Shocked and quite confused...

[Madelaine McMasters]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Possibly. Literature, however, is not just reading, but also writing. As is roleplay.

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Certainly. There is a large area of overlap between all three categories: reading, writing, and roleplay, and RP of course partakes of both the others. But, while all three are "immersive" to some degree, the immersiveness of RP is different in some important ways. For instance, there is a logic to the unfolding of a narrative in both reading and writing that need not necessarily apply to RP. How that difference applies here, though, is the question.

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Qie Niangao wrote:

I mean, it's fine if some people think

their

SL is all about teh sexors. That they'd presume to impose that view on others -- and impugn others' motives on that basis -- well, that's where it's wrong, sick, or both.

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Yes, agreed, when that is what is occurring. But I can imagine scenarios -- say, a man or woman who was abused as a child in RL -- where other motivations and factors might come into play.

And I suppose it's possible that Leia's objections to age play do 

not 

assume that it is always sexual; she may have other objections to it.

But we won't know until or if she clarifies.

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What I see here is dogmatism. I don't beliieve Leia imagines that every person roleplaying a child has sex on their mind. I don't believe she imagines... anything at all. That's what dogmatism is all about no? You draw the line and you don't think past it. I do that all the time, I just don't know when or where.

The person who had the most profound influence on me loved to roleplay a child, though "roleplay" isn't really the right word. He was being. He taught me never to let go of those aspects of childhood he cherished, curiosity, playfulness, the ability to feel wonder all day long. And I hope my friends see some of that in me, for I am Daddy's Girl though and through.

So, when I put on my Lucy Van Pelt avatar, I can feel the mischievous presence of Charles Schulz and my father, and hope I do them proud. I'm not roleplaying.

[LaskyaClaren]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

What I see here is dogmatism. I don't beliieve Leia imagines that every person roleplaying a child has sex on their mind. I don't believe she imagines... anything at all. That's what dogmatism is all about no? You draw the line and you don't think past it. I do that all the time, I just don't know when or where.

 

 

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Yes, she certainly is dogmatic. What that doesn't really tell us, however is why she is so. You "believe" that this is an unthinking attitude, and insofar as she seems to be emotionally, intellectually, or imaginatively incapable of grasping the possibility of a rationally valid alternative, you are right. But that doesn't imply that the origin of her dogmatism is unthinking. "Thinking" need not mean "correct" or "logical" after all.

To some degree, though, this is leading us away from the constructive question at hand -- is there a rational reason for disliking non-sexual age play -- and towards the much murkier and less creditable territory of psychoanalyzing Leia.

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

The person who had the most profound influence on me loved to roleplay a child, though "roleplay" isn't really the right word. He was being. He taught me never to let go of those aspects of childhood he cherished, curiosity, playfulness, the ability to feel wonder all day long. And I hope my friends see some of that in me, for I am Daddy's Girl though and through.

So, when I put on my Lucy Van Pelt avatar, I can feel the mischievous presence of Charles Schulz and my father, and hope I do them proud. I'm not roleplaying.

 

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I think I might want to argue that all "roleplay" is a bit like this: if it appeals to us at all, it is because it expresses a part of ourself that we feel needs expression. What distinguishes "roleplay" from "being" in the larger sense is that the former is a conscious act of artifice: you are deliberately assuming a role that may speak to part of who you are, but that you are also declaring is not identical with yourself. So, you are roleplaying, maybe, when you become Lucy, not in the sense that you are departing from "who you are," but because you are using artifice -- a particular avatar -- to declare and highlight that expression.

You know, it may be too early in the morning for this conversation . . .

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Possibly. Literature, however, is not just reading, but also writing. As is roleplay.

I mean, it's fine if some people think

their

SL is all about teh sexors. That they'd presume to impose that view on others -- and impugn others' motives on that basis -- well, that's where it's wrong, sick, or both.

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You must have missed this thread where a poster stated that ANY nude image of a child was pornography.  In this case we were talking about classical fine art paintings.  When the poster said ANY they meant ANY.

 

[Leia36]

If you look at my first post I used the phrase "in my opinion" several times, to show that, while my views may not be popular, they are MY opinion and not LL nor anyone else's .. Am I prejudiced against child RPer's? .. Yes and emphatically, here is why .. I see the practice as highly questionable, unlike most other forms of RP, if you go to an info hub in a child AV you face ridicule and scorn at best .. Go there as a furry, elephant, robot, motorcar, slave, warrior, elf just about any AV you can think of and little will be said ... But cross that line .. Have a child AV, and people instantly get defensive and/or hostile. as for the why, I think it is in part related to the way the media deals with children, and ourselves ... Pretty much nothing is as sacred as a child in the eyes of 99.9999% of people. As I said in my opening statement I do not see how child AVs can ever be used without THE QUESTION arising and so I deal with it simply .. I refuse to acknowledge or interact with child AVs .. if that offends you well then block me and be done .. I am not changing.

Aye Syo we know each other, and if you recall I have had this argument before on this forum, I value our friendship and I must tell you that I agree with you most of the time, but on this issue I will not budge.. SOME people abuse SL by using it as a platform for kiddy porn .. do I have proof? no .. but I do not need to see the residue of that, however innocent it may seem.

[LaskyaClaren]

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Leia36 wrote:

If you look at my first post I used the phrase "in my opinion" several times, to show that, while my views may not be popular, they are MY opinion and not LL nor anyone else's .. Am I prejudiced against child RPer's? .. Yes and emphatically, here is why .. I see the practice as highly questionable, unlike most other forms of RP, if you go to an info hub in a child AV you face ridicule and scorn at best .. Go there as a furry, elephant, robot, motorcar, slave, warrior, elf just about any AV you can think of and little will be said ... But cross that line .. Have a child AV, and people instantly get defensive and/or hostile. as for the why, I think it is in part related to the way the media deals with children, and ourselves ... Pretty much nothing is as sacred as a child in the eyes of 99.9999% of people. As I said in my opening statement I do not see how child AVs can ever be used without THE QUESTION arising and so I deal with it simply .. I refuse to acknowledge or interact with child AVs .. if that offends you well then block me and be done .. I am not changing.

 

Aye Syo we know each other, and if you recall I have had this argument before on this forum, I value our friendship and I must tell you that I agree with you most of the time, but on this issue I will not budge.. SOME people abuse SL by using it as a platform for kiddy porn .. do I have proof? no .. but I do not need to see the residue of that, however innocent it may seem.

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Hi Leia, and thanks for the clarifications!

You raise a number of points here.

First, it is of course your opinion. As, indeed, is my own attitude. I certainly don't harbour the illusion that I have unmediated access to "The Truth." So, we'll accept that as read. At the same time, however, one always presumably has reasons for one's "opinion": the questions are 1) how conscious of those reasons are we, and 2) how rational are they?

Your second point seems to be relying upon cultural or social norms. Your argument is, as I take it, that other people don't like child avatars, so there must be something behind such dislike. Or, alternately, that your view is validated by the fact that others hold it as well.

I'm not sure how really rational or valid such an approach is, although it is certainly understandable: we all often conform to social norms without really interrogating them. In the US deep south for a very long time, the "social norm" was the firmly held belief that blacks were inferior. In a great many parts of the world, social norms hold that people who are "Queer" are abnormal or "sick." You would surely not agree with these viewpoints merely because a majority of others might hold them?

In passing, I'd also suggest that maybe this sort of response applies to other avatar types as well. There are a great many places in SL where furries, for instance, are emphatically not welcome, merely on the basis of a common perception that furries are "weird."

I agree that we have, as a culture, sort of fetishized childhood. It "represents" innocence, and so we are very sensitive to anything that seems to undercut that symbolic equivalence. But, again, why should we accept that unquestioningly, merely because, as you say, the media and popular culture reinforce it? The popular media also tends to push particular models for female attractiveness, as well, and yet we know that these have changed over time. I think it is vital that we continually question such received "truths," or we become passive consumers of our culture, rather than critically self-aware participants in it.

I'd also suggest that one of the things that attracts people to age play is precisely that "innocence." They want to recapture it in some way. Why should we assume that in doing so they are also contaminating it?

Your third point seems to argue that, because child avatars may, just possibly, be engaging in sexual role play, we should therefore condemn everyone on the assumption that they may be doing so. This is surely to presume guilt even where there is absolutely no evidence?

Your opinion about child avatars is, of course, your own, and I'm not going to suggest that you should not have the right to hold it, or let it dictate your own actions. I do think, however, that you might want to examine the reasons behind it and consider how valid they really are. And you might consider that there are ways, and ways, of responding to others who engage in something that you dislike. You can be censorious and accusatory . . . or you can simply have nothing to do with them, without accusing them of things for which you cannot possibly have evidence. Surely the latter is the better principle?

I ask of you no more than I'm always doing myself: one of the reasons I enjoy discussions like this is precisely that they force me to constantly question and critique my own perspectives. 

:-)

[Syo Emerald]

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Leia36 wrote:

Aye Syo we know each other, and if you recall I have had this argument before on this forum, I value our friendship and I must tell you that I agree with you most of the time, but on this issue I will not budge.. SOME people abuse SL by using it as a platform for kiddy porn .. do I have proof? no .. but I do not need to see the residue of that, however innocent it may seem.

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Of course you have people here, who act out their fantasies about sexual contact with children and they even form sort of a community. I have seen prove of that. I have seen the places they used to hangout, their profiles, their groups and statements....how they managed to stay undetected from outside and from LL. Half of them had in fact childavatars, but the other half used adult avatars, because without their fantasies wouldn't work. I could tell you a whole lot about all that, if you like to. Maybe when we sit at your beachhouse again.

I spoke to someone who has a child avatar as her primary form and she said how upset she is about all this stuff and that its dragging those down who have nothing to do with all this and who just want to have a happy SL and absolutly innocent roleplay in school- or family settings. And once I knew someone (who sadly passed away) who felt that being exploring SL with a child avatar helped him and just felt right for him.

Things like that, my experiances with both sides of the users of childavatars, shaped my opinion that I think it is unfair to say all of them are potentional criminals and worse. You know that I have soft spot for fantasy avatars and even run around as a furry from time to time. Some people would say that alone would make me a freak or a weirdo...and speaking of furries, some would accuse my of criminal acts against animals just because of my avatar choice.

And I wouldn't want to be treated like that, so I don't do the same to others.

[hazeonelove]

No clue where this all got jumbled. But a lot of what I said has been taken out of context. Child pornography, age-play, whatever else of the like, has NOTHING to do with child avies in themselves, at all. I clearly stated how I'm not prejudice against ANY types of "reasonable" RP. Of course "reasonable" being my opinion of what I think is reasonable. Yes, naked children running around public places bothers me. Yes, age-play really bothers me. Even the rape/rvp, whatever RP isn't suitable to me. But that has nothing to do with age-defined avies. As many people have said here, a lot of child avies are actually very kind and sweet people, who want nothing more than to just be "free" and goofy. Do I think pictures of naked child avies is child porn? Yes. That is MY opinion. But this does not speak for every child avie out there.

 

The titler thing... Ya, I'm not touching them. I see how they're just used as a "dare", and I'm not participating in that. I'm not in SL for drama. There's enough of that in RL.

 

Edit: Everyone has their own opinion. As the person before me has said, sometimes you can learn from other's, or not. So let's take everyone's opinion with an open mind here. No one is truly right or wrong. All this is just opinions and personal standards. Some of which, are good to consider.

 

Happy posting!

 

P.s. I no longer speak to my "brother", as I took into consideration what was said. I did what I felt was necessary and I separated myself from the situation. A situation that I don't want to be in. So, thank you for the advice and guidance.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

What I see here is dogmatism. I don't beliieve Leia imagines that every person roleplaying a child has sex on their mind. I don't believe she imagines... anything at all. That's what dogmatism is all about no? You draw the line and you don't think past it. I do that all the time, I just don't know when or where.

 

 

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Yes, she certainly is dogmatic. What that doesn't really tell us, however is 

why

 she is so. You "believe" that this is an unthinking attitude, and insofar as she seems to be emotionally, intellectually, or imaginatively incapable of grasping the possibility of a rationally valid alternative, you are right. But that doesn't imply that the origin of her dogmatism is unthinking. "Thinking" need not mean "correct" or "logical" after all.

To some degree, though, this is leading us away from the constructive question at hand -- is there a rational reason for disliking non-sexual age play -- and towards the much murkier and less creditable territory of psychoanalyzing Leia.

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I've always thought of dogma in an unfavorable, unthinking light. I'm a skeptic, ya know. The more I think, the less dogmatic I become (I think ;-). So it makes sense that I'd equate Leia's dogmatism with unthinking here. That's how I understand it in myself. And I also believe I do a lot of thinking that just ain't correct or logical. For what it's worth, I think Leia's as normal as you or me, so I'll save the time and embarassment of pyschoanalyzing her by looking inward and keeping my mouth (mostly) shut. Why is she dogmatic? For the same reason I'm dogmatic. It feels good.

Is there a rational reason for disliking non-sexual age play? This is a pretty soft subject. Where's the objective database from which to draw a rational conclusion? If you were raised to "act like an adult" and had no childhood role models like mine, "acting like a child" might generate disdain. Even if you had my childhood role models, the sexualization of children in the media (as Leia correctly alludes) could certainly be a influence. I'm pop culture deprived. It may be difficult to imagine non-sexual age play if the only examples of age play that make the news are sexual.

My refusal to patently reject age-play might stem from a dogmatic view that almost everything is more complex and nuanced than it appears. I've been accused of being "wishy-washy" because I rarely draw hard lines, anywhere. I draw them when I have confidence I know where they belong.

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I think I might want to argue that 

all

 "roleplay" is a bit like this: if it appeals to us at all, it is because it expresses a part of ourself that we feel needs expression. What distinguishes "roleplay" from "being" in the larger sense is that the former is a conscious act of artifice: you are deliberately assuming a role that may speak to part of who you are, but that you are also declaring is not identical with yourself. So, you are roleplaying, maybe, when you become Lucy, not in the sense that you are departing from "who you are," but because you are using artifice -- a particular avatar -- to declare and highlight that expression.

You know, it may be too early in the morning for this conversation . . .

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My use of Lucy may not have been particularly helpful. She's not really a child. She's ageless, as you'd expect of a character written for young and old alike. She's also a pain in the ass.

I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to do justice to an explanation of "roleplay". I won't disagree with yours, but it might not be the only one. I'm in my early days of community theater. I've rehearsed with my playmates (we do plays!), dressed with them before the shows and dined with them after. We've discussed our approaches, if we have them. Some try to understand the character, some mimic behavior, some just do it. I think I'm just doing it, but I've yet to have a part that requires more of me.

I've watched quite a few "Actors Studio" interviews, expecting to see some underlying truth emerge about acting. I'm still waiting. I recently watched an interview with Jennifer Lawrence (who I think is terrific) in which she said (paraphrased) "I know there are actors who inhabit their roles to understand their character's motivations. I'm very impressed by that, but don't think I could get anything done if I worked that way. I just hear "action" and I get to work."

This bothers me, because I want to believe I understand what I'm doing. Another dogma? Is this why I can't draw a line?

What a strange word, anyway.

I could understand "catma".

[Tari Landar]

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Leia36 wrote:

 As I said in my opening statement I do not see how child AVs can ever be used without THE QUESTION arising and so I deal with it simply .. I refuse to acknowledge or interact with child AVs .. if that offends you well then block me and be done .. I am not changing.

. SOME people abuse SL by using it as a platform for kiddy porn .. do I have proof? no .. but I do not need to see the residue of that, however innocent it may seem.

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I know your post wasn't directed towards me, and I promise I'm not simply berating you here, just discussing.

Child avatars are something you do not like, and also, do not understand. It's not something you can relate to, and it's not something you want to relate to. So you choose to simply avoid it at all costs. I do understand that fully, and I believe that's actually a really good approach to take towards something you simply don't like. You don't necessarily have to explain your reasons to anyone, or even know what they are yourself.

It's not the fact that you dislike them, or even your reasons for disliking them, that bothered me in the first place, personally. It was what you said about the people who participate in that type of roleplay I found offensive. Everyone has opinions, likes, dislikes, of course. There is nothing wrong at all with expressing your opinions. I just don't honestly understand where some of the, seemingly, hostile thoughts you have towards others came/come from.

The main reason I found it offensive, is because of past conversations on the forums about various types of rp. I know you are very much into the type you like. I also know you have gotten extremely offended when anyone has dared to say anything bad about an rp style you enjoy. I can remember, quite distinctly how angry it, seemed to have, made you when people have said things about gor, dom/sub master/slave, etc... types of rp.(please don't be offended by my abbreviations, none are a type of rp I participate in, so, I doubt they're actually correct, it's not done to offend). I can remember people saying the same thing you did about those who choose to rp as children, needing to see a shrink, as if it applied to people who enjoyed the types of rp you enjoy. You found the comments people made about those styles of rp, and more, quite offensive. You didn't think it was fair of others to judge you, and people who enjoy the types of rp you enjoy. Any sort of negative comments that were made, just fueled what seemed to be your anger(not just your anger of course, others shared the same stance you do/did during those conversations). This is why I don't understand your hostile comments about people who rp as children. You don't appreciate it when others did or do it to you. Of course I wouldn't understand those types of comments regardless of who said them. But coming from someone who gets extremely offended when their brand of rp is discussed in any negative manner, it's even more peculiar.

The second part is just a blanket statement. Yes some people choose to abuse sl, in all kinds of ways, not just involving child porn. That doesn't mean we paint everyone in sl with the same brush, though. We don't necessarily need to see what people do, or have done, to know it's not acceptable, or know that those things exist. It still doesn't mean everyone in sl is inherently bad. Just because some people use a certain type of rp to do things that are not acceptable, doesn't mean everyone does. If that were the case, adult avatars would have a much worse fate than child avatars, as most "abuse" or at least unacceptable things done in sl, are done by adult avs, not child avs(not that any av can actually "do" anything by themselves, of course). We certainly wouldn't paint the whole of sl as needing a shrink simply based on what a few choose to engage in. The same should apply to all. It doesn't have to, nor should it, change your opinion. I would never try to sway your position on what you do and do not like. Those are your opinions and you're entitled to them just a smuch as anyone else. It doesn't mean your comments about the mental state of others is even remotely appropriate, though. Nor does it mean those kinds of comments aren't going to offend people. You can't be surprised when it happens. You were offended when others did it to you. It's a natural human reaction when others judge people harshly, and seemingly without reason.

 

[Wooja]

There's no smoke without fire.

Wooja...translatethatforthebenefitofthelinguisticallychalleged

[Wooja]

Are we going to find a change in LL's attitude to all forms of age-play, given the cultural heritage of the new CEO?

Wooja...believeliberalismcouldgothatfar

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Wooja wrote:

There's no smoke without fire.

Wooja...translatethatforthebenefitofthelinguisticallychalleged

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You better hope they don't look up "pyrolysis" in the process, though.