SL Transgender Poll

Hi all. This poll is about Opposite Sex role-playing in SL.

I think we need to get hold of this issue. Please be truthful, the purpose of this poll is scientific and sociological, not to disclose anything about your Second Life (provided that would even be possible - I sure don’t know how to do it!).

Note, RL gender refers to biological gender, so if you are a serious transgender person, choose the alternative referring to the mistaken biological body you were born with.

Note that you may only choose a single alternative. Please read through all the alternatives carefully, since there is considerable overlapping. If you have several avatars of different gender, please choose the alternative which involves gender bending.

Officers of certain groups are considered ”employed” for the purposes of this poll. Adult Entertainment is considered everything from being hired for erotic club dancing (for example in alluring attire) to escort service.

Thank you.

One of the Lindens posted the actual figures in a thread several months ago. I'll see if I can find it.

Edit:

Ok they didnt post the female to male ratio in SL but they did post the female to male ratio figures from the SL registration page (ie when you create an account):

"At the end of April accounts split 32%/68% women/men (keep in mind this reflects the gender given at registration, not the av gender)."

This quote was from Robin Linden and can be found in this thread:
/3/16/45889/1.html

Thanks Annah. The ratio is telling and I guess also useful for this poll.

Interestingly, even the registration gender could obviously be faked.

As a transgendered woman I find this method of choosing "alternatives" not only incorrect in it's definition of gender, but downright offensive.

Gender is between the ears. Sex is between the legs. I was born a transgendered woman. I have never been a man.

So my response to your poll would be:


"Screw you. I'm a woman in RL and SL."

Okay sorry. I really tried not to be offensive. It's difficult to be absolutely safe with the semantics here. Won't you consider replying anyway?

Surely we will all get lost in a maze trying to conclude anything from this if truly transgendered people start voting whilst making different choices about whether or not to ignore their original biological gender.

Might it not be better for a truly transgendered person to start a parallel poll for transgendered people, using their understanding of the complexity of the issues to phrase the questions in the most sensitive and valuable way ?

For myself, I think I will get lost if we get involved in a heirarchy of nested gender reversals of two different types. I won't be able to deduce anything at all.

At present, it is very interesting to see the suggestion in the numbers that simple gender-crossing may be much less prevalent than one might have guessed. Fits in with my experience. A trans-gendered posting alt seems fine, and to help in breaking stereotypes, but taking one in-world leaves me a little uneasy.

I responded as RL female using female avatar.

Monique, why are you confabulating RL/SL gender choices with a virtual adult entertainment industry? In other words, what's your agenda there?

Part of the problem is that different transgendered people feel differently about the issue and place different levels of importance to being identified a particular way. It is better, I think, to allow each to choose for themselves how to respond, rather than impose an arbitrary rule.

I doubt that, where transgender becomes involved, a poll of the sort that originated this thread would be able to produce useful data. Not because our T-Sisters and T-Brothers are not able to contribute to the industries or role play in question, but because in SL, as in RL, they do not fit the neat and tidy little boxes that are so necessary for statistical analysis.

Like members of the Gay community (And though ther is often overlap, here, the two qualities are not really linked...a number M->F transgendered persons start out Straight men and end up lesbians... Some few switch partner preference after surgery and remain straight. Orientation is still not a completely figured out statistic, and I think that is as it should be.), the Transgendered community serves to shake up our preconceived notions about how the world "should" be and presents us with sometimes confusing and discomforting reminders about how the world IS.

Unfortunately, the science of statistical analysis usually truncates the ends of the bell curve when doing its calculations because, as with so many things in the "real world", efficiencey of process focuses mostly on the main body of data, eliminating "statistical anomalies" infavor of calculable efficiency. If it did not, there would be no way to make any kind of social analyses because the calculations would be too complex, if they could be done at all.

well stated. thank you.

Can you elaborate on why we "need" to get a hold of *this* issue?

What makes this different from a poll such as - are you a Furrie in RL? A Mech? Vampire? Sex worker? Erotic dancer? Land Baron?

I change my AV to a woman when i want something for free

Thank you, this was the part of the whole thing that caught my attention and I didn't understand. Why do we "need" to get a hold of "this"?

I can only guess - so to avoid throwing up, ala the Crying Game, after mistakenly having cybersex with someone of your own RL physical sex? Hence the additional sex worker categories on the poll??? I dunno....

Hmm, I came here based on the thread title, and found a different subject. My own particular "niche" of being transgendered wouldn't fit anywhere on the poll, so I think maybe some more precise language usage may be in order?

You are looking for cross-gender players, not necessarily players who happen to be truly transgendered, I think. Transgendered is an umbrella term that covers pretty much anyone who feels they are or presents as a different gender than their biological sex. In SL though, there are plenty of people who play as a different gender purely for the game of it.

And as Kendra mentioned, gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs. (Crude slogan, but I'll go along with it).

So far there has been no mention of anything but the traditional two poles of gender, leaving no room for androgynes like me. Not that that's any different from RL. I've regularly tried to jam myself into one or the other of society's gender boxes, but neither entirely fits. Oh well.

Not that I expect a button just for mine but here it is:
"RL androgynous biological male playing androgynous female avatar"

At the risk of seeming to be a "Me-Me-Me", this is another post to support my point.

Here is someone who turns the entire idea of gender altogether in its ear...

Thank you, Ananda, for broadening my world and its horizons.

Androgymous RL biological male playing an androgynous SL avatar female: Beautiful symmetry.

My pleasure...

Hope to meet you at the Club sometime (see my sig)
It's a place for adults, but not necessarily "Adult" in nature, since its in a PG sim.

Well, I do have a female avatar as well as a male one, but only for modeling purposes (to see how tattoos and piercings look on it). So - male playing male.

This won't prevent anything like that. You will still have that. You will have throwing up due to some man pretending to be a lesbian. You will have someone 50 years old pretending to be 21 or someone 22 pretending to be 45. This will not stop that. If you want to avoid that, stay off the internet period. That's what Second Life is all about, be someone else. There's no need to "get a hold" of anything.

I don't see any option for people of any gender/sex combination playing an animal in SL, nor an option for asexued personas.

Kendra,

I have to say, I don't agree with your criticism here. What was mentioned was 'biological gender'. Now you might not thing that such a term has any relevance, but the fact is it exists, it can be tested, and it is less ambiguous than other definitions.

There are many people who are female in every single respect, save the biological one. I am thinking of those who are testosterone-insensitive at the foetal stage. Until it was possible to test chromosomes, there would have been no way of distinguishing them from other women. But biologically they *are* male.

I think there is a difference between scientific classification, which is what biological gender actually is, and the kind of classification that is done by people with their senses, which might be something else entirely.

We are all a mixture of various qualities, both masculine and feminine. Sorting us on the basis of biological gender is convenient, and in most cases, says something about the person so classified.

I thought the creator of the poll was at pains not to cause offence.

D'accord. Be any damn thing you want.

There is no such thing as "biological" gender. There is biological sex and there is "socialogical" gender.

In my own case regarding "biological" sex I would have to say intersexed, as I was born with ambiguous sexual characteristics.

My gender, which I have been sure of since early childhood (despite attempts to raise me as a male) is unambiguously female.

While the creator of the poll took pains to not offend, offense was taken. The premise of the poll posits that transsexuals are not truly the men or women they have concluded themselves to be. As such, it is offensive nonsense.

I dont understand this statistic. I thought when I registered at SL that the question was not asked, but was asked when I created an avatar. (maybe I am remembering wrong??)

My point is that if I remember that correctly then the Linden figures reflect avatar gender choice instead of actual RL gender.

ugh, need coffee for brain...

that's what I want to know too.

Why the lines about sex trade workers? Is this poll just an attempt to say at the end of the day that one is more likely to be involved (or not be involved), in the sex trade if one is playing a different gender or something??

Also I agree with Kendra about the complete lack of a third or trangendered/intersex choice. I have about 40 or 50 people on my friends list (and without ever even asking the question), I know for a fact that at least three, and possibly four of them are intersexed in RL. It's neither that rare nor really unusual in SL (or RL for that matter).

If you add in the GBLT players it gets even more confusing. The poll says that if you play another gender with an alt, then to consider yourself to be playing "cross gender," but tons of the gay male players I know have a girl avatar even though they play mostly male. I also find that most of what I consider to be "cool" or good RL (straight) male players have a girl avatar that they play occaisionaly (not sure why the girls dont seem to do this so much ).

I have the feeling that to only focus on male/female is to leave out a sizeable chunk of the people that make up SL, and to consider everyone who has ever played an opposite gender character to be a "gross-gender player" is a big flaw.