[MUD-Dev] RE: The Price of Being Male

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 10:17:31AM -0700 in
<C12079793797A84CA92DF1A6805676F2028009A5 at e2k1.fullerton.edu>,
Castronova, Edward <ecastronova at Exchange.FULLERTON.EDU> spake:
> From: Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu

>> Most men don't want to appear female, simply because that's not
>> what they are or care to be viewed as.  And that really is normal
>> and OK; not everyone is an androgynous bisexual transvestite.

> truer words were never writ. not everyone is an androgynous bisexual
> transvestite.

And yet your tone suggests that everyone *should* be so, that a
preference for appearing to be their own gender is discriminatory.

  '"In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman.'
  -John Varley, _Steel Beach_

> the argument is, men just like being men, so a preference by men
> for male avatars is not discrimination.  but instead of just
> assuming that men like being men, and calling that normal, let's
> go ahead and ask the question: why do men like being men?

For the same reason that women like being women and small furry
mammals from Alpha Centauri like being small furry mammals from
Alpha Centauri.  By their late teens, most humans' self-image and
sexual preferences are fairly well set.  They experiment with their
image more in online worlds than in the soi-disant "real world", but
prefer being visible as roughly what they are.  Fantasy race,
profession, and name are somewhat mutable, but usually consistent
even across multiple games; gender is a very strongly-held personal
image, and few people play different genders regularly.  As Richard
Bartle pointed out, many users find it actively disturbing or
offensive to encounter "cross-dressers".

Women dislike being seen as men as much as men dislike being seen as
women.  Don't believe me?  Go up behind a woman who's not extremely
feminine-looking or in a dress, and call her "sir".  When you regain
consciousness, you can call that "research".

> you know, here's one thing i haven't heard from any man in this
> discussion, here or elsewhere: "Your study is wrong. I like
> playing female avatars. Being female is more fun and less hassle."
> Some have said they like playing females to look at the avatar's
> nice-looking body. Others have said females get gifts and are
> groups, so they should be better off. But no man has said that
> they actually do play a female avatar because, on the whole, they
> like how gameplay is when you're female.  But quite a few women
> have said that about fronting as male.

"Being female is more fun and less hassle" is not a statement that
they prefer gameplay as a female?  In what language?

That would be an entirely different paper, though, and *IF* you can
put numbers to that, you might have something interesting.  But
right now, you're just pulling that out of thin air, out of your own
biases, and it does not convince.

There certainly *are* men who routinely play female characters (as
opposed to brief experiments), especially on roleplay-heavy MUDs,
but they make up a few perent of the male population at most.  Which
is unsurprisingly in the ballpark for the more unusual kinds of
sexual experimentation--I'm not talking about homosexuality, as most
of the gay men I've met in MUDs have played male, often VERY male,
characters--but dom/sub games, transvestitism, and so on.

Calling it discrimination on such scanty evidence is inappropriate,
when there are many other explanations; I've offered the one I think
most likely, and Richard Bartle has a whole list full...  When you
complete your research, I'm sure everyone looks forward to seeing
it...

Until then, the paper is equivalent to discovering that Dark Elf and
Troll characters are worth less money at auction, and concluding
from that that there's discrimination against blue and green people.

--
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
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