In Second Life, there is a proposed voluntary gender verification service in their JIRA that will allow residents to optionally verify their real life gender. Why? Because in the world, lesbians are considering it a form of “cyber-rape” that the woman they might be in a virtual relationship with might not actually be female in real life.
I think there are decent points to argue on both sides of this, but I have to say that in general – I am against it. Look at this real-life example:
Angie Zapata, a transgender teenager from Colorado was murdered because a man she was intimate with found out that she was biologically born as male. This man was found guilty of a hate crime for being prejudice against Angie for being transgender. His defense claimed that he was decieved and that she should have been obligated to tell him beforehand. This fact is simply not true in the real world. There are no laws whatsoever that claim that you have to disclose your biological sex to someone before sleeping with them.
So why should there be one in a virtual world? There have been many examples of people who have been able to explore different cultures and lifestyles by assuming a role in a digital society that is different than theirs in real life. I have never, under any circumstance, seen avatars in a virtual world as direct representations of their real life self. Instead, I’ve seen them as humans interacting in a virtual world as who they want to be represented as. It’s one of the beautifully intriguing things about virtual worlds for me, is the fantastical sense of a self that you may or may not resemble in actuality.
Lesbians saying that a man representing himself as a woman qualifies as rape is mostly congruent with a man in real life saying that his girlfriend representing themselves as their non-biological sex is rape. Gender is NOT binary, and is not necessarily inline with physical sexual organs (“sex”). The sex of a human being is not necessarily their gender. And in a virtual world, it’s all about gender. We can represent ourselves however we would like, and the physical parts in our shorts shouldn’t matter.
If we start with gender, what is next? Race verification to attend a virtual African-American only club? Nationality verification before you can live and interact with an Asian society? Picture verification to make sure that if I’m playing a short, skinny, adorable female avatar that I might actually BE short and skinny on the other side of the screen?
And, the hot topic at the moment is “what if the person in Second Life is transgender in real life?” What is their ID doesn’t state they are female, but they live their life as female? The majority of trangender people are NOT transsexual, they haven’t had a surgery, and their birth certificates and ID’s have not been changed. They wouldn’t be able to verify the identity they play in the world. Sure, it’s “voluntary” but that still would be another exclusion for them from actually being the gender they believe they are. It’s demoralizing, discouraging, and it happens enough in the real world.
If you choose to enter into relationships with anyone represented by pixels on a screen, you should never presume that they resemble who they are in real life.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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If you fall for someone in a virtual world, you're probably falling for their personality, not the pixels that represent them. If the person you've entered into a virtual relationship with has won your heart, why does it matter what gender they actually are? You've obviously fallen for that person because of his or her personality, his or her soul, rather than his or her physical appearance. The person might be faking his or her gender, but I find it unlikely he or she can successfully fake his or her personality.
If you're a female and the female avatar you're “virtually” in love with happens to be navigated by a man, that doesn't mean you've been cyber-raped or duped. It seems to me that someone willing to enter into a virtual relationship with another person in a virtual world, if gender is really important to him or her, should determine if the person behind the avatar really is a man/woman/cat girl.
Nevertheless, it's a very interesting topic. I don't have a problem with the gender verification since it's voluntary. If it was mandatory, I might think differently.
I was greatly relieved to see that that JIRA was closed by Linden Lab with a “Won't Finish” action – essentially a corporate veto – after garnering all of one supporting vote (from notorious gadfly Prokofy Neva, presumably).
The proposal reeks of the Gay Panic Defense – and for anybody that upset about the physical sex of the avatar they might be dating – easy enough to ask for voice or webcam, seriously!
If you want to move a relationship from the digital to the atomic world, and A/S/L matters to you, ask for verifications. But really, the digital world is its own place, and best taken on its own terms: treat people as who or what they present themselves as, and make no assumptions about what physical person might be behind the avatar. Not so complicated.
So, if these lesbians get into a relationship with another female, that plays a female character and is “gender-verified”, finds out their partner identifies and lives as “male”, would they still think that constitutes as “cyber-rape”?
All in all, I think it's a weak system. Especially for this where you are essentially role-playing a character, verification of any kind is useless. Unless you are going to generate avatars from the identity of the person playing (that is, not allowing anyone to choose, but generate it based on data, which would be ever-changing) you can never know for sure that who you are talking to is actually who they are.
I guess it all boils down to that you can never be entirely sure who someone else is, unless you can read their mind. But if we could all do that, I bet the world would be an entire different place, not necessarily for the better either.
- SG
P.S. Technically it's not rape unless something physically entered the body
Touchy subject, very much so even. I think games and “Real life” should be very much seperated.
The real gender of the person behind the avatar doesn't matter much. As somebody else already pointed out, it's the personality you virtually fall for. In “real life” however I think it's different and I would expect anybody to tell me they used to be male before starting a relationship with me and would feel well betrayed if they didn't.
Not that I condone the killing actually, that's a couple of bridges too far. a major domestic argument would be more then enough. (No, not the violent kind. Just lots of shouting :p ) What happens after that would all depend I guess.
Very nice post, and I definitely agree. I think, as you and some other posters alluded, that virtual worlds are about being what you want, not what you are. I don't see that as a separation between real life and the virtual world so much as virtual worlds being a fantastically liberating and transformative tool. I'd hate to see that changed.
Cuppy, if they tell me they are a girl online, I will believe they are a girl unless i am in a roleplaying server where you are forced to act in character at all times. It doesn't matter if they think they are a girl, if we meet face-to-face and I find they have lied, and they are a guy that can't be excused by “it's just fluid gender roles.”
Its about deception, and not mentioning you are transgendered is a deception if you let a relationship progress to intimate conduct. Some guys may be ok if their lover is transgendered, some won't. In both cases its not something like saying you are blond when you are brunette, its something that can deeply challenge the person and they have to make peace with it or not.
I play female toons in my MMO, and I am scrupulous about the “speech” where I have to tell guys I am a guy. Even if i felt i was a woman, the reality when you meet me is that I am not, and its not fair that I am not open about how i feel as it relates to my sex. I have to do this because it I were unethical, it would be easy as hell to seduce guys on the net by playing the part of a woman for whatever reason-be it emotional needs or using sex as a means to get swag.
It's about deception, not about gender theory, and gender theory should never be used to sanction deception.
Dblade said exactly what I tried to say but couldn't find the right words for.
Upcoming: You must beam to the Second Life offices and demonstrate basic tricorder skills to RP a Starfleet officer.
You must have been born with integral fur, tail, and muzzle to be a Furry in Second Life.
Only people in possession of real-life piloting licenses will be allowed to operate Second Life aircraft. (I mean, c'mon, we all saw “Catch Me If You Can”, right?)
Further measures are in the works.
The sex of a human being is not necessarily their gender. And in a virtual world, it’s all about gender. We can represent ourselves however we would like, and the physical parts in our shorts shouldn’t matter.”
I agree 100%.
I also agree with those who say it's about deception. They are also 100% correct. The problem is that they don't go far enough. No one should deceive another person, but everyone has a responsibility not to be deceived.
Gender theory isn't being used to sanction deception. Rather, it's the reality that truth is a mutual endeavor. If you chose to believe that when someone says they are a girl they are a girl, that is your free choice. No one forced that choice upon you and there isn't anything intrinsically right about such a choice. Truth is not the default. All you are doing dblade is trying to defend yourself with the old cop out that “I didn't evade the truth, the truth evaded me.” Farking BS. You both have a proactive responsibility for the truth. If you refuse to aggressively seek out the truth, don't expect me to have any sympathy when you whine about being deceived. You were deceived and it's your own damn fault.
should still be an option to .. I'm so sick of female impersonating Hetero men.. and it is traumatizing..
I totally agree with Jennifer, quote: ‘If you fall for someone in a virtual world, you’re probably falling for their personality’ …for me that stands true for visual and age.. BUT.. to find out that the one you fell for is same sex would be a shocker (for lack of a better word, am sure I think of a good one once this is posted…). Finding out if someone is the sex ‘advertised’ is just about impossible. Even voicing can be manipulated via voice distortion software. Gender verification? I would do it…
There seems to be two types of players. Those that understand the concept of fantasy and those that don’t. It must be very confusing to live in SL as yourself whats the use?
I think that the problem is that some people want to make second life a kind of extension of real life, I mean they want second life to be real life in a sort of cartoons. But this was not the objective of the creators of the game, I think. Second life is another world, based on imagination. The argument about the transgenders is more important that some people would like to make us believe: they say that transgenders are a minority but, if transgenders are a minority, aren’t lesbians (if all of them agree with the gender verification matter, which we don’t know) a minority too? As far as I can see, heterosexual men and women haven’t asked for gender verification. They don’t seem to have the same problem. Is it important for everyone here? And what about homosexual men? Are they scared of the possibility that the man they’re in love with in sl could be a woman in real life? Asking for gender verification just because some women (not all) are searching other women in real life (if not, why do they worry about the people behind the screens) can destroy the main principles of the game: we have all the right to be whatever we want in this world of imagination and believe it (and we believe it better when everyone believes it too). I was disappointed once when I discovered that the character I was in love with was a fifty-year-old woman in real life instead of a twenty-two-year old one. But it was my fault: why forcing her to tell me how old she really was in real life? I was in love with the character (a mixture of the avatar and the imagined soul of the person who was behind the screen: not the person himself/herself). This is something some naif people forget. In second life, we are all characters (everyone invents something), and characters must be coherent and credible, that’s all. There are good and bad players.
And one more thing: the man with a female avatar who managed to marry that woman everybody is talking about was very credible as a woman, wasn’t he? Doesn’t it mean that men and women are not so different in the mind after all?