Calling out someone's RL sex in the forums - right or wrong?

It's interesting.
Just looking at names, I had Mickey as a guy and Rene as a woman.
It's not important.

Pronouns don't often come up.
"The OP" is comonly used.
"You" is used when responding directly.

But...

Is the need to use a pronoun a danger sign?
If we use a pronoun, we are talking about someone. We should be talking about ideas.

I'm at least as guilty as anyone else in this.

Soooooooooo..

If you find yourself typing a pronoun........ stop.



This rule only applies to others btw.

It's not dead is just sleeping...

.d

No- it's pining for the fjords.

I don't think it's right, unless the person being outed has already explicitly outed themselves in public. If it's based on private information, or if it's an assumption based on observation of things like the cliches you mentioned in your other post, then it's definitely not right.

And e's not pining, e's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!

I always refer to people by their SL gender, and if he person had only told a few people their RL identity and not disclosed who they were to the whole forum, then yeah, it's pretty bastard thing to do IMHO.

SL TOS and Community standards are clear on this matter.

A Person's real life gender, is covered just the same as every other part of their real life information.

There are clear rules that you may not devulge that informaition if you know it. This means even if you over herad them say it in a chat conversation or they told you, you can't tell others. Plan and simple. Same as you can't tell where they live, what they do, who they work for.

There is also community standards for personal attacks. Included in that is mis- quoting someone's words or statements, reprinting their ims in any form, or reprinting their chat comments in part or editing them to make what they said appear different or out of context. Also covered is quoting chat converations at all if you were not within 20 m when it took place. In fact recording chat conversations remotely is also covered.

Simply put, these forums are here to comment on SL items, issues etc. and to hold discussions and yes debates WHERE you can dispute the ideas, argue about them, attack them, but NOT the poster.

When attacks start to happen against the posters, and personal insults start to fly, threads will be closed, as they should be.

Debate the issues and ideas, not the person posting them.

No.

I do not want threads closed because one person is being his usual heinous anus self and trashing a thread non-stop with his usual grammatical and misogynistic bullcrap posts.

No, and no.

It's not only unethical, and stooping low but it violates TOS.

Unless they met the person in real life, anyway, how do they know for sure. (Especially if it's someone who has very poor reading comprehension skills and is unable to detect satire.)

Simple solution Briana, don't reply to them and press the ! at the botton right of the post and report it. When that one person gets others to reply in kind, then yes Threads will get closed.

If that one person is ignored and reported to the modorators, the thread will go on fine and that person will get bored of talking to themselves.

Regards,

Samatha

It is wrong on any number of levels, and indeed seems to be covered in the TOS / Community Standards.

Frankly, even if everyone thought it was 'evident', unless the person involved has specifically said "I am X in RL and I don't care if everyone knows it" it would not be an appropriate topic of discussion.

The only time i would think it is an issue is if said person was making a claim as in how a "women " would feel in some circumstance. If they are a RL male then how would they really know

You would easily know if it was a man saying things about feelings.

Pep (He would use one sentence; a woman would go on and on and on . . . )

It reveals more about the person doing the outing than it does about the person outed.

(Tangent: I'm personally more disoriented when the same account switches back and forth between avatar sexes than when I know the avatar is just the opposite sex of its typist. I recognize people have every right to change between (among?) sexes as often as they want, but I nonetheless find it a bit awkward.)

it's the same even when it is the same gender..it is hard for me to focus right away when someone switches to alts..it is like i have to start over communicating again..they have just changed their whole appeance and it is hard to pick up where i was at with their other avatar lol
it's like hmmmm time for subject change

I'm fairly certain I know the thread to which you are referring Briana (ugh, what a mess that deteriorated into) and at the time I read it I was very annoyed and indignant for the person who was 'outed', for lack of a better word. I myself had NO idea the person's RL gender until I read that thread.

Apparently it had been mentioned openly before but I wasn't the only one who missed it. I felt somewhat better when the person targeted confirmed their RL gender and took a "whatever" kind of attitude about it, but I was still personally offended that they were, for all intents and purposes, forced out of the gender closet. It's nobody's business unless someone wants to openly disclose, and I thought it was in extremely poor taste for the one who did it to go there.

Perhaps you could take on Pandora's Box as your next project?

Pep (Perhaps a time machine would do the trick? Ask the ferret!)

Wait, who exactly is being referenced here as being despicable? (IM me if you don't want to say it publicly)... I think I've lost the thread of the conversation here and am now very confused.

In my post I was referring to the person who disclosed the other forum poster's RL gender.

I thought they disclosed it themselves.

Pep (Originally)

I am merely expressing my opinion Pep, like everyone else in the thread. Hardly a project.

Yes but many pages of posts before, and I and apparently a rather large group of individuals hadn't read it, thus it was news to us.

In a discussion of gender issues, the gender with which someone has to live (as opposed to one assumed completely voluntarily and temporarily) is important to the discussion. I can understand how someone would care, in the context of that discussion, a participant's gender outside of SL as a context for what the participant contributes to the discussion.

What that may mean is that these forums are a poor vehicle to discuss gender issues.

However, the root of all gender-based social issues seems to be societal enforcement of rigid gender roles. The assignment of an unalterable destiny based on the random presence or absence of a Y-chromosome. Asserting that one must say or do certain things to be a "real" man or a "real" woman- and insulting those who do not conform to the stereotype of a "real" man or "real" woman- is one method of enforcing rigid gender stereotypes.

As it turns out, through history, women usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to reward and penalties based on conforming to rigid gender stereotypes. But women aren't the only ones hurt by rigid gender stereotypes either. Just like most women do not want to be confined to a stereotype of a "real" woman, actually, many men do not like being confined to the stereotype of a "real" man either.

Attacking someone's gender identity is just wrong. Pressuring someone to conform to a gender stereotype is just wrong.

I don't know if it makes some sort of "logical" sense for a "real" woman to reject the idea that a violent poseball animation is a root of evil that must be stopped. Personally, I think that "Log Cabin Republicans" make a lot less sense. And yet, Log Cabin Republicans really do exist. I can't explain it. People do not always do what I think is logical. But I've learned to live with that and love them anyway.

World War Two is over as well.

Pep (Not been in the news recently so perhaps you missed it)

There's a fine line when it comes to public disclosure and politeness comes into it as welll. I know of a few people in SL who have had their RL gender disclosed under different circumstances and while some argue that they're still protected (although some of them disclosed it themselves) others just ask that people use their SL gender as a show of politeness to their preference which should be respected. As I've said before I haven't always followed that so it's probably hypocritical for me to be preaching that.