displaying gender-inappropriate behaviors. Girls make crafts or pretend to be princesses. Boys play with thinly disguised “toy soldiers.” Today, as the result of years of struggle, girls can express a range of behaviors. Barbie can be a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect, and she can ride a Harley Davidson. For boys, the possibilities have not changed since the 1950s. They can be superheroes, soldiers, robots, or race-car drivers, but never mermen or nurses. When boys attempt to cross the line, they quickly get the message that they have done something wrong. Research shows that parents worry much more about “sissy” behavior in boys than about “tomboy” behavior in girls. We often think of oppression as something that stems from the barrel of a gun, but it is even more insidious when reinforced by subtle messages from peers and loved ones. From the schoolyard to the workplace, the typical American man hears the same message throughout his lifetime: “Boys don’t cry.” “Stop acting like a girl.” “Be hard, not soft.” “Show no fear.” So it is mind-blowing that men choose to play women in on-line games at all. Virtual worlds are one of the few social spaces in which men can display female-coded behaviors without fear of social persecution. Perhaps so many males are playing female characters in Azeroth because this is the only place that they can get away with it. I am not suggesting that World of Warcraft — or any other multiplayer world—is an enlightened utopia. Homophobic and racist slurs fly fast and furious in the general chat channels, and the level of maturity is a few notches below that of a junior-high cafeteria.
3.12 Lewis Lumino as Salo. “This whole experiment has been very interesting,” writes Lewis. “Firstly because of how surprisingly easy it was to create this very androgynous appearance – even though Salo is wearing both a female skin and a female shape, the appearance is so far off what people expect of female that other people have assumed male. Which is what tends to happen in RL too. So even a transgendered female avatar in SL can ‘pass.’” Lewis’ blog is accessible at: luminosity2l.wordpress.com/
It is also important to acknowledge that men who experiment with female characters often rely on clichéd stereotypes. At first, they might play a hyper-sexualized character who jokes about having a bad sense of direction and becoming grumpy during “that time of the month.” However, over the course of a single year, the average gender-bending male player spends approximately 30 work weeks in a female body. It is possible—though not guaranteed—that he will encounter new insights about gender along the way. For example, he might realize that it’s not flattering to be constantly flirted with when wandering through a public area. Ultimately, these digital arenas remind us that gender is a social construction. For all of their problems, on-line games allow men to explore these issues with unparalleled freedom. As Richard Bartle, the programmer who created the first virtual world, writes: “For me, the question isn’t ‘why would people play the opposite to their real-life gender’ but ‘why wouldn’t they?’”
Reality Hackers : Extended : Emergent phenomena in virtual worlds (Gender)
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