Will Linden Lab Ever Introduce Non-Binary Avatars to Sansar & Second Life?

Linden Lab is headquartered in San Francisco, a legendarily important city for the LGBT community, and has a corporate culture that's admirably supportive of both LGBT staff and its LGBT userbase in Second Life and now Sansar. Support for the "T" part of that acronym, however, is notably lacking in Linden Lab's actual products -- as the Sansar News Blog points out:

Virtual world developers in general, and Linden Lab in particular, have so far failed to accommodate (or even acknowledge) the gender fluidity that occurs in real life, and instead have merely entrenched the classification of sex and gender into the two distinct, opposite and disconnected boxes of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. They had a chance to fix things with their new virtual world, Sansar, and frankly, what we have again is two boxes: male and female. It’s so disappointing.

Surprisingly (as screencapped above), some of the latest starter avatars force a gender choice ("a female avatar cannot use the brown horse attachment that the male warrior uses"), and even more boggling, forces the female avatar to stereotypically ride "like a lady". This has literally been a recurring problem with the platform for at least 13 years.

Obviously, experienced users can customize their avatar sufficiently enough to appear non-binary -- see this sampling of androgynous fashion photography by Cajsa -- but the lack of any nonbinary starter options is still notable.

I've asked Linden Lab about this topic (at least where Sansar) is concerned, and will update this story if I get a reply. Meantime, read the whole Sansar Newsblog (and reader comments) here.

Comments

[Ilsa van den Broeck]

is it right? no... I hope that LL recognizes the mistake and improves on it. Second Life's big... BIG advantage over Sansar at this point is that with so many people making AOs and poses, you can pretty much put together the AO you want (mine is a bit "to confident" for a woman supposedly), and can put poses in your chairs for whatever you like.
my question though, Wagner is did the people trying to create change approach Linden Labs and try to create allies, or did they just shoot from the back row? (I read your article and theirs and did not see where they had approached Linden Labs)
That said I still stand by my post the other day -
"Wagner James Au, can you do us all a favor and pass along our heart felt thanks to Philip Rosedale for making SL a place where everyone can feel safe with their sexuality and how they express it.
My partner and I have been partners since before we moved to Second Life... Because of the bravery? risk taking? blind luck? whatever you want to call it of people like Philip Rosedale, what at the time, and even to this day is a charged issue, marriage equality, in Second Life is an easy reality.
It is not a huge step, but to paraphrase Martin Luther King, it is long, but the arc of history bends towards justice for all."

[Ryan Schultz]

Thanks for the shout-out, Wagner!

[TnT]

War on gender by 1% of the population while most of the world loughs at the stupidity.

[Wagner J Au]

It's not strictly an LGBT issue -- most consumers are not familiar with MMO-type avatars, and so many are uncomfortable with choosing ANY gender or even a human-like avatar, preferring a cartoonish videogame-type character they don't necessarily associate with themselves so personally. Linden Lab briefly had a non-gendered starter avatar of that type -- a cute fucking robot.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

TnT, this has nothing to do with a "war on gender".

Some ladies like to RIDE A HORSE PROPERLY, and not in a "ladylike" way.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Aliasi has a good point, they could have had the horse have the option to ride it either standard OR sidesaddle as the rider chose. I've had riding horses over the years in SL and have ridden BOTH ways depending on location and outfit.

And the "lady-ness" of the archer with her dress surprised me. When I think of lady archers in SL I think of The Blogging Elf.

Even Arwen's riding outfit in the Fellowship movie wasn't a dress, it was a flowy overcoat over pants.

[madeline blackbart]

I mean you used to be able to be a ship or car or whatever...how much more "non-gendered" can you get? It just seems that not many wanted to be those as you rarely saw them when they were available TBH. In fact, if you look at SL most users are pretty clearly portraying one gender or another. Even people who are trans or "femboy" tend to conform to gender norms for one gender or the other in the way the dress and look. I don't think I'm being unrealistic in saying that the majority of users WANT to look one gender or the other. I don't think it's wrong for LL's to focus on characters that appeal to the majority of users. As well the characters riding the horses are supposed to be historical. If I'm not mistaken it was common for women to ride side-saddle in the past.

That said why LL's just doesn't let the new user design their outfit from a small selection of items when they first join I'll never know. If people could pick they're clothes (either during sign up or first few moments in the world) then this wouldn't really be an issue. The premade characters have always been unsatisfactory to new users and IMO a LOT of that has to do with the fact they're already decided for the user. Why couldn't experiences be used to create a hud system for new users to create theyre own avatar?