Thoughts on Avatar & Gender Identity in Second Life

"People whose avatars are a different sex than IRL, how do you let others in SL know?" is a good question with some fairly thoughtful answers on Reddit's /SecondLife community. Here's one from Caitlin_Tobias:

After being in SL for over 7 years, I have long ago decided: I will treat and address anyone to the gender they portray in SL. It is SL, if someone looks like a guy and acts like a guy, for me... it is a guy. It is not only simplifying my own SL, but also I think it is a form of respect to not doubt or question someones RL gender.

Which brings up this reply from VeliciaL:

Coming from a trans background, this is considered a common courtesy in those circles. If someone is presenting as a certain gender, it's pretty likely they want to be referred as that gender. Not doing so is kind of a dick move.

How about RL women portraying SL males? That's covered too. This from ElderSign:

I generally don't [reveal my RL gender]. I play my guy in great part for the "man" experience, which would be lost if I outed myself. But I'm not interested in romantic or sexual intimacy, and make it very clear. If I thought my sex was relevant due to eg. developing deep friendships or gender-specific topics, I'd probably just blurt it out in some very out-of-place way. OTOH I do get directly asked [when I'm playing as a female avatar], so I'm guessing "just don't mention it" doesn't work as well the other way around. The hilarity when I refuse to answer and am assumed to be a guy by the kind of douche that cares is awesome in its own right, though.

Much more here. Image, by the way, from this related guest post well worth reading.

Please share this post:

Tweet

Comments

[JimM]

The problem with SL is that different people are logging on for different reasons. A lot regard it as an unofficial dating site, lots more are on for the sex and little else. They're setting themselves up for a fall, I think, but I can see why it's an issue for them.

[Adeon Writer]

So, so simple.

1.) Call them by the pronoun they tell you to use.
2.) There is no step 2.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I agree with Caitlin's perspective on that.

There are people 'playing' as one sex, who insist on being referred to as the other sex that they state is their RL one. Female avatars that insist I refer to them as men, or more rarely male avatars that insist I refer to them as women.

Lacking any other clue... I pronoun everyone as what their avatar is in SL.
If I'm to use something else, the person insisting on that needs to make it obvious enough that it can be remembered, unless I know them and can remember them.

- There's also a significant segment of SL that treats it in a 'Facebook like' way and needs to know your RL details to interact with you.

Its not always just newbies. There's a crowd that will subject you to an interrogation over things like age, race, sex, social class, city, and then assorted dating info. The folks who want to send you RL-selfies.

- they seem to treat SL as a free version of match.com or linked.in depending on their end goal...
- for these people, there is a lot of drama around who is 'lying' or whether someone is an 'alt' of their date or whatever...

These folks will put you into a box, put a clamp over your opinions and self image, paint you with their own brush, lock the box, and throw away the key.

[Iggy]

Over the decades it has been normal during face-to-face RPGs for guys to play female characters. It shouldn't be that different online, though reasons vary for gender-switching.

In our group--nerds rolling polyhedra dice since the late 70s--running a female character has been rare. Now we'd find it silly: our cabal of balding middle-age dudes has a hard time acting in heteronormative feminine ways.

Recently our first female gamer in years joined in via FaceTime, and she finds something else hilarious: a bunch of gamers will actually clean up their language and try to be couth in other ways while a woman is in the room, even virtually.

Even the dog (a male) behaves better now.

[iisingh]

I like my cat