It is Eureka Dejavu interviewing Jessica:
Eureka Dejavu: are you a man or woman in RL?
Jessica: how about you tell me?
Eureka Dejavu: I am trying to decide. you are certainly not gender-neutral but possess both in spades…sometimes I am positive that you’re a man, and other times equally positive you’re a woman
Jessica: lots weird gender things happen in here after awhile…like — the gender of the person on the other end doesn’t matter so much
Doesn’t matter? Really?
On one hand I couldn’t agree more. If metaverse was the world as it was imagined in sci-fi of passed decades, with too much geek talk about networks, data and stuff and no sex it would be ok. “Avatars don’t need to sit” – said a friend just few nights ago. Very true, I must agree, but I am the first one to complain if there are no bar stools in the club.
Gender does not matter if there is no sex in the world. Out of sex, and that counts a whole lot more than clubs with pose-balls, we can all be whatever gender, or androgynous shapes, or robots or abstracts. But, as you may have noticed, sex is here in the world. From shapes, skins and clothes to Xcite! and sexgen beds.
So, does our RL genders matter? Somewhere in Eureka’s blog it can be found that about 50% of residents are transgendered in second life. There is an urban myth that when asked about voice feature Philip Linden answered that’s gonna happen when they find an easy way to transgender the RL voice. (It was long ago and voice is on its way now.)
Second life is huge world with residents coming from different cultures, sub-cultures and with different backgrounds. What is perfectly acceptable and “normal” for one resident can be treated as completely weird for other. Some can feel deceived or even abused if find out that the cute girl they had fun with last night has biological male on the other end of keyboard. Other will pay no attention if “girl” behaves like a girl. Maybe they don’t want to go behind SL/RL border for any price.
We are all aware that avatar and its human are not the same and that there can be lot of dissimilarities between the two. But, some differences are more important than other. It becomes even more complicated if we take into consideration the way of telling our date something about RL selves. Is it ok to ruin the scene by telling something that is behind the satellites? It can be mayor turn-off for both sides. Second life is, once again, huge world and some rules are not possible to be stated. If we are in sex themed virtual world we could make some kind of terms and conditions, we could even insist on RL gender field on profile page. That doesn’t mean that all of us would be honest, but some people would have right to feel deceived and abused. This way, nobody ever stated that RL woman must have female avatar.
This is land where people fly and have wings and tails and horns. This is the world of tigers speaking. You can meet girl riding a dragon she is married to. And we all (most of us at least) find that as a product of imagination, not a lie. Why virtual living in the shape of the opposite sex should be treated differently?
Had SL sex? Any experience?
Do u feel like it’s really u…are u D 1 in action or just a voyeur of someting going on on screen?
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nice blogs
why m i writing in eng?!?? :conf:
thanks for the kind words. :D
your questions really pulled some of my thoughts long before I was ready to draw any draft conclusion about all that. But, start of that mindstream is to be found in this post.
Don’t forget that there is a difference between gender and sex — the former is socio-cultural, the latter is genetic/physical. However, on most people (around 99% at least), they assume the gender role appropriate for their genetically determined sex, even if that role is mostly determined by social and cultural means (see the article on gender on the Wikipedia).
Transgenderism in this context (since the 1950s at least) just means that someone with one of the genetically possible sexes has adopted the opposite gender role. I find it very hard to believe that 50% of the residents, however, are transgendered, when the statistics for RL are far lower (around 1% or so). I would probably claim that these are just roleplayers :)
This does not change your basic assumptions — again, 99% of the people in the whole world would feel “deceited” if they expect all the people to have their gender linked to their physical sex, and get confused — or even annoyed, disappointed, or furious — when that is not the case. The base of success of most relationships has to start with honesty and an exchange of trust. It’s very hard to accomplish that without knowing someone’s most intimate details… and for the ones that don’t accept the separation of sex and gender, this should be the first thing to check for, if you’re serious on your relationship.
Since I wrote this one one thing is puzzling me. It is almost obvious that most of SL transgenderers are straight heterosexuals in RL. They just roleplaying. But, when you go a bit deeper in researching and meeting TG residents, you must notice that they do have cybersex. It is not just playing a girl or a boy in everyday public activities, it is not just crossdressing. It is living the life of the opposite gender in its very essence.
So, is it possible to be straight (in the lack of better term) in real life and transgendered in second? Does it still count as role-playing?
Sure one can behave heterosexualy and straight in RL. I doubt that more than 50% of second life’s BDSM population is practicing any of domination and violence at home. But, are our first and second lives so separated as we usually say in our profiles?
Thanx for this very well written post, and needless to say, thanx for the “flow my tears…” quote that i found in another… Such little things tell a lot about our (real/second) life. As for the main topic question, every answer could be wrong. Personally, i don’t care, and if you ask, i usually don’t wanna know, too.
I started SL as a fem AV stating to myself that i would have kept things quite separated. So i did. And everything ran just fine. One day I meet another fem AV, started a relationship, had fun, had sex, mostly i had a lot of talking. Suddenly I started to feel very well in RL while thinking at her. I feel so good that i don’t want to know if in RL she/he is a woman or a male. I keep running my real life normally and i have happy time when i’m on SL. In the end, is what she tells me that it makes me feel special. If she/he is a men, and it’s so good with words, i’m not intersted to know. I think, that RL gender is not that important in SL. But I accept that many residents have more than an issue with this topic. I still cannot understand why. But then again, i guess it’s too much of a personal matter and it will remain this way, even if we write pages & pages of phylophy about it!