Men acting as females embarrassed to call support

I went to a club once to chill and listen to music while I sorted through new notecard mail when I noticed a guy standing nearby (the club was empty when I went in). I Alt+click on him and checked out his avatar. It took me about 5 seconds to conclude the bloke was a woman although his profile stated he was a man etc.

After a few minutes he IMed me asking me if I wanted to dance. I said "yeah, sure, pick a dance" and the "man" grabbed a pink ball. I stood there for a bit waiting to see if "he" realized he had made a mistake.

"So, I just click on this ball and Sit?" I asked while right clicking the blue ball.

"Yes," he said.

"Sweetie, you grabbed the girl ball."

"OH! I must have let my inner girl out!"

LOL

I mean, why pretend? Besides, a real man would NEVER look that fabulous.
Muahahhhahahahaaaa

So many people have multiple identities in SL that encompass not just genders, but races, species and robots and cartoon characters!

If my dumb robot functionary alt got into difficulties I'm beginning to worry what sort of voice I'd need to use as I'd never even imagined it being able to speak!

Lol

I am pretty new here. I looked up for Jerry Springer and there is one inworld. But his profile is empty. Alt-genders might contact him anyway. Who knows ...

Oh and there is one more thing I want to say. I've seen many weird avatars that look scary, even as shop owners, even though it's in SL, yet they scare me and I just tp elsewhere. I find these folks highly disturbing.

This thread prompted me to pull up an old alt who is male and gear him up a little, and after a few minutes I realized it's just too much work and way, way too much catching up to do. Besides, Janelle's more fun anyway.

It's a sort of roleplaying in the first place. I'm just playing a character... actors do it all the time. The voice changer just makes it more fun to mess with people.

Exactly. In fact most of us in SL don't care either if the gender switch isn't done to con people.

Just call for heaven's sake and be proud to be who you are.

SL can be disturbing when you first start; it was for me. It is part of the effect of the creative freedom that exists here and how much people are pressured in RL to toe the line.

But who people choose to be here has a truth to it that is hidden in RL and you get used to it and then finally celebrate it.

It's a two way street and at some point that freedom will turn out to set you free as well.

Welcome to the forums and to SL.

=^-^=

OMG!
/me freaks out and will never return to that place again

Looks to me like that avatar is a good match for the styles that she sells. Anybody likely to be scared away isn't likely to want to buy the fashions on offer anyway.

Soooo...? I've played males on other games, hardly anyone could tell the difference. Even when I let them know, the majority were open-minded enough to not really care. Heck, the females were usually males anyway.

Doesn't bug me. The avatar is just pixels, the personality is the same either way.

I ran a chat channel in irc for two years as a male (though i am very female, as anyone who knows me well will confirm).

The reason I chose to run the room as a male was twofold...

First the theme of the room was quite a masculine one, and the role-play demanded virtual muscle (being strenuous).

Second, I didn't want to have to go through the hoops of dealing with what we used to call in irc 'HNGs' or 'Horny Net Geeks' , and the patronising attitudes of many guys (not all, please note I said 'many') who would come in and make a nuisance of themselves, and then pat me on the head patronisingly and ignore the fact that I owned the channel and could make the rules and had a right to enforce them. A male doesn't have to go through that process and it saved SO much time being male you wouldn't believe. I had run channels before as a female and the contrast was very marked and made my two years gender transition worth the downsides to it.

The downside was, that despite the fact that the room was created to satisfy my particular kinky needs, as owner in male attire I couldn't actually participate in it the way I would have liked. *laughs at the irony*

Nonetheless I don't regret much about that two years, and some very good things came from it. I did wonder, sometimes, if i would start talking in a deeper voice and grow whiskers.

There might be times in SL when people change gender for similar reasons and i wouldn't blame them for a nanosecond.

Imogen

yup

even a friend of mine wich was male all his time ingame made a female alt as he classified me as nuts and didn`t believe half of what i said, took him a week to take his words back after messing with people`s heads and every one saying "it was fine, no problem" where his male avi would have gotten banned and muted

after 1.5year of having ali, i can pretty much say that a large part of the male population in sl is dumb and face value (to be honest, females aswell)
"pretty chick with attitude, cool!!"
you wouldn`t believe the shit i got away with, specially when i was only a couple months old...really...it`s unbelievable...

thing that scares me the most, if i didn`t have a female avi, i *might* have ended up the same or atleast missed a couple of good lessons in life

do i regret having her? nope, if i had to do it over, i`d do it again
if i have to look at my screen all day long, i`d rather have something pleasing to the eyes as i`m straight

no awkward moments as that crap doesn`t interrest me, lonely, sometimes, but got stuff to fill my time with and not here for pixel dating

when i last said it in the plain open, even some posters that i meet sometimes ingame didn`t even read it and kept thinking i was female while it stared them right in their face

saying this cause of your your example, as i`m not hiding or roleplaying or want to mislead anyone while sharing an observation of the sl population, me = me, simple

Now this is interesting to me. The same thing still happnes to me after more than a year. Yesterday my alt was invited to attend the grand opening of some role play sims based on the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey. In the welcome area I was approached by a full sized dragon. Now I know the person behind the keyboard is just as geeky as me, maybe more so. But the dragon still made me nervous. I left plenty of room for him and eventually just teleported out. I wish I could have overcome that - it was a magnificent creature.

I must be completely immersed in the world and the ancient lizard brain's fight or flight instinct is still strong no matter what my higher brain knows to be true. I think this is why I accept people's apparent gender at face value too.

I imagine that the typical person calling LL for support is a Premium, or at least verified, account. If you are one of those, LL must have your real name. Giving a false name that matches your intended avatar's gender at that point would be payment fraud, and that's not a good place to go.