Title: Unspecified Admin Consensus
CKEY: Caerie
Your Discord: None
Offender’s CKEY: Unspecified
LRP or MRP server: MRP/Sage
Offender’s In-Game Name (if relevant): ...
Date (MM-DD-YYYY): 03-22-2021
Round Number: 28126
Rules Broken (if relevant): Rule 2/Rule 0
Part of Admin Conduct Broken (if relevant): None.
Incident Description: Desmond Lyle referred to the Chief Engineer in a derogatory way by referring to them as a '■■■■■■■■■(sic)' because the HoP office power went out. I submitted a ticket, because '■■■■■■■■■' is an older derogatory word for someone with Down's Syndrome, and an antiquated anthropological word for referring to people of East Asian descent. Tyranicranger4 handled the ticket, discussed the term '■■■■■■■■■' with other admins, according to their message, and determined the language to be acceptable, resolving the ticket, as is the admin's prerogative.
Additional Information: I absolutely disagree with this decision. Invoking the name of a race in anger (which is the best possible read of this phrase in context, with the worst being an actual slur towards people with Down’s) is inherently derogatory to that race. If he had said “Hurry up and turn my office power back on, you Asian person”, which is the complete translation of that phrase, the bigotry seems obvious. The racism is an application of a known negative stereotype at a time when anti-Asian violence is at so regularly on display, and seemingly blatantly against Rule 2
“Be patient with other players who may not know what they’re doing and assist them when you can; remember this is a newbie-friendly server before anything else and toxicity toward players for not understanding something will not be tolerated. In the spirit of this rule, no racial/homophobic slurs or generally intolerant behavior is permitted in or outside of the game. In-character racism between different species is permitted, but keep real-world slurs (including allusions to real slurs) and references out of it.”
This was both impatient, and alluding to real-world slurs. Invoking race as a pejorative addendum to a sentence is inherently racist, as you are invoking their race as though it relates to their inability to provide some specific service. Later on in that same round, Desmond Lyle used the word ‘cunt’ repeatedly for the same concept, which reeks of similarly sexist bigotry in the method of usage. I see no way either of these expressions from Desmond at the time could be taken as anything other than bigoted in their usage, although I do admit that ‘cunt’, at least, has regional differences in severity, being a much more severe term in American English than Australian English, and I did not specifically report that usage during the round, as I was honestly too busy managing the events themselves, much less my emotional state after being told that a clearly racist pejorative was within the rules, to express myself in the moment.
It is, of course, admin’s discretion as to what that would be, but I see no reason that either of the events aren’t bigoted, and even if for some reason both of those terms were acceptable, I don’t understand how that hostility and impatience fits at all beneath the Rule 2 ‘Be excellent to each other’ umbrella.
I have 240 hours playing on Sage. It’s my favorite server specifically because I don’t run into bigotry like this on it. This is my first encounter of anything to this degree, and I am utterly shocked that appending a racial type to an accusation of incompetence is somehow not racist. Whichever racial term is put in to replace the one that was chosen, it should be clear that the intent of the phrasing was clearly bigoted in nature, because it was invoked at all in that context.
In-character racism is one thing, but in SS13, ‘■■■■■■■■■’ isn’t a race. Only in real life.
If the issue cannot be revisited, I would at the very least like it explained to me why this decision was reached, seemingly by a consensus of admins represented to me by Tyranicranger4.
Thank you for your time.