I would love some advice

Well, you went further down the road than I would have. I would have told him straight up, "I don't have to prove anything to you, get lost!"

heh chosen


Anyway theres that 1st life tab in your profile. Many people put that they prefer to keep their first life and second life separate.

If someone is too shallow to realize that they're getting involved with text, feelings, and an avatar, then that's their problem. SL isn't a dating service; it's a place for experiences.

I used to be hugely anti-voice and very vocal about it (no pun intended). I was self-conscious about my accent, felt unsecure, was worried about my privacy and so on. But face it, with about 20% of fake females around SL the average guy (or just anyone) will always hold a special sort of suspicion against any female non-voicer. Being a RL female non-voicer, you will always be in the weak and pathetic position of ultimately defending those who deliberatly won't voice because they ARE guys. It's a position *I* didn't want to stay in.

My advice, from a former voice hater: Don't let yourself being stuck in the weak, defensive role. Why the f.. should you do that? Why should you get bothered with privacy any more than a guy does? Guys don't give a dam, they just use voice.

At some point I started to use voice with just anyone (if it does work LOL). It is a matter of self confidence, and with time, you will get used to it. Do a pre-emptive strike, spend 5 bucks on a mic and just talk, even before they ask you to. If a guy starts to bug you show off your hawt voice. It is so much more fun to say "I am sorry, but *your* voice sounds way too feminine for my taste, now f... off!" than just mute them after they accused you of being a fake, and sneak away, hurt and embarrassed. Be on the powerful side, not the weak one!

I will not use voice and will not webcam - paranoia wins out over proof of sexuality. The idea that I may (may!) be recorded saying something stupid (in voice or on cam) makes me shudder. So, if you cant hear me and see me, well too bad. Frankly, most of teh men whose pics I have seen would look ghastly on webcam and prolly have voices like jackrabbits so it's just as well I dont do voice. I liked this place more when it was silent and private. Maybe that is a cultural issue from real - friends in sl should stay in sl, just as I dont like people in my reality popping in to see me in sl. Anyway, that's my two cents for what its worth.
PS. these kinda things can be copied so watch out for yourself on Utube if you do both - or on some creepy guy's dvd.
PPS. I dont "do" email either.

Then again, in my book, if you're a decent kind of person playing the opposite sex who picks up that the person you're roleplaying with is taking it all too literally, you DON'T announce that you're not the gender they imagined - you find a quiet and kind way to exit the relationship while leaving their self-esteem intact. If you're creative enough to successfully roleplay your non-RL gender in the first place, you're creative enough to find a way to leave them with a pleasurable memory and an unbroken heart.

As for being pushed to the wall to 'prove you're female' - usually, I won't waste my time trying to convince the literalists, but on occasion, when in a devilish mood, I find that offering to describe first-hand the experience of childbirth in graphic detail usually serves the double purpose of convincing people you are what you say you are AND completely killing their desire to have sex with you

Sorry, but giving in to pressure to use voice looks like a sign of weakness, not strength, to me. By all means CHOOSE to voice, but do it because it's more convenient, or gives better nuances of understanding to your words, because typing is a problem for you or want to DJ. I might eventually use it for those reasons, especially as the tech improves, but I'll never voice just to prove a point.

I used voice when it first came in but I soon gave it up. It didnt really add anything for me. Same with my cell. I find it easier to text than call.

If someone has made something in SL we're both looking at, they find easier to explain by voice then I'll listen but thats about it.

Perhaps this is what's happening...

You get to know a guy over a period of time, as you said, and his thoughts turn towards intimacy with you. If he's going to attempt to move in that direction, he wants to know that the other person is not a guy. That's *very* important to many of us. If I thought I was getting sexually aroused with another man, I'd be sick, regardless of the avatar. Roleplay just doesn't cut it - the arousal isn't roleplay, and there's no way that I'd want it to happen with a guy on the other end. There are good ways of knowing for sure, but an RL pic isn't one of them.

Another possibility is that many people are similar to me - if I'm going to treat a girl as a girl, I want to feel confident that she really is a girl. There's nothing strange about that. Perhaps after the first few weeks of getting to know someone, that comes up in the mind.

You can say that again. When I'm helping people with my products, or even just discussing them, I really do prefer voice, and use it whenever possible. It doesn't matter to me if they use voice or not, as long as I can avoid typing

My point was, that many RL women choose not to voice to keep their privacy and reasons like that. That means they basically don't voice because they are women. After a while this looked like a very weak opinion to me, so I started to use voice, just because it's easier, and because I can.

Umm nope, this is not really the reason. I try to keep this as PG as possible.

SL "relationships" do not necessarely involve RL feelings for RL people, nor are the necessarely about "honesty" (If you want those things, an online matchmaker service is a better option). But SL "romances" do involve (imagined) sexuality. Unknowingly sharing a sexual moment with a person of the same gender is a highly undesirable situation, unless you are bi or gay. Since a quite high percentage of female avatars are actually men, and since many men even created those figures specifically for the purpose to find sex, and since probably the overall number of men looking for sex is higher than the number of women doing so, a straight male looking for cybersex has enough ground for reasonable doubt, if the female avatar refuses to voice. On the other hand, a RL woman can be quite sure, that the male partner is actually a RL male.

Maybe the OP should imagine enjoying "sweet talk" with a male avatar and then discovering it was a woman. Would that really not matter to her?

Personally (and a former voice-hater/former stutterer here) I've found a kind of wicked fun in going on voice to "prove my gender," and -then- admitting to my discomfort with it.

The glee comes into it because... the methods I've chosen to cope with past speech difficulties have created a breathy, accent-less, soft-core porn voice that's actually quite pleasant to listen to. I've done a lot of service calls for business (in which case I dial down the breathiness and deepen the tones so that I sound more mature) ...but I've gotten a lot of compliments on my voice, from males and females. Funny thing is, it comes from being so self-conscious about it that I pay close attention to how things sound to others.

Doesn't change my comfort with speaking or my feelings about those who would press the issue, of course. But I will admit to a certain impish thrill (or maybe it's just empowerment) in using it as -I- choose to, and not as others might like. ^^;;

First of all, I make it plain to any avatar that I meet, I am only looking for friendship and fun, NO relationship or commitment will ever happen...
It does not bother me what gender the person is behind any avatar I meet, all I am interested in is that we get on and have fun together..

All the more reason to ignore the people who press the issue.

Some in this thread say that guys are never asked to prove their gender - but it happened to me (to my alt rather). He was accused of being a woman playing a man. I'm not sure where the accusers got this idea or why it mattered to them, but it proves the tables can be turned. I was half tempted to come on to them to see how fast they would run, but instead chose to rise above it and just mute them. You can't win with some people.

My objection to voice is that I'm afraid it would yank me back to reality too fast. Even if the luscious brunette I'm seeing across the room really is a girl, what if her RL voice is nasal or she has a decidedly unromantic American accent (as in my own deep south)? That would destroy the illusion we have all so carefully crafted.

To those truely concerned about the real gender of the people you associate with, might I suggest a real life singles bar? What are YOU hiding that you must come into SL for your relationships?

LOL. You mean that SL isn't for relationships - however mild? Do you have friends in SL? If you do, what are YOU hiding that you must come into SL for your friends?

Sorry, I must have misunderstood your original post, where you said "... they give me all the sweet talk and we become good friends..." What does "sweet talk" mean? (I am not a native speaker so maybe I miss some nuances here.) I thought you were talking about erotic chat. If you block erotic chat right from the beginning, the question for "voice proof" will never arrive.

I have several friends on my list, who are RL males in female avatars. I have been "suspecting" that for a long time in some cases, and in some other cases, it came as a total surprise. At some point I just asked them about their RL gender, and they told me the truth. It didn't change a thing for me. I still treat them as my "girl friends".

The situation would be entirely different if your romantic partner reveals his real gender to you and it is not what you expected. I thought you were talking about this kind of relationship, sorry for getting you wrong.