Linden Lab! Please do NOT ever implement any kind of gender verification in the server code or Profiles in Second Life!
I'm reacting here to "Robin & Daniel Linden Answer Age Verification Questions" at http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=12397 (thread not safe for work due to an image), starting about halfway down when Eric Reuters asked, "will linden be offering gender verification as well now that is has the data?"
I welcome feedback and comments. I realize I'm looking well into the future on this, but it would be too late to wait until the feature has been announced. Not everything some residents may wish should be built into the server code. Code is the law of a place.
Gender verification in the server code or Profiles would be very destructive to the social fabric of Second Life. It has been pointed out that it would be bad for TG/TS people, but it would also be bad for women in general, who will be griefed if they refuse it and stalked if they accept it.
I'm worried about three things: the first two are the newbie experience, and everyday socializing. Gender verification could ruin both of those for verified women. It does so by making it easy for sexual harassment to find its preferred targets. The third thing I worry about is the risk of stalking when RL gender is known. It shows those who would stalk who their preferred targets are, and makes it that much easier to guess who is controlling an avatar.
In short, not being provably male or female gets me a lot of protection from jerks and worse.
I'm assuming a flag for gender would sort for M, F and not specified, which is anyone who doesn't check the box. The largest number of people who will not check the box will probably be born women, not TS (who do not generally identify themselves as neither, but rather as the gender to which they are transitioning). So discriminating against those who will not check the box works out to being a ban on women who won't declare themselves. Women who do not wish to verify gender for reasons of safety or privacy will be constantly hounded to justify their decision, or rebuked for being a male pretending to be female, or accused of having slack morals (I have already seen all three in the blogosphere). There is no such thing as voluntarily opting out of gender hierarchy.
Where all this becomes a problem for TS people specifically is that it could be difficult for someone in transition to get verifying documents at all in some cases (this was brought up recently in the forum), or when someone starts discriminating against avatars whose appearance doesn't match the verified gender (because the verifying document doesn't match the resident's chosen gender).
Requiring residents to declare a gender would be a disaster for women individually and would ruin the social atmosphere in SL. Turning the place into a meat market dating club would just drive many women away. This has happened in other online social venues already and their experience should serve as a cautionary tale. The only reason the party is still on in Second Life is that the neanderthals aren't sure who is female. The level of crudeness aimed at verifiable women in other online environments guarantees they will be a small minority in many. Voice also brings some of these dangers, but a Profile flag can be checked by anyone, while one can choose to whom to speak.
In addition, gender verification facilitates discrimination against gay and bisexual people. How hard would it be to write a script that sorted gender verified people by sex or by whether or not they came in opposite sex couplets?
Those who need to be really certain of the gender of the person they are dating already have plenty of ways to do that, none of which need to be in the code. There is very little legitimate business reason to require someone to verify gender specifically, with the exception of marketing, but I am not paying Premium to have sexist marketing forced on me without my opt-in.
Lessig is right to say that code is the law of a place. We don't need a law that can be used to make caste out of gender.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Brenda Archer
Bisexuals in Second Life
I'm reacting here to "Robin & Daniel Linden Answer Age Verification Questions" at http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=12397 (thread not safe for work due to an image), starting about halfway down when Eric Reuters asked, "will linden be offering gender verification as well now that is has the data?"
I welcome feedback and comments. I realize I'm looking well into the future on this, but it would be too late to wait until the feature has been announced. Not everything some residents may wish should be built into the server code. Code is the law of a place.
Gender verification in the server code or Profiles would be very destructive to the social fabric of Second Life. It has been pointed out that it would be bad for TG/TS people, but it would also be bad for women in general, who will be griefed if they refuse it and stalked if they accept it.
I'm worried about three things: the first two are the newbie experience, and everyday socializing. Gender verification could ruin both of those for verified women. It does so by making it easy for sexual harassment to find its preferred targets. The third thing I worry about is the risk of stalking when RL gender is known. It shows those who would stalk who their preferred targets are, and makes it that much easier to guess who is controlling an avatar.
In short, not being provably male or female gets me a lot of protection from jerks and worse.
I'm assuming a flag for gender would sort for M, F and not specified, which is anyone who doesn't check the box. The largest number of people who will not check the box will probably be born women, not TS (who do not generally identify themselves as neither, but rather as the gender to which they are transitioning). So discriminating against those who will not check the box works out to being a ban on women who won't declare themselves. Women who do not wish to verify gender for reasons of safety or privacy will be constantly hounded to justify their decision, or rebuked for being a male pretending to be female, or accused of having slack morals (I have already seen all three in the blogosphere). There is no such thing as voluntarily opting out of gender hierarchy.
Where all this becomes a problem for TS people specifically is that it could be difficult for someone in transition to get verifying documents at all in some cases (this was brought up recently in the forum), or when someone starts discriminating against avatars whose appearance doesn't match the verified gender (because the verifying document doesn't match the resident's chosen gender).
Requiring residents to declare a gender would be a disaster for women individually and would ruin the social atmosphere in SL. Turning the place into a meat market dating club would just drive many women away. This has happened in other online social venues already and their experience should serve as a cautionary tale. The only reason the party is still on in Second Life is that the neanderthals aren't sure who is female. The level of crudeness aimed at verifiable women in other online environments guarantees they will be a small minority in many. Voice also brings some of these dangers, but a Profile flag can be checked by anyone, while one can choose to whom to speak.
In addition, gender verification facilitates discrimination against gay and bisexual people. How hard would it be to write a script that sorted gender verified people by sex or by whether or not they came in opposite sex couplets?
Those who need to be really certain of the gender of the person they are dating already have plenty of ways to do that, none of which need to be in the code. There is very little legitimate business reason to require someone to verify gender specifically, with the exception of marketing, but I am not paying Premium to have sexist marketing forced on me without my opt-in.
Lessig is right to say that code is the law of a place. We don't need a law that can be used to make caste out of gender.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Brenda Archer
Bisexuals in Second Life
What nonsense!
Gender verification implementation would help remove thousands of escorts who are really males and would add another layer of trust to SL. Although we can "change" gender at any time, it seems that we all should have some specific gender. I have seen gay people in SL pretend they are females just to be with certain guys.
Although I highly doubt that LL shall ever implement gender, it would help a lot a lot of residents out if we could filter out females from males.
