So I’ve been thinking a bit about this, even before I saw this post. (Caveat: I’m subbed to Muma’s stream and hang out on his Discord. I am a fan and like him a lot. I’m also a bi woman.)
A few times people in stream chat or Discord have asked, in a polite but confused cishet sort of way, why precisely his stream chat and Discord are. Well. So aggressively gay. And I’ve tried to explain it to them in a friendly and not condescending way and here’s what I come up with.
Being an out LGBT person is not, as a lot of outsiders think, a matter of just Coming Out and being done with it. It’s constantly judging the environment, figuring out what the consequences are of being any given degree of out in the current situation. I’m flagrantly queer on the Internet, but almost entirely closeted in RL. I’m out to my mom, but not to my dad. I’m lucky in that I’m in a relationship with a man so I can at least casually mention my significant other without outing myself (first person to call that ‘passing privilege’ is getting shanked), but a lot of people can’t.
And it’s exhausting. It’s a lot of mental work to suss out exactly how Yourself you can be, what parts of your life you have to avoid discussing or straight up lie about, in order to protect your mental, emotional, and sometimes physical safety. Will this person be upset? How upset? Will they just glare, or say something, or be violent? Can you afford for them to judge you? Is it safe to say ‘fuck it’ and be open or do you need their respect for the sake of your job or safety or life? To be LGBT in an environment that is not explicitly marked as safe for us (and even some that are – bi in a gay environment, trans in an lgb environment, etc) is to be constantly on your guard and conscious of your words and actions.
It’s a massive burden that, frequently, we don’t realize we’re carrying until it’s lifted. And the gaming community, unfortunately, is one of the more homophobic places on the internet, and one where we have to be more careful. The stream and community surrounding an openly gay pro gamer is one of very, very few places where it’s genuinely safe to be both a giant gamer nerd and as gay as the hell you want all at the same time.
So we are. Aggressively. And, you know, we do collectively tend to feed off each other the more of us are in a room together, so Muma himself (who is fantastic about reading chat and messages) rolls along with it. If I had to guess – purely conjecture, mind – given the intense training schedule and team-building that the Outlaws do, it’s entirely possible that his stream is the only time he really gets to spend time with other LGBT people. And no number of supportive allies, no matter how much you love and trust them, can really make up for spending time around our own, you know?
There’s a big, big difference between fellow LGBT people reading your sexuality as a major part of your identity, and a cishet person doing it. This post (a favorite of mine) does a good job explaining the difference. TLDR: it’s the difference between a cishet community making him a curio and the LGBT community seeing and embracing him as one of our own.
Short answer: Muma’s stream and fanbase are so excessively gay because we can be, and that ability is much more rare than you think.
This is so fucking important. This very clearly explains how exactly it feels to be queer (I know Tumblr hates the word, but I am a queer woman so I am using it) and finding that place that’s safe. If I actually enjoyed Overwatch, I would find this Streamer’s Discord in a heartbeat. Good on the community for supporting each other. I love all the LGBTQA+ gamers!
Land of Sweetness and Light 