Tag Archives: GLADD

Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, has tweeted some good news this morning.

A change to the XBL code of conduct will now allow you to express your sexual orientation in profiles and Gamertags.

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Stephen Toulouse, Xbox Live’s head of policy and enforcement, says that the company is looking for ways to allow gamers to express their sexual orientation without being exposed possible negativity.

Once Microsoft figures out how to do this properly, the change will be implemented.

“The overall policy we have today is that the expression of sexual orientation in a Gamertag or text field is not allowed,” he told Kotaku. “That doesn’t matter what the orientation is. We recognize that the policy is not just, that some communities feel like they are being targeted. Our challenge is how to do that. We are working on that now.

“I don’t know what shape or form it will take, but yes we will go back and figure out how to make it work.”

Microsoft found that 98 percent of those who used the word “gay” on Live did so in a pejorative manner.

Toulouse will be present at the EA hosted talk today,sponsored by GLADD.

XBL community manager Stephen Toulouse has met with members of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to discuss how Microsoft can improve relations with the gay community.

Speaking in a recent Major Nelson podcast, Toulouse did not go into much detail on the chat, but he did say it was a positive experience.

“I can’t talk about what we discussed specifically except to say that we provided them with a lot of information about what we do today, why we do what we do and how we do it,” he said. “And then we asked them the question, ‘How can we do this better?’ And we have some ideas. Here are some ideas.

“That dialog was super, super helpful. I think it was a great engagement. Justin and Jeffrey who came out from GLAAD really appreciated the effort that we’re putting into it – and had great ideas, like they brought up some stuff we hadn’t thought of.

“I would recommend to any business who’s tackling these issues, they’re a great group to work with. The GLAAD folk totally understand a variety of things, they’re really great to work with. They want to enable communities to be safer. They just want to enable communities to be safer – that’s what my team tries to do as well, so it was a great thing.

“We’ll plan to say something about [GLAAD and Xbox LIVE policy] in the future.”

You can hear the full podcast through the above link.

Via Gay Gamer.