Height Discrimination in Second Life

Then I guess by your logic my Elemental Av can thing your short little 6' Av is a child and AR you just for your stature? When I make the Aerospace pilot form is some one wants to call me a "child", he can just whip out his "Codec" and say "Here is a list of my millitary accomplishments. And yes, he will be short, with a big head and big eyes.

Bottem line is that not every short avitar out there is ment to be a kid, some people actually want their Avs to be reprisentitive of themselves IRL including there stature. I am all for that and do not believe that alone should be the basis for claiming the Av is a child.

This hasn't been only about public space so much. The policy includes consentual private spaces for such activities, too.



Cavorting? Um, you *do* know that not everyoeneon SL hits same sex places, right? I assume you do form this post, and tyhat's great for you -- but you won't find me there.

Would a female adult avatar who happens to be 5' 4" tall and nordic happen to have "no body hair and tan?" Would you call them a child avatar?



How about I remain a kid, kay? I don't *want* to be a smurf, ewok, or fairy, thanks. I also don't inhabit a world in here of ewoks, smurfs, or fairys. Nevermind that, if you read the thread at hand, it isn't about "kids," but people being called out due to height. Tell me, would an ewok, smurf, or fairy have a height issue?

I suddenly have a peculiar desire to see Smurfs and Ewoks in bondage gear getting it on...

Why peculiar?

Fine. Remain a kid. Live with the consequences of that decision.

Don't have sex with anyone while you use a kid AV. Don't *LOOK* like a kid engaging in sexual activity. Repect those who have a problem with it, and we'll respect your right to be a kid playing ball, or using a jungle gym or any 50-kajillion other things you can do that don't involve sex.

If you do have a short avatar that *LOOKS* like a child and you're having sex, understand that in this case it *WAS* a choice you made and live with the consequences without whining.

Um... why would I wanna have sex? I'm a kid avvie. Sheesh... touchy.

(Didja miss when I mentioned that you'll not find me doing that, above? I guess so.)

As for living with the consequences: I will, every day when I log off with a smile on my face.

Meanwhile, I would suggest rereading the beginning of this thread. It is about a short avatar that doesn't look like a child, yet was called out as a "child avatar."

Mari

I think that's the key word there, though: _depiction_. In other words, making a _picture_ that looks like sexual activity with a child. Even if ICly the child isn't supposed to be a child, if it looks like it, it's actionable.



Your interpretation didn't try to define what a "child avatar" is, so it doesn't address the issue, unfortunately.

While peopel are paranoid about their short ADULT avatars being accused of having Child sex,

What about all the normal sized avatars having sex with Giants?

My point exactly. If you judge an Avs age by it's size what is preventing a some one with a larger Av considering you a child?

It's based on whether your avatar looks like a child in OOC reality, not about whether "your 6' elemental avatar would think a shorter one looked like a child".

Let me put it this way: Is Samwise Gamgee or Frodo Baggins (from the Lord of the Rings movie) a child? Do they look like children? Is Bernadette Peters (who I recall as being slight in stature) a child, and does she look like a child? If they were avatars, should they be barred from sexual activity?

*That's* the issue that started this discussion. Not child avatars like me, but short adult avatars, and them getting barred from places over fears of child avatars.

It fascinates me that this hysteria has reached this point. I mean, it's far beyond "child avatars having virtual sex" now, no?

Mari
(Who is apparently one of the most menacing things one can come across in SL!)

For that matter, what's to prevent the rest of us from considering someone with a giant avatar who gets so hysterical and upstraught about child avatars as themselves behaving in a childish fashion and therefore like a child and therefore being a "child" and therefore -- bannable and ARable? It's not just size that counts - it is behavior too.

I mean the people with kid avs in here sound a lot more sensible, mature and - adult - than some of the hysterical "adults." If I was going to ban anyone from SL, it would not be the Marianne McCann's of this world.

I think Certain People need to get a grip and realize that if it isn't an obvious child-adult-sex tableau they have run across, it is they who have the problem, not the kid av. OK I know they won't do that, and telling someone with a kid av they can't be in an obvious adult area like a BDSM palace or a dong-and-pussy shop seems to me absolutely appropriate for a lot of reasons, but maybe the rest of us should take a moment to remind the so-called "adults" that when they do start throwing public tantrums about there being - gasp! - children around, it is also inappropriate and maybe tell them they need a Time Out. This subject really is getting rather old.)

And for those with kid avs well, when I was a kid there were a couple of old meanies in my neighborhood who didn't like kids. We avoided them and had a lot of fun anyway. And they didn't. Sounds like a plan to me. : )

Personally I want a village where the only people allow to enter are under 1 meter. Now if only I could figure out how to get that 1 meter avatar automatically on everyone who enters.

Thankoo!



The subject is so old now, it's eligible for the main grid!

An ya, hypothetically, if I ended up in one of the above establishments (say, if I used an old LM an found out that where "little girls playhouse" is now "Bobs sex emporium", I would expect to be asked to "G'wan kid, ya bother me." 'course, I also would not be liable to stay as soon as whatever they had their rezzed in the first place. Easy peasy. But some people jes wanna make it more of a big deal'n it is, I s'pose.



Ya, cuz they always yell at us to keep on their darn lawns!

Mari

I know zactly whatcha mean Mari If I happen across a dult place.... they wouldnt have the time to tell "Gwan, kid" they'd be talking to thin air hehehe.

I think us kids in SL have a firm grasp of what we do and how we act. But thenits not us wit the problem

Naj

Why is it "a problem" for them to have a particular opinion? People who do not like the idea of RL adults pretending to be children have as much right to that opinion as the people playing the children do. Likewise people who do not like the idea of childlike avatars. The truth is that in Second Life, outside of your own land you have no right to role-play anything at all.

It is a problem because they don't have the right to harrass people who are minding their own business and not themselves harrassing anyone else. Also, it is THEIR problem that they have this hangup, and they should not be inflicting THEIR problems on the rest of us. Also, since when do you get to dictate when and where people may role-play in SL as long as they are not harrassing people? I don't notice your last name being Linden. Get it? I fear not.

Go to the blackboard and write 50 times: I will not harrass people who are not harrassing me.

Then go to the other blackboard and write it 50 more times.

It may not change your mind, but it will keep you from annoying people for a while.

People have the right to whatever opinions they like; they do not, however, have the right to make life difficult for anyone who holds a different opinion. I don't see the appeal of playing a child av and have in fact seen several that I find quite creepy looking, but I'm not rude to them and I don't make assumptions about their motivations. What I believe Har was saying is that, if you dislike someone purely because they're wearing a young av, and not because of anything they've said or done, you're indulging in prejudice and that IS a problem.

And I mean 'you' in the general sense, not in the 'you, Yumi' one.

Personally I do enjoy child characters for a change of pace, even with widely varying personalities adult roleplay characters can get a little stale if you play then long enough. Infact I got so bored with one of my mentally and emotionally "troubled" characters adult person, I had her loose her mind and revert back to a child like persona at a convenient point in the storyline. Generally of the 8ish characters I play in various medium 8 are age 26+, only two characters ages 10 and 14 who are minors and I must say they can be fun to play as they don't need to be serious. They can also be serious in very comical ways that an adult character just can't pull off. I mean you can have an adult character crack a joke about another one needing to look for a girlfriend, but it's not nearly as funny as that characters daughter threatening to play the "Pick a mommy" game with his sister if he doen't look.

In areas set aside for general roleplay, not sexplay, I see child Avs as being a great detail. It makes the sim seem alive with the future residents of the sim being born as children and growing into their own over time shaped by the environment. Personally I don't like the idea of an RP environment without even the suggestion of children. The adult Avs had to have come from some where and I definately hate the idea that they just appear out of thin air. So yes, child Avs have their place and perpose, and I agree their place and perpose is not to be in sexual situations.

"Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."

If I am walking down the road IRL and I see someone who's appearance disgusts me, I retain the right to be disgusted. If they were walking into my place of business, I would retain the right to ask them to leave. It would, however, be rude to tell them that tey disgust me (though, in some cases, appropriate). It would be uncalled for if I caused them physical harm simply due to their appearance, no matter how it disgusted me.

Of course, there are also rules barring certain classes of discrimination in the real world. If a racial group "disgusts" me, it would be discriminatory to bar them from my place of employment based purely on their race, or gender, or ability, or other protected classes.

In Second Life, the same rules apply. If I did not like furries (I have no problem with furs, but let's use it as an example), it would be my right as a landowner to bar them from my property. It would be rude of me (but not against TOS or CS) to tell them I "don't like your kind." It would be wrong - and ARable, even - if I orbited them.

We do not have any anti-discrimination clauses in Second Life, but we do have a capitalist world. It would be fiscally unwise to overtly discriminate, especially against the larger classes: barring African-American avatars from your store based on race is admissable by the rules, *but* you would likely find your store without customers, and a reputation that would be worse than some landbarons.



What Har said.

Second Life is a shared reality. If I see a human male, I assume they are a human male. If I see a kid acting like a kid, then i'm going ot interact with them as cuh. Same with furs, or dragons, or whatever.

Mari

Well, creating a child Av *is* "something they've done". RL ideas of prejudice don't apply any more when you have almost absolutely free control over your body, and can change at any moment.

Moreover, disliking an avatar isn't the same as disliking the person wearing it. I have an extremely positive impression of Marianne from this thread, but that doesn't change my opinion with regard to child avatars - although I didn't exactly "dislike" them before.

Even if disliking an avatar could be seen as the same as disliking a person, at just the level of social relationship prejudice is something that can't be regulated. In real life it's sad if someone refuses to be friends with someone because they are black (for example) but it's not something they can be banned from doing or that the black person can sue over - that'd be insane! If that happens I could l be right there I could sue people for disability discrimination for ignoring me because I was shy around them..

Well, that's the problem. Unfortunately, the law of the land - or at least of some lands - has decreed that a person can become suspected of a major crime simply because of a child avatar taking certain actions within their sight on SL. Because of that, unfortunately, the actions of any child in another person's sight are *forced* to "become their business", because it's them who risks being investigated for paedophilia if the child does the wrong thing - and nothing stops a child suddenly doing that wrong thing on a PG parcel called "happy fun playground". Yes, this is a very silly law, but it's true. And yes, you can argue that SL policy shouldn't be based on these more extreme laws, but the behaviour of people in areas governed by those laws will HAVE to be - because, y'know, the police are right there with dogs and handcuffs.

Yes, you can argue that this is their problem, but they're not inflicting it on you. The only way they could avoid inflicting it on you would be to teleport away the moment they see a child, and that's far more of a restriction on their freedoms in SL than anything being asked of you.

I see what you're saying, but I don't entirely agree. In most cases, if someone has a negative opinion of child (or whatever) avs in general, they're not going to bother to get to know the person behind the avatar. They'll continue disliking that person for what they believe he or she represents, rather than bothering to find out anything more about them. In the end, that amounts to the same thing as disliking the actual person.

And, yes, we have free reign over our appearance in SL, but said appearance frequently reflects some important part of the person that maybe they can't easily reveal in RL...reacting negatively to an image they closely identify with CAN be hurtful, even though they were given a choice in the matter.

Discrimination is discrimination, regardless of written regulations or clauses. We certainly don't all have to get along, but if someone's dislike of another avatar and/or the person behind it is based purely on appearance...or sexual preference, or religion, or a myriad of other things...well, I do find that to be a problem, in any world. Those things may be elements of who a person is, but they're not the whole story...we should all be willing to read at least a chapter or two before we close the book.

Not to say I'm perfect, by any means, but I do try to keep my mind as open as I can manage without anything important falling out.

I just find it funny that some people can be so scared (of nothing really) that they will go to these lengths to distance themselves from someone that could potentially be loosely related to a very specific issue.

Also, "height discrimination" in SL is no different than "bling discrimination". You can change bling as easily as you can change avs and yet many of you have a pre-conception of people that wear bling. Where's their complaint thread? If they had one, how would most of you most likely respond? I would bet many would laugh and bring up reasons why bling is stupid or laggy or whatever.

Just about everything you say or do associates you with a particular group or school of thought. If you don't want to bear the stripes of that particular institution then don't associate yourself with it!

Dearly Darlings,

As some of you know, I'm old. short and have purple hair. The few times anyone ever thought I was a child avatar I was offended but retorted that they obviously had a virtual pituitary gland problem and were too tall. I just don't get it. I'm very tolerant of citizens here. Very few people have I ever been so offended by that I've made complaints. My Grand Father told me when I left for college ...a VERY LONG time ago...."Forget not that thou comest from a line of sheep herders and hog tenders lest God strike you from the wheel of fortune." It's not that hard to be polite to everyone you meet here. Most of us are actually after the same thing: A nice, well lighted place to converse and hobknob with our fellow wizzards.

I hope you all have a lovely evening,

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger