SL Transgender Poll

Simple really. Curiosity.

I started playing SL some weeks ago and noticed there weren't much of a labour market. What I did notice however was that there were shops for raunchy clothing and exotic dancing clubs just about everywhere.

Now, I'm not a particularly prude person myself, but it raised questions since it was so different from real life as I know it. Personally, I don't know a single friend who'd say she'd be ready to work in a topless bar for real. So where did all these sultry ladies and escort girls come from? For example, were we witnessing what happens to a labour market/society when it gets starved of 'proper' work (because basically, there are no physical needs or services that needs to be fulfilled in SL - it's a material Schlaraffenland) or was it a matter of men living out a possibly common hidden fantasy to be women?

Or was it a matter of women who in a protected and anonymous environment took the opportunity to act out particular fantasies of rough sex and objectivication without the risk of being condemned by feminist sisters for sucking up to a sexist and/or traditional gender role stereotype?

See, a host of questions well up...

Yesterday, I also noticed there had been several discussions about the dangers of lying about sex/gender and what can happen when SL result in serious relationships. I therefore felt it was time to actually look into the matter of gender role-play prevalence.

Oh, by the way "biological gender" in my original post is meant to mean "biological sex". See, simple hey? Hope that will clear up eventual confusion.

Just to throw another hat into the ring, and maybe provoke a bit of controversy half-seriously, how about this for an interesting but different gender-related definition:

Group 1: All those experiencing significant naturally-generated cyclic changes in their blood concentrations of powerful hormone-related chemicals, on a periodicity of very roughly 28 days.

Group 2: Those not. Which would presumably include most males, the biologically androgynous, the pre-pubertal (hopefully not here), the post-menopausal, and a number of others.

Could this be a psychologically important distinction ? I often wonder how the average man would cope if we strapped a computer-contolled hypodermic to his arm, and pumped in a similarly powerful cyclic drug cocktail.

Useful definition, correlating with measurable behavioural and preferential factors ? I just don't know, but one might guess yes, might one not, if one felt able to take the flak ?

*crouches down in trench, grinning impishly *

I am a SEXY blue unicorn in real life and I dare any of you to prove otherwise.

LOL, Ellie

I sure needed that laugh.

Okay, everyone who feels my options and categories aren't good enough should feel free to make their own much superior polls.

But please take the trouble of answering mine first.

Some of you people are reading WAY too much in to it.

Being OFFENDED because someone doesn't UNDERTAND TG's? Come on, gett of your high horse. Are we being just a teensy bit over-sensitive here, and finding offense where none is intended?

In the real world, sex and gender mean the same thing to most people.

And no, I'm not ignorant of your situation. I have several friends and acquaintances in varying stages and conditions of being both intersexed and trans-gendered. (I do consider those to be different things.) Your getting indignant over this issue is not helping your case any. In fact, you're simply playing the drama queen for no good reason.

There is yet another problem with the poll questions, as well: what about people who play both female and male avatars interchangably? I create characters and expect to be addressed as the "skin I'm in" when I'm wearing a particular av. This comes from my UO days when my friends and I would RP exclusively while in the game. We would use emotes or team chat to talk out of character.

In SL, we don't really look at the role-playing aspect the same way people do in the more stylized RPG's. Ultima Online is a good example of this: many of the players on UO will only talk "in character". For some, the avatar is an extension of their real-world persona. For others, it's a way to escape who they are in the real-world.

Personally, I think a character on the grid is NOT the man or woman behind the keyboard. As far as I'm concerened, the avatars are their own people. When I see a female avatar, I act as if I'm talking to a woman. When I see a male avatar, I act as if I'm talking to a male.

In either case, I'm not particularly concerned with the activities where gender makes a difference. Since, in this little world we share, being male or female, tall or short, fat or thin, or attractive or ugly is purely a matter of choice, I tend to be drawn more to unique personalities than anything else. In fact, one of my favorite people in-world wears such extravagant designs that I'm not even sure what gender the avatar is supposed to be under all those prims...

Maybe that's the way it should be. In the end, being man or woman doesn't make too much of a difference. We're all human beings, and that's the one thing wel all have in common.

Thank you for your curt dismissal of my feelings. I do hope it made you feel better.

I'm not offended when people don't understand me as I still struggle to understand myself. What IS offensive to me about this poll is how it groups being transgendered in with unspecified sex work. As if sexual activity is the main determinant in this whole thing. This is a stereotype I'd really like people to get over. Not every transperson you meet is a #$^$)%$)* prostitute.

*sends warm all-enveloping hugs out to Ana*

Love you, Ana.

Precisely. I'm definitely not here to hurt anyone's feelings. I was hoping I made that clear from the outset. I accept everyone exactly the way they are in SL and in RL it's the same as long as they don't hurt other people.

If there is something I don't understand about transgenderism etc, I do apologize.

Can we please move on now?

I agree, this is a problem. That's the reason I stated in my original post that people who use avatars of different sex interchangeably should pick an option that related to their opposite gender use.

This poll is about people playing the opposite sex/gender. It's not about establishing who is truly an authentic female/male inside but born with the wrong sex. That's a different question.



Oh, definitely not. But it might be possible that males who are simply turned on by crossdressing or would like to play a female in a sexual role, i.e be the desired object themselves, could feel attracted to this line of work in SL.
The question is not irrelevant. Are the prostitutes in SL male or female? What does this tell us about differences in male/female psyche, libido and expectations?

Alright, that was a mishap. What country are you from Ryntha? Sex and Gender issues are not on the regular college schedule everywhere. It could be it even is in my country nowadays, but it sure wasn't in the eighties when I went to school.

That said, I am generally aware about the difference implied.

I'm not sure quite how to word this one that wont sound offensive, so I'm apologizing in advance. In the meantime, here goes....

Your feeliings and opinions on the matter are no more important than anyone else's on this.

Now, having said that, I'm going to try to explain why that wasn't intended to be an offensive statement.

The biggest hurdle with the current transgender movement is that for many people, there is simply no distinction between 'gender' and 'sex'. The two words have the same meaning, and can be swapped conceptually without any change to the meaning of a sentence. That essentially means it is impossible for a transgendered person to convey to such a person that they can be of one 'gender', yet be of a different 'sex'. It simply doesn't compute, because the person hearing the statement is getting 'I am, but I'm not.'

I will freely admit to being one of those types who do not see a difference in the concepts of 'gender' or 'sex'. However, I am aware that there are people who see the two as separate concepts, and are able to integrate such concepts into their sense of self. On the other hand though, if someone states that they dont understand or agree with a person's opinions on sex/gender, then it might simply be that - a lack of understanding. Or ability to understand. When that happens, it's an inability to communicate one's thoughts between the two persons. Not any type of dismissal or attempt to be malicious.

I'm all for the rights of transgered persons to be permitted the rights and respect deserving of all members of society. However, on that same coin, Traditionally-gendered/sex people also deserve the same rights and privileges. This isn't a matter of pro or con anything - it's a matter of general human respect.

- Newfie

I'm always amazed by discussions of this type in all the MMOGs I've played...and now here in SL.

In a virtual world there is really no need for gender at all though I certainly understand that RL desires, conditioning and preferences carry over...as do personalities to a very large extent. It's also, apparently, quite a good business.

As far as I'm concerned however gender is largely a biochemical issue evolved to continue the species. Other than that why would anyone even care about the gender of someone they ONLY knew in virtual space? Even if it carried over to RL why would you care if you had already developed a relationship?

I used to ask my wife, as a thought experiment, what if one day she found out I was nothing more than a very cleverly disguised machine...not human at all. Would she instantly stop loving me? The same can be said of people you meet and like in SL. I've constantly seen relationships in MMOGs fall apart because one found out the other wasn't the gender 'expected' by avatar appearances or behavior.

Personally I stopped trying to figure out the RL gender of everyone I met a few MMOGs ago. I don't ask, I don't particularly care and I certainly don't look for any deep meaning in the relationship between the two spaces.

Hell, I don't even much think about gender relationships in RL...let alone in virtual space where fluidity of form reigns supreme.

Gender just isn't an important issue in the grand scheme of things. Maybe in crawling out of the mud of RL and into the goo of VR we need to reevaluate the importance of things like gender?

Interesting. For the topic at hand, a more apt question to a RL opposite sex partner might be "what if one day she found out I really identified as a woman." I imagine her answer might be slightly different than when comparing yourself to an inanimate object.

Cross and trans gender, when it comes to relationships, both RL and VL, is an extremely volatile topic. It brings into focus the other partner's self concept of their own sexual orientation, feelings of inadequecy about their own sexuality, gender competition, a host of many things most would otherwise never give a second thought to. And usually the reaction is neither benign or favorable.

What you obviously DON'T know is that we already have a similarly powerful cocktail already flowing through our veins. Ask any menopausal woman who is newly dealing with increased testosterone levels and she will tell you... through tears, rage and laughter(all at the same time sometimes). And males deal with this stuff from the start of puberty.
I am not saying women have it easy. I just want it understood that men don't either.

In addition (sorry guys... trade secret, I know... but it's gotta be done.):
Men DO have a hormone cycle... it may not have physical symptoms (like bleeding once a month or thereabouts), but the impact affects our lves nonetheless. We bloat, we experience times of increased aggression and times of increased ... ummm... amorousness. We even have times where our gonads are making increased levels of gametes and we experience associated tenderness and pain. The big difference is that the male cycle runs 3 to 4 months instead of 3.5 to 5 weeks.

What does this mean?
No bleeding.
PMS for a month at a time.

I once heard testosterone is basically like PMS'ing all the time, but men (usually) get used to it because it's ALL the time.

I thought about posting more about how sex and gender are not entirely interchangeable terms or something serious about relationships but I'll just give you a comic I stole instead. It's from an often extremely hilarious webcomic by an FTM guy:

Transe-generation

at which point did I say they were ?

I continue to insist that I don't actually exist, being merely a fantastically unlikely string of coincidental electrical impulses and flucuations on the Internet.

Depends on the day and moon aspect.

Wow, Kendra,

Way to twist an out of context snippet....

Did you read the rest of his post?
Do you have no other comment on the content of that post except this one snippet?

I came into this discussion on your side, and I still consider myself your ally, because I want only your and everyone's best end result, so I am going to say the following. Please take it under consideration in the spirit in which it is offered:

*This discussion is not personal, and no attacks against you were launched.
*Your reactions seem to indicate that you are feeling attacked.
*These kinds of reactions can trigger a lot more drama than is needed in an already volatile discussion topic.
*It is clear that your feelings are getting hurt here and you may want to step away from the keyboard for a few.
*If people don't understand, or don't get our position, that is not a reflection on us or our position.
*It IS a reflection on our ability to speak their language, but keep in mind that their language may not have terms to encompass concepts alien to their thinking and common to ours.
*You have the courage it took and continues to take to be a Woman; now use it to maintain your dignity and not fall into Drama Queendom.
*Help us all keep the drama to a minimum, so that some education and frank discussion can take place without this devolving into a flamewar.

Alain
"Translating from English to English for decades now"

I think the problem is that a vast majority of society has been trained to think that biological gender always breaks down into male and female. I can understand your feelings getting hurt, but most people simply do not realize that many are born with the characteristics of both males and females from the beginning. I think the poll was posted with the culturally excepted assumption that humans really do break down into male and female only at birth. I don't think you should be offended, simply help teach people that their view of the world is culturally programmed, and it is not correct at all.

Thank you, Dark.

My point exactly.

For some folks, though, because feelings run deep, it is difficult to retain objectivity on certain topics.
That is why it is important for allies to engage the education process as much as possible while looking to the experiencees of the topic in question for fuller or deeper explanations when possible.

For instance, it is no secret that I am a "male identified (gender), gay (orientation), biological male (sex)".
My orientation falls outside the "normal range" of the orientation bell curve...
It's not something I parade around, shouting from the rooftops, but I also don't have a "Deep Dark Secret" either. I am "Out" but not "OUT LOUD!"


I cannot even begin to explain why my orientation was not a "choice". I get extremely frustrated when trying to break through that particular piece of misinformation, mostly because people seem to cling so deperately to it. The only choice I made, or could make in this regard, was honesty.

Fortunately, there are a number of people who have managed to formulate excellent wordcraft that very effectively outlines the situation as it is. Could I use these wordcrafts? No... Because I am too close to the situation to be objective enough to keep my cool. Some can; I am not one of them and I realize this.

For similar reasons, I suggested Kendra take a short break from this thread when it became clear that her intent to educate became compromised and was becoming dangerously close to baiting and sniping. Such activities would not have gone far toward education and further enlightenment of the populace, and indeed would have only served to propagate a number of inaccurate and unhealthy stereotypes.