Avatar sex detection.

Well you are assuming a lot here about the genders. Hermaphrodites (actually intersexed people), are not that rare at all. Also lots of gay folks will tell you that thre is more to it than playing the male or female role in a gay relationship. The very idea is kind of offensive.

That being said I dont have any hard numbers of course as the Lindens have all the cards in that regard. I think its fair to say that sex, and dressing up in clothes, posing, sexual situations, or even social situations are all very common and wildly popular. Vehicles and guns are also popular, but I would argue not so much as the former.

Regardless of the relative poularity of each however, it is clear that there are large numbers of people engaing in activities (or wnating to) of this nature (sexual or social) and virtually no script functions to deal with it. There should of course be a function to determine gender (at least three genders), as it's a popular thing that one might need to code for, but there isn't. If I wan't to make an object (and I had this problem just last week), that has an animation in it for a female character, there is no way for me to code it so that only a female characer can play that animation for instance. To me, it would "wreck" my creation to have a male character use this device, so I simply won't produce it until I can find a way of ensuring that this does not happen. I dont see that as "bad" or unusaul in any way, there are some things that female bodies do, and others that male bodies do, what is the big deal?

There are also no functions that deal with possibly the most popular items in SL, clothing. Why can't I script a clothing change with something like llRemoveClothing(string Item, key AV);? Probably because if I could, it would also have all kinds of sexy other uses that might embarass LL and make the world out there see us as a "sexy game." Can't have that.

There is no llCreateGun, but that woudl be a stupid function anyway. there does exist all kinds of ways of rezing bullets and fancy physics for flight etc. all I am saying is that if it truly *is* a user created world, then we should have the functions that people want for the things they want to do or the things that are popular. I have heard people ask for the gender function repeatedly, and got no answer at all.

It's obvious that there is a "flag" in the avatar somewhere that tells the system what gender we are because thre are times when the system neeeds to differentiate between males and females.

Until I hear otherwise, I have to assume that this function to hook into this flag has been left out of our repertoire on purpose.

The only reason I wanted the llGetavatarGender(); command, isn't for sex pose balls or anything like that. I was just thinking of having male avs sitting one way on a chair, and female avs sitting more lady like and cross legged. That is all I wanted to do. It was all innocent really.

llRemoveClothing would require a change with the asset/user server. We don't get llWriteToNotecard, you don't get automatic strip scripts.

But yes, there is a gender flag stored somewhere on the servers, but it would most likely require a dataserver request to get it.

The avatar creation window doesn't have options for those who don't classify into the usual genders, so why should the function? Would you rather demand that this function to be hermaphrodite/butch lesbian/whatever friendly and never get it, or get a basic version of it?

There are a number of things you could do with scripts that might be considered discriminatory if a function actually returned the gender of the avatar. For example, you could design security scripts to ban all members of one gender from an area. I think that's why this hasn't been included when it came up before.

...Which would of course be a violation of the TOS. I hope this wan't the reason that this hasn't been done yet.

Don't worry, I didn't assume it was. However you might find that making male avatars sit manly and female avatars sit ladylike isn't taken as innocently as you hope by some people.

pics plz






Just kidding, please don't.

You go to the wrong parties

rare? just because they look normal is only a hint at what lies between the legs. In SL very little is rare.


This isn't a new debate, there is no easy way to implement this feature. In the end it could be used to facilitate discrimination. Some people don't want to be classified as just male or female, and in the processes of adding that, it would allow people to single them out. Imagine the scale of harassment that could be facilitated by this feature (greifers flying around scanning for people to harass). And why? so you don't have to ask the user.

The way av attributes are stored, in the long term it would be difficult to implement this feature (the reason being that av attributes interface is very dynamic).

If i recall the last time we had this debate, one suggestion was to add a gender text box to the profile page.

I do not support this feature as it would cause more problems then solve. In the real world there is no way to do this, why should there be a way in the virtual world?

<general rant>How about a function that returns an avatar's height and then selects an appropriate pose? That way you could have a specific pose for short avs that doesn't embed them halfway into the sofa with their arms sticking through their heads.</general rant>

Pol, that function already exists. I guess not too many poseball makers use it. Maybe it's difficult to adjust an animation for height changes, I don't know how that stuff works. But yes, having a separate set of animations for short and tall avatars should be doable.

I think the problem lies in the fact that most poses are built for avatars of average dimensions. My avatar is just unorthodox enough that most commercially available animations/poses look really crappy on me. And that really crimps my crust, dammit.

We can do dataserver requests already for other info though, so it seems like a no brainer to add this. No.

I would rather just have the function right now since I want to make things that use it. The problem is once you go defining gender, a lot of folks have a lot of very specific ideas about it.

What I meant was, to do it fairly, you *should* have at least three genders, (male female & none), and possibly more for the animal folks.

I would apreciate a function being written right now just to make things sensible, but over the long haul the issue probably requires an avatar redesign. The avatars *are* being redesigned though, even though we are unlikely to be told exactly how that is going or if gender is going to be included even in the next round.

And, one hopes that eventually all poses will be owned by the avatars rather than the furniture that they sit/lie/horizontal bop on.

I think a simple gender flag that is unlikely to change a lot or frequently is a very do-able thing though.

I remember hearing this kind of talk in the last debate on this but I never understood why people think this is so.

I think this is extremely unlikely that it would "cause harrasment" to know what gender an avatar is. This sounds supiciously like that argument that women wearing "sexy clothes" would attract harrasment because of the fact that they are identified as "sexy." I dont see how this necessarily follows.

I agree that for it to work properly, more than the two base genders available to us now would be best, but I see no reason not to implement it now, so that we can all see (how valuable and great a function it is), and how we absolutely need multigender avatars in the next round.

Again, no offense but I have yet to hear an argument as to what problems exactly this would cause. Being able to tell at a short distance if someone is advertising themselves as female or male is exactly like RL for the most part.

In RL intersexed individuals are "undetectable" of course but even then, most that I have known "pick" a face to show the world, usualy male female or "neutral." I just dont see a problem with that. Especially since we can define gender anyway we want and have ten or twenty varieties if necessary.

To me this is a serious issue that a lot of LL's customers seem to want, yet the Lindens dont seem to want to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Are you seriously saying you cant tell a man from a woman in RL ??

I got built in detectors, call em eyes. LOL

I should have said, there is no fool proof way in RL (short of stripping the person).

I don't know. I think that gender bits are something that should remain iffy. One of the great things about this world is that you can play with new concepts, and that includes gender issues. Ambiguity increases ease of creation. Sometimes I like playing a character that is not easily identifiable as one gender or the other. My first avatar was that way. It's fun to see reactions, and to enjoy types of interaction that would normally not exist. If there was a bit that said "male", "female", or "other", a lot of that would be lost. Even with an "other" tag, it signals that you *want* to be ambiguous, which immediately makes people disassociate with you.

Keep it as is. We don't need a gender script handle.

Here's your llGetGender/llGetSex:

// Gender-Requesting Sit-Pose Script
// Written by Christopher Omega
// 9/20/2005

// Global constants, change to your heart's content:
// The animation names
string MALE_ANIMATION = "SitLegsSpread";
string FEMALE_ANIMATION = "SitLegsCrossed";

// Number of seconds before dialog timeout (force stand), set to 0 for no timeout.
float DIALOG_TIMEOUT = 30;

// Number of avatars to remember the gender choice for.
integer HISTORY_LIMIT = 50;

// Global variables, please dont change these:
integer isMale = FALSE;
integer usedHistory = FALSE;
list history;

addHistory(string name, integer choice) {
    integer index = llListFindList(history, [name]);
    if (index != -1) {
        history = llDeleteSubList(history, index, index + 1);
    }
    if (llGetListLength(history) / 2 > HISTORY_LIMIT) {
        // Delete the oldest entry.
        history = llDeleteSubList(history, 0, 1);
    }
    // Store choice as string, takes 1 byte vs 8 bytes for int.
    history += [name, (string)choice];
}

integer getHistory(string name) {
    integer index = llListFindList(history, [name]);
    if (index == -1) {
        return -1;
    } else {
        return llList2Integer(history, index + 1);
    }
}

default {
    state_entry() {
        llSitTarget(<0, 0, 0.1>, <0, 0, 0, 1>);
    }
    changed(integer change) {
        if (change & CHANGED_LINK) {
            key sitter = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
            if (sitter != NULL_KEY) {
                string name = llKey2Name(sitter);
                integer oldChoice = getHistory(name);
                if (oldChoice == -1) {
                    usedHistory = FALSE;
                    state getGender;
                } else {
                    usedHistory = TRUE;
                    isMale = oldChoice;
                    state sitting;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

state getGender {
    state_entry() {
        integer chan = (integer) llFrand(184712) + 1;
        llListen(chan, "", llAvatarOnSitTarget(), "");
        llDialog(llAvatarOnSitTarget(), "What pose would you like to play?", ["Male", "Female"], chan);
        llSetTimerEvent(DIALOG_TIMEOUT);
    }
    listen(integer c, string n, key id, string m) {
        isMale = (m == "Male");
        addHistory(n, isMale);
        state sitting;
    }
    timer() {
        llSetTimerEvent(0);
        if (usedHistory) {
            usedHistory = FALSE;
            state sitting;
        } else {
            llUnSit(llAvatarOnSitTarget());
            state default;
        }
    }
    changed(integer change) {
        if (change & CHANGED_LINK) {
            if (llAvatarOnSitTarget() == NULL_KEY) {
                state default;
            }
        }
    }
}

state sitting {
    state_entry() {
        key sitter = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
        llRequestPermissions(sitter, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);
    }

    run_time_permissions(integer perms) {
        if (perms & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION) {
            llStopAnimation("sit");
            if (isMale) {
                llStartAnimation(MALE_ANIMATION);
            } else {
                llStartAnimation(FEMALE_ANIMATION);
            }
            if (usedHistory) {
                state getGender; // Ask the user again, just in case they want to change it.
            }
        } else {
            llUnSit(llAvatarOnSitTarget());
            state default;
        }
    }

    changed(integer change) {
        if (change & CHANGED_LINK) {
            if (llAvatarOnSitTarget() == NULL_KEY) {
                if (llGetPermissions() & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION) {
                    if (isMale) {
                        llStopAnimation(MALE_ANIMATION);
                    } else {
                        llStopAnimation(FEMALE_ANIMATION);
                    }
                }
                state default;
            }
        }
    }
} 

A fully functional posing script, with dialog to confirm gender choice, and it remembers the previous choice of the avatar. I cant get in-world easily atm, so its not tested. Ill post back with corrections asap.


Generalizing only hinders your argument. I dont want a script to know my gender without me explicitly telling it first. I strongly suspect that an llGetGender would put many non-heteronormative couples out of luck with finding poseballs that respect how they wish to cuddle.
==Chris

How would llRemoveClothing (and other clothing wear/unwear functions) hurt the asset server any more then llRezObject? In fact, it would matter even less, as clothing assets wouldn't be created, copied or changed. LL simply hasn't enabled the functionality for either moral reasons or due to just plain laziness.
Also, the only reason we dont have llWriteToNotecard is because notecards are immutable assets; under the facade of the UI, notecards are actually recreated every time they are re-saved - allowing scripts to do the same could potentially pose a storage problem. (If notecards were made truly mutable, there wouldn't be a problem).

I just wanted to clarify the differences between potential clothing functions, llWriteToNotecard and llCreateNotecard.
==Chris

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to get me on that particular comment.

I was... excited, and overgeneralising.

Also, even though I did not explicitly state it, I was assuming that permisisons would have to be required for the function. The idea of being able to detect without permissions is definitely a bad idea.

What I am looking for and what I would also find fair and effective is that once an avatar has given permission to "sit" that the pose would refuse to comply if the gender was "wrong." The permission would be given by the fact that the avatar has chosen to perform the animation but without a "detect gender" function it seems unlikely.

That is my current scripting dilemma. It's not about poseballs or roleplaying or any of that. I have an object with an animation associated with it. It is for female bodies only, I dont want to sell it/make it if some guy is going to use it cause I am an artist and I think that would "wreck" my idea. It would look ugly and awful to me and I dont see why I should have to suffer idiots in that way. If the object was for a small person and it refused to comply if the avatar was "too large" no one would get upset. This is the same to me. I want to refuse avatars that are not saying they are "female," the ability to use an animation that is intended only for females.

I just don't see why this simple practical thing can't be done, other than the fact that an initial implementation of it would of course only report the two genders that LL has seen fit to give us. The fact that genders should be more flexible and there should be more of them and so forth is a given, but not related (IMO) to the need for the function in the first place.

I'd like to apologize for my previous conception that it's rare... I spoke out of ignorance.

I think Christopher brought up some interesting points as to why this might be a bad idea, and I'm beginning to agree with him. Perhaps it might just be easier to click on the right poseball, or to put a dialog in.

While banning avatars of a certain gender from an area you own *is* one of the things you could do, I dont see how that is *necessarily* discriminatory. Like a lot of functions it could be used by idiots to do stupid offensive things, but that is true of lots of functions we already have.

There was a recent debate about the pushavatar function and how it should be banned, but there are lots of good uses as well for that. Same with this. Determining a property of an object I want to animate is not "wrong." If someone wants to use that nefariously that is their problem.

If it's "wrong" to ask the avatar what this property of itself is, why is it there at all? It's there because obviously people *want* to define themselves as being either male or female. If the choices were made available, people would also likely want to define themselves as "neutral" (and others probably) as well but it's not currently available.

It's not the same as a property like say "race." When we make the avatars we make choices of skin colour and so forth that imply a certain race (or not), but there is no "white" or "negro" property because race is irrelevant to the game in terms of what one can do and what one can be.

This is not the same as gender. There are physical differences between males and females, that is just the way it is. There are times in the game when the physical gender of the avatar is an important part of the game. That is why the choice is available to you when you are making the avatar, and that's why it's a "property" of the avatar.

This is only one part of the secret script I am writing to determine an avatars gender!

It would just be nice to have the function instead of four pages of funky script that only works *most* of the time.

Why not just have a console nearby that the user could choose a sitting pose from once they have sit down?

I haven't played with any scripting yet but I would think that it would be possible.

Everyone has turned my thread into a topic on "it is a bad idea because thread" I realize there are some instances where it is a bad idea to use that funtion. But I was really talking about where someone decides whether or not to sit with your legs crossed or not to.

As in most woman wearing a dress would not sit in a chair with mixed company with thier legs spread wide. It wasn't a question of prefered sex positions, which seems to be what people turned it all into.

Then should I have just asked if there was an option to determin if an AV is wearing a skirt or not, that would work for me. Cause I would rather not see a man in a kilt spreading his junk over my chair either.

Not too sound too liberal ...but what if you have a male- male or female-female couple?...If they wanted to cuddle could they if the script was only thinking to place a male in the male position and waiting for a female to fill the girl position?
:/