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Lila

Not sure if it's me you're asking. But I'll answer anyway. Oskar doesn't need any penis LOL. he's manly enough anyway.

Lexxi Gynoid

Yes, and it even matched (shudders softly at unmatching). Rarely used. Want it?

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Summer

I was just asking for curiosity sake and fun.

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Aodhan McDunnough

A better approach might be for a person to select options to flag the avatar. The options would be male, female, genderless, random.

1. The flags would not be fixed. You can change it anytime. A resident would choose the settings based on how they want the avatar treated at any particular time.
2. The flag set can be an additional avatar element (like the skin, shape, etc) that defaults to the gender of the avatar.
3. Different aspects get separate flags

• Default walk

• Sit poses

• Default sounds

• etc.

4. Random is detected not as random but male/female since it's a client-side switching that is transmitted back to the server for broadcast. Optionally there can be further settings to select what "random" will detect as.

What this means is that you can have a male avatar that can have a male default walk, but sit like a female, and have a gender-neutral set of default sounds.

More humorously the default walk can be switchable automatically by your client if you select the "random" setting.

Here we have a possible solution to gender determination without most the risk of discrimination ... all the settings are mutable anytime.

The discrimination that cannot be eliminated by this approach involves history. If for example someone decides to ban anyone who has ever been detected by the sim a male avatar with a female default walk regardless of current settings, then that's that. That discrimination however cannot stop this visitor from having an alt with the correct settings from returning.

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Karl Herber

Those are a really good set of ideas, Aodhan

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cala

Welcome to SLU, Lila, and I really appreciate the considerate way you've approached the question. As a few others have mentioned, the Dimorphic way in which you phrased it does leave some of us out. There are plenty of RL transgendered and Intersex people in SL. Don't feel bad - I get caught in this by official forms and documents every day: my Passport, my Drivers License, tax history, and employment records all provide only M/F as options.
I don't consider myself prejudiced against- well, not in this thread anyhow- but yes, Hermaphroditic (*wave*) and other-gendered or non-gendered avatars are definitely here. I do like Aodhan's suggestion, but to suggest an alternate that doesn't feel quite as dehumanizing, I'd like to see "Male/Female/Other" as the 3 choices for avatar sex, especially if it's going to be an LSL call that animators would use. How the scripter chooses to deal with the Other choice is up to their creativity.
I'm not genderless, I'm just differently-gendered, in both SL and RL, so I can't answer your survey - I'm "none of the above".
Random (?!) as a gender animation option would be funny for about 5 minutes. I imagine an AO with a swagger, then a sashay, then scratching myself, heh. I would LOVE to see some animators put some effort into creating some "Other" AO packs and other animations (Actually, I might just work on this some with my partner, she's already working on AOs for "Full Bodied" avatars). I'm soooo sick of all the "sexy_walk" animations, ugh.
And Enough with the Pink and Blue! Bring on the Green Poseballs in furniture! And Purple!

Vaalith Jinn

Hm, In SL i play an extremely effeminate male who, in many situations, is much more feminine than most women around him.

In RL though the situation is much more complex, currently i am an effeminate male who
will, hopefully in the future, go through a MTF transition.. If i ever manage to come out to my parents.
(yes, i'm 23, and yes.. i care what they think, a bit too much)

Go figure.

Gemini

Girl in rl, girl in SL. 5 people I know in SL, know or have met me in rl, so they know I iz a reel gurl..

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Starry Goss

Male playing mostly with male furry and genderless avs that don't look like the gorilla Ken newbie av. I can remember only one human av I have, a wizard. Got plenty of inanimate ones like a glowy ball, cube and atom. I've finally picked one av for my profile picture, the genderless Crux.

bilbo99 emu

Option 5.

Day one in SL I really had no idea I was going to be more than an hour total. I saw the m/f option and thought what the heck, if I gotta follow an ass it may as well be a nice one. Sheesh! SL was like a rebirth. I was hooked. I brought my fiancee and two friends into SL so reverted to true gender.

Some while later I created Emma to further investigate this strange new phenomenon. Later, came Inigo and Lorna, one due to LL not authorising one but subsequently repairing her
They all came 'out' at the Forum Cartel 'Alt Party' at the beginning of the year. They were never very closely guarded secrets, Emma with my RL female friends female avie both being dancers at the same club last year. All my avies are me. Very little roleplay and never a lie.

Bilbo is the real, real me for spending time with my Morgaine, my RL fiancee. The others, my escapees, my experiments, my alter egos and sheer bloddy fun. And all can be seen in the Style thread, the exhibitionists!

As can be testified in that thread, *my* girls had larger than usual heads btw!

/me wanders off muttering about Lexxi offering a secondhand penis.

Lexxi Gynoid

It was used just twice! Hardly used! Great deal it is too. Course, I don't think it is transfer, so I can offer you a picture.

Quiplash

When I first started in SL, I had all male avatars (I'm a man btw).
But since January 2008 I've created a few female alts and I'm having a blast creating characters, e.g. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse.

Po Qinan

I find this whole conversation fascinating!

I'm a straight male in RL and while my main avi is also male, I created a female alt long ago (primarily for messing with horny male noobs) but over time have pretty much switched exclusively to logging on as her.

Why? Well, I think female avis look much better in general and the clothes are nicer; I never did find male hair I thought looked good. I find more people are willing to interact with my female alt than my male avi. I'm not at all interested in SL romance or cybersex so I'm not missing anything by being female instead of male. Sure I have to let the guys who IM me know that I'm totally not interested in their advances (and I say so upfront in my profile), but overall it's just more fun. If I wanted to be my regular male asshole self, I can do that perfectly fine in RL.

And when I "came out" to the original SL friends of my male avi, most were totally accepting. In fact it's been very useful as my female friends who know my RL sex have been patient with my bizarre, poorly-thought out fashion choices and have pretty much eliminated slutgear from my inventory!

Lila

Oh I do too. I am sorry though that I missed some alternatives in the poll, that wasn't intentional.

About creating an alt of the other gender. I have a friend that did that, he's heterosexual ( as far as I know LOL) but he seemed to be more happy in his female account.

The strange thing is that he got more friends, people liked his female av a lot more than the alt he created to be more similar to his RL self. That made him quite sad.

When he finally came out to his SL friends (me and a few others already knew) It was a bad experience for him. He didn't tell me much about it, but he lost most of his friends and in the end he closed down the female account and he doesn't use the male one a lot either.

Before he closed down the the female account he asked his SL friends (those who were left after he came out) if they wanted to get in touch outside SL (chat, email or such) but most of them declined.

It's sad that people can be so cold. I mean he was still the same person as he was before they knew he was male in RL.

Beebo Brink

I've never understood that kind of reaction. What I love most about SL is that people have the freedom to be creative with their identity. The choices they make fascinate me, and I applaud them when they are revealed to be very different from a RL existence. Holding that difference against someone seems to be missing the point of SL.

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Madhu Maruti

I have a good friend in SL - one of my earliest friends actually - who is a female avatar. Some time ago she told me that she is biologically male in RL, although she is in the midst of the process of changing that (at the pre-surgery therapy stage).

I know it was a big step for her to tell me that and I'm really honored that she felt she could trust me with the information. I also know that other people have not been so understanding to her about it. But one very interesting thing she has told me is that being, and being perceived as, a woman in SL has been a big help for her in her RL process of understanding herself as a transgender person.

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Lila

Yes I agree. And this was his friends. They should have be able to see behind the av and see the real person.

I'm glad it helped her. I think that my friend had even more trouble understanding himself after the experience.

Beebo Brink

That's one of the main reasons I don't interpret hiding RL gender as "lying" to people. At a deep level, it can be more the truth than the physical sex someone was born into, and the deep-seated need to live out that inner life is threatened by telling people about the disparity.

Even for someone who isn't transgendered, there is often some kind of pull to express themselves in a different gender. Telling people you're "really" a different sex can effectively destroy the immersion, for themselves and for others.

I certainly don't mind if someone shares that information, but I never would demand it and to maintain the integrity of my own immersion, I simply don't consider it when interacting with that person inworld. It's not relevant. Period.

Arilynn

Interesting post, Beebo. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

This is a little OT, but a little on topic. I have been wondering about what is "lying" or "deceiving" in SL and what about RL should be revealed.

In my profile anyone can see that I belong to 2 SL Deaf groups (totally dead from what I can see). But I have had people IM me about music or DJs at clubs, asking my opinion, what my favorite is, etc. I usually try to give an ambiguous answer and either end the conversation or change the subject. But I don't want to deceive anyone or pretend that I am something I am not. I also don't want to get into the giant "Really? You are deaf? Really?" conversation when someone is just trying to chitchat. But I don't have it as clearly thought out as you do, I think, Beebo, and am uncertain about when being vague becomes unfairly deceptive.

Brenda Connolly

Who and what people are in RL is immaterial to me. I take all the people I meet in SL as they portray themselves. I never ask for RL info, if some is shared over time fine, I will sometimes too, depending on the relationship. I never look at the First Life tab on profiles, I won't even look at the FL Picture thread here. I like to treat Sl as a self contained world of it's own.