ok, your av vs. your gender

MadameX

I just read your post and it made me a bit teary. I am really glad you found SL and it can help you be who you feel you really are, at least for a few hours each day I would love to have a friend like you. You sound like a really great person

Man playing a man.

However, I don't think gender has much do to with my character, as most of the time you can't see my avatar's face through a large teddy bear mask, or whatever I'm wearing at the time.

@MadameX

All I can say is "wow."

I found it more than fascinating that the disabled find freedom in Second Life since being deaf or being unable to walk didn't matter because they can do both inside SL.

Now this.

Another page in SL being liberating.

In mainstream RL culture, I don't think it comes up much. Men are supposed to either act somewhat embarrased at the praise or just sort of ignore it, and shrug it off with a line that minimizes the significance of whatever is being praised. Unless it's something REALLY big, like knocking in the winning run in the World Series; then you're expected to brag a bit, but not too much.

In the subcultures I inhabit in RL, compliments are given much more freely between men and women in both directions -- it's rather pleasantly like SL that way. People of either gender are expected to accept them smoothly and graciously; saying "thanks" with a smile would be just about right. Saying something nice about people really does make their day, especially if you find something to say that isn't trite and obvious -- go ahead and try it in RL!

Exactly is why I'm on SL lol.

Clarification:

I just wanted to point out that my main account is not MadamG Zagato. I just now realized the names are somewhat similar -- I hadn't remembered that when I made this account.

I do want to thank the people who have responded to my post. I can't tell you how much that means to me.

The most painful tragedies I've had to witness among my RL transgender acquaintances have to do with "passing" or blending in. Medical techniques have advanced a long way, but not far enough. So it leads to this condition of putting a hopeful goal out in front of you, so you can get a long way across the desert from one gender camp to the other, but not... quite... get there. I feel like it has left a few of the people I know stuck just outside the border - no one would think of them as men, but there is just that sense of something wrong, the "pause" you mention, where they cease to be seen as women.

I see that, and it (along with the fertility issue) stops me at the inside border of the male camp time after time. This is frustrating because when you really start looking at people, you realize how much of a continuum people fall on physically and socially, but there is just this one thing holding precedence and that's the instant assigning of people to the male or female gender. It is the tiniest of balancing points and yet crossing that point can be a journey of a million miles.

I took a different direction with this on the privacy issue in SL. Perhaps this is because I'm single. After having a few experiences with just how easy it was for me to fall in love here, or discover someone was falling in love with me, I just couldn't do it anymore. That's because I'd never be what they and (I) wished could be. I would probably be willing to endure any amount of inevitable pain and loss for a few moments of real bliss and connection but I couldn't rightly expect that of the other person.

MadameX, I don't know really what to say... Other then Fantastic ^.^

I came to the slow 'realization' that gender isn't binary, as I saw someone say it on the net, but completely analog... 'male' or 'female' are just two poles in a wide spectrum that cannot really be defined by the tools nature gave you.
Sex is what's between your legs, and gender is what is between your ears. I have said in a previous post to this thread that I wouldn't tell what gender I was IRL, but after doing a little soul- and internet searching today, closed off by your post here... Makes me feel a little less weird. Thank you.

My sex might be male IRL, but my gender IRL is just as it is in SL: whatever mood I am in ^.^

Love,
Darkfoxx - Genderqueer and Proud

I'm a male, playing a male.

However, I treat people as how they represent themselves here, if I see a male av, I treat him as a male. If I see a female av, I treat her as a female. Your first life is your first life, and therefore, none of my business.

I personally don't see the need to KNOW who's behind the av, as long as you're a decent, caring person, that's all that matters to me. That being said, before things go too far in any relationship, honesty is a must. I trust my love here implicitly, we have no secrets from one another.

Thank you for your kind words. From the nice replies I have gotten in public and private. I feel a little less wierd too

Madame X

I agree with Ruby. I think if you're upfront an honest with what you are behind the av, then endulge in your fantasies. I simply do not agree with people who are hiding their genders & mayhapsibly hooking up with the opposite sex with false info. Okay seriously I swear I had a point.... oh oh oh... lost it.

I am a female on both sides of the monitor.

None o you are gonna get into my pants anyway,
so you shouldn't care what's in them. (or not)

(but I voted male and male, fwiw. )

--
Do you think your eternal soul has gonads?

Gender only comes into play when using pronouns. Personality FTW!

I've played both sexes in so many games it's rediculous. (I'd say my characters are about 50/50.) I want to say that I'm very glad that MadameX found SL, and TOTALLY support your right to privacy.

Our RL selves are technically as removed from our SL AV's as anything else in RL. Frankly, SL only knows what you type into it, and last I checked typing is gender neutral. ;p

I think people just need to chill and realize anybody and everybody could be anything at all, whatever they have said to you. If you get "duped" frankly it's your own fault for assuming details about the RL person which you aren't privy to.

Personally I've found personal information, of many kinds, to be a bit dangerous. So I try to stay private now. Besides, I don't play games to be the RL me whichever sex I choose to play as. lol Some people want that, I don't. I want a fantasy. I want to roleplay. I want to have fun, not get involved in yet another tradgic online romace. I've been there and I'm not doing it again willingly.

Games like this are meant for creativity... Roleplaying is like writing. You create a fiction. Should authors only ever write characters in their own sex? That would make all romance novels homosexual! lol Come on... I like to create interesting characters, and roleplaying is both a fun use for such as well as a great tool for expanding them. In fact I've used many of my characters from my written and unwritten fiction in games, and I've even begun importing characters from the games to my fiction. It took me a while to see how well developed some of them got just from playing EQ, WoW, and such. I'm not going to create only male, only female, or even only human characters. Me liky freedom.

Which is the best reason of all to remain private. If I'm playing as a guy and get hit on by some random annoying person I can just hint that I'm really a girl... and vice versa. Usually they run for the hills with little extra effort on my part. ;p

But more seriously... RL is RL and SL is SL. Oh and YOU can't tell ME WTF I can do with my SL.... clear? Sorry... I don't like being told what I shouldn't be doing without very good reasons for it. (With good reasons, I'm quite amenable, though.)

As for my sex... you don't have any need to know. If I feel like it I'll tell ya, though. Same with age and many other things. If you can't respect my privacy then flip a coin. I don't care all that much what people think I am in RL, as long as you let me be who I want to be in SL.

As long as somebody isn't using sex to grief people then it shouldn't be a problem. Of course people get very into it, and then get their feelings hurt. Well surprise, there are people who are not like you, and you should know that from the beginning. I don't think everyone should dumb down everything they do just to be PC to the overly sensative. The internet has been around for a while, and it's full of lies and deciet. Really, you should be used to it by now! lol

(Note: Someone playing cross-gender does not in it-self constitute a lie. There is no rule stating your AV's gender need depend upon anything other than user choice, which is why in SL you can change it anytime you like! Roleplaying a character isn't lying either, it's acting. If you don't know the difference then... meh... So when that hot guy/girl that you've been friends with for a year turns out to not really be the sex you though, it doesn't necessarily mean they've lied to ya. You're assumptions are not their responcibility.)