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Is it abuse to be a male in RL playing a female avatar in SL?


Deanna Moonwall
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I don't care if a male plays a female. Thakfully no one I know cares about who I might be in RL.

 

Only thing I would add is if a Lesbian club says NO men as the club is in SL hey should allow the SL character to be there

I've only known one club to ban a friend of mine after looking at her profile and asking about her RL gender.

As far as I'm concerned they had no business asking her about her RL anyway and I would have thought demanding her to give RL infor was against the TOS.

 

Huggz and kisses

 

Mondy

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Maybe its not technically abuse..but it is a horrible thing to do to anyone..to lie..pretend to be a rl woman...and I am not talking about me..it was someone I know...

 

SL is a wonderful place to explore and be whatever you want to be..but...but ..but...please never ever...use it to lie and hurt people..that is all I am saying.

 

Have a nice Christmas everyon!!!

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This is not an abuse per se, and many people do this (although generally the contrary, RL females playing a male in SL to escape harassment) and anyway not a TOS violation.

 

However there are cases where you should be careful not to harm your play mate's feelings: if you engage into sex activities, or love activities (or some professional activities). Some don't really care about your RL gender, but the majority will feel deeply hurt or raped if they realize that you are not the gender they expected.

So you need some care if you engage into such activities. If you are in a place with sex poseballs where people just click to use them without saying hello, very probably these people will not care of what you are in RL. But if you want to engage into a more constructed relation, it is better to tell your partner, if he asks for. Ideally the dialogue should be:

"-are you a lady in RL? (or what is your age, race, etc.)

-Do you really want to know? it may be disappointing

-yes I really want to know."

At this stage, you must accept one of the two: to tell the truth, or that your partner may not engage without knowing.

If you reply, you can ask for not disclosing.

Concealing RL gender, age, etc. is part of the game. But Lying is often felt as a very serious offense. Remember that divorces were pronounced on the basis of a SL relation, considered as a true adultery. I would not be surprised if some courts consider lying about SL gender as a kind of rape.

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Gender swapping, by definition, isn't defined as abuse. As many talked about it before, it really depends what you do with it.  Do you habitually lie to get what you want by being a female rather than a male avi? Do you go in length to tell the other person that you are indeed female rather than a male? Something to think about.

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"Only thing I would add is if a Lesbian club says NO men as the club is in SL hey should allow the SL character to be there

I've only known one club to ban a friend of mine after looking at her profile and asking about her RL gender.

As far as I'm concerned they had no business asking her about her RL anyway and I would have thought demanding her to give RL infor was against the TOS.

 

Mondy"


 

 

I totally agree and I'm pretty sure the invasion of that person's privacy was in violation of the TOS.

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If places consider lying about your SL Gender as Rape, that is insult to anyone who has ever actually been raped.

 

Secondly, why does everyone consider males playing female avatars as 'lying'? Has no one ever stopped to think that some of them might be transsexual and in their own minds are females regardless of having been born in a male body?


But really, don't use Rape seriously in conjunction to this game. That's just downright offensive and insulting.

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Deanna.Moonwall wrote:

 

If there is a male in real life playing a female in second life, what actions by this female avatar could be considered abuse?

Whatever falls within Linden Lab's definitions of abuse reportable offenses. None of which involve gender unless someone is disclosing real life information in which case they are probably history if LL confirms any sort of disclosure has occurred.

I.e.; if someone discloses rl gender information about anyone else in Second Life then that someone is subject to disciplinary action not excluding termination.

The Privacy, TOS, and Community standards are available for your review. And you agreed to them as a condition of signing up for an account and continued use of the service.

http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php

So the answer to your question either falls within the confines of those policies or if in doubt you can contact Linden Lab and ask them.

As for simply an adult male playing an adult  female, an adult female playing an adult  male, an adult male playing an adult  male, an adult female playing an adult  female, an adult human playing an adult  fox, etc... No not an abuse. It isn't the adult character in question. It is the actions of the adult character.

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Again, again, and again, no- gender swapping isn't abuse in and of itself. I've a well-documented history of wearing male and female forms and not once have i ever used either in an abusive manner. If anyone cared to ask when I was female I'd tell them up front that I was a RL male; 90% of the time it didn't make a bit of difference. When I outed myself to my close friends in SL, it didn't make a bit of difference although it was a shock to them to hear my RL voice finally .

So, no- playing as a male or female and not being that in RL is not abuse. HOWEVER... if someone tells you they are male or female in RL and YOU go telling others that personal RL information, that is a TOS violation

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I thought this response was disgusting. To use the word rape so light heartedly is terrible. And about this topic, why not ask, Is it abuse to be playing a male and be a female in RL? Why is this topic always so one sided? I know many women who are playing males in the game so that they can make more money at a men only strip club. Wouldn't taking advantage of people like that be considered abuse? I do think that before you enter a serious relationship with someone that it is your job to find out more information about who is on the other side of the keyboard. But it isn't their responsibility to inform you. Be wise and don't let yourself fall victim to the fantasy life of SL. Trust isn't something you can just hand out in this game.

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as far as my side of the equation - for casual friendships or casual relationships that go beyond friendship to an extent, in other words anything that exists only in SL and is not going to RL, i personally don't care who or what someone is in real life.  only if we are going to get together in real life does it matter to me.  i prefer honesty but honesty is kind of a subjective thing sometimes, by which i mean it is your sl persona i want to interact with, and rl doesn't matter until, well, until it does matter.

in sl i have male avatars and they are straight males, i have female avatars and they are straight females.  in rl i am a straight male, so straight i bite hot dogs in the middle, and that is why if things are going into the realm of rl, then yes, it makes a difference.  having said that though, i know that to some people it does matter about rl gender, and it is on me to be aware and sensitive to that and alert for signs that it does matter to someone if one of my female avatars is engaging them beyond a simple hello how's the weather, and it is also on them to be aware that while i don't feel the need to hang an "i'm a male in rl " sign somewhere in the females' profiles, they should let my girls know if things get to that stage that the rl gender would matter to them and i haven't already broached the subject myself.  oh and to answer the question some of you may want to ask so you don't have to, yes my girls have interacted with females but only twice and in both cases the ladies i was with in my female form did in fact know my rl gender right from the start.

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Although a wide variety of answers and scenarios have been provided and discussed on this topic, I can think of one most obvious thing that wasn't.  It was something to which I gave much attention upon first entering SL.  Gender and/or species aside, how many of us actually model our avatars after our rl bodies?  How many of the men look at those "perfectly" shaped women in SL and think, "That must be a mirror image of the modelesque body sitting behind the monitor," or how many women see the huge bronzed muscles on a male avi and would expect to see that same image were they to knock on his rl door?

It's a game.  It's not REAL life, it's SECOND Life.  We are not here to create accurate portrayals of reality, but what we might wish to be, or merely to let our imaginations run free.

By the way, this is what I really look like:  http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x200/drexious/RL%20Me/Explosive-Muscle-3.jpg

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Landon.Raghilda wrote:

 

Although a wide variety of answers and scenarios have been provided and discussed on this topic, I can think of one most obvious thing that wasn't.  It was something to which I gave much attention upon first entering SL.  Gender and/or species aside, how many of us actually model our avatars after our rl bodies?  How many of the men look at those "perfectly" shaped women in SL and think, "That must be a mirror image of the modelesque body sitting behind the monitor," or how many women see the huge bronzed muscles on a male avi and would expect to see that same image were they to knock on his rl door?

It's a game.  It's not REAL life, it's SECOND Life.  We are not here to create accurate portrayals of reality, but what we might wish to be, or merely to let our imaginations run free.

By the way, this is what I really look like:  http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x200/drexious/RL%20Me/Explosive-Muscle-3.jpg

 

i know a lot of people whose avatars bear no resemblance to their RL, some just create a character from whole cloth so to speak, and some specifically go to make an opposite of their rl, making their av petite if they are a little hefty in rl, and so on.  but i do also know a few people, and i am one of them, that do try to make their av as much like they are in real life as possible.  i can't speak to their reasons, but as for me it helps me identify, helps my sense of immersion, and a couple of people i know have said the same applies to them.  however i do also have more than one avatar, and while each does sort of share a gene pool with me, the others since my original do depart a bit from that in various ways.

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- Off topic... or not:


I think that digital worlds are important not because we are going to'simulate' the world we know inside them, but because we are soon goingto create and experience things inside them that we can never see onearth.  Things that can only exist right now in our imagination. Moreover, we aren't going to stop at the detail and realism of the realworld, we are going to go far beyond it.

Philip Linden wrote today in 'Avatar', and Inspiration

My 2 cents are absollutely agree with Philip.

- End of the Off Topic (or the On Topic).

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