Like all gamers, I enjoyed watching this year’s Game Awards, and I was excited to see who would be the winner of the best esports player of the year. I was even more excited when they announced Mortal Kombat 11, one of my favourite franchises, and a true example of everything that makes gaming great.

But later, as I watched Scorpion rip Raiden’s head off, tear his torso apart, snap his spine, violate his skull and dance around in his remains, all in graphic, terrible, realistic detail, all I could think was how horrified I was.

My breath caught in my throat with revulsion. My mind kept replaying that awful scene, over and over.

How dare SonicFox tell us that he was gay!

I can’t believe that The Game Awards have sunk so low as to allow something so offensive, so damaging to the image of gaming as a hobby, as a man saying “I am gay” to be aired live on stream. Where is the content control? Where is the live broadcast team, to jump in and say “this is too far”? What was Keighley doing when this obscenity happened?

As gamers, we play our games for escapism, to get away from the horror of the world. And yet, just as Raiden’s body was being violated by Scorpion’s brutal attacks, my sanctuary was being violated by SonicFox’s insistence that everyone know he was gay.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with being gay. I’m not gay of course, but if someone was gay, I would be okay with it. But do we really need to see it? Do we really need to see someone saying they are “gay” when we could be watching any number of less offensive things, like a man’s skull being ripped off and his dismembered spine flopping about like a wet noodle, spattering blood across the floor in perfectly simulated spatter patterns?

And if SonicFox is allowed to tell everyone that he is gay, well, what next? Could anyone be gay? Is Scorpion gay? Is Raiden gay? Am I gay? (No.) What about the other Mortal Kombat characters? Are they gay? This agenda has to stop.

Other gamers might be willing to roll over and allow this kind of deeply disgusting stuff to be shoved down their throats to burst out of the back of their necks in a spray of blood, but not me. Something so offensive and vile as identity politics has no place in a world of endless dismemberment and evisceration.

Fighting games are a place for one thing, and one thing only: endless, over-the-top, hyper-detailed but non-political violence. What kind of message does it send to the mainstream media when they see two ultra-realistic video game character tearing chunks of meat off each other in an orgy of bloodlust while a frenzied crowd hoots and hollers like slavering wolves, and one of the people controlling them is gay?!

If you’re as sickened by this as I am, it’s time to stand up and say NO to identity politics, and YES to placing your thumbs into your enemy’s eye sockets and tearing his skull apart like a ripe melon. The standard we walk past is the standard we accept.