Gender vs. Biological Sex

Which is indeed a problem, maybe we need to have an "AV 101 class" along with the others to help educate people on just how many options and ajustments there are to AV's. We litteraly have the most customizable charactor/av in any game, ever.

FACE TATOOS! There is your answer to this whole problem. We dont need a new sex. Just use a female AV, if you want her to have facial hair give her a tatoo that does it, if you want to have a guy with boobs, make her heavy set with facial hair... you get the picture.

I submit with a little effort on the creators part that any of the above requests could already be possible within the current system and that no changes need be made to suit said parties lazyness their in.

You know were all based on a female avatar anyhow right?

My point is that the devs intended this to be a free environment (creatively speaking) yet there are built in restrictions.

I don't really get your point in calling people lazy. Does it feel good?

You dont have any restrictions, you just dont understand how to acomplish your goals within the game.

And no it dosn't, I'm sorry I used the term. Some people are some aren't. I'm under the impression now that its just a lack of info on your part and its wrong of me to have not taken this train of thought before.

If you like, next time we are both online, and I can sign on to look for you tomarrow if you like (Todays booked, date tonight ), I can show you ways to acomplish the avatars you desire. I have a lot of experiance with building them

Was just about to say--it is no longer a discussion when you're throwing attacks out at people, Gwydeon.

"I submit with a little effort on the creators part that any of the above requests could already be possible within the current system and that no changes need be made to suit said parties lazyness their in."

And if your opinions from the start had anything to do with others' laziness, nothing of the sort appears in your previous posts. It was clearly an issue of your not wanting "abnormalities" to be a part of SL.

Thanks for the suggestion, though, Eggy; like the idea with the tattoos. Wouldn't know how to do it personally, but that's just because I don't mess with tattoos. (And have never had a female AV to try them on.)

And, like Misnomer said--again, there -are- built in restrictions regarding gender, and to have to tip toe around them using "advanced" methods (tattooing, for example) leaves some people limited to gender and not others.

Laziness..???

Gwydeon I have been here a lot longer than you and have a full and complete grasp of the game including advanced texturing and avatar creation. I think the lesson here that needs to be learned is tact. I'll have some and not offer you instruction.

Look, I appologized, I'm not going to again.

You'll have to excuse me if I'm prying here, Gwydeon, but you seem to be kind of alarmed at the idea of all this.

Is it as Daemioth says, that you see transgendered or intersexed people as "abnormal" and not something you'd want to see "legitimized" by the inclusion of a third base option in the Avatar Settings panel?

I apologize if I'm putting words in your mouth or misreading you. I'm just trying to get a sense of where you're coming from here.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. The Avatar Settings window is probably the part of SL that requires the most work, and when it's revamped, (in 1.2, perhaps? ) I think it'd be a good opportunity to add in an additional way to customize our avatars. Gwydeon's right, of course, if you want an androgynous-looking avatar, it's possible, it's just not very convenient currently.

Also, it would make sense to integrate the future gesture editor and the Avatar Settings window, as well as allow for gesture "schemes" to be used: "lazy", "supermodel", and so on, ideally with sliders and controls to allow us to adjust the frequency of certain animations.

Excellent, yes. Right now with male & female options you are locked into things such as stride. If a male bodied av wanted more of a swish, or a femaie bodied av wanted less of one, too bad. Custom animations should address this however it is perfectly legit for these, or any other ideas for that matter, to be discussed.

I think we could go even further as to have a single blob shape added for those lag moments.

Would be much easier in events to have av's that are not so lag induceing.

<<there is no gender in a blob>>

I am all for complete customization of the av. I really don't see this as a trouble issue. WhyTH should it be??

2nd life is ment to be about creativity, remember on the SL web site, ya know the front page?

I play SL with this attitude:

If I like it I go see it, If I don't, I leave it alone.

I wonder why can't more people do this too?

I agree. And I find that in-world, for the most part people are taking this approach. In the forums though there is a distinct tendency to create an argument out of almost thin air. Unless you really WANT to have an argument *caugh*off-topicforums*cough*, its always easier to let seemingly hostile or condescending remarks go unanswered than it is to challenge them.

As I said in my initial post I think the current limitations on avatars have to do more with the technology than any social or political issues. I'll amend that slightly however based on a recollection I had:

Back when there were only a couple dozen users I was involved in a teleconference where we talked about avatars and I (I think it was me) suggested the need to animal or other life-form avatars. The response was that LL didn't want to have non-humanoid avatars, at least initially. I haven't bothered to argue that point since, but I'd still like at some point to be able to be a bird, or fish (or blob) without having to resort to covering my head and four limbs with objects to achieve it.

I experimented with creating avatars with Truespace for a while and in a few cases tried to make animations for them. It *IS* rocket science. I'm fairly certain that the current default avatars are as they are for this very reason, to avoid presenting new users with all of the failure scenarios possible with complete freedom of avatar design. I'm also relatively certain that this will change in the future as more of us become advanced in working with the current interface more options will become available. It has nothing to do with politics. REALLY.

Nope just don't want people draging their problem with IRL issues into a game.

Remember the issues with Thai Greenacre? He was/is gay. No one cared, but he ran around flaunting it and anoying people and then crying that they were discriminating against him. I thought he was an OK guy until I found out he was running around pushing his lifestyle in peoples faces so he could make something of it when he had anoyed them.

This is the kind of thing I want to avoid.

I hate the segregation of our people in any way. People should just be able to accept each other without stupid problems with one subset or another. Conversly, people in subsets should not run around trying to proove themselves, its no better. Just be.

I don't know, Gwydeon. Isn't that basically what you're doing too: using your own opinions on gender as an argument to limit what people can and cannot do within a game?

I can think of no good reason to not have an "all sliders" setting alongside the "male" and "female" ones. Just because such a feature could concievably be used to further someone's sociopolitical agenda doesn't mean that it shouldn't be implemented. Even if that were the only possible use, (and it's not) I still don't see the problem.

Personally, I think that the biggest argument against giving us an "all sliders" setting would be that I honestly don't see it as getting a lot of use. It just seems a little implausible to assume that this would lead to a flood of avatars sporting breasts and a goatee, or going around vocally challenging others' notions of gender.

"Yes, with my boobs and sideburns in place, I can now move forward to promote my anti-binary-gender-system agenda! Mwhahaha!"

Probably not.

I should note that I DEFINITELY would use it, if combined with a gesture preferences option, so I could tone down the female butt-wiggle. I mean, who walks like that?

Awwwwww... come on, people.

Let us have "all sliders". I'm sure the SL community will do creative and wacky things with them.

Bring on the freaks!

As I said before: If the reason for the addition is to increase creative oulet / ability I'm all for it.

But that was not the spirit of Daemioth's post. The spirit of Daemioth's post was to "transend gender". I've gone over the Daemioth's original msg again, and it still smells to me of some kind of transvestite / transexual brigade leader.

I have no specific problem with transvestites or transexuals, i mean its your body do what you want. but again I am tired of people pushing their cause in the publics face to justifiy their actions. And thats any group: Religious, political, sexual, etc...

Ok so Cath Omega wins this one!





fen-

"But that was not the spirit of the post. The spirit of post was to "transend gender". I've gone over the original msg again, and it still smells to me of some kind of transvestite / transexual brigade leader."

I'm neither transgender nor transvestite, nor would I utilize the transgender/transvestite option, particularly because I use one AV (and from a few posts before, you are uncertain of the terminology of "transgender/transvestite", so it's strange you still throw these terms in here and there without thinking) and 1. I don't think I should HAVE to announce that, 2. I don't think it would matter even if I was, and 3. For you to say I'm the BRIGADE LEADER of people of this sort you're totally wrong. Where is your animosity coming from?

I want equality for people, and this has NOTHING to do with a personal agenda to "free the transexuals" as you think I'm putting it. When have I ever put myself in a position where I am advocating and/or revealing my own lifestyle, of which you know absolutely nothing about, but have assumed a whole lot based on one post?

One small last thing, I read the forums regularly, so when you talk about the first post and then the person who wrote it as being a "transexual/transgender brigade leader" you threw out a hefty accusation there and were either gutsy or thought that I was airheaded and wouldn't notice. I would appreciate it if you not tip-toe around my name if you're clearly recognizing me in a thread that I even started and if you would like to accuse me of something PM me because accusations of any nature don't belong in a thread of open discussion.

And one last thing. Pull from my initial post what you think makes me a "transexual/transgender brigade leader." A bit of truth about my lifestyle: I am an English Education Major. So when I try to get my point across, I don't just say "Hey how about some new customization--drop the gender options!" Of COURSE I'm going to expand on that and explain beneficial reasons as to why that would make sense! Take a peek at the last paragraph--or as we call it in the English department, the "conclusion"--the very first line, and the most important one, is "So" and I hastily neglected a comma here "let's allow full customization." Aha, the point is made in its entirety, and the opinions leading up to it yield a lengthy post with explanations for why I believe in my proposition.

Since this post is starting to become lengthy, I'm going to stop now. However, I think what I'm trying to say is clear. I won't even type it out in the last paragraph. Perhaps now I may be noted as a "snooty english major transgender advocate corrupting public schools brigade leader," but I'm hoping my post does not "smell" that way to you.

While I find this "debate" fascinating, hasn't it long since strayed off the topic of "feature suggestions"? As far as I can tell, everyone is in agreement that more flexibility in avatar manipulation is desirable, so all thats going on here is (at best) quibbling over terminology. I second my motion that this thread stick to technical issues and that a new thread be started in "off-topic" to debate these profound RL issues.

*places fingers firmly in ears*

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA

Better Daemioth ?
I wasn' trying to tip-toe around anything man.

Mac, yea we have long since strayed into an unessisary debate, and while its been fun its getting unessisarily ugly and I went to far to keep it going. I do appologize for keeping this going so far / long.

As said before I hope that more avatar customization in ANY form gets into the game, Give us Antanee, Extra Eyes, etc.. I dont care, I'm all for it.

I did have a problem as I took Daemioth's post the wrong way (apparently) and I'm sorry.

Honestly, they are natural traits, if you think about it, there are hermaphrodites in nature, not just in the human race. But I digress, it's not an issue about natural or unnatural, it's about options. Hell, I'm female and I have a bit of a mustache and chin hair because of my body's screwed up chemistry from surgery. But does that mean there's something wrong with having face fuzz on a woman? Or the option to have it if you're making an av in SL? What about someone wanting to go with the joke about female dwarves in fantasy rp games having beards? It's not so much about breaking gender expectations or breaking out of the mold so to speak, revolutionizing society or shocking people with what you make. It's about having options and plenty of them! Full customization. It's about having fun in the game!

Changing from a biped to say a quadruped isn't all that hard. It just requires a customized animation which some people have already experimented with in Poser. I've honestly been trying to make such for a better dragon avatar among other things. Something like that isn't so much for LL to do, but for the users to have fun with and be creative. Walks can always be changed with an animation overrider.

MOOBS! :ouncehug!:: Bless your girlfriend for loving a fat man too! Please excuse my forwardness, but yes, people love fat men with moobs. True, not everyone does, but plenty do. Getting sick of the toothpick thin ideals of men and women, especially in US society where heavy people are looked down on. And heaven forbid if you actually enjoy that form! Sorry, I'm ranting. I just woke up. :nuggles before sliding his girlfriend back against his side and placing her arms around him, then runs off::

Yo Satu nice digging there .. did ya noticed when the last post was to this thread befor you ? > 10-19-2003, 11:42 PM ....
however, i wouldnt have anything against more flexibility in the creating my AV

I endorse this product and/or service.

I like this idea, too. More options == good. More options also == more bugs, so fix the bugs first, please.

Wow, this is a blast from the past.