Not allowed to work because of my avatar?

This incident happened a while ago, but its still bugging me so i figured i would ask about it now. I submitted an aplication to this club which i won't say the name of just in case. lol. And the message i got back was somewhat like this..."Hi cabbosey, i would love to hire you but we only hire human avatars" or something of that sort. (yes, my preferance is furry avatars) I was upset for some reason, but got over it eventually. I was just wondering if this somehow violates Secondlife tos...which i'm suppose to read. lol. I'm not revengeful anymore, but its nice to know.

Any club owner is free to decide what type of avatar they want as staff, a club aimed at furries may deny human staff, and vice versa if they want.

oh how I miss the pinkiew/furries war of 06

ah, alright, that makes sense. thanks

DOES this make sense? In practice, sure. And according to the sort of ultra free market ethos that tends to run SL, yeah.

But I wonder how this would really test against the first clause of the CS. What if, for example, someone represented themselves as a black avi, or a Jewish avi, or female, and was denied work because the club owner didn't want one of "those" working in his or her club?

(/me waits for Ian or Chris to swoop . . .)

I see your point indeed, mind you though, there are places that for instance only will hire female avatars..

Yep, true. I myself would only find that acceptable if it were done for reasons of safety. But as you can't know who is really behind the avi, the whole thing is either academic, or much more complicated than in RL . . .

There is no such thing as a "black avi" or a "Jewish avi". There might be avatars that potentially appeared to have characteristics that could be imputed as being black or Jewish, although I am not sure what those might be in the context of SL. They are also ephemeral. I could be what might appear to be a black Jewish male one minute and a green nihilist hermaphrodite the next.

It isn't specified if the club owner hadn't advertised for a specific type of avatar, or if the OP had refused to work except as a specific type of avatar, but either would be pretty stupid.

Pep (as Scylla has pointed out, there is little to be gained from inisisting on female only avatars either! )

Or if one's avatar severely clashes with the atmosphere of the business. Torley and Ravenelle got thrown out of a jazz club last year when they showed up in Kool-Aid man avatars.

Maybe not allowed to work at that club, but at last count there were around a zaquillion others, so keep trying

I dunno. Try selling that idea ["little to be gained from insisting on female only avatars"] to the Isle of Lesbos (assuming they're still around). I hardly think safety was foremost on their minds, either.

As long as these joints stick to avatar discrimination, I suppose it's just dopey, not blatantly offensive. But if there are any out there that actually require a "voice check" (or worse RL disclosure) in order to confirm some characteristic they want to discriminate against, they should be ridden from the grid on a rail.

I really love how we get these threads every now and then about being discriminated against in SL. As if SL somehow should be like RL. In real life (in the United States anyway) employment cannot be denied due to race, religion, sex or whatever........the reasoning behind such laws banning that is quite simple. The person has no control over who or to whom they were born into this world.........that's in real life. Now, in SL it's quite a bit different...............you have total control on who you "are".

I can't understand why in the world it would still be something that bothered you....especially since it happen some time ago. So, what is the purpose of this thread? I don't think it's a sincere concern at all, myself.

I am clearly black... ;P

You sure that's not more of a dark grey?

Yes we do. However, in general, basic human principles of morality continue to be relevant in SL, and in particular, racism and sexism remain wrong here. Discriminating in hiring or in access to a public accommodation against an avatar who appears to be a black person because of that appearance is racism. Discriminating against an avatar who appears to be female in hiring or access to public accommodations on the basis of that appearance is still sexism. Discrimination by a Japanese dance club that is open to the public against an avatar that appears to be, and behaves like, a white English-speaking male because that avatar does not appear to be a native Japanese person is still wrong.

The fact that some people would like to make SL into a place where basic principles of human decency don't have to apply because nobody gets physically hurt doesn't make it a valid exercise, anymore than it did 20 years ago when people first started to figure out that they could get away with being rude, boorish and nasty in text chat because nobody could immediately punch them in the face.

Discriminating against an avatar that resembles a green groundhog in hiring and public accommodations because of that avatar's appearance is not racism or sexism because green groundhogs are not a race or a sex. However, it is still rude, boorish and nasty and, therefore, I submit, it should not be acceptable.

I don't deny that in other areas, SL has its own logic. For example, discriminating against an avatar that resembles a 30-foot wide by 60-foot tall Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robot in hiring or access to public accommodations may be acceptable because to do otherwise would make it impossible for anybody else to get into the place where that avatar is working or dancing. It would be okay to punch such an avatar in the face, assuming one had a tall enough ladder or it was a flight-enabled parcel.

Agreed, plus... the OP could work as a human during the hours involved in the shift and convert back to whatever later. *shrugs*

Friday thread is early.

I'm going to make a protest sign.

I think it is more complicated than this suggests. Let's take a hypothetical example, and a not implausible one.

Suppose the instance of a black man, whose avatar is also black, going to a nightclub.


Seems to me that this presents a somewhat more complicated conundrum than you suggest, Peggy. These may be pixels, but they still have MEANING.

The difference from the situation suggested by the OP is, of course, that a furry can't claim to REALLY be a fox, wolf, cat, etc. Unless he is Argent, of course.

How come that racisme against non human avatars is so wrong but obviously slavery is totally accepted in this virtual world?



seriously, it totally depends of the nature of the club and the job.

When a lesbian stripclub don't wanna hire male dancers, is that discrimination?

That's sort of a good question, except that I'd probably look at it from the opposite perspective.

But you really don't want to get me started on Gor . . .

Slavery is fun!

Grasping just a little?

Uh, no. I don't think so. You really find this little scenario implausible? It was not so long ago that SL had sims for Holocaust deniers.

ETA: Sorry, Peggy, maybe I am being too clever-clever by using the dialogue, which is of course hypothetical.

So, to keep it simple: would a club that hires only people willing to represent themselves as whites be ok?

I do not build my club staffs by pre-conceived demographics. I had a baby diaper fur DJing my weekend gigs and his events were full of baby diaper furs. The goth event full of RP vampires, my erotic restaurant full of collared submissives and the Hip Hop event all full of homeboys all threatening to f*ck each other up.

I love the diverse quilt of the club crowd. I do not believe in protecting my regulars from people that are different from them.