Happy International Women's Day!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

March 8 has been celebrated as a day recognizing both the achievements and particular challenges faced by women since the early decades of the 20th century. It was recognized by the United Nations in 1977.

Personally, I've been celebrating IWD in Second Life in a variety of ways since I began here. This year, I made freebie tee shirts for two of my feminist groups, and sent these out with a notecard about the day. And I produced a photograph that celebrates the contributions of women during both world wars -- contributions that demonstrated conclusively that women were more than capable of taking on any task traditionally assigned to a man.

 

The other way I want to celebrate today is to recognize and celebrate two of the women I met in Second Life who most inspired me. The first of these is Ledoof Constantineau, in RL a tough Scottish socialist with a wonderful sense of humour, and the guiding spirit for many years behind the SLLU Feminist Network. The second is Paty Amiot, a Mexican MD in RL who founded the very successful group "Stop Violence against Women." Neither are in SL anymore, sadly, but their legacy is still here. I miss them both: they were wonderful people.

Second Life is full of incredibly powerful, talented, and enterprising women. Many of our best known artists, creators, and community leaders are women.

What women in SL have inspired you? An artist? A creator? Even just a partner! Tell us!

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

The best womens' day celebration I saw was when Lavender Storydel turned up in some online Napoleonic War game and trolled them out of ammo

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

The best womens' day celebration I saw was when Lavender Storydel turned up in some online Napoleonic War game and trolled them out of ammo

"Mais Joséphine, je vous en supplie! J'ai besoin de mes balles!"

Works for me.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

"J'ai deux O-levels et un budgerigar" - Les Goons

[Paul Hexem]

I am in complete support of International Women's Day.

Ever since that whole "day without women" thing, strikes and time off, I look forward to the peace and quiet each year!

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

March 8 has been celebrated as a day recognizing both the achievements and particular challenges faced by women since the early decades of the 20th century. It was recognized by the United Nations in 1977.

Personally, I've been celebrating IWD in Second Life in a variety of ways since I began here. This year, I made freebie tee shirts for two of my feminist groups, and sent these out with a notecard about the day. And I produced a photograph that celebrates the contributions of women during both world wars -- contributions that demonstrated conclusively that women were more than capable of taking on any task traditionally assigned to a man.

 

The other way I want to celebrate today is to recognize and celebrate two of the women I met in Second Life who most inspired me. The first of these is Ledoof Constantineau, in RL a tough Scottish socialist with a wonderful sense of humour, and the guiding spirit for many years behind the SLLU Feminist Network. The second is Paty Amiot, a Mexican MD in RL who founded the very successful group "Stop Violence against Women." Neither are in SL anymore, sadly, but their legacy is still here. I miss them both: they were wonderful people.

Second Life is full of incredibly powerful, talented, and enterprising women. Many of our best known artists, creators, and community leaders are women.

What women in SL have inspired you? An artist? A creator? Even just a partner! Tell us!

Well, let's not leave out any history here, now Scylla.

Celebrated first *by Roza Luxemberg*, a German Communist critical of the Bolsheviks; then by the Soviet Union for many years; then by the UN; and then declared a holiday by Obama. So here we all are. Many Russians won't celebrate this now because it was so hypocritical, not to mention the kitsch involved, because women had a double burden, unacknowledged in the Soviet work force, and today, policies are going backward in Russia with removal of the criminalization of domestic violence. What I've found is that you don't have to glorify this Soviet holiday, and whitewash its origins, to promote women's rights as human rights. As an Obama voter, I would say his socialist side and culture wasn't so effective.

So in the SL context, I would mention Robin Linden (Robin Harper), an older woman and non-geek among a staff largely made up of geek men in the earlier days, who played an important role in bringing about reform of the group tools, better governance, better accountability by LL, etc. I believe she had a title similar to Gruhmpity, VP of Product, maybe not as elevated, but basically, she was the grown-up in the office who ran the world that everyone said they hadn't made, convinced they merely coded a platform.

Among the SL women avatars, I would recognize Callie Kline, owner and creator of KittyCats, who has brought untold hours of joy and fun to customers and run a business very responsive to consumer problems, quick to answer tickets to fix things, and innovative with content year after year.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Celebrated first *by Roza Luxemberg*, a German Communist critical of the Bolsheviks; then by the Soviet Union for many years; then by the UN; and then declared a holiday by Obama. So here we all are. Many Russians won't celebrate this now because it was so hypocritical, not to mention the kitsch involved, because women had a double burden, unacknowledged in the Soviet work force, and today, policies are going backward in Russia with removal of the criminalization of domestic violence.

Yep. All of this is entirely true. In fact, I sent out a notecard to my groups this morning with links to stories detailing the radical origins of the day.

The main contribution of the Soviets was to fix it on 8 March (although they didn't actually initiate that). I'll agree entirely that the Soviet Union had a pretty mixed record on, well, pretty much everything, including women's rights.

I'm not sure why any of this is particularly relevant to the modern commemoration of the day?

(Luxemberg is a fascinating figure. I don't idolize her, and I'm not big on the way she was co-opted by the East Germans, but she is a really interesting figure, and one in whose ideas I do find much to admire.)

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So in the SL context, I would mention Robin Linden (Robin Harper), an older woman and non-geek among a staff largely made up of geek men in the earlier days, who played an important role in bringing about reform of the group tools, better governance, better accountability by LL, etc. I believe she had a title similar to Gruhmpity, VP of Product, maybe not as elevated, but basically, she was the grown-up in the office who ran the world that everyone said they hadn't made, convinced they merely coded a platform.

Among the SL women avatars, I would recognize Callie Kline, owner and creator of KittyCats, who has brought untold hours of joy and fun to customers and run a business very responsive to consumer problems, quick to answer tickets to fix things, and innovative with content year after year.

Very cool! Thank you!

Edited March 9, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Luna Bliss]

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

I am in complete support of International Women's Day.

Ever since that whole "day without women" thing, strikes and time off, I look forward to the peace and quiet each year!

Gosh, you just sounded like . . . an old and largely unlamented forum regular/ troll.

/me peers at you suspiciously

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

"J'ai deux O-levels et un budgerigar" - Les Goons

And have you been taking pics of bloomers?

HARDLY appropriate, do you think?

[Paul Hexem]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Gosh, you just sounded like . . . an old and largely unlamented forum regular/ troll.

/me peers at you suspiciously

Look at it this way. The obvious trolling is always the most harmless!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

20 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Look at it this way. The obvious trolling is always the most harmless!

Yes, but you're only mostly harmless.

[Orwar]

13 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

What women in SL have inspired you? An artist? A creator? Even just a partner! Tell us!

   There are many talented women in SL, both creators, artists, entrepreneurs, and educators. I've also attended a few live concerts over the years with some very good singers .. And some terrible singers .. But the one I've enjoyed the most was a German woman, whose name I promptly forgot. Whoops. 

   As far as artists go, I have a dear friend I've known for many, many years, who uses SL as a platform to exhibit and distribute some of her art. It's often dark and distressing, which is a theme which certainly appeals to my aesthetics - but it's also her way to process her hallucinations and nightmares that she struggles with as part of her mental health issues.

   For creators, it's one of those things that you don't really know whether it's a man or a woman behind the avi - but also, in my mind, that doesn't matter one bit. There's been rumours that one of my favourite creators is a woman, it was up on that trashy gossip site for a while. If true, who cares. If false, who cares. It doesn't impact my appreciation for the things they make. Either way, there seems to be a lot of women who make all sorts of things in SL, and many of the more popular brands are owned by women.

   As for entrepreneurs, one can't really talk about entrepreneurship in SL without mentioning Anshe Chung. When I first looked into SL and found out that you could potentially become a millionaire through it, I was ready to drop everything and have at it. Of course I'm much too lazy and easily distracted to ever make a business in SL that'll even get to breaking even - but hey, she briefly sparked a dream. And then I found an L$5K pirate ship and immediately bust my virtual economy. Whoopsie.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

43 minutes ago, Orwar said:

the one I've enjoyed the most was a German woman, whose name I promptly forgot.

Is that the singer who taught singing IRL and always has a big pan of soup on the stove in the kitchen where she held impromptu performances in-world? She's got quite the vocal range.

[Orwar]

5 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Is that the singer who taught singing IRL and always has a big pan of soup on the stove in the kitchen where she held impromptu performances in-world?

   I'm not sure .. Caught the performance a bit at the tail end, and promptly went to show friends only as the venue was packed, so I didn't hear or see anything about any soup pans.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And have you been taking pics of bloomers?

/me strums a Ukelele and sings "The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la"

I nominate Jeri Ellsworth for the front-line in the list of great inspirers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v6pDBDeYr4

Edited March 9, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku
Some of you might not have heard of her

[Ceka Cianci]

Every day is Woman's day in my house, since I'm outnumbered 3 to 1..

It's always, I'm gonna tell mom  or Don't do that your mother will have a fit..

The tone has been set, so my job is so much easier..

They all fear my war path.. hehehe

[JanuarySwan]

8 hours ago, Orwar said:

 As for entrepreneurs, one can't really talk about entrepreneurship in SL without mentioning Anshe Chung. When I first looked into SL and found out that you could potentially become a millionaire through it, I was ready to drop everything and have at it. 

Are you kidding or serious?  I'm asking because as far as Anshe, it takes money to make money.  So, I've always assumed Anshe had the money to invest in SL early which many (most) of us average folk did not.  In short, what I am saying is, Anshe had to have money to buy up all that land.  I doubt she obtained all that land from strip-tease dancing or hostessing.  

As far as the OP, there are woman who inspire me here but I'd rather not name them but I think they somehow know who they are.  The woman who inspired me the most were in my own family.  The courage they exhibited being survivors of the Holocaust and even saw many in their own family die is a kind of courage that cannot be put into words, so I shall not try.  

Edited March 9, 2021 by JanuarySwan

[Orwar]

26 minutes ago, JanuarySwan said:

Are you kidding or serious?  I'm asking because as far as Anshe, it takes money to make money.  So, I've always assumed Anshe had the money to invest in SL early which many (most) of us average folk did not.  In short, what I am saying is, Anshe had to have money to buy up all that land.  I doubt she obtained all that land from strip-tease dancing or hostessing.  

   So, what? Anshe's achievements 'doesn't count' because she had capital to fund her entrepreneurial enterprise with?

   That's sort of entrepreneurship 101: invent a solution to a problem -> fund your solution -> get to it -> profit.

[FairreLilette]

31 minutes ago, JanuarySwan said:

The woman who inspired me the most were in my own family.  The courage they exhibited being survivors of the Holocaust and even saw many in their own family die is a kind of courage that cannot be put into words, so I shall not try.  

Yes this.  The elder women in my family as well saw people in their own family die as young people and the courage they had to live life still and to trust people at all period cannot be put into words.  As far as my Mom and my Aunt, I will say the men that came into their lives were pretty awesome men, meeting them in Polish Town in New York and then bringing them to California to have a pretty good life here.  Both my Mom and my Aunt did well on their own in business; my Mom and Aunt both retiring with a pension which is almost unheard of these days.  My Mom received her pension from working in a hospital; my Aunt as a school teacher.  

As far as women in SL, Strawberry Linden inspires me.  Strawberry Linden went from her own YouTube videos to becoming a Linden and then having her own talk show in SL.  I emailed Strawberry once before she was a Linden and she answered me and I was very excited then - lol.  I think she is one to be celebrated on International Women's Day.  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

/me strums a Ukelele and sings "The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la"

I nominate Jeri Ellsworth for the front-line in the list of great inspirers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v6pDBDeYr4

Oh! I know a little bit about her, mostly from articles that have occasionally been posted about her work on New World Notes, I think. A couple of them did inspire me to look her up. She's certainly pretty dynamic, and evidently very cool and smart. I admire autodidacts.

[JanuarySwan]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

   So, what? Anshe's achievements 'doesn't count' because she had capital to fund her entrepreneurial enterprise with?

   That's sort of entrepreneurship 101: invent a solution to a problem -> fund your solution -> get to it -> profit.

I'm simply speaking in terms of a privilege of money that most of us don't have.  Philip Rosedale is the entrepreneur and invented a solution to a "problem" or in better terms, built a virtual world to live and chat in as well as have cybersex in, and even take cybersex further to having a marriage and a family if one so desired.  Or, it could be whatever you wanted your SL to be.  Anshe was an investor in virtual property.  Although, perhaps I didn't speak about Anshe correctly because as far as Anshe it was a gusty move to invest in virtual property like she did.  I like her spirit of "adventure capital" (making up a term).  Most of us could not afford similar investments is what I meant.  But, if I could, would I have invested in virtual property too way back then with Anshe Chung as an inspiration model?  I might have bought some but it would have turned all this virtual property into a monopoly game with properties going higher and higher and higher and that would have been like a pyramid scheme or something.  As far as her investment in X-street, that I admired greatly.  That was a great move.  

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, JanuarySwan said:

I'm simply speaking in terms of a privilege of money that most of us don't have.

   So Florence Nightingale doesn't deserve any credit for her feats, because she was born into a rich British family?

8 minutes ago, JanuarySwan said:

Most of us could not afford similar investments is what I meant.  But, if I could, would I have invested in virtual property too [...]

   Oh, I'm sure - if only you had been born into a wealthy family, you would've cured cancer, too. 

   Oh and, by the by, Anshe Chung did start off her Second Life as an escort, hostess, tutor, and fashion designer. 

[JanuarySwan]

28 minutes ago, Orwar said:

 Oh and, by the by, Anshe Chung did start off her Second Life as an escort, hostess, tutor, and fashion designer. 

Well, I stand corrected about Anshe Chung.  I thought she was a pioneer to be the first to invest in virtual property as an equivalent of investing in real life property.  

She is a virtual world made woman.  

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, JanuarySwan said:

Well, I stand corrected about Anshe Chung.  I thought she was a pioneer to be the first to invest in virtual property as an equivalent of investing in real life property.  

She is a virtual world made woman.  

"Anshe Chung" is actually a husband and wife team, where the husband, who also had an avatar inworld, did as much or more of the land operations as the avatar called Anshe. They also hired a huge staff in the days when businesses could get a last name for all the staff, and those people run the business today. And originally they had significant investment from a RL company in Europe known for its investments in Internet start-ups. That doesn't mean Anshe, who was the first to become a millionaire in Second Life and got on the cover of Business Week, should not be celebrated as a successful woman. Sometimes, women are virtual-world-made in that they start as an escort or hostess or shop clerk in SL and work their way up. This one had some extra help as well.

Anshe had to fend off an enormous amount of hatred and griefing precisely because she was a woman, and people would delight in finding some old notecard she had made years ago as a hostess and try to shame her with it. She was invincible, and God bless her for it, it's awfully hard to be in the land business in SL and be hated and scorned by the very people who rent or buy your land, since you provide a service.

Anshe cornered the market of telehub and prime waterfront. But that meant she kept its value in a virtual world. It was hard to find anything under $10 or $15/meter in those days. Once, on a day I told her that my mother had died in RL, she offered me to buy some of her telehub land for only $7/m. Then not long after, the Lindens announced they were they were removing telehubs from SL because they were putting in point-to-point teleporting. I opposed this move for lots of reasons I've written about extensively, and not merely because I happened to own a little of this type of land. There were others who had massive portfolios of it. After some protests, the Lindens arranged a buy-back of the land at $5/m. They had the last word on this matter, as they always do even with user protests, by laying out dozens of new sandy waterfront sims in their own area, many named after artists and scientists, which Anshe was then forced to buy to keep her cornered market. 

The land business in SL is a thankless task, and even those who appear to make a profit from it suffer losses and take an enormous amount of hatred from the resident population. Anshe branched out into other virtual worlds like IMVU and opened up an office in China. 

I was privileged to meet them at a RL meet-up, SLCC, years ago. Anshe did hold back one strip of that telehub land she sold me to keep her ads in the view and a section of the parcel with autoreturn, to be remembered by.

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Prokofy Neva