Hey everyone. I wanted to discuss something with other members of SL in the hope I can understand this better. I've beeen playing SL since 2007 without any long breaks. My avatars varied from teenage boys to adult men. I never did any wolf/furry RP or Sci-fi trooper avatars though. Today I only want to discuss about 1 type of avatars, the children one. Evererywhere I go, be it a RP sim or not a RP sim I see a huge fear and hatred to child avatars. As if it is bad luck to have a child avatar on your sim. This mainly applies to RP sims though, as regular sim owners tend not to care toooo much as long as you buy something from them. On RPG sims however the fear of child avatars is incredibly high. It could be a mature-rated sim even and most of the time the 1st rule listed is something like ''No child avatars allowed''. Now I THINK this is an american thing. LL, an american company seems to feed this fear to it's residents by ruling and rumors of simowners banner or having their sim shut down after child avatars RPed there. SO to take away some of this fear I want to clarify something. Players that have a child avatar are /NOT/ pedophiles. They don't get their rocks of staring at their avatar, they don't engage in ageplay, they don't spread porn. Really, they don't. Some of the people that have a child avatar I know turned out to be great people IRL that are now close friends of mine. SO I implore the frightened community to stop being so meek and understand for yourself, experience for yourself that people that play child avatars are also normal, regular player, enjoying the virtual world that's out there. Coming back to the RP sims. I think it is utter nonesense why virtually no RP sim accepts child avatars. I ask sim owners why, and all the time the answer is the same: ''... Affraid of ban... - don't want the sim to shut down.. - .. It will attract ageplay... '' etc. etc. But none of these answers are true or based on a rational explanation. They simply won't allow child avatars because other sim owners don't either and they are afraid to get in trouble, even though they wouldn't. It is frustrating beyond anything for me. I am a sworn RPer, I love to RP in SL. Be it as a teenager or an adult, to me it doesn't matter but I want to be ABLE to do both, everywhere. I understand it's a sim owner's decision whether to allow child avatars or not, but at least let them come up with a REAL reason/motivation. Something I can understand. Now the floor is open to discussion. Do you agree with what I think or do you have a different opinion? As long as you motivate your answer and aren't writing out of the fear I spoke of I am very thankful that you take the time to reply.