I believe my previous post needs some clarification. I left The Lucky Kitty Crew, because I felt the application of the group chat rules had become intolerably
homophobic, and I felt it was a
hostile environment towards LGBTs.
I am an out-and-proud Married Lesbian iRL, but I was being asked by group owner, Serenity Semple, to not speak about my life, for fear of offending someone.
The three verboten topics were Religion, Sexuality, and Politics. Apparently,
my life resides in the Bermuda Triangle, as it hits on all three of these in her opinion.
And I understand the point of having rules for group chat, but, as Rebekah stated in the comments left on the
original post, other people were free to discuss an open range of topics, whatever was on their mind. However, each time I discussed my life, what I was doing outside of Second Life (unless I was talking about my kitty cat), I was told that my chat was "Off Topic."
This created a hostile environment, not just for me, but also for other LGBT members of the Lucky Kitty Crew, who were also subjected to this hostility, and who witnessed free-flowing relaxed chat get shut down, time and again, anytime chat steered towards LGBT topics.
There is a fine line between maintaining order and creating a hostile environment, and that line was crossed.
I would have liked to maintain my friendship with Serenity, and thought that... I don't know... she would see how upset she had made me, her friend, and would apologize, and we'd, eventually, be fine. But, I honestly don't think it's a possibility. I'm sure that if you spoke with her, it would be
ME who had wronged her in some way. That's just how she is.
-Kira
