Should LL ban men who play female avatars?

Given that all male avatars have to buy strap-on (a rose by any other name), then the question of appendages is irrelevant.


PS: I found your description of toaster sex somewhat arousing

Ah, but the advantage of toaster sex is: a slice of bread doesn't require an appendage. He just dives in!
Don't get me started. When I tell people about the sexcapades of my good friend, Miss Breville Six-Slot Deluxe, people start feinting all over the place.

Check out the cartoon in the 1st Life tab of my in-world Profile
That's the basis that I work on.

I'm pretty sure of the female RL sex of most of my female friends. It comes from interacting with them over a time.
There's one that I know is male, there's another that I have strong suspicions about. Quite frankly Scarlet, it's their minds I'm interacting with so I don't care what they look like in RL.

Of the 100 or so accounts in my WoW guild, about 10 of us are females. Right at 60% of the characters are female. By logical extension- you've got a 50/50 chance of any guy cross gendering. Figures pretty much the same in every group I've been in.

This is normal, has been normal, and will continue to be normal.

What tends to get lost is that the majority of folks against cross gendering simply don't have the kind of exposure to gaming communities that the other 90% or so do. I've been playing my games with guys who play girls for years. It's standard for the genera because in MOST mmo's there's no chance of relating the character specifically to you. I don't look at my blood elf priest and identify with her. I don't ever think she's an extension of me. She's like a character in a book that I can control. She's completely addicted to magic, channels "The Light" to heal the people around her of mortal injuries and calls on the shadows to inflict wounds on other people. This isn't a characterization specific to her that I conceptualized- it's the lore of the world, the race, and the class. She doesn't like... or dislike. She doesn't pick out a nice outfit to wear to a party. She doesn't GO to parties. Sometimes I'll put her in a festive looking outfit when I go to an in game festival but I don't go to those to mingle for the most part... my mingling and friend making and chatting and socializing is done outside of the game on voice chat (another reason I'm not voice shy...) or "out of character" in game. She has a name, because names are required but there's never the thought that ASHARTE would like to go shopping or that ASHARTE would like to throw a party. Asharte is a "handle". It's a name that people will use to communicate with me in a game where no one knows your name. My character is just a set of pixels that wears the best gear (not clothing- gear.)... which is unrelated to how it looks and is strictly related to it's magical properties... and which provides a vehicle for me to interact with the world.

In that sense- does it MATTER if that vehicle/handle is male of female? Not really.

Unlike SL, WoW is a very restricted platform in terms of movement and actions. Each character is given only one dance animation, one "casting" animation, on "hit things with a stick" animation- depending on their race and gender. Picking your race and gender limits you to a specific set of "voiced" flirts, cheers, and jokes. I can spend upwards of 20 hours a week staring at my character, and she will only preform those same very rigidly set animations. Is it any surprise that people gender bend in such a world so they can enjoy a more pleasing set of movements? (Here's a video of each gender/race dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlQtbh9YgP0 Remember, you only get *one* dance and it's tied to your gender and race.) It's also severely restricted in terms of shape and size of characters- you can pick a set hairstyle (one of 8 or so styles, with 8 or so colors) and skin tone (again one of 8 or so) and a different face- but all blood elves are going to look pretty much like all other blood elves.

Anyways

My point is that if you severely restrict the ability to customize they go from avatars to characters easily. In fact "Avatar" (Wiki - an Internet user's representation of himself or herself, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. The term "avatar" can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.) is a word that I've only heard commonly in reference to direct representations like SL provides....

and in wow our pixel people are usually referred to as "Character" (Wiki- A character is any person, persona, identity, or entity whose existence originates from a work of fiction.). It's the same basic meaning but with vastly different implications. Capella, my Avie, is an extension of my personality and tastes in a meaningful way. Asharte, my WoW character, is not.

But... SL is whatever you want it to be. I have a male alt to explore that interest of mine, I certainly wouldn't hold it against a guy to do the same- especially when it's a common thing on the internet.

As far as I'm concerned, I think I can usually tell, sometimes quickly, sometimes over the course of time, who is a woman in RL and who is not. I think it takes quite a knowledgeable and sophisticated impersonator to "fool" another woman in detailed conversations over an extended period of time. There are some men who could pull that off, but not too many, I think.

Now it doesn't particularly bother me, one way or the other, what someone's RL gender might be, as long as the person I am interacting with is convincing as a woman. If it's a poor show, then it's really not interesting to me -- not because I am offput by gender-bending, but because I am offput by poorly-done gender bending. If you're going to be a guy playing as a woman, please do a good job with it, or don't bother. If you don't do a good job, most women, I think, will be able to tell what you are doing.

I think this is often a bigger issue for men because they may be more easily "thrown" by visuals, on the one hand, and, on the other, less well equipped in terms of sussing out whether someone is a woman or not based on extended conversation. In other words, it may be "easier" for gender-bending men to "fool" other men, than it is for them to fool other women -- hence the desire of many men to have other means of "verifying" the RL gender of the people they are speaking with or planning to bed. Added to that is the very powerful force of male homophobia, and you end up with some men getting hysterical over the issue, whereas I think many women are more relaxed about it.

Connecting up with the Skank / Slut thread:

----- Would this imply that she is a pop tart?

Yet women are supposed to get involved with hairy/beer bellied guys online and like it?

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The question wasnt whether people should lie about their gender and date online. The question wasnt even if people should gender-bend. The question was should LL ban the practice.

I think if the question had been should people gender bend, a larger number would have been opposed.

If the question was whether people should gender bend and lie about it and date, the number of people opposed would be much greater still.

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Add that to the intrusiveness of the "Verification" system used in the chinese game, and the sexist nature of it, I really cant beleive people would have expected the results of this poll to go any other way.

Thanks! It's a freebie, called "hair", and has a nice touch of gray you can't see in the photo. It's created by Starley Thereian, full perms. I dropped you a copy.

But, I thought my skin was a freebie too, until I found out it's a cracked version of a Lost Designs' Dante skin. The skin's creator appears to be "newbie_template Linden", hmmm. And here I was so proud of my 100% free av, only to find that I'm a criminal! (OK, I bought the skin, and I IM'd Starley to find out whether the hair is really a freebie.)

Thanks! It's a freebie, called "hair", and has a nice touch of gray you can't see in the photo. It's created by Starley Thereian, full perms. I dropped you a copy.

But, I thought my skin was a freebie too, until I found out it's a cracked version of a Lost Designs' Dante skin. The skin's creator appears to be "newbie_template Linden", hmmm. And here I was so proud of my 100% free av, only to find that I'm a criminal! (OK, I bought the skin, and I IM'd Starley to find out whether the hair is really a freebie.)

ABSOLUTELY!

But, only if you're really hot young babes in RL, of course.


HAHAHAHAHA

Re: Toaster sex... we can now rewrite Raymond's famous question:

"If you ram your dick into your laptop, is it cheating in RL?"

to

"If you ram your dick into a virtual toaster in SL, is it cheating in RL?"

Yeah they should ban the hairy/beer bellied guys instead.

This would be my response as well. So much so that I routinely have to tell people "I don't WANT to see your RL picture... I dont care what you look like or even what gender you are in RL". Plenty of guys get annoyed at that, but oh well.. It's very easy to see the ones interested in a RL relationship because of that response. If I found out that someone I had gotten intimate with here in SL was not the gender they told me, I'd be a bit hurt by the deception, but it was their beautiful mind and personality that would have led to that intimacy in the first place, and that's where the attraction is. NOT how hot their RL pic is or even what gender they are.
Once you get to know someone, you can pretty much tell for sure what RL gender they are. It's the ones looking for a quick hookup that dont want to take the time to get to know you and decide for themselves that try to use voice chat or webcam to do their investigating for them.

I have a female av, its pretty well known. Truth be told, the rp is fun, there is ten times the clothes (I'm a shopping w****, male or female), and pixelwise its alot more pleasing to me to be looking at a womans av from the back alot of the time.

I encourage men to play women and women to play men and try to get a grasp for the other sex and how they think.

Since no one responded to my thread on this topic ( /280/1c/213112/1.html ) in which I had already taken the time to locate and put a copy on my SL picture space a picture of the androgynous character Pat from Saturday Night Live I will attempt to post it here for your viewing pleasure. It's being a bit of a pain.

Would you feel significantly better if it was a (RL-gender-verified) gal with a beer belly and all hairy?




What would gender verification actually do for a RL guy who was into superficial quickie SL (hetro) sex?
I can see what it would do for a beer-bellied hairy gal.

I did play about with a male av for a while, was pretty interesting really to see how people react differently when the personality is the same. Role-playing aside though i'd be intrigued to know how transsexuals and the like would fit into a ban on cross gender avs, although some could no-doubt trick the cam verification (more if they played with the focus).
I have a friend who is male but uses a female avatar, he's not a transsexual, but is gay in real life and feels more comfortable as a female avatar because he can be "one of the girls".

The beauty of sl for some is the ability to be whatever you want, that shouldn't be taken away.

That would be cheating on your laptopt... she would start crashing a lot and giving the toaster resentful looks

A bit of explanation to the hysterics out there. I have a female alt and I created her because I was sick of all the pencil thin fake cookie cutter Barbie dolls in world. I wanted to build a woman to MY specifications to see if it could be done.

I took her into the world to see the reaction and it was staggering. She gets huge amounts of attention from both genders (maybe) and all kinds of species - and not really pick up lines either, just instant interaction. My male avs are all but invisible compared to her. I have no real explanation for this, but she is great to use when I want to interact. I use the males when I want to be alone in a crowd.

The female alt does not reveal that the person pressing the keys is male since it might spoil the effect. She has never cybered and never will. She has never once suggested that she might. She has never once suggested that she is willing to be in a relationship of any kind other than very casual friendship. All homophobes are safe from her and from me. Though I have a number of gay friends, I am firmly hetero. Besides - I do not have a hairy beer belly in real life. My romantic life in the real world is just fine and I do not need to seek it in SL.

Anyone disturbed by this experiment can just "cyber" off and get a real life before trying a second one. Dig?

Hmm I hate to spoil your view but nearly all female avatars get the same reaction unless they are actually bad looking. And the pencil thin Barbie dolls get more attention again, but whether they can keep that attention is the hard bit, in the end it's still personality that wins.

A few people honestly believe that a totalitarian Regimne with a Questionable (From the North American Standpoint) Human Rights record is the best Model of a society that will "protect their morals". It's Amazing what some people are willing to give up (On YOUR Behalf) in order to protect their narrow view of "Normal".

Angel

P.S.
My Wife and i are Laughing our Backsides off over those Scarfs, WHERE cane we get them?? (My Real Pair is small enough i could really benefit from owning one. Lol )

A.

You're not spoiling my view, but you worded it better than I did. I knew it was the female effect - not my creativity. Didn't mean to imply that.

And I know it's personality in the end - but, when you TP into a place and get several simultaeneous IM's and you're not used to it, that may alter your personality at least temporarily. Mine anyway.

Just trying to explain to fanatics out there why someone might try different genders, and maybe letting off a little steam at them. No reason to though. This poll suggests they are in the minority. Truth is, no one has ever asked my female av for proof of gender.

Who the f**k said Sl was a dating service??? Ya wanna ban men playing women avies so you dont find yourself beating yer meat with some dude??? OUR WORLD, OUR IMAGINATION, means you get to be whatever you want to be at the moment. You say you need verification to prevent yourself from masterbating to the typed text of the same gender? Then do whatever you need to do to bring yourself peace of mind. You may indeed be getting bamboozled by that sneaky GAY GUY who deviously enjoys tricking straight guys into doing em. You may even hear them go MUAHAHAHA once youve typed that climax OOOOO into the chatbar Make your SL dates call you on the phone or drop their drawers on the webcam, but dont go dragging everybody through the witch hunt machine just cus you got sloppy paranoid muck sloshing around as the content of your own head. Keep it in your pants if yer that friggin nervous.

How do you feel about avatars that pretend they are leaving SL and RA but keep posting instead?

"Darling since you're leaving, don't you think it's time to go?" -- Del McCoury

About the same way I feel about people who sit on here all day bitching.