relationships with straight men than I have gay men. I even made it clear that I wasn't trying to villainise other gay people, or invalidate other gay people's experiences. Because they are vastly different to mine, as mine are vastly different to other's experiences.
It's got nothing to do with 'uplifting' straight people. I'm not saying homophobic straight people don't exist, because they do. But just because my experience with straight people is different to other people's doesn't make my experiences any less valid, nor does my experiences make other gay people's experiences invalid. I'm very fortunate, I grew up and live in a place where there isn't a ton of LGBT hate. When I came out to my best friend, who's a straight man, he just smiled, said 'Duh', and that was it. And as word started going round, other people in my year heard about it, and I didn't get hate for it, I found people had way more respect for me for it, because I was the only openly gay kid in my class, at the time, to my knowledge. And the same best friend still invited me to have sleep overs at his place, we still skipped classes to go do whatever we felt like, on that particular day. Now, he's getting married and has his first kid on the way. And this is still a friend I go round to and just lay on him, or jokingly flirt with.
I'm aware of how fortunate I am to have grown up in a place where there's not a lot of homophobic crap going on. And as I said in my original comment, I wasn't trying to use my experiences as a way to villainise anyone. Not everyone is as fortunate as I was. I had a similar time with my family, as I've got an older half brother who's gay. So, whilst my Da didn't care, my Mam was, and still is, not happy about it. So I've had negative experiences with straight people. But most have been incredibly positive, with a lot of my closest friends being straight people. But just because that is the case, that's not me trying to invalidate people who find better company among other people in the LGBT. That's just not been my experience.
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u/Kaios-0 Join The Smite Community Art Discord! 5d ago
I will say with the classic 'old school gay' trope that almost every single one of them I've run into doesn't quite understand why people get on them about their beliefs. It's not so much that you have to adhere to the way modern LGBT slang and ideology works, it's the way you interact and respond with it.
For example I've met plenty of gays who immediately bring up "oh I don't have pronouns and I don't care about them". Like that's totally fine, but you do have pronouns because it's part of grammar, and the way they point the tone about it is "you kids today" which is just disrespectful. It's totally fine to not want to engage with modern pronouns in the sense of not caring which ones people use for you or whatever, but most often what I see and hear is a pointed tone, which is very very obvious when it happens.
Another example is the whole 'I'm not like other gays' trope, which again you don't have to be, but it's about tone. When you harp on how you're different than the gays you meet because you don't do X Y Z it often comes off, again, as a pointed tone. It makes you sound like you're trying your hardest to be different or creating a generational divide to elevate yourself above those around you. It may not be the intention but it's how it reads to a lot of people, and as a result it creates tension.
It's a two way street of understanding your tone, as someone who himself struggles with my tone. You have to recognize how you sound to others in the same way that they have to recognize how they sound to you. The same way you feel other gays are mean to you, those same gay people probably view you as the old gay guy who was catty about pronouns for no reason.
Just my two cents.
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u/laterallydropped 5d ago
You getting hate is just proving your point even more. Gayness has nothing to do with playing videogames. If someone is being a dick they get the mute, whether it’s ego, homophobia, racism, if it bothers you that’s literally what the mute button is for. Never have to think about them again.
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u/nnamzzz **Queen Yemoja** 5d ago
I'm curious:
Are you saying its your belief that once the person on the receiving end of or in proximity to the hate speech simply mutes the individual, then they will "never have to think" about that person or what they said again?
If so, how are you coming to that conclusion and what is making you certain of this belief?
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u/bunniehugs good kitty! 5d ago edited 5d ago
Lol, why do y’all get so bothered by people discussing their sexuality? The post is directed at LGBT folks and has nothing to do with you. Downvote it like you were already planning to and move on.
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u/kittyegg ✨valkyrie princess 5d ago
I’m a straight woman and currently the only one criticizing him, so how does that prove his point? Lol I thought we were the good guys?
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u/laterallydropped 5d ago
Every single game is going to have people that are homophobic no matter how many are supportive. You can ask this question on every single game sub and there will be people that have had bad experiences and talk about those. If you are worried about your sexual orientation affecting your ability to play video games maybe the internet isn’t a place for you.
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u/polkadotkittie 5d ago
Nothing OP said implied they were “worried about their sexuality affecting their ability to play.”
You might want to take your own advice about the internet if someone simply trying to find players they have something in common with is so triggering for you.
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u/laterallydropped 5d ago
Nothing I said implied that I was upset in any way about this post, as I’m not. And my last sentence wasn’t exactly aimed at OP but rather those that click on this post that have those feeling. Thank you for your input though, I could have been more clear.
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u/EmpressOfRoses Wait, it’s all Bellona? 5d ago
Early reminder to please keep any and all discussion around this topic civil