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If you use an avatar of a gender you are not, are you good at portraying that gender?

Gopi Passiflora

By Gopi Passiflora,
in General Discussion Forum

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Candide LeMay
Candide LeMay

I am a man in RL, but in SL I am a fabulous chick!

Scylla Rhiadra
Scylla Rhiadra

Then you're doing it exactly right, Gopi. There is no "base behaviour" associated with particular genders. No "right way" to be a woman, or man. Just a variety of right ways to be human.

Madelaine McMasters
Madelaine McMasters

During my grad school days, I went out to a bar with friends. We didn't realize it was a LGBTQ hangout. I ended up sitting at the bar next to a trans woman (or CD/TV, I'm not sure). She was warm, inte

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, SorachaNicEoghain said:

I have to do it all the time even though I'm a woman in RL. People are constantly accusing me of being a man. I don't swear or tell fart jokes or anything and I'm not into romance either. I dunno. What can you do? I've only been exploring a couple of weeks and am rarely online anyway. Maybe I should just turn tiny. 

I have not once in 12+ years hopped on voice to verify that I'm a woman.   Random people can accuse me of whatever they'd like.  I honestly do not care.  I've used voice in SL literally a handful of times.  It's not you, it's them and their insecurities therefore, there is nothing you can or should do.  We don't owe people in general a dang thing in SL.  You don't HAVE to do anything. 

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Scylla Rhiadra

Scylla Rhiadra

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, Mysti Aurelia said:

Apparently, trolls get far more responses than posts that actually are on topic.

/me gives up on posting on forums again

I suspect that is because the trolls are so obviously wrong, while almost no one would disagree with your post on the subject. 

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Lewis Luminos

Lewis Luminos

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Edohandsome said:

me no believes,  gender doesn't  matter,
If it's no matter, we no need separate bathroom and there no need put gender in id card.   , and why no put prisoner woman /man at same cell if it is not matter.

Folks, this is a perfect example of "unable to tell the difference between "sex" and "gender".

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Scylla Rhiadra

Scylla Rhiadra

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Mysti Aurelia said:

I met a guy who played mostly as a female in SL and he admitted to wanting to meet a girl to play a guy so they could RP together.  So, I decided to try gender swapping as well.  To my confusion no one ever doubted my RL sex when I was presenting as a guy in SL, but I got doubted all the time when I use a female avatar.  I wonder if it was because guys with female avatars are more common than girls with male avatars.  Or do I naturally act more like a guy?! 

One of the reasons I suspected guys might like to use female avatars is because it is more acceptable in RL for females to dress and act like guys, but still not very well accepted for males to act and dress like girls. In SL they can get in touch with and act out that side of themselves.

You raise two related phenomenons here that I think are interesting. On the whole, they correspond with my own observations, but it is of course important to remember that they are still "anecdotal." One of the things I've noticed about SL over my years here is how really varied the cultural can be from one social sphere to the next, so I'm sure there are people who could counter with their own (equally anecdotal) observations.

Your first point, in which you ask why there is more paranoia about RL men representing as SL women than the opposite, is interesting. I can't speak to how "natural" your representation as a man is, but I'm sure that one reason is, as you say, that there are more men representing as women.

The other possibly more important issue, though, is social conditioning about gender. For reasons, it is (as you note in the second paragraph I've quoted) more acceptable for a woman in RL to exhibit "boyish" characteristics and behaviours than for men to seem "feminine," and that undoubtedly is projected into SL.

You can relate this to strictures against homosexuality: it's interesting to note that there were legal and social proscriptions against male homosexuality (e.g., laws against "s*domy") long before ones against lesbianism were introduced into most Western cultures. The UK has never had a law against lesbianism, but for a very long time prescribed the death penalty for male homosexuals. (There are "reasons" for that, including the fact that sex was usually defined as necessarily involving penetration.)

In a more recent context, attacks on trans women far outnumber attacks on trans men for, I suspect, similar reasons. Most of the latter, interestingly, seems to come from cis lesbians who fear (irrationally) that trans men will "erase" lesbianism.

I think, in other words, that the moral panic and paranoia about men representing women in SL has its roots in our cultural, political, and legal history, such that you can draw an almost direct line between attitudes among some in SL, and RL attitudes towards "effeminate" or gay men.

Edited by Scylla Rhiadra
Subject-Verb Agreeent. -1%
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Love Zhaoying

Love Zhaoying

Posted
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36 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:
10 hours ago, Edohandsome said:

me no believes,  gender doesn't  matter,
If it's no matter, we no need separate bathroom and there no need put gender in id card.   , and why no put prisoner woman /man at same cell if it is not matter.

Folks, this is a perfect example of "unable to tell the difference between "sex" and "gender".

Is also Trolling 101, being something that is discussed here so very often, and in fact often brought up as intentional derails!

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
Posted
39 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Folks, this is a perfect example of "unable to tell the difference between "sex" and "gender".

Or tell the difference between any of that in SL where no one needs to use the bathroom or gets imprisioned and last I checked, we aren't issued ID cards either.

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Love Zhaoying

Love Zhaoying

Posted
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5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Idea: required and permanent SL tattoos, "XX", "XY", "X?", "?Y", and "??" (trying to cover all the bases here).

On our foreheads. And neck barcodes, those are in style!

WHOA! I have a better idea! Just send someone your UUID, and tell them, "My gender is encoded into this. This is my official, permanent identifier in Second Life." 

A little lie never killed anyone.

 

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Rowan Amore

Rowan Amore

Posted
Posted
41 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Would our profiles be considered ID cards? It's close to it..?

Since LL doesn't share our RL information via our profiles then no, they aren't ID cards or any way for people to discern who we are in RL.  

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Lewis Luminos

Lewis Luminos

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't think the UUID encodes anything. It's just a unique but random hash. 

It most definitely doesn't encode gender, because your RL gender is not collected on sign-up, and your avatar's gender can be switched just by wearing a different shape. Your UUID doesn't change when you do that. Or ever.

Edited by Lewis Luminos
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Switchblade Serenade

Switchblade Serenade

Posted
Posted (edited)

I'm going to speak for myself rather than let my sibling do it for me.

Who made up these silly rules about gender stereotypes anyway? They never made sense to me. The gender-based punctilios has only succeeded in holding back the progress of much of the world's population and hurting those who don't fall neatly into the binary. I want to meet the person who came up with these gender rules and give them forty lashes with a wet noodle.

When I'm logged in as Cat, I never thought to put on any acts of clichéd gender binary typecasts. I'm just myself inworld and I don't act any different than Eddy or Greg.

Do I make a passable representation of a female avatar? I don't know. I hate dresses and high heels hurt my feet. And I can fart as loud as any other guy.

 

Edited by CatfishChef
i can't spall
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Edohandsome

Edohandsome

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, SorachaNicEoghain said:

I have to do it all the time even though I'm a woman in RL. People are constantly accusing me of being a man. I don't swear or tell fart jokes or anything and I'm not into romance either. I dunno. What can you do? I've only been exploring a couple of weeks and am rarely online anyway. Maybe I should just turn tiny. 

edo see now you're starting to believe gender acceptance is a matter.. giggle

 

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