« Three Points John Oliver Should Make in His Next Cryptocurrency Segment | Main | Cajsa's Choices: The Sexy, Sunlit, Dream-Like Second Life Photos of Cub Smit »

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Pulsar

13 years later, Second Life is still populated by many "lesbians". Chances are that they meet other "lesbians" eventually. They aren't necessarily so sensitive and tender, but in their attempt to be seen as girls and to avoid to be unmasked, they follow the feminine stereotype so much to become goofy sometimes. They aren't RL lesbian women nor RL lesbian transgender women, but just RL heterosexual men. It was quite puzzling to me. Eboni Khan theory is interesting and makes you think how the patriarchal culture and its stereotypes may be a problem for men too. I think there are more reasons though. When I asked, one of the most frequent answer was a variation of "I prefer to see girls on my screen". This ranges from guys who like to play with female charters (e.g. Tomb Raider) to men who like to watch lesbians. Someone tries to put themselves on the girl's shoes, more or less, but they don't really identify themselves with their girl avatars.

Just Another Monster

Somethings you have no control over things like the gender you were born as or your expected to be.

Not everyone who is someone else inside plays the dating game or pretends to be same gender gay to fool others- for some the avatar just represents who they never got to be.

Pulsar

Yeah, A. M., that's what trangeders do too: they identify with it, they do it for this reason, not to fool others, on the contrary they are more honestly themselves having the avatar of the gender that represents them better. Among those I know, a number of them doesn't even write it in their profile, because, as you say, they aren't into "the dating game", they don't have to go around with a sign to tell it to everyone, plus many people don't understand that a transgender woman isn't a gay man (or bi or heterosexual whatever), and she just would like to be and be seen as the woman she is. Ditto for transgender men, and there are all the other cases. That's perfectly understandable.
Transgender women aren't men, nor they are the men that Eboni Khan is talking about, who have different reasons. Then there are the curious one who experiment with further different reasons. And so on.

JohnC

As interesting as this conversation is, and I have lived it from both sides for many years, I often wonder why we have it at all. We go to a place called second life where, as I understand it from the name, the idea is to live a virtual life of your choice, whatever that may be, and to live it if you wish totally disconnected from your RL, For many it is an escape from RL in fact. And that does not always mean you are having a bad first life, you just have other parts of yourself that maybe cannot be expressed openly in your otherwise fine RL.
But all around in SL you find people who just don't get it at all. People who have a chance to be something else, anything they wish, and they just create an Avatar that looks exactly like them in RL. Or people who are all for creating a new self but “hang on I didn't mean being weird and pretending to be a woman”. To me that seems a bit like being granted three wishes for anything you desire and asking for a Big Mac, Frys and a Coke. Of course it is up to anyone in SL to play it the way they wish. Just seems a bit of a waste of opportunity.
And why is there a real life section in the SL profile anyway. It simply encourages people to drag their RL into SL. Although most times the pictures are of someone else or pics of the RL self some 30 years previous.
Now I don't mind a bit about all the above as long as those who choose to be themselves or stick to their RL gender understand that it is them who are missing the point and not using the opportunities they are offered. SL is not supposed to be a dating agency for real world relationships, although that is what it is used for constantly.
If you meet someone in SL and fall in love then those feelings and emotions you experience are real, as real as they are in RL. So if you find out that the person you have fallen in love with is in fact the opposite gender to what you believed them to be, it should not alter in any way that love.
It is not a deception, to be completely different from your RL self in SL, it is supposed to be the whole idea behind it. The fact that the beautiful woman you fell in love with is a guy in RL should not matter, it is your RL programmed mind that is offended.
I have felt all these emotions in my time, love, betrayal, surprise, shock, but the fact is, while in SL If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then you should treat it as a duck, because in this world you have entered it is a Duck, and whatever it might be in RL is not part of this world, this second life.

Clara Seller

JohnC may have written the most eloquent vision of Second Life I've ever read. It should be page one of the SL Bible. I was touched.

In Second Life, I've always valued honesty of the heart so much more than the Facebooky/LinkedIn/Cartoon Portrait verification that many deem necessary. It always amazed me that some people could not see how twisted their arrogance was in demanding an FBI profile on everyone they associated with in SL and shamed those who refused interrogation. They stand before you as an artificially animated cartoon with grossly inflated body parts and tell you they are only interested in genuine RL experience. Run for the hills.

RSL

I think the high-minded arguments in favor of gender bending in SL are fundamentally sound, but I think they sorta fall into the same trap as an argument or legalize heroin. The problem isn’t that a a vast majority of lesbians on SL are heterosexual men recreating cheerleading porn from the 1990’s; it is that given the ease of finding other heterosexual men interested in doing the same, an extraordinary amount of time spent on the platform revolves around this… patriarchal conception of feminine sexuality. Sure, it truly boils down to desperate men congregating and masturbating together, which is perfectly legal and probably not immoral, but the void this leaves behind ripples throughout the platform.
If heterosexual women are looking for both a connection and a sexual interaction, the heterosexual male seems more inclined, since the option is available, to dress as a cutesy girl and scissor with the endless supply of pseudo-lesbians.
It is my experience that the problem has snowballed in the last decade. More heterosexual women have left the platform, the ones who are left appear to fight for the attention of the few heterosexual males who have yet to go lesbian, and those men are in such demand that the feel no need to offer any emotional or intellectual bond in return for their services.
So even if avatar numbers are declining, the cultural health of the community is trending towards a smaller number of players controlling more and more lesbian alts to maximize male gratification.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Your Information

(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Thumb Wagner James Au Metaverse book
Wagner James "Hamlet" Au
Dream Seeker SL Estates
Competitive rates, 24/7 English, Spanish & Dutch support -- visit online or in SL!
Dutchie SL furnishings
Click above to Dutchie Design's site!
Wagner James Au Patreon
Making a Metaverse That Matters Wagner James Au ad
Please buy my book!
IMG_2468
My book on Goodreads!
Wagner James Au AAE Speakers Metaverse
Request me as a speaker!
Making of Second Life 20th anniversary Wagner James Au Thumb
PC for SL
Recommended PC for SL
Macbook Second Life
Recommended Mac for SL
my site ... ... ...
ADD store SLurl
Visit ADD's SL mainstore, creator of sexy styles you want to wear!
Intellivision game console book Tom Boellstorff Braxton Soderman
Get the latest book from the author of "Coming of Age in Second Life"!
Meow Meow Making SL flowers
An SL flower shop for all occasions!
Rapture
Original SL mesh fashion since 2014
Vmuseum NWN Ad
Click to visit all four sites!
Second Life virtual world coffee table book
Coffee table book available now -- click above!
Juicybomb_EEP ad

Classic New World Notes stories:

Woman With Parkinson's Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life - Academics Researching (2013)

We're Not Ready For An Era Where People Prefer Virtual Experiences To Real Ones -- But That Era Seems To Be Here (2012)

Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father A Second Life (2011)

What Rebecca Learned By Being A Second Life Man (2010)

Charles Bristol's Metaverse Blues: 87 Year Old Bluesman Becomes Avatar-Based Musician In Second Life (2009)

Linden Limit Libertarianism: Metaverse community management illustrates the problems with laissez faire governance (2008)

The Husband That Eshi Made: Metaverse artist, grieving for her dead husband, recreates him as an avatar (2008)

Labor Union Protesters Converge On IBM's Metaverse Campus: Leaders Claim Success, 1850 Total Attendees (Including Giant Banana & Talking Triangle) (2007)

All About My Avatar: The story behind amazing strange avatars (2007)

Fighting the Front: When fascists open an HQ in Second Life, chaos and exploding pigs ensue (2007)

Copying a Controversy: Copyright concerns come to the Metaverse via... the CopyBot! (2006)

The Penguin & the Zookeeper: Just another unlikely friendship formed in The Metaverse (2006)

"—And He Rezzed a Crooked House—": Mathematician makes a tesseract in the Metaverse — watch the videos! (2006)

Guarding Darfur: Virtual super heroes rally to protect a real world activist site (2006)

The Skin You're In: How virtual world avatar options expose real world racism (2006)

Making Love: When virtual sex gets real (2005)

Watching the Detectives: How to honeytrap a cheater in the Metaverse (2005)

The Freeform Identity of Eboni Khan: First-hand account of the Black user experience in virtual worlds (2005)

Man on Man and Woman on Woman: Just another gender-bending avatar love story, with a twist (2005)

The Nine Souls of Wilde Cunningham: A collective of severely disabled people share the same avatar (2004)

Falling for Eddie: Two shy artists divided by an ocean literally create a new life for each other (2004)

War of the Jessie Wall: Battle over virtual borders -- and real war in Iraq (2003)

Home for the Homeless: Creating a virtual mansion despite the most challenging circumstances (2003)

Newstex_Author_Badge-Color 240px
JuicyBomb_NWN5 SL blog
Ava Delaney SL Blog
Virtual_worlds_museum_NWN