Should I put my real-life gender in my woman avatars' profiles?

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, cirleen said:

Comparable politics? What are the political beliefs of this forum? I want to make sure I fit in.

See? Your dumpster fire is raging. 😂

My post was only about who I'd want to "date" or interact with in Second Life, which is the "why" behind putting things in your profile. Sorry, Forum interaction doesn't count. Nice try, though!

[Persephone Emerald]

12 minutes ago, cirleen said:

Comparable politics? What are the political beliefs of this forum? I want to make sure I fit in.

See? Your dumpster fire is raging. 😂

On the SL forums we warm ourselves by the weekend dumpster fires.

[cirleen]

11 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

On the SL forums we warm ourselves by the weekend dumpster fires.

I'll check the candidates views, pro or against SL, next time before I vote. Since no one wants to talk politics here.

[cirleen]

2 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I did not think this thread could get any stranger.

You can't blame me for trying to help.

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Would it be deception if one is crossdressed to represent a female and halfway through a slex session pull out a male appendage and attempt to use it in the session or conversely a female crossdressed to appear male and then halfway through a session, not have the expected appendage?

Deception is deception, whether it is in Second Life or outside of it. For instance, would it be deception to not tell people in "real life" about one's activities in Second Life if those activities would change their perception of you?

[Kathlen Onyx]

2 hours ago, cirleen said:

I'll check the candidates views, pro or against SL, next time before I vote. Since no one wants to talk politics here.

Oh I'm sure lots of people want to talk politics here. It's against the forum rules to do so though.

[Kitteh Whiskers]

To answer the OP question,

 

Long answer: Up to you

Short answer: Up to you

 

That's it really. There's plenty of males irl that play a female character in SL and vice versa. All comes down to your choice and what you want to disclose

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, cirleen said:

I'll check the candidates views, pro or against SL, next time before I vote. Since no one wants to talk politics here.

Politics as a topic is against Forum Community Standards.

[Paul Hexem]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Or, what if they were actually aliens, and it turned out that they had tentacles. And they wrapped you in them and abducted you to their spaceship, which was piloted by intelligent talking rhododendron bushes, and they performed weird and far-out experiments on your ears, because in their strange culture, those were actually the sex organs?

Sounds like you gave that some thought. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Paul Hexem

[Love Zhaoying]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Or, what if they were actually aliens, and it turned out that they had tentacles. And they wrapped you in them and abducted you to their spaceship, which was piloted by intelligent talking rhododendron bushes, and they performed weird and far-out experiments on your ears, because in their strange culture, those were actually the sex organs?

Can do, but I'll have to charge you extra. 

[Kathlen Onyx]

2 hours ago, Kitteh Whiskers said:

To answer the OP question,

 

Long answer: Up to you

Short answer: Up to you

 

That's it really. There's plenty of males irl that play a female character in SL and vice versa. All comes down to your choice and what you want to disclose

I think that most people that feel that disclosing whether you are male or female is important is in sexual situations.  At least that is when I would expect it should be revealed. 

Otherwise I don't really care who is behind the avatar.  There is one Cavet though.  If you are running a different sex than your real life sex then play the part and don't reveal it ever.  It feels like when people do that then the person feels deceived and it's kinda  a "gotcha" moment which is not a good feeling at all.  I still would like people to be honest but realistically that isn't going to happen.  I am very careful now what personal things I reveal to anyone.

[Katherine Heartsong]

11 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Its the deception that causes the rage

I'm one of the small % of men in female avatars though who aren't deceiving anyone. The fact that I'm male RL is literally in the very first line in my profile.

Not my fault that someone doesn't read my profile, but even then I go into truth/paranoia mode and ask them before accepting an offer to dance if they have read my profile, just to make sure.

Men—and I do have some insights here—if they're looking for any kind of pixel play in SL are first attracted to the visual aspects of an avatar, and honestly couldn't give a sweet flying truck about a woman's personality, interests, intelligence, emotional needs, etc. Just like real life.  

Aside: Everyone here is deceiving with their avatar, unless most men stand 7" tall and look like a sculpted Adonis and most women are glowy supermodels or hyper-botoxed Kardashian wannabes. If it was only the fact that you really don't look like your avatar we'd all be raging all the time.

The rage isn't caused by the visual deception, because if it was then men in SL are being stupid or deliberately naive about SL in general. I do personally think that men are being deliberately naive a lot here. Ignoring what their brain is telling them cause sexy-times! I know that women are just as wide-ranging in their RL fantasies as men are, but you'd have a very hard time convincing me that there are SL's percentage of women into violent r@pe and, umm, "non-human" encounters as there seem to be in world. But I can't back that claim up.

The rage is because I'm living in SL as something that's horribly "wrong/gross/icky"; i.e., not my actual biological sex. The rage is centred around masculine expectations of sex and gender roles, and it's societal and culturally driven and ingrained from a very early age in everyone.

tl,dr?

Read profiles, or if you don't and someone asks you to, please do it. And if you don't like what you read (and there are a lot of ones I read that turn me right off, especially political and religious ones) do what my Irish gran always said ... "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything."

And if it wasn't addressed ... trans persons are affected by violence up to 400% higher rates than cis. Easy to find the stats. "Trans people age 16 and up experience 86.2 victimizations per 1,000 people, compared to just 21.7 per 1,000 for cis people, according to the study. Transgender women experience violent crime at the rate of 86.1 per 1,000 people, and trans men experience it at a rate of 107.5 per 1,000. That means that over one in 10 trans men are the victims of a violent crime at some point in their life. Those numbers drop to 23.7 and 19.8 per 1,000 people for cis women and cis men, respectively (Williams Institute study, among others)."

Trans women of colour are most targeted, and trans persons also face higher mortality rates for general diseases as well. Again, easy to find the stats (NIH, CDC, Mayo, etc).

Now, back to the OP. Your choice, but don't deceive if asked.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Rowan Amore]

9 hours ago, Kalegthepsionicist said:

because they think this dude mightbe laugh at them behind keyboard and share the chat among his ftiend. and said, " look this horny dude he not realize engage dude also"

every man know other man  evil thought .

For once, I agree with you.  This is almost exactly how someone explained it to me years ago.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

For once, I agree with you.  This is almost exactly how someone explained it to me years ago.

As Kaleg described it, sounds like a conversation between males in South Park or Beavis and Butthead.

[Rowan Amore]

16 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

As Kaleg described it, sounds like a conversation between males in South Park or Beavis and Butthead.

Because some grown men act like Beavis and Butthead.  

Men's masculinity is, oddly enough, a delicate thing.  If they feel someone has undermined their masculinity, they may get angry.   I don't know too many women who worry about how anyone perceives their femininity.

[Paul Hexem]

20 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Because some grown men act like Beavis and Butthead.  

What's wrong with Beavis and Butthead?! I love those guys.

[Silent Mistwalker]

11 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

Moderator.... please LOCK this thread, as it is inflammatory.

To add to the inflammation...

All human fetuses start out female

[Silent Mistwalker]

8 hours ago, cirleen said:

Maybe I was going off topic a bit but I was making a general comparison showing how sometimes we might readily adapt a feeling of being higher on society's stratus layers than others, everyone knows they have value, even the ones in the worse shape who think they don't matter know that things could be better.

Too true. Even more so when it's the same in RL.

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

7 hours ago, cirleen said:

I'll check the candidates views, pro or against SL, next time before I vote. Since no one wants to talk politics here.

Political discussions are not allowed on the forums anymore.

[Luna Bliss]

5 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Deception is deception, whether it is in Second Life or outside of it. For instance, would it be deception to not tell people in "real life" about one's activities in Second Life if those activities would change their perception of you?

Interesting...exploring in depth what 'deception' actually is. There are many things I don't disclose to others but don't consider it 'deception', even if one of the motivations not to disclose is because I know it would likely change their perception of me. For example, I'm not going to tell overly-conservative and religious Myrtle next door that I have practiced Wicca in covens, drumming and dancing by the light of the full moon.  That would definitely change her perception of me but I don't feel I'm deceiving her -- rather I feel I'm entitled to a certain amount of privacy.

Anyway, definition of deception:

"An instance of actions and/or schemes fabricated to mislead someone into believing a lie or inaccuracy"

For me it veers into deception when we know our omission of facts could very likely harm another emotionally, and then we need to consider whether it's okay to keep certain information private.  For many, and for the OP it seems, this line is crossed when we begin relating romantically so someone in 2nd life.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Read profiles, or if you don't and someone asks you to, please do it. And if you don't like what you read (and there are a lot of ones I read that turn me right off, especially political and religious ones) do what my Irish gran always said ... "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything."

I think the main reason why people don't read profiles before interacting is because in RL we don't have profiles to be read. We actually have to make the effort to get to know the person, rather than everything being superficial. When I joined SL I never expected it to be so superficial. The sad thing is, it won't ever change, and I still won't have friends because I don't do superficial. I can't and I won't.

[Luna Bliss]

8 hours ago, cirleen said:

11 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I did not think this thread could get any stranger.

You can't blame me for trying to help.

I was referring to somebody else but I do see your point.  Grins*

[Ayashe Ninetails]

2 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I'm one of the small % of men in female avatars though who aren't deceiving anyone. The fact that I'm male RL is literally in the very first line in my profile.

The part I find so interesting is that some men are so quick to assume everyone is playing their actual gender (age, species, etc.) here in the first place. Think of all of the multiplayer games and platforms where profiles don't even exist to be read in the first place and how well-known it is that people just create avatars/characters that they themselves like to look at. In those instances, those looking to deceive are in a very tiny minority - the common excuses given are "cuz butt" or "cuz he's hot" 😏. It's been a meme since the early days. It's even come up on BG3 forums recently (and seems a rather hot topic with almost 650 replies in under 12 hours despite that being a single-player game with optional voluntary co-op). 

It is known. It's a longstanding phenomenon in the gaming and roleplay communities that goes back decades. You can find such questions posted on forums way back in the early 2000s.

A platform solely designed for people to develop entire second virtual lives seems like a great place to find that type of thing playing out. I'd be rather surprised if it didn't.

I agree with you - read profiles, but I also think expectations should be managed a bit, as well. SL's customization is off the charts - there's little chance that a guy who enjoys staring at a female character's rear in *insert any game here* is going to recreate an authentic copy of himself here in SL and ONLY play that. Why would he do that when he could stare at an even better butt than he could get anywhere else - a customizable one he could shape himself with jiggle physics and squish?!?!

As for, well, it's SL, romance happens here - yeah, romance happens everywhere. Look at all the ERP in WoW, for instance. If someone has reservations about the RL person behind the character or avatar, that ought to be respected of course, but to automatically assume everyone's being real in a place ripe for roleplay and exploration is setting oneself up for a challenging time, IMO. And of course, lashing out at people for doing what tons of people do everywhere else all over the Internet is just uncalled for. Block liberally if anyone gives you hell for being one of eleventy gabillion men playing a female character online (or in my case, one of eleventy gabillion women playing male characters online).

[Orwar]

10 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

The fetus at 6 weeks is simply undifferentiated with respect to genitalia.

   Even though I am without any real data to back up my claims, I feel reasonably certain there aren't a whole lot of 6 week old foetuses piloting SL avatars.

[Luna Bliss]

30 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

The part I find so interesting is that some men are so quick to assume everyone is playing their actual gender (age, species, etc.) here in the first place. Think of all of the multiplayer games and platforms where profiles don't even exist to be read in the first place and how well-known it is that people just create avatars/characters that they themselves like to look at.

That is interesting to consider.

The reason it might be different in 2nd life for these men is that there is no gameplay occurring similar to what happens in a game like WOW, where there's a mission to kill or not be killed and there's usually an expectation of gender switching. Instead, what's occurring  in 2nd life is more like a real life scenario (especially at the clubs Katherine is citing these instances from), and so expectations would be similar to real life where they expect a woman to actually be a woman.  Apparently, these upset men don't have an expectation that 2nd life is a game, and experience it more like a platform or dating service.