Tags
avatar, avi, disclosure, gender, identity, lies, privacy, second life, truth
A lot of Second Life avatars are different from their Real Life counterparts. A lot. Males have female avatars, females (less often) have male avatars, married people represent themselves as single and available, and almost everyone is svelte and trim, with large breasts for the women and bulky muscles for the men.
There are people who fight against this trend, some staunchly, others of us less emphatically. In my case, I’ve tried to at least keep my breasts to a realistic size. I’d love to compare them to my real life breasts to find out whether I’m in the ballpark, but there’s no easy way to do that unless someone out there has a scripted prim measuring tape they can loan me!
For this entry, I’ve gotten kind permission to post Second Life and Real Life pictures of seven residents side-by-side. Here’s Aur. |
Anyway, it’s all up for grabs: age, weight, race, marital status, sexual preference, personality … you name it, someone in Second Life is appearing differently in that way than in Real Life. Let’s call this kind of thing “identity bending.”
And there are all kinds of schools of thoughts on what “should” and “should not” be the rule of thumb for different kinds of identity bending. This gets tricky, because there are all kinds of issues that come up. Some people are freaked out by or condemning of gender bending in any form; many people aren’t interested in getting involved with someone who’s married in Real Life; and even well-intentioned people might be a little disturbed to find out their petite, girlish lover is a 350-pound 55-year-old in Real Life.
Casidy Craig in Second Life and Real Life. In Real Life, Casidy is transgendered, female to male. |
So some people hide their Real Life identities, and other people lie about their Real Life identities. I’m one of the hiders: my Real Life and my Second Life aren’t allowed to mix, because in my Real Life I’m not interested in having to defend my habit of blogging about sex and all the other fun things I get to do as Second Life me. I’d do it if I had to, but in the end it would be more trouble than it’s worth.
It might be useful before we plunge much deeper into this to reflect that there are really two different types of reasons someone might not want to mix Second Life and Real Life. One reason is because the person doesn’t want their Second Life to affect their Real Life, as with me. The other is because the person doesn’t want their Real Life to affect their Second Life, which usually means that they differ in some substantial way from their avatar, for instance in gender or marital status.
Fenix Harbinger, matching closely in both lives |
There’s no question that some people would be very disturbed to find out that a friend-or especially a lover-is the opposite gender of their avatar, but it’s hard to make an ethical case for objecting to this if the gender bending person doesn’t claim their Real Life self is the same as their avatar. It comes down to asserting that people who bend gender should always reveal that in their profile because people who associate with them in Second Life may feel bad otherwise-but it’s just as defensible to say that people who aren’t comfortable with gender bending friends should stick to friends who have declared their Real Life gender already. In either case there’s that bad old pitfall “should.” Regardless of what you believe is morally best for people to do, a lot of people (in this case) are going to do the exact opposite. Many people will have avatars of a different gender than their real life selves without making that public knowledge, and many people will assume that avatar gender is the same as Real Life gender even though that’s a lousy bet in Second Life. Ultimately we can’t expect each other to conform to our personal codes of conduct. All I can suggest is that being as honest as we reasonably can and as open-minded as we reasonably can is likely to be a big help.
Keiko Takamura |
The gender issue especially is more complicated than it might seem at first. First, there’s the whole prejudice issue. If a person’s profile is one gender and their “1st Life” tab says another gender, they are likely to be opening themselves up for abuse from random passersby which you could argue isn’t really deserved. Second, there’s the experiment part. If a man is trying to find out what it’s like to be treated like a woman, or a woman is trying to find out what it’s like to be treated as a man, the results aren’t likely to be very accurate if everyone knows that the person’s Real Life gender is different from the avatar’s gender.
And being able to be different and to experiment are some important advantages of Second Life. Yet for all of that, some people always will be disturbed if they discover a friend is bending gender, and there’s probably no way around that short of complete cultural transformation.
Lisse Livingston |
Another thing that might be helpful to think about is this: sometimes people aren’t given the option of keeping quiet; they must either lie or be silent and revealed. If someone asks a male avatar “Are you a guy in Real Life?” and the person is female in Real Life (or more confusingly still, transgendered!), then just refusing to answer the question or saying “I prefer to keep my RL private” is usually going to be taken as an alternate version of “no, I’m not.” That cuts the options down to revelaing or lying, with no privacy in the middle. So if you feel people deserve privacy on these things, don’t ask those questions!
Marianne McCann. This is an old picture of her, of course. As you can see, Marianne’s avi is a child, too. |
(I tried hopping into a male avatar for about an hour once. I stayed only with friends while doing it, and everyone knew who was really behind the wheel. I actually didn’t find it appealing *at all*, but I understand there may be a greater appeal for men trying on female avatars. After all, we are prettier than they are! With the exception of the occasional Orlando Bloom, of course.)
I’ve sometimes seen people confuse “honesty” with “disclosure,” and this is a mistake. For someone to decline to reveal something about themselves is not a lie; it’s privacy. So a 50-year-old Asian male who goes around in a 20-year-old Caucasian female avi is not lying by doing that. That’s bending genders and ages, not bending truth! Of course he *could* lie about it too, and that’s a different matter.
Maus Ennui. Like Fenix, a close match in both lives. |
Marital status is a more serious issue in some ways because many people (raises hand) don’t want to have any part in someone else’s marital infidelity. If you have an open marriage or are legally separated or what have you, that’s fine by me (though not by everybody!). But otherwise it’s a problem because people can get enticed into an immoral act without knowing it’s immoral. (That is, if the sex itself isn’t immoral by their standard, but cheating is.)
As to appearance and age, Second Life avatars are clearly designed with the assumption that they’ll be relatively young and relatively svelte. I would be happy for my avatar to look my actual age (mid-thirties) instead of the default 25-or-so we all seem to look, but I don’t know any way to age myself attractively in Second Life. And it’s even harder, presumably, when everyone else has physically idealized, young avatars. Well, almost everyone! I’ve seen older and heavier avatars very occasionally, but I’m not sure in those cases that they represented a closer match to their Real Life counterparts; they may just have been experimenting.
In the end, it’s probably helpful to think of Second Life as a place where it’s fun and interesting to experiment with identity. If instead we get in the habit of assuming that everyone is showing their Real Life self, I think we invite trouble, because that’s definitely not the case! At the same time, it’s hard to go wrong with honesty when you can get away with it.
^^^\ Kate /^^^
flwrbabe said:
Interesting
I like to think that I have nothing to hide. My avatar is probably maybe a size 8, when I’m like a size 12, but since there’s nothing to measure by in SL, I’m kinda just winging it. Otherwise, I studied my face and tried to match the facial structure as closely as possible. I don’t hide who I am in real life and have attended several SL-centric functions in the last few months, posting pictures after each of them.
I guess I can understand wanting to be something you can’t be in real life, or express yourself creatively. It’s their right to do so. The hiding of marital status seems totally wrong to me, though. They should be ashamed.
~moo Money
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Anonymous said:
I use my second life as a second life. it’s my chance to do and be whatever I want. My avatar is me,idealized. I just try to treat other people with respect. I do respect the choice to live your SL any way you want to.
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brace_coral said:
“I’ve sometimes seen people confuse “honesty” with “disclosure,” and this is a mistake.”
Amen to that. If you have the sense to be safe online, being in VR is a “lie” from the getgo.
There are very few people online (and those I’ve know for years) who know anything indepth about my RL. I frolic and play and mess around and have a great time in VR.
I never assume the nickname, appearance, gender etc are anything like the “person behind the wheel”. For some people to assume that sort of thing – its asking for trouble.
For me I never bother, because I don’t really care. Mostly I care about how that person deals with me – and I suppose this sentiment would be apt, being what day it is today – “judging people by the content of their characters and not by the color of their skin.”
So our “skins” are our avatars – whatever shape, form, animal, gender, robot etc we choose to portray.
You have such thoughtful, interesting and probing posts and points of view, and I’m glad I found yer blog as I was sailing along on the oceans of the web ๐
Me & Brace
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Anonymous said:
Sam
I am a student at Ryerson University.
I was wondering if it would be possible to link to this journal entry in a project I am doing on Identity and Second Life.
I would fully source and credit you.
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kateamdahl said:
Re: …
I definitely agree with you…but not everyone does! As far as I can tell, people who object to having an avatar of a different gender or age or race or appearance make a distinction between things that are obviously not true about a person (like having the tail of a fish) and things that might or might not be true about a person (like being 20-something years old). And how you and I may feel about the matter won’t persuade someone who feels differently! However much we may want people to share our point of view, a lot of people won’t, so we’ll have to deal with those people one way or another, whether it means avoiding them, confronting them, or just handling problems as they come up.
And while I might disagree with some of the reasons for thinking that way, there are at least a few that I can really understand. For instance, when someone doesn’t want to get romantically involved with another person unless they can be sure that person’s First Life gender matches their Second Life gender, or people who don’t want to promote the Barbie Ideal any more than it has been promoted.
Where do you like to spend time when you’re a mermaid? Mermism is wonderful! ๐
^^^\ Kate /^^^
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Anonymous said:
Privacy and gender
To make it simple, if you care about the RL/FL gender of who you are frolicking with in SL then you should not be frolicking with anyone you do not know in RL/SL.
Second life is like a breath of fresh air for some like myself who have had to toe the line in being a responsible person. You see, I like girly things. I like shopping for womens clothes. I like flirting and I really enjoy sex as a women.
The problem is I am a guy who has never had a gay relationship and likely never will. I do not imagine myself as a guy having sex with a guy. I imagine myself as a women having sex with a guy, or a women.
That imagination has worked pretty well in RL in my relationships with the two women I have been married to, (sequentially), and the two girl friends I had while outside of the wedded state.
I would probably have been happier if I had a sex change operation when I was young but when I was young was quite a while ago and those things were not even mentioned back then.
I have a daughter who is married and she probably does not know about my inner self other than by how I have supported her and helped her through her life.
My present wife and I care deeply about each other but our sex life is non existent. My wife has a bad disk in her neck. So bad she has to put cold packs on it every night. She said sex of the really good hot kind would likely kill her due to the motion involved. I have told her to let me know if she ever felt up for it but it has been a couple of years now and so far she has not given me the word that sex is a possibility.
I always enjoyed masturbating while imagining myself as a women being made love to by a man.
Along comes Second Life. I can be a women in appearance and my mental nature was already at least half female. I don’t care for sports. I do not care who is stronger or more athletic. I do not like to compete against others to gain advantages. I drive like an old lady, and always have. I love looking at pictures of pretty women, both clothed and unclothed, not because I lust after their bodies but because I would have liked to have had a body like that.
You are all thinking I am pretty messed up and you are probably correct.
The thing is, I have had several flings in SL and as far as I know the males and females I was with never guessed my FL/RL gender.
I do state in my profile that I am not a beautiful young women in FL/RL. I leave it at that. I have found that a lot of folks do not seem to read the profiles of others. I do not state I am a man in FL/RL but the implication is there for those who are phobic about having virtual sex with a man whose avatar is female. Those who don’t care can choose to believe I am an older unattractive female.
Now to the gist of this comment. It is my mind that is engaged in the virtual sex. I can type really well, and I care about encouraging my partners. I tell them how much I am enjoying their attentions. I can even type one handed which often becomes necessary part way through the tryst. I try to give as much or more than I am getting.
My main goal is to live the life I might have lived in FL/RL if I had been born 30 or 40 years later. The shopping for female clothing is just plane fun. The shoes, the dresses, the underthings. I tried to make my avatar a bit less like a barbie doll and more like a women. The avatars are impossibly thin and tall. That can be adjusted and I have.
My main concern is the time I spend in SL having sex. I need to limit myself so it does not cut into my sleep and other responsibilities. I am hoping once the thrill runs out I may be able to work it into a more limited regular schedule. I am also considering bringing my wife into SL as a female friend and lover. We used to cyber long ago when we were separated and I think she might enjoy being a beautiful young woman again. We will see.
There is so much more to be said on this issue. I know there are transgendered who use SL as a haven. Please be kind to those you may meet. Really, they did not ask to be the way they are. They are coping as best they can. If I had been born later I would probably be one of them.
Peace
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kateamdahl said:
Re: Privacy and gender
Thanks for sharing your story here. I can’t think of a thing to add, but I’m glad you were willing to talk about your Second Life here to broaden our horizons. ๐
^^^\ Kate /^^^
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Anonymous said:
Gender bending in SL
It’s been quite a while since you posted this original thread, but the issues you discuss are still relevant today.
I’ve been involved in Second Life for years now and from day one, I’ve bent gender. I’m a hetero male and happily married in my first life, I don’t engage in sex play in Second Life (though I did experiment a little in the early days), and while FL me is generally content with life, there is a large part of me that doesn’t get to express itself well there.
It’s becoming more and more acceptable in society for women to act in what used to be stereotypically “masculine” ways — wear pants, work on cars, be sports fans, aggressively compete in the workplace, and so forth. If you are female with a strong masculine side, you’ve got options in RL to express that side with little social risk.
But what of males with strong feminine sides? We get villified. Do you want to be pretty rather than ruggedly handsome, have no urge to compete in the workplace, hate sports, love womens’ clothes, and so on? Tough! In the real world, you face the risk of social ostracism at the least and physical assault, even murder, at the worst if you give that side of you free rein.
In Second Life, you can indulge this side in relative safety — or could if people wouldn’t rudely keep asking you that no-win question “Are you really a woman?” For the longest time, I dreaded that question — if I answer honestly, I destroy the illusion I psychologically need in order to satisfy my inner feminine self and I strongly risk the social ostracism that I’d get in RL, yet if I want to maintain that illusion I am forced to lie because as you have pointed out, declining to answer inevitably is translated as answering “no”. Even explaining that the question is a no-win scenario for the person being asked it (even if you are a woman RL playing a woman in SL, as answering yes can open you up for stalking or other awkwardness*) doesn’t get any better results.
So….much as I hate to do it, these days I lie. I’m honest about many aspects of my RL, but when it comes to matters of gender I just flip them around and run with it. Though increasingly, voice chat is becoming the new “no-win” question; if you refuse to pop onto voice or tell folks you don’t have a mic (completely honestly in my case), they again assume you’re male playing female with all the same consequences I mention above.
When I talk to someone in SL, I make no assumptions about who and what they are RL — it’s none of my business. I accept tham as they present themselves, looking at their SL selves as a presentation of the personality behind it, an expression of who and what a person _psychologically_ is, which is far more important than whatever genetic hand they were dealt in the real world. Six foot nine tall, busty and lean? Fine. RL, you’re probably not, and I doubt your hair is that shade of red either, but it doesn’t matter — I’ll treat you as a tall svelte redhead. Show up female one day and male the next? Fine, you’re female so long as you look female and male when you look male. You run around as a four-legged fox? Okay, you’re a fox. Point is, even people who try to model their SL as closely as possible on their RL, not a one of them can resist the urge to shed a few pounds, clear up their complexion a little, or otherwise ever so slightly idealize their second selves. SL is about the mental, not the physical, and anyone who attempts to tie SL back to RL is risking a shock no matter who they’ve been chatting with. There are things more important in play in SL than peoples’ RL traits, and I wish folks would just accept that no one comes to a virtual reality without some kind of emotional or physical mask on and just deal with people at face value there. SL is not and has never been real except as an emotional landscape — let people express what they need or want to express and enjoy!
========
*The stalking thing is speaking from experience; I’ve had to change alts to escape particularly agressive stalkers who thought I was female RL.
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