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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    Ok, so now I'm curious. Does she have to be a busty blonde? (Just asking for a blonde friend who uses Maitreya "Petite.") 😏
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    @Coffee Pancake is one the leads in the Catznip viewer team. So I think the answer is "yes"?
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Dahling, it's not always about you! Like, actually, seriously: I wasn't thinking of you. I was actually thinking of Gabriele's response, and my own. I very rarely run across Experiences, and mostly when I do, I take them -- but not before taking a moment to investigate who it is coming from, and so on. I don't worry too much about them at stores (although I wish I didn't have to use them there) because I assume a shop owner isn't going to see any advantages to forcing her customers to dance "Day O" naked across the shop floor. But otherwise I am careful, and I have on occasion refused them, even though I've never been griefed by one. I have, however, been griefed. Which maybe does make me a bit more paranoid?
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    Did Rowan consent to you biting her on the butt? DID SHE???? Also, you missed the coffee. Which hopefully you don't have to "bite."
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    Putting to one side the (I think) unwarranted accusation leveled against Rolig of condescension, or complacency, or whatever. I think that there is a tendency for some, and most especially coders of various sorts, to rather assume that what seems "duh, obvious" to them is not so for most of the rest of us. I've been in SL for 14 years. I've built things here, and even done a teeeeeeeeeeeeny bit of scripting in LSL (mostly by futzing around with open source scripts). But Mr Amore's description of the problems he had with the HUD left my brain hurting a bit. He seems to have been almost as perplexed -- and he's not only experienced here, but is (I take it) a creator. I have similar issues with the RLV and Experiences. "Don't worry!" people say! "Just [utterly baffling technobabble relating to the viewer] and you'll be fine if anything goes wrong!" I don't think I'm a stupid person and, as I say, I've mastered a fair amount of SL over the years. But I can experience something akin to an anxiety attack (something to which I'm not especially prone) when I get thrown a series of instructions much more complicated than "Click on stop all animations." I've also written "articles" for SL photographers on how to do some of the more complicated things with in-viewer photography tools (such as fine-tuning depth of field to make it "realistic"), and I have a reasonably good sense, both from writing them, and from fielding questions afterwards, at how complicated some of this stuff is -- especially across multiple viewers. I think people nowadays are used to "intuitive" when it comes to digital experiences of most kinds. SL is anything but, and it would be really good to keep that to the forefront of our minds whenever we talk or think about this kind of thing.
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    It suddenly occurs to me -- I don't know that this is relevant at all, but I find it interesting, and I post to please myself -- that those who are suspicious of Experiences are likely to be older SLers who remember, and likely witnessed first-hand, some of the kinds of griefing that used to be reasonably prevalent in SL in the "Good Old Days," but are really no longer nearly so much in evidence. I suspect that "newer" residents -- say, within the last half dozen to ten years or so -- have likely never been tricked to sit on something, accept an animation, or take something that it would have been wiser not to. And my guess, judging from my own memories, is that true noobs very likely have no concerns at all about accepting something like an experience, because it likely hasn't really occurred to them that anyone would want to do something sinister to them. Just a thought. As I say, I don't know if it's relevant or not.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    That's my read on this. They have actually enabled more of the content that one would tend to think "objectionable" here, but also hidden away more. And SL surely falls under Section 230, which protects social media platforms for liability for content posted by users?
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    This would be complicated, and off-topic, but a good starting place is an interview given by black lesbian feminist poet and author Audre Lorde in the early 80s. She specifically references Samois in it. There is an interesting collection of essays by radical feminists, including Alice Walker and a young Judith Butler (and including also this interview by Lorde) entitled Against Sadomasochism (1982). The conversation, and the ethos of BDSM itself, have both moved on a bit since then, but, as I say, a good starting place.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    The question of whether or not BDSM is "hard wired" or the result of social conditioning, upbringing, and so forth is a contentious one. My suspicion is that it is, like a great many things, a mix of both, with the preponderance of one or the other varying from individual to individual. The key thing, though, about true BDSM is that it is not built around gender, as opposed to pseudo-BDSM movements like Gor, which is. The first purely Lesbian BDSM group in the US, "Samois," was explicitly also a feminist group, although it came under attack by 2nd Wave anti-porn feminists. The same ethos and "rules" apply to female D to male s BDSM or D/s as are applicable to male D to female s relationships. And, again, all true BDSM is founded upon consent. Indeed, not only consent, but care. I have personal objections to BDSM, but they don't relate to gender relations (or consent) for this reason.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    Well, I suppose, as SL is "virtual," and always consensual (with some caveats: "consent" is a complex subject), one can argue that pretty much everything here is more like Gone with the Wind than actual "sunset towns" and the like in RL. But the actual line between "we're telling a story here, and this is a component," and "we're telling a story here, and integral to that story is the following set of beliefs" can be murky. I could find a lot of examples, but here's one group description. Role play? Advocacy? Both? And then there are the groups that are literally associated with RL organizations or beliefs. Here's the description for SL's "Proud Boys" group, which includes (now dead) links to the RL group's YouTube and web pages. This group was ARed by a friend nearly a year ago. Still here! ETA: The Proud Boys seem to have found a new ISP that will host them, so that link is no longer dead. I'm removing it for that reason.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh certainly. And I think you're possibly right about this distinction so far as LL is concerned: be racist if you must, just don't advocate for it. But it's a bit like the distinction between a very nice town that has separate water fountains for "colored folk," and one that also boasts a local meeting hall for the KKK.
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    Brilliant shot, Taya! And you look gorgeous. (Except, I always wonder in movies and stuff . . . why isn't the person holding the camera visible?)
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    You'll be delighted to know that Maddy signed off tonight by wishing me a "Good night, Maynard." This is your fault, Ceka.
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah. I've dropped a few men friends over the years whom I couldn't convince to stop stuff like this. Their friendship wasn't worth the sense I had of continually fending off their advances, especially as they didn't seem to respect me enough to stop when I asked them to. On the other hand, I have a male friend who calls me "babe" a lot. He's a conservative Texan, and I suspect it's just his idiom. It's not a come-on, from him -- it's just how he talks. And he's provided abundant evidence, not merely in his words but also in his actions, that he respects me as a person. So . . . I let him to do it. He's worth the tiny bit of aggro it causes me.
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    I am extremely reluctant to attribute these kinds of behaviours to anything inherent in the male of the species, for all sorts of reasons. For one thing -- and I really am sorry to hear about your own experiences! -- my own experience of men in my life, both SL and RL, has been overwhelmingly positive. Almost all of the men I know are lovely. But in general, this kind of "essentialism" -- men are from Mars, for instance, and are "like" this, while women are inherently "like" that -- ignores the enormously important role of culture and socialization in how we become who we are. I think patriarchy (yes, that awful word, sorry!) has distorted masculinity, and repressed men too, albeit in very different ways. And if we accept that men are the way they are because of their "Y" chromosome, or "evolution," or things like that, then we abandon real hope for change. The same of course is true of women, who historically have been socialized to be, for instance, "nurturing" and "soft." Well, we know that women can be those things, and also strong, smart, capable, and enterprising. Similarly, men can be strong and protective and so forth and also sensitive and even nurturing. I know men who are like this! I think we've seen positive changes in our understanding and expressions of both masculinity and femininity within my own lifetime -- almost all of them positive. I hope that we can continue with that.
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    Last point, returning to the OP. To reiterate: I have never heard a case of a region or parcel owner being compelled to not discriminate for any reason they want. Has anyone here heard of such a case? Bottom line, so far as the OP's point is concerned, I think. The rubric against discrimination is utterly meaningless in the context of who can or cannot be banned from a privately owned region or parcel.
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    I'm feeling a little left out. But the idea of spilling hot coffee on my butt makes me wince a bit. What if I use a glass of wine instead? That might also be a LOT more fun to clean up if it does spill.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Because some of it is kink, Luna. The difference between the two, of course, is consent.
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    And that, put beautifully succinctly, is the overall point I'm making. LL is entirely arbitrary about what in the CS and ToS they permit, and what they don't. A lot of both documents isn't worth the screen real estate it appears on. On the whole, LL gets it right, I think. But again . . . it's complicated. Which explains the inconsistencies (as well as leaving LL less liable for stuff that does happen here).
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    It definitely does. In my 2010 exhibit on the subject, I featured a scripted and animated table that allowed a woman to castrate a man. (I used it on my then bf, who was very sweet about it, but none too thrilled. Got a good pic from it though!) There are of course also groups for male "slaves" and humiliation. On the whole, though, the market for representations of sexual violence is dominated heavily (by a factor of about 1 to 15) by objects and groups/sims that feature a female "victim." (I know this because I've counted.) You make a very good point in one regard: I don't think LL is any more likely to move against misandry than misogyny, even of there is a lot more of the latter overtly visible. The take-away is that it's the category of discrimination against gender generally that is pretty meaningless. If you read further up in my comments, you'll see that I say both of these things. I explicitly say that there are no real "victims," for instance (although see Seicher's point above). This is also why I'll most often refer to this as representations of sexual violence. It's not "the real thing," nor would I suggest it should be treated as though it were.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    This is a good point. I'm not unaware of it (which is one of the reasons I mentioned coercion), but I didn't want to muddy the waters too much. It's one of those nuanced things that could be the subject of a whole thread to itself. Thank you for pointing it out, though.
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    I suspect it's a mix of the two, based upon what I've seen in descriptions and profiles, but I'll agree that mostly this isn't explicitly intended to attack or belittle another group as a sort of polemic. And I think that a lot of this stuff is sort of badly mangled and distorted BDSM, which is not, by its nature, gendered, but is sometimes played as though it were by those who don't really understand it. There's also a bit of hair-splitting here, though. If you are racist to someone, perhaps unconsciously even, but don't believe that you are racist or aren't trying to make a point . . . well, you've still been racist.
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    Not sure I can think of any form of RP that is not "consensual," barring things like coercion that I'm pretty sure LL would not intervene in. So . . . in practice, any sexual RP. Also, arguably, racist RP, such as a "plantation" or slave market sim might offer. Your second point is, I think, a good one. Except that we have had groups here that promote all sorts of racist, transphobic, misogynist, homophobic, etc., views. The National Front was here, and the Proud Boys. There is no end of groups proclaiming women are inferior, and so forth. But in general, I think they are more likely to act on those. Except the misogynist ones. It's open season on women in SL.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    Interesting! And all the more reason for me to stop using the term as a catch-all.
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