Scylla Rhiadra

Yeah, this is what I don't get. While of course there are people who log in just for sex, that's really not always the case. Possibly not even the majority of cases. If there were no emotional involvement at all, there'd be no point in the exercise in the first place.

Surely you don't mean this, Coffee. It sounds very like the unsympathetic response one sometimes sees to people who've been emotionally abused or griefed in SL: "It's not real! Just hit the 'X' at the top right!" Are you really suggesting that all relationships in SL are so shallow and superficial that simply logging off represents an always-applicable "solution"? The deeper the emotional connection, the more the opportunity for real emotional abuse, gaslighting, coercion, etc. SL relationships can be very deep indeed. And unfortunately they can also be very emotionally unhealthy too. Even an amicable breakup can be difficult if the connection has been deep enough. SL relationships are in that regard no different than RL ones: they can be healthy, or unhealthy. And they can certainly be abusive. The fact that there are few financial, legal, or physical restraints to leaving unhealthy ones doesn't mean that they can't also cause emotional hurt and damage. Is it not just possible that he is speaking from personal experience, and not "white knighting" at all? I'm a bit surprised at this answer, Coffee, tbh.

Rather, I suspect, like being a forum mod. It's not something I'd care to do.

Lol. Right. Rolig is, of course, a very unsophisticated reader! Have you met her?😏 A Masterclass in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" happening right here, folks.

I have very mixed feelings about Governance. In general, I probably have less faith in them than you do, but I tend to think that their problem is less that they are overzealous (as I think some here fear they will be) than badly understaffed. My complaints about them have tended to be regarding their failure to act upon obvious violations of the ToS, rather than about them possibly being a little trigger-happy. That said, a major and repeating griefing problem I had last year -- the cause of many of my complaints -- seems to have been resolved as there has not been a repetition in some time. I DO think they are going to be a bit more vigorous and proactive on the a*eplay front for a bit, as they try to establish the new rules. But I think they'll only be coming down hard on very obvious violations, as they work to clean up the grid in the wake of recent allegations. I think they'll be much gentler with edge-cases, with a focus upon what we've been here calling "education." Mostly, however, none of this will be visible to most of us. Including, I suspect, to most of those in the child avatar community.

This has suddenly become a VERY amusing and entertaining thread. 🙃

Thanks! Yeah, I VERY rarely build a pose from scratch: it's a nightmare. I really need to understand anatomy better than I do. As it is, I'll sometimes assume parts of a pose myself when adjusting in the BD poser, to make sure I'm getting it right. Which, um, possibly looks a little odd . . . And yeah, I usually disable the bones in the head and neck in the poser, and use the Axis for those. Soooooo much easier, and the results tend to look better. I've done the "freezing from animation" thing too, mainly using dances. It DOES work well!

i need to try this. How's the poser?

Don't be silly. LL doesn't need spies. They rely on the microchips they've implanted in all avatars, connected to 5G towers (of course).

J'accuse!!! Only a feminist would question women's genetic, God-given predisposition for pink! I wonder if she floats or sinks . . . ?

Um. Sure. So, women can wear what they want, but we're going to demonstrate that we sexualize young women by forcing them to cover up, because . . .there are men who find them "sexy." You can't see that forcing a 6 year old girl to wear a top is actually confirming that her chest is sexual?

Are these people really leering at a 6 year old girl's flat chest? And if they are, we need to force people into gendered straight-jackets to prevent it? We are, again, coming close here to suggesting that women need to "cover up" because bad people will respond in a bad way if they don't.

Of course. I'm sorry, I don't understand your objections to what I'm saying. It's "the ignorant," who are parroting reactionary views of gender, that I am arguing against.

You is not "you." And maybe I've misunderstood the point you've made above, but I'm not in a sense arguing against you, I'm pointing out the dangerous road that enforcing a sexualized and gendered kind of clothing on children has.

It makes my initial point, that the tendency of this conversation is to open us up to this kind of argument. When we start defining what people wear on the basis of a gendered binary perspective, we are in essence imposing cultural conformity on a group of people who don't fit into that, and are actively working outside of it.

Love, you're just underlining my point. Gender and sexual biology are not the same thing. But if you insist that a young girl who biologically does not have breasts must cover her chest anyway, then you are conflating gender and biology, and insisting they are the same thing: that her biology must be made to conform to a narrow view of what her gender is, and vice versa. The physical reality of her body is being made to conform to a view that female = sexualized chest / breasts.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

I beg to differ on that one. My use of "you" was generic, and not "you = Love." And the point is that a non-binary person's point of view is always a function of a culture that continues to insist that "non-binary" isn't really a thing.

But that's precisely my point, Love. "Gendered female" and "sexual" have come to mean the same thing. The result is that a young girl's chest is viewed as "sexual" because it's been gendered "female." To make this clearer -- if I showed you the picture of a topless 6 year old with no other visual clues -- hair length, genitals, whatever -- and asked you if it should be covered up, you would be unable to make that determination unless I informed you of that person's gender. If a boy, then no. If a girl, then yes. Despite the fact that there is no visual or effective difference between the two.

So thought experiment. Is a 6 year old girl's chest "sexy"? Can it be read that way? If so, why? What is it about a young girl's chest, which is physically at this stage undifferentiated from that of a boy, that makes it "sexual"? And if it is not, why are we covering it up?

Well, yes. If you are nonbinary or gender nonconforming, part of what you are doing is critiquing the binary. And if you tell someone you "decide" looks "feminine" that they should be wearing a top, even if they don't have breasts, you are doing the opposite: you are enforcing it. No breasts -- but STILL "sexual," because it's been decided you are a "woman," and our culture has determined that mammary glands, the purpose of which is nursing infants, are really more importantly understood as secondary sexual organs -- even if you don't actually have breasts. Because, of course, women "should" have breasts -- it's one of the ways biological essentialism "defines" women.

For practical purposes -- that is, avoiding ARs and disciplinary measures -- yes. But that's also rather disturbing, isn't it? And the point that Qie and a few others have made before is spot on: putting a top on to a girl baby, toddler, or prepubescent does actually have the effect of sexualizing them, and their chest. "Nothing to see here . . . yet. But it's still sexual!" Clothing that is intended to mask sexuality almost always has the effect of, if not drawing attention to it, at least underlining that one particular meaning of the body.

Perfect.

Thanks for this thoughtful post, Persephone. We all, I think, understand the point of all of this. But the modesty layers thing in particular, because they are gendered, are beginning to seem like the thin edge of a rather awful wedge. What we've all been talking about here is, in effect, policing what people wear. And there's a logic, and a necessity to that. But what is now beginning to seep into this conversation is an element of enforcing gender conformity, and the binary. We're a few short steps here from arguing that undies for boys should be blue, and those for girls should be pink.

Are you emoting as though you were a child? I'd imagine that'd be the criterion.