True confessions

Tatsuko Hayashida is one of my closest friends in Second Life. I've written about her in this blog. Now she wants me to write again, for a specific reason.

She wants to tell everyone that she's a biological male in first life. I thought I was going to give gender a rest for a bit, and go back to writing about discoveries in SL or fashion or something less weighty, but Tats has a need, and I want to help her.

I've known for a long time that Tats is male in first life. Way back when, she came out to a small number of friends. She says she's coming out to everyone now because she wants to reveal the real her. "I am two-spirited, TG [transgender], and bisexual, and that's not only what I am but also the foundation of who I am," she wrote in her SL profile. "If I'm not accepted or treated fairly because of this, so be it."

People who cross the gender line in SL have to figure out how to navigate the waters while remaining true to themselves. If SL is about imagination and possibilities that cannot be reached in first life, then there should be no problem in a biological female being a male in SL or a biological male being female in SL. SL is not a game. It's an alternate reality, a "metaverse." It is a world of imagination, at least for now (Linden Lab seems to be trying to back off from that, sadly), but it is also a world of real people with real feelings. And there is no general agreement as to what the "right thing" is in cases like this.

T-girls and T-guys feel that they are expressing their real selves in SL. For some at least, confessing to their biological sex would be providing misleading or incomplete information, information that would likely be misinterpreted, because biological sex and gender identity are two different things. Gender identity isn't something chosen. It's something that happens in the brain and the body. It's innate, like sexual orientation, and it's not either/or. Those whose gender identity differs from their biological sex deal with that fact in various ways. One way is by living their ideal life in SL, freed from the constraints of their biological first life reality. In SL, they can be who they feel they really are despite appearances to the contrary.

But no one can or should impose his or her views on others. If someone says that the biological sex of an SL lover matters, it does. For some, it matters a great deal, and there's nothing wrong with that. For others, only SL counts. What you see is what you get. And there's nothing wrong with that.

That's how it works for me. I still see Tatsuko as a beautiful girl. I did before I knew, and I did after. We have made love in the time after I knew her first life biological reality, and it didn't matter to me. Her in-world presence is what counts for me. I find this is true for other cross-gender people I know in SL. I can force myself to think of them as their first life sex, but it's not easy. It seems to come naturally to treat them as they appear in SL.

I love Tatsuko regardless of what is between her first life legs. But then, even though our relationship is between two real persons, it's also expressed entirely through our SL of imagination.

I'm not unique, but I don't know how common my view is. I know many disagree. And Tats herself is feeling that she has been deceptive. I think she might be flogging herself excessively, but she feels the way she does. So she has now chosen the path of being female in SL but publicizing her first life biological sex in her SL profile, right on the first tab. People who know her and people who meet her will have to decide for themselves which is reality for them. Maybe it's both.

Freedom tastes of reality

Yoiks! I got distracted in that other posting. I asked the question—why are there seemingly so many guys whose primary avatar is female?—but didn't really even attempt to answer! I appreciate the comments that entry has already received. Comments always provide additional insights. Maybe there will be more insights from this one.

I already touched on one reason that some men play women. It's more social than sexual. For all the talk of male bonding, it's women who bond more easily. Women tend to see each other as allies. They can form exclusive cliques, of course, but in general they are more welcoming. Women can form friendships at any point in their lives. For men, not so much. Heterosexual men might have other men they hang out with—go to bars, watch sports, shoot hoops, things like that—but they are rarely close to other men unless they happen to have known someone for a long time, like an old buddy from high school or university. Women can more easily get close to other women, and can share much more intimate things than men can with each other. When it comes to friendships, woman are freer than men.

Another reason is that women, much more than men in this society, can be overtly sexy. They are allowed, even encouraged, to put their wares on display. It's like the opposite of the situation among birds, where males tend to have the brighter plumage and are the ones that "strut their stuff" (and females do the choosing). Among humans, with some exceptions, that's the domain of women. Women can strive to look beautiful. Men get to be strong silent types. They can be rugged and handsome, if they're lucky, but they're supposed to do that without making much effort. If they make too much effort, that's not manly. So here again, women are allowed more freedom than men.

(Incidentally, this freedom to be sexual is very powerful. I think it's one of the reasons for the oppressive patriarchy, and why in some societies women are forbidden to make any kind of display. A woman can bring the strongest man to his knees just by being herself. Desire can sap the will out of the toughest guy. This leads to men both wanting and fearing women, which of course leads to a desire to control. You know the rest.)

Second Life, of course, helps with this freedom to preen and strut. SL is loaded with "slutwear." But it's not just that. Designers also create very beautiful clothes, not just overtly sexy ones. Female avatars can as easily look beautiful and sophisticated as hot and sexy. The range of female clothing is astounding, and new designs and designers keep on showing up. For men, the choice is limited, although not as limited as many think. Still, just as in first life, guys don't have the clothing options that women do. Women have the freedom to look beautiful, sexy, sweet, pretty, or any and all of the above. The range for women even includes most of the range for men.

It's clear from comments I have read that being female in SL is liberating in these ways and more. For some, being female allows them the freedom to open themselves up, to be vulnerable, to learn about their own emotional range. They don't get this in their first lives. The fantasy of SL, the allowance for imagination, lets them escape the chains of first life male existence. They seem to be better men for it. And some question whether they have been repressing something in themselves.

What we're seeing in SL is that many more men than might have been imagined, when given the opportunity for a fantasy existence, choose to be female. This is extraordinary. It's telling us things about what men want when given the chance. It's telling us about what is lacking in men's lives in the our current cultures. It's like a grand social experiment, although without controls. Still, someone in academia should probably study what's going on here. No doubt there is much more to learn.

Men who are women who are men

It's another one of those periods when nothing really blog-worthy has happened. You don't want to hear about yet another fun night at the Velvet, I'm sure! But I'm working on some stories for PixelPulse, and that always gets me thinking about social issues in Second Life.

This time, it's one of the big SL questions: why are there seemingly so many guys whose primary avatar is female? No one knows for sure how many, but it seems there are more than a few. I'm getting some interesting insights from some of the comments on my article on gender and integrated voice on the various reasons this might be so.

I don't doubt that a certain percentage of men playing women are doing it for kicks. I've met some. Men tend to view SL as a game, and being a female avatar would just be one aspect of game playing. Apparently, men have done it in online war games for years because of certain strategic advantages. In SL, men being female for kicks seem mainly to want sex, sometimes as escorts but often girl on girl. It's certainly obvious from first life that women, for the most part, control if and when they have sex and, if they want, can have as much sex as they want. Being female in SL brings the same advantage. Men might be the initiators, but it's women who say yes or no.

Of course, at least sometimes, the guy looking for hot girl-on-girl sex is having sex with another guy looking for hot girl-on-girl sex. Maybe the guys looking for hot action might keep this in mind. Or maybe they'd rather pretend it's not so.

Men playing women for kicks are sometimes called "transgendered." This is a misappropriation of the term. These men have no desire actually to be women in first life. They are simple doing a bit of role playing. Even though there might be some undertones for some of these guys that they're not admitting to themselves, for the most part we're not talking about transgendered men. There needs to be another term for these men, because it muddies the water.

Actual first life transgender male-to-female (MTF) people are another group who often play women in SL. I have spoken with many in the course of working on articles for PixelPulse. For them, being a female in SL is no game. Some are transsexual women in transition, at various stages, so it only makes sense for them to be female in SL. But many are MTF non-op transgenders. These would be biological males who feel themselves to be wholly or partially female but, for various reasons, are not transitioning. For them, SL is like a dream come true. They can live a life that is not possible in FL, but only if they live in stealth.

I've found an interesting in-between category. This would be a guy who is not transgendered but who finds playing a female avatar to be compelling. He doesn't want to be a woman in first life, but very much does in SL, not to have hot sex but simply because women in SL have more interesting lives—better social lives, more and better clothing choices, more opportunities. SL, unlike FL, is a woman's world. It's hard for a male avatar to demonstrate that he's a genuine person and not just someone looking to pick up a girl for sex. As in FL, the cool guys suffer for the sins of the numerous male asshats.

The influx into SL of "augmentationists"—those who consider SL to be an extension of FL—threatens to upset the equilibrium. Augmentationists always want to know the FL biological sex of other people, especially women. They abhor cross-gender role play, regardless of the reason for it. They do not distinguish among the different reasons for being cross-gender. To them, it's all deception.

Not many will cry over the hot-sex role players being "outed." They will just have to go back to being guys and taking their chances in the meat market, just like in FL. But the outing of transgenders, and even of the sincere non-transgenders, will be tragic. An opportunity that in unavailable in FL, that was unavailable until SL, will be lost. Not to get melodramatic, but at least one suicide will be the result. And many others will be crushed, lost, and depressed. Some might create new avatars and try again. Some will leave SL.

I sympathize with those who have been deceived, who have been having sex with someone who suddenly "outs" himself. That would be pretty traumatic, and something to be avoided if possible. But you can't have certainty in SL any more than in FL. You can try, and in so doing curb the freedom of decent people. But it's a bad idea. The level of control that attempts to achieve certainty is fascism.

It remains to be seen how prevalent augmentationism will become. Mitch Kapor might want to erase the distinction between SL and FL, but many long-time residents do not. "Your world. Your imagination." Many take that as an opportunity to create a parallel universe, a better world, a world of positive imagination. We have to see if the augmentationists have the staying power that the immersionists have already demonstrated. Whatever Mr. Kapor wants, he doesn't control what goes on in SL. The residents do. Unless the plug is pulled.

Rebel, Rebel

You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl

I recently received my copy of Second Life: The Official Guide. I'm sure I'm going to find much that is of interest in there. I've been in world only since the end of July 2006, and there is still a great deal I do not know. I must say, however, that I am disappointed with the simplistic treatment given to the issue of gender.

As you might expect, in my role as a counsellor, I run into people who have gender issues. It's one reason people come to talk to me. And one thing I know from having spoken to people and from having done my homework in this area is that it's not as simple as either female or male. So to say flat out that those whose avatars are of the opposite sex as their First Life selves have to come out to their friends, and that's that, seems to me to betray a lack of understanding of the issue.

The term transgender is very broad and encompasses several different gender-identity phenomena, so without further specification, it's not terribly useful. But it does get us started with the notion that not all people see themselves as having the gender that is assumed to go along with their biological sex. A biological male might see himself as female, or both male and female, or neither, or some combination of the two, and you might never know it by looking at him. Same for a biological female. Transsexual is a subset of transgender; not everyone whose gender identification is outside the norm undergoes sex-reassignment surgery (SRS).

After films like Boys Don't Cry, you'd think that Second Life would be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Now, no one likes to be deceived, and most people do not like being deceptive. I'm sure that among those who participate in SL using an avatar that does not correspond to their biological sex, there are some who do it to deceive and some who do it as a lark. But among those who choose an avatar of the opposite sex, there are some, perhaps even many, who do so very purposefully for one reason: because they feel themselves to be that sex, wholly or partially, yet for various reasons cannot live their First Lives as a person of that sex.

What if a man in FL goes through the full change, complete with SRS, and the result is good enough that she has no trouble passing? Is she forever obligated to tell sex partners and other intimates that she was once a biological male? Does it mean that she is not a "real" woman because she grew up biologically male? In SL, if someone has the right personality and commitment, "passing" physically is no problem (the beauty of the pixelated sex change). Is a person who is committed to living as that avatar and successfully "passes" still not a real woman or man?

There are openly transgendered people in SL. If they want to be treated as transgendered, that's not a problem. But if they want to be treated as the gender they visualize for themselves, forget it. A female avatar who comes out is no longer female but transgendered. A male avatar who comes out is no longer male but transgendered. Complete acceptance as a genuine male or female by one's friends? Well, maybe, and maybe not. To the SL world at large, not a chance.

So there's the choice. They can be honest and despised or treated like freaks, just as in First Life. They can come out to their friends and, in all likelihood, no longer be treated fully as the gender they see themselves as, except perhaps by an enlightened few. That is the price of honesty. They might as well give up the fantasy and stay in FL. Sadly, in order to live the cross-gender life they can't live in FL, they have to keep a lot to themselves and perhaps even deceive their friends (if that's how they see it). That is the price of living fully as a person of the opposite sex. They have to pass.

It's not a happy choice. It's not an easy choice. And it's a lot more complicated than the SL book makes it out to be.

Talkies

It was inevitable. The silent film era was never destined to last forever. It was only a matter of time before someone invented synchronized sound recording and made it practical. For many silent film stars, it was a career ender. For others, and for many who had never worked in silents, it was a new opportunity. Movies would never be silent again.

The implications were parodied to great effect in the movie Singin' in the Rain. Gene Kelly's sexy silent-screen co-star turns out to have a horrible, squeaky voice. That cute little Debbie Reynolds has to stand behind a curtain to dub in a voice that people can stand to listen to.

So now Linden Lab is testing the integration of voice with Second Life. It was already happening in various ways, such as through the use of Skype. But now we're faced with the prospect of typed chat being replaced, or maybe complemented, by built-in voice communication.

I was fourth in with a comment on this announcement in the official Linden blog (I've since posted several more). The divisions that already exist in SL are apparent in the comments that follow. Those divisions can get pretty nasty, and misunderstanding is rampant.

For some, SL is an extension of First Life. Some of these people are in business. Some are in education. Some are just people who either have no imagination or can't be bothered to use it. Some comments even express hatred or disdain for those who do use their imaginations, who dare to be not "real," who dare to create their own world.

[Addendum: as Mordecai angrily but correctly points out, not all FL extenders fit into these categories. I know this is so. I was not intending this list to be comprehensive, and I was mainly reacting to the disdain and ridicule I was reading in the official blog.]

For others, SL is a way to live a life that they can't live in FL. It's a way to learn about themselves and others, a way to see just how far imagination can take them. It's a way to be free of a FL that might be fine but limiting or might even be intolerable.

I have a First Life already. It's a good life, for the most part, but it is what it is. Why would I want more of the same?

I'm thinking that the "utopia" of Second Life was never unified anyway. If there is any utopia, it's because there is room enough for an extreme diversity to exist without too much confrontation. Voice vs. typing will simply be another thing that divides people, which is kind of too bad but what can you do. Hopefully there will continue to be enough typers so that we will not become marginalized. Hopefully, not too many friendships will be broken.

See you in chat. Imagine that! You can if you try.