Duck and cover: it's one of "those" threads

its odd that some claim they see child avs in sexual situations... Ive never seen it, or been approached my another child av for sexual reasons. Im a child av and the furthest thing on my mind is sex, period. But maybe I dont look for it or Im to much of a newbie. I have been approached a very few times by adult avs tho. And they get instantly AR'd.

Now, where did I put that balloon for my trike??

I love you, Love, but I think this is a llittle pessimistic

SL IS a society ... or a set of societies. Grassroots efforts in RL are, I think, often more effective than governmental policy in changing opinions en masse. I think that really intelligent mini-campaigns on behalf of child avies in SL can have a cumulative positive effect.

Things like Mari and Immy are trying to do, such as having a positive presence in newbie areas, throwing fun occasions that are open to all, etc. can slowly make a difference in SL's culture. After all, they're not aiming for everyone being a child avie advocate. All they need, is that when a player makes gratuitously bad statements about child avies, some more reasonable person who is NOT a child says" "Jeez, give it a rest. They're harmless."

A few more ideas for positive visibility: Livingtree having GREAT freebies that show up in the freebie blogs (which have HUGE readership; just send something to whatzername at SLFreeStyle), interesting treasure hunts in kid-tolerant sims that have kid avies present (why wasn't there a kid around at the opening of Magic of Oz, fishing all the time? The number of avies that went through there was incredible, and the owner, a great guy, was around a lot around the fishing area).

There are a number of tourism/cultural awareness sims. When someone is doing a new one, perhaps kids could contact the project managers or suppliers and volunteer to put together a small well-researched playground area ... I'm thinking of places like Visit Mexico! A little play area with a few Mayan toy artifacts around would have fit in very well. And we know that ArchTx, for example, was involved with that one.
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This reminds me of a club I went to recently where I saw a guy sitting all alone in the corner with no one talking to him or even dancing near him. There was a wide empty space around him. Curious I poked at him for his profile and discovered a long rant about how everyone is here burying their heads in the sand while the outside world is going to excrement, blah blah blah. You don't try arguing with that kind of mentality. You just leave it alone to stew in its own festering fluids. Maybe the witchhunters should be treated likewise. Some people only see evil everywhere they look, except in the mirror.

Continue to have kid avatars at NCI as much as possible. When I first came into SL, NCI was my first hang out and I grew accustomed to seeing several kid avies there as mentors and officers. This gave credibilty to the whole idea for me, and so I never thought of them as any kind of perversion.

Only one time I was working late at night in a sandbox and a kid avatar rezzed nearby and started having a soliloquy about being all alone in a big field, with no one around ... all alone ... Well THAT creeped me out. I muted him. You can tell by the context what is appropriate behavior and what is inappropriate. Even that might have been innocent, so I took no action beyond muting.

Other than that all the remaining times I've been around kid avatars have been the most joyous of my times in SL. They just seem to be about FUN! I am much more comfortable around SL kids than with real life kids.

Maybe I too should become one at least part of the time. Who knows? They may even convince me to shed my curmudgeon's armor some day!

You just have to spend 5 minutes with Marianne to figure out what being an SL kid is about for the vast majority of them. I don't know what their motivation is, if I would understand if I did, nor really care why. To those that have a problem with it, look in the mirror. That's where you can start changing things.

I've AR'd many kiddie avatars mainly when at a store and you see them trying out the sex bed, poses, etc, so its very annoying while shopping at like that 'abr' store where the sections are all side by side.


love the response time though, as the avatar usually disappear in a minute or two

just go AR nuts it works quickly when it comes to those situations.

Ya, I've not seen a lot of it either, like I mentioned above. I sometimes get the feeling there's this roving mob of sexual kid avvies swarming the grid that somehow manage to remain hidden from the eyes of the no-sexual ones. Maybe people see shoyter than 6' = kid, or they see fairies an dills an think their kids.



I shop at Abranimations from time to time. They have a great ballet HUD. Glad to know you'll go AR nuts on me next time i visit there.



Thanks

it's so secret, me thinks the only way to see it is to be the party in it.

I don't see why it's so difficult for LL to act on reports of sexual ageplay and weed out the innocent child avs that get reported. All they need to do is state that screenshots must be submitted, or other clear evidence such as group memberships. Also, enforcement of this should be a high enough priority that any reports lacking screenshots but that sound plausible merit further investigation. It's not that difficult to send an undercover av with a non-Linden name to check out locations of reports. If it's a sex club, or sexual material is present, send that av every hour for a week until the offenders are caught in the act. If LL has the name of a suspicious av, they could also pay surprise visits to that av's location periodically, to see what they're up to.

Regarding language, I was talking about sims set Mature, particularly my own - not PG sims and other settings where it would be inappropriate. And regarding IMing someone's Master or Mistress instead - I don't believe that any person should be that under control of another that they can't speak for themselves. I have no problem with kinky bedroom play among consenting adults, but the idea of letting someone control every aspect of your life is dangerous and abhorrent to me. I've known too many people in abusive relationships - and it can happen in SL too. I feel so strongly about this that yes, it would be compromising myself to contribute to it in any way. Also, your personal fetish is not a reason for me to not IM you regarding a customer service or land rental matter for my businesses. Most of my dealings in SL are business related, so that is the standpoint from which I approach it. I have friends who are into BDSM in SL, but they don't expect me to be a part of that, or treat them any differently. That's something they do with their partner(s), not me! To expect a total stranger to be a part of one's personal kink is inappropriate, IMO.

exactly...
thats what i was trying to say .. but said it badly..

maybe if i use shoes as an example..
ppl respond to diff things in diff ways depending on what is going on inside them

i see a killer pair of shoes.. i drool and think.. ooooo that would go so well with my little black dress or that new skirt i bought at ***** the other day.

someone else looks at the shoe .. they drool and think... Domme, submission, humiliation, ball torture....

its ok to each his own


and then another someone else looks at the shoe .. they drool and think... Domme, submission, humiliation, ball torture.... and then they freak out and start hitting themselves mentally ... nonono must not think of that ... bad bad shoes... BAD BAD BAD SHOES!!!!! and start to rant out loud at how all shoes are evil because they induced the drool factor in him...

now any sensible person sees some guy with his jocks down and perving on a shoe .. knows that yes.. here is shoe and fetish joined together...

but a shoe alone cannot be the source of all evil.. that needs to come from within.

It addresses the original question. It also covers the OP's backside if the person who accosts her tries to turn the encounter into something else. It might just educate someone who is educable.

And it doesn't hurt anyone.

If you want me to solve all the problems of the world, you'll have to pay a retainer.

Yeah, maybe... I guess if they see normal kid avatars at newbie areas, they won't so quickly conclude that kid avatars are something other than normal.

But let's play out that scenario a little further. Kid avatar at Ahern; newbie watching and listening; jerk taunts kid; a few people in the crowd tell jerk to STFU; jerk keeps taunting; nothing happens for a long time.

And then... a 50/50 shot as to whether jerk is banned for intolerance or kid avatar is banned for ageplay. (Actually, 50/50 is being generous.)

Now what did newbie learn?

I can think of one thing that might really help. Couldn't LL be prevailed upon to offer among the default avis for new residents, a choice of basic boy or girl child avatar?

This would send the message that LL does indeed 'permit' innocent roleplay as children. It would need to be accompanied by an explanation of the restrictions that exist; for example that if you want to flirt or more you will need to grow up fast!

As to the other points raised about being compelled to join other people's r/p when it runs contrary to our personal belief system, I would say that in public areas you can simply ignore or mute them, and on your own land in extreme cases, there's the old freeze/eject combo!

My stores are on PG land mainly, and I do have to occasionally ask people to put their weapons away, or cover up a bit. I am a child friendly store-keeper, and I also sell shoes and clothing for kids, and I don't want my customers upset.

If I see a Gorean slave in my store, then so long as she/he is respectably dressed, they are free to come and go as they like. I can see that if I needed to speak to them about their attire, it might not be very convenient to have to go through a third party, who might be off-line, and so I would ignore any 'Please IM my master/mistress' instruction, and IM them directly. A case of my land, my rules. I cannot go to their sims and behave in any way I wish - it's a two way street!

But I would definitely like to see default child avatars offered by LL.

That assumes the kid is passively tolerating the taunting. I spend a lot of my time in welcome areas and noobie locations. Most here are quite aware of my appearances. I get "flirted with" a lot. I deal with each one a different way. Mostly to work up the crowd around and show the jerk for who the jerk is. (^_^)

As for the odds on banning... Hopefully my own little event helped some in the GTeam follow their own verbal rule of "all ARs are investigated". (>_<

Me too, and I was glad to see some less-than-amazon ones in the inventory. There was a child avvie (Little Red Riding Hood) that resided in everyone's inventory. Not sure if that's still there, or if it was part of the library clean up.

That said, I suspect LL wants to avoid any visibility of kid avvies whenever possible, at least judging from past actions. The initial sexual ageplay ban, for example, was done without a public notice -- only a notecard presented to places considered questionable (yes, including those that weren't involved in sexual ageplay activity). Consider too the SL5B "no kid content" rule that fell kinda on its face. It's not a ban (to borrow words), but it is like sweeping the crumbs under the carpet.

It actually surprised me to see a couple mole-made playgrounds, including the inoperable one in Bay City, as they imply the existence of kid avvies.



I've never been too good with that passively tolerating thing.



I have someting like this, an I know others do too. So frustrating, though, having to have a "carry letter." The difficulty I've had, too, is that many will decline anything from me (eww, kid germs!) or will automatically assume that anythign I say is a lie. Each of the examples inthe OP were like this, unwilling to believe that I was *not* trying to hid some perversion somewhere. An really, if I wanted to hide someting, wouldn't I jes get an alt instead of running around in public spaces?



Which is another one of those issues, like above. People assume there must be *something* going on somewhere. Like there's secret rooms at home for doing that or something.

Not so much, though.

When I was beta testing URU back before I joined SL, they asked us to test out avatars of the opposite sex to make sure everything worked consistently. It was a real shock to me (who had never done so before) how differently peopled treated each other. The social dynamic and expectations were totally different. URU was crazy through, people were really into the RP and it had a PG rating (to bring things into perspective, the community was split into two groups, those who saw the road cones as unimportant and those who saw them as important safety equipment that should not be touched; the road cones had no importance or use in the game).

The thing is, once people get an idea into their heads, it's hard to get it out.

I really wish LL would allow for more avatar forms, human is so meatspace. In a world where you can be anything, why be human?

They've shown they don't want to take a public stand on any controversial subject. Considering the lightning rod effect of the topic, the should have been publicly displaying their intentions and efforts to ensure that SL is not a haven for child predators, or sexual activities involving children. You get bad press you use the same press to shoot back. Yet they just shrugged and stumbled around.



And why should you have to prove anything?You aren't doing anything wrong. No other subgroup in SL has to "Show their papers", why should you kids?

I see 3 main groups of people who have problems with this. Self righteous busybodies, who believe too much of what they see on TV and read on the internet, who have nothing better to do with themselves. In RL they are probably the ones who peer out of their windows behind the curtains and watches what everyone in the neighborhood does.

Next are the Self Haters who have a disposition toward the behavior and think this is how they resist it.

Last are just plain asshats, who really know what the deal is, but just like stirring up shit for the rise it gets out of people.

None of them deserve the time and effort you go through to defend something that needs no defense.

Or they put on adult avs and transition to an adult context. Which, as far as I can tell, is allowed as long as all of the sexuality is restricted to an adult context.


Be careful with this. If the group itself is something that violates the TOS, then it's the group that should be reported. I'd let LL worry about what to do with the members. (I vaguely recall seeing a group like this a month or two after the first big controversy.)

If it's merely an adult-oriented sex group, I'd ignore it. As indicated above, someone could be switching between adult and child avs. Or they may even have separate alts, and perhaps their adult alt is the one that actively participates in the group, but they want the convenience of having the child alt get notices - so they can relog as the adult when something interesting happens. Or maybe they own land that gets used for sexual activity, they need to have the land in group ownership, and they created an alt to ensure that the group doesn't get deleted, and just happened to make the alt a kid for the fun of it.

Remember that it's engaging or promoting sexual activity involving kid avs that's against the rules. Mere membership in a group, by itself, isn't promotion.

Me too. 'course, being someting other than human doesn't fit well into the "3D web" world of some, too. Nevetheless, imagine if they had some default tiny meshes, quad meshes, etc. Keep the current one... but offer options. I *like* options.



Bearing in mind that LL is in some ways as knowledgable at anyone else on kid avvies, there are likely those at the lab who have their own misconceptions about child avatars. There were those who did not like them before, and I suspect that the Report Mainz report also helped shape a lot of the views on them in others. I canot help but assume this has been a part of their non-stance, too.

But yes, you are totally right. They could have handled that in oh so many better ways, in my opinion. Really left th' door open for a lot more trouble down th' line, instead of gettin' it cleared up from the start.

1 person agreed

Then LL needs to give those employees some of that sensitivity and tolerance training Corporate America likes to force down our throats.

Even more of a reason to have a consice policy on it, and make it known to all employees. Just like most of our employers do, they have values policies and practices, and if we can't live with them, you can show yourself the door.

I do. Please put all of your dirty stories on a notecard and send them to me. I like to print them out and read them out loud on the train. kthnxbye

A little off topic here...

I went shopping to set up a boy av last night. Met 3 very helpful girls, twins, another who owned a small shop.

Anyway, I am now of the opinion that boys stuff is even harder to find than men's. I know the avatar mesh works against child avis, and particularly against boys. But there seemed to be a very small selection of boy things.

In the end, I didn't buy anything yet. Ah well. Little J will have to wait a while.

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I don't know what LL is hoping, that kid avis will just fade out if they aren't talked about, or they will be pressured out by an endless stream of improper ARs, or what. It seems like such a little thing to have a clear statement in the TOS, and in the AR system.

I had a good chuckle at this one because it brought back a memory from years ago.

My Grandmother lived in a retirement condo community in Ft. Lauderdale. Each condo unit was alloted one parking space. Spots for visitor parking were on the sides of the buildings. One of my grandmother's friends who lived in the same building did not own a car. My father visited often and for awhile lived with my grandmother. On holidays I might stay 4 days or so on a visit. My grandmother's friend basically gave my grandmother her parking space as she had no need for it.

Without fail, anytime I visited and parked in that spot - given to my grandmother by a kind friend for our family's use - one particular woman invariably first peeked through her blinds, then came outside and stood there frowning at me. I guess she hadn't been clued in that I was "allowed" to park there and figured her frowning presence would show me the "error of my ways."

I just smiled, waved and said "Hi there" - which made her scamper back inside.

/derail off

Honestly, there are days when I long to be a kid again in RL. I can see the appeal of being a kid in SL.

I started to say that I think it would really help to have some clear guidelines in the TOS on this issue from LL. I think their communication in this area has not been good. They sort of hedge around the issues and never want to actually take a stand it seems. We don't need a bright line definition on what is acceptable, because someone will always find a way around that.

On further thought, though, I'm not sure whether the TOS really matter. It seems like the issues are more with the individuals like the German guy mari was talking about and the furry who have convinced themselves that all child Avs are pedophiles. That is their own bigotry, and all the laws in the world can't make people stop being bigots. hatred is deeply ingrained. Plus, who knows what urges they have that they are trying to supress with their hatred. I wouldn't be surprised if they had those tendencies themselves.

I wish there were a solution here, but I think that, just like real world bigotry and hatred, child avatars in SL are going to have to keep fighting a battle that can't be won. It can be lost, though, so I would urge people like Mari, toy, and others to keep fighting it the way you all are. Rationally, intelligently, and calmly. Those are the things that hatred can't stand up to because it is inherently illogical, irrational and preys on peoples fears.

I wonder how that Furry would feel if confronted with the notion that all Furries were into Bestiality.