Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - June 2015 | Page 74

tivities in SL. Verification is also
need for age purposes in those
instances.
Of course verification processes can be faked by the most
devious of humans in order to
enable an avatar to engage in
activities that the ‘real’ human
operator desires. It may well be
that that extreme effort goes on
in some cases. But the average
human usually doesn’t bother,
and writing that they have been
voice verified may well be a ruse
to enable them to slip under the
average viewer’s radar.
The opportunities for people to
explore how ‘the other half lives’
in terms of sex and gender roles
are unparalleled in immersive
environments such as SL. I distinguish here, as is usual in sex
and gender studies between
sex, the biological facts of being
male and female (but yes, I know
there are multiple variations on
that these days too, however I
will choose to remain very simple here and only refer to male
and female), and gender, which
is the collection of behaviours
associated with being female or
male.
Some stereotypic gendered behaviours are dressing in pink as
a girl and blue for a boy, or wearing long hair to indicate femininity and short spiky hair to indicate masculinity, for example.

74 NU VIBEZ & ROLEPLAY GUIDE MAGAZINE

So by using an avatar of the
opposite sex in SL to one’s RL
sex, it is possible to experience,
at least as far as a virtual reality
(VR) environment allows, what
a person of the opposite sex experiences in RL. But, being VR,
the experience is never precisely identical to RL, and hopefully
all users realise this. Of equal importance is the realisation that
behind every avatar is a real human, of whatever sex or gender
role behaviour set.
If, let’s say, a male user is seeking to gain a more full experience of a slice of life as a female,
then they may take their female
avatar and hang around a shopping mall and try chatting to
the ‘girls’ (other female avatars)
there while shopping, getting a
feel for the social life of females.
However if more than half of the
‘girls’ are in fact fellows, then the
experience is rather unreal in
more than one sense.
So at least for the sake of clarity about one’s individual SL experience, having some reliable
knowledge of the real sex of the
human behind the avatar could
come in handy. Next time I will
explore the more emotional
and sexual side of this dilemma.

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