Eboni Khan has a fascinating theory based on her many years in the Second Life social scene:
The men pretending to be women are more into dressing themselves and admiring themselves-- and attempting to build relationships, which is interesting. The men that I know [who] are women here, are very feminine. And strive to have loving friendships and relationships. Which leads me to believe a lot of men think they can't accomplish the same thing [while] being a stereotypical male.
Sensitive and tender? Pretend to be a girl, then seduce the girl of your dreams. Then tell her you are a man, and hope for the best. I think the majority of these men just want to be tender and loving, and think a female avie makes it easier for them to do it.
The "My Real Gender Is..." discussion is a genuine topic in online game worlds, so I'd say there's some truth to this. Read my whole profile of Eboni, full of insights like this, here: The Freeform Identity Bebop of Eboni Khan.
Pictured: Image from an equally notable post, "Cheating In Second Life Relationships Extremely Upsetting To Many SLers, Study Finds".
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.
Posted by: Pulsar | Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 03:31 PM
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.
Posted by: Just Another Monster | Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 09:43 PM
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.
Posted by: Pulsar | Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 03:50 PM
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.
Posted by: JohnC | Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 04:08 PM
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.
Posted by: Clara Seller | Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 07:07 PM
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.
Posted by: RSL | Thursday, April 07, 2022 at 06:22 AM