Discrimination in SL - have you experienced it?

I'll be upfront - I'm a Furry. I've been Furry in RL for over 5 years now - even met my RL hubby through the fandom. I never got a fursuit for Purrdence, my Furry alterego, if I dressed up - it is all fuzzy ears and tails and facepaint. In my corner of Aussieland, fursuit makers are far and few between and they're also very very expensive. I'm also not the only one I know that goes the ears/tail/facepaint route rather than a fursuit.

So one day I was introduced to SL and once I found out about being able to customise one's AV, I chose to recreate Purrdence as similar to how I wear her in RL... so her face is somewhat more humaniod than say, a cyberfursuit.

Since then I've had several Furry SL tell me 'I'm not Furry enough' and that I'm a 'freak'.

Now, I really shouldn't be *that* surprised. SL seems to replicated near on every aspect of RL, so in turn there should be all the 'nasty' things like discrimination. What I do find somewhat dryly amusing that the fandom I've gotten the most crap from on SL is one of the most discriminated groups in the science-fiction/fantasy fandom...

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But getting back to the title question... What kind of discrimination have you encountered in SL? How do you think it compares to your area of the RL world?

I've seen it, never experienced it.

Same here... I have yet to really encounter it harshly save a few RP places which wanted immersion... but one of them was just one person who was complaining that I was in a anthro av, despite the place was actually partially run by furry fans (or at least furry tolerant, can't remember which), and allow them in their rules. (Crimson Falls, in case you were running)

The only experience I've had that I can compare is this:

I normally walk around as a female human style av but I have the Cat ears and tail that I wear with it... I had recently spoken to a few friends about getting a Furry av for myself mostly because I think they're cute. I was more or less yelled at and told not to and yet wasn't given a real reason why... I'm still looking for one to buy but I thought it was kind of strange that people are so against certain things.

Yep, I've seen it and I've experienced it. It's funny, if I wear a furry avatar, people wearing the human mesh discriminate and say it's disgusting, but if I wear a human avatar, the furries say I'm vile. I think it goes both ways.

Several? Was it really -several-, Purrdence? I find that kind of strange... Been involved with 'furry on SL' for almost 3 years now, and I just *can't* see that as being common...

Kathmandu Gilman has been making furry avs like the one you described since the very genesis of furry on here, and I've never seen Kathmandu's stuff ill-received.

Of course in any community you're gonna run into people who think that "their version" is the "only version"...

And I've gotta say, it depends on where you are. I've seen orders of magnitude more "anti-furry" rhetoric than "you aren't furry enough" diatribes.

I have seen and and experinced it in land ownership.. where only a certain group is allowed to live in the communitee. I had began to purchase a piece of land from a owner sent a 10k down payment .. the owner did not tell me that you had to be a certain nationality to live in the area that i was purchasing from.. Now i am not sure rather he was or was not aware of that fact.. How ever because he was doing business with one of the angles the final payment was to be made to them and they would close the transaction I went to the land for which the owner had already add me to the group and begin what i thought was the closing of the land. Meet up with the person who was the agent for the land owner and we were approched by the sims manager and this person wanted to know who was buying and when i said i was she proceeded to ask me if i was of the nationality that this sims was for .. I said no.. but wanted to know if that was a problem she said yes it was and that i could not close the land ownership. now this to me seems to be housing discrimation because if the person that was selling the land did not say to me up front that it was only for that certain nationality then i didnt understand why it was a problem .. needless to say all transactions stopped and the agent would not let me purchase the land. they did over to move me to a different sims but for a increased rate. with less prims.. which was something I was not willing to do. it is sad that even in second life housing discrimination is allowed..

Bah! Everyone in SL that plays either a furry OR a human is a freak!

People are people. On the other hand, I have a moderate interest in things furry m'self, although more as a subset of my general love of shape-changing in SL than as any deep-seated thing. The vast majority of furs I've met in SL are quite tolerant; indeed, someone complaining about your route is rather ignorant, given there's several furry av creators out there that follow suit. (Kathmandu Gilman comes to mind.)

So just chalk it up to idiots showing themselves. I had that kind of experience once - one of my favorite forms is a "half-dragon", similarly more human than reptile looking. I had a couple of fools in Jakkal Dingo's draconic avvies (Which I like quite a lot; I have one myself) give me grief for similar reasons.

So I hit them with a train.



I've seen the petty geek discrimination abounding, as well as more serious racism. (I've met more than a few "white power" neo-Nazi types.) This is to be expected; the world may be virtual but the people are not.

On the other hand, I find that sort to be even MORE laughable than the furry case. I may look African, European, a dragon, a rock golem, or an abstract work of art at whim - claims of racial superiority ring hollow in such a situation. (does a blue-skinned cyborg count as "Ayran"?)

The intolerant sorts are far outweighed by those who are tolerant, or can at least be polite and civil in any circumstance. SL is the 24/7 Freaker's Ball, a small taste of what a transhuman RL may be like... and for all the negative things that happen, I remain essentially optimistic.

OMG i totally did not know someone could be a furry in rl... anyways

I have no problems with furries by the way, they are so adorable, i think.
Sooo anyways....

I once got discriminated in SL, i was wearing these cute little boots and i looked soooo sexy, and this white pale chick who looked like she just got a vampire bite, told me i looked to ghetto with the boots, She had flat pixel boobies, no pixel booty and had jet black hair, it was totally fake. She was wearing those sl "Implants" to enhance her boobies, but they were still 10% breasts.

anyways, i felt bad for like 2 minutes, then i got over it.
i thought to myself "Who does this pale whore think she is, look at her feet"

It was totally mean of her for calling me ghetto.

thats totally uncool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah so that was it!

Actually, if you want spefics, about 7!

Note - I didn't say all furries, I didn't say most. 'Several' - to me - has always been more than one and less than most... if that makes any sense.

Hmm. I've got quite a few furry avatars that I wear often; I can't say I've ever run into any discrimination or other ill-treatment because of them. I keep expecting it, but it never happens...at least not on an individual basis. The only time I encounter general anti-furry intolerance is when I'm on one of my rare visits to the Luskwood platform; they get bombed so often that even infrequent visitors stand a good chance of catching griefers in the act. It's just ridiculous.

Pretty much the only time I've been faced with discrimination was of the male chauvinist pig sort; someone who of course wouldn't look at me crosseyed while I was present as my main said rather crude things to my alt (a female who was dressed nicely, not trashily). What an eye-opener that was.

Anyways...


Who cares what other people think? be yourself!

Cuz your beautiful, in every single way... words can't bring you down............... oh no no.

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/8674/omgfurryomfg0mp.jpg <-- proof?!

I think I've been really lucky - I have't experienced much at all. The only incident that stands out in my mind was my first day on SL. I had gone into FurNatiion, but as a newbie with very little $L, I hadn't bought myself a furry av (or found those free ones floating around) yet. A whole bunch of furries were hanging around, and most of them were pretty discriminatory about me being in a human av (tried to eat me and the like *pout*). Luckily someone spoke up, told them to knock it off and pointed out that I was new. After that they let me hang out with no problems. And later that day, I had someone very generously donate me enough money to buy my first furry av, so that definitely countered any possible bad taste in my mouth from my first experience.

Since then, I really haven't had any problems. Maybe the random "ew a furry" here or there, but for the most part humans have just thought my av was really cute. I've even been hired for human av magazines to model with my furry av! ^_^

While I won't tolerate prejudice obvious prejudice around me, it really comes down to a simple rule:

Don't worry about what someone thinks about you, unless it's someone you like and respect.

If some idiot wants to think bad things about me, that's fine by me. If some hate-monger wants to try and label me, judge me, or spout his opinion about me, then he can knock himself out. He certainly wouldn't ruin my day by doing so.

Sure, it's not fun to be picked on, but the great thing about SL is, you have so many options, from mute, abuse reports, teleporting or simply pointing out to others around you that the prejudice person is not only showing their ignorance, but also displaying the some of the worst traits a person can have.

I think that the grid has a large number of folks, especially now, that want to prove how mean, superior or just plain cruel they can be. But all they really prove is how small and weak and insecure they are.

Don't sweat the small stuff and be yourself, or whoever it is you feel like being.

I have experienced discrimination a few times in SL. I'm not a furry - I don't have a problem with furries at all, though I have often times found some to be not particularly welcoming of non-furries. My encounters with discrimination have been of the racial variety - I have been called nigger multiple times, the oh so creative "spic", I've been called a monkey, been told to go back to Mexico, and have had my life threatened on more than one occasion. I've also been called a greasy illegal import from a third world country. Wonderful stuff. I have known some people with similar, or worse experiences in SL as well.

That said, it is certainly not the norm by any means- in 3 1/2 years, it has happened a handful of times. I imagine with letting every 12 year old fucktard in existence into SL now, it will only rise, unfortunately.

Great advice

I've had people repeatedly hassling me because of politics. I rise above it. Or they do, at a rapid rate.

It's pretty infrequent and hasn't happened for a while now.

Possibly me I thought it was out of place but now I'm a furry there too. I've descriminated against gangsta types before =P I would report those people calling you racial slurs.

oh yeah i just remenbered.

I was discriminated on those gor sims..

They wanted me to wear their own tags.. and their clothes.. wtf.

I came looking cute, and they started to chase me, i put on my skates.. lol and they told me to take it off and i began running and jumping, and they kept running after me with bows and a arrows lol

Then i lagged and they got me, they said i was a trouble maker, and they were very mean to me.

* falls over laughing * The image of you on rollerskates in some hoochierific outfit running from the big bad Gorean slave masters made my day, thank you.

I generally ignore people that behave like this towards me. They're rather laughable.

However, one instance happened last night that bothered me.

I was just hanging, chatting with friends and helping new people in the Lost Creatures Store in Sables d'Alliez and someone came along bitching about how "Furrydom is slowly going to hell." Of course, they couldn't elaborate or elucidate, so I just let her rant and rave. Suddenly, someone shows up in a human AV. "Ewwww... a human! That's disgusting!"
The guy then said, "Doh! Sorry, just came from a party. Haven't had a chance to put on my lion, but she just kept on about it.
I couldn't believe it. All the bullshit that we, as furries, put up with, all the "You freaks and faggots and perverts" that we have to listen to from the uninformed, and after all the "Oh, furrydom is going to hell", she behaves like this?
I apologized to the guy, assuring him that the people that usually hang in the Lost Furest aren't like that and that everyone is welcome, but it really got me.

What pisses me off the most is she's the type of person that will flip out at the slightest anti-furry inference. She's the type that, when people say something like, "I don't really get it and it doesn't appeal to me" will get on her high horse and be all "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND US! DON'T OPPRESS US, YOU BIGOT!"

Dudes, we're furries. WE'RE the ones that are shat on. It is OUR duty to take the higher road and be as open and accepting as possible. It's the ONLY way that we can expect to be accepted.

Be the person that people talk about when they say, "Most furries I've met are really cool".

And to the OP, come hang with me! *grin* I don't care if you got fur, skin, scales, feathers or whatever. You're furry enough for me!

(And, as a promotional plug, if you REALLY want to piss them off, buy one of my dolphins or orcas! No fur at ALL, but LET them tell you you're not a furry!

AND! They swim in the ground, do backflips and everything!

end of plug.)

my RL husband - who *is* a dolphin furry - is going to soooo be going green that his computer can't take SL now....

What's "discrimination" in Second Life?

My avatar is a deeply-tanned young white man with gray hair - but the only things that are the same about me in real life is the man and the tan - I'm not white, not in my twenties, and I have black hair. Whereas in real life, my people have had a long history of genocide and discrimination practiced against them, in Second Life, I have no history or background at all - I'm a couple of months old, I wasn't born into any particular situation, and beyond having an obnoxious forum personality I have no distinguishing reason, physical, traditional, religious, or otherwise, that would serve as an excuse for real-life-like discrimination.

In fact, I had hoped to use Second Life to explore ways of "living" and "behaving" neutrally that might normally be more difficult for me to experience in real life.

So what is discrimination here? Is it real world discrimination carried into SL? And back out again? But that would necessitate knowing personal details. Is it discrimination carried out against a pixellated representation of a person or group? Sort of a symbol-versus-symbol thing - one person's beliefs in what's right versus another person's individual desires and expressions? I can see some unresolved issues of definition there.

Cart before the horse, I think. What is this thing in a virtual world that you're reacting to? And does it - and how does it - translate across two worlds?