Avatar Genders & You ๏‿๏ (img heavy)

[egg worm]

im an animal rn but i generally use the male base and dress in female items emotion_kirakira

knowing the gender of users im interacting with isnt a big deal to me? i try not to assume gender based on avatar tho

[Bowie-Spawan]

I've had countless conversations about this very subject with irl friends. I tend to stay away from it nowadays on the internet, because, frankly, it's the kind of subject that seems to draw all the wannabe SJWs out of their holes to attack anyone for perceived sexism. You have to tread on eggshells around those types of people because they get irrationally upset over semantics.

I don't make a big deal out of my gender identity, but I also don't have a problem talking about it when someone asks. I just don't throw it around everywhere. I don't care what gender anyone takes me for. I've had gender dysphoria for as long as I can remember, for the longest time not being able to put a name on it (thanks for keeping me so sheltered, parents /sarcasm). I had therapy, started transitioning, but ended up at a point where I decided that I don't care what gender people take me for, I'll just be myself and express myself the way I feel, without trying to fit some preconceived notion of male or female just to make people feel more comfortable. I ended up identifying as genderfluid. I don't make a big deal out of it, as I said before. People only find out about this if they post-stalk me (as I only bring it up in relevant topics like this) or if they ask me directly, because they aren't sure.

I rarely make threads, but I made one this year where I asked users about their gender expression preferences (without any judgement whatsoever, just curiosity) and had people jump me for being sexist, when I said one of my preferred styles tends to be very masculine and that I feel Gaia should have more masculine items. People get so hung up on semantics, it just pisses me off. You can't have a conversation with these wannabe social activists because any word you use can be interpreted as some form of ableist slur by them. We're all bound by language conventions and when I describe an item's style as male or female, masculine or feminine, then the vast majority of people will immediately have the same idea of what I'm talking about. Because that is simply how those words have been coded in our understanding through the society we live in. That doesn't inherently make them wrong or right. It just means that that is how they're understood. I ******** HATE being accused of being some kind of sexist scum, just for saying I like masculine items. I mean seriously? This is what you get upset about? This is a topic I could go on about for a while, because of how wrong a certain type of online activism rubs me. But I'll refrain, I don't feel like getting indigestion today.

As for the way I perceive other users based on their avatars, I would be lying if I said certain avatars didn't make me roll my eyes, but tastes differ and what matters in the end is what the person in question posts. And unless someone specifies their prefferred gender and how to address them in their sig, I'll default to whatever gender their avi is (or looks like), they're free to correct me. Seriously, if getting misgendered upsets you, then make it clear to people what you DO prefer to be addressed as where people can see it. I'm not going to check everyone's profile just to make sure lol

/disjointed rant (I just got up, have mercy)

[Pankontra]

I treat my avi as a doll.
If I feel like dressing up a male doll, that what I'd do. Same for when I feel like dressing up a female doll.
Sometimes I make 'em cross-dress blaugh

At times when I dress up more musculine, I don't get mad when people mistake me for a he . wtf why would I even lol I know how I dressed my avatar up, and Im aware someone might get the "gender" wrong at some point.

With other people. I use pronouns that match what they look like at first glance. If they correct me, or have some sort of note about what gender they are, then that's how I'll address them. No problem.

Not like their gender affects my perception of a person anyways.

[snow danger]

for my first few years on gaia my site interaction was strictly roleplaying, so my thought process is that avatars are not really a representation of one's self but more a representation of one's character (even though I no longer roleplay on gaia or frequent those forums). I still dress my avatar like certain female characters of mine (usually) because they have styles that match what I find pleasing to look at.

I've never had a weird interaction based on my avatars gender (although once someone pmed me a thanks from dumpster diving when I had a sort of baking theme going on and it was a male avatar asking if I liked to bake cookies??? which was more super weird in a what even kind of way and less so a creepyweird vibe)

How someone's avatar looks doesn't really change how I treat them or interact with them unless that avatar has racist/sexist/or any other undertone that makes me uncomfortable (but this is the same for signatures/profiles or things that they say so)

As for the whole skimpy items thing, I couldn't care less either way. But it is a little eyeroll worthy that gaia would make items that can earn you a warning when used in a certain way. like it just doesn't make sense to me logically because gaia has full control of how the items can be equipped so just... don't do that then gaia if it's an issue? idk.

[buncy]

Bowie-Spawan

I've had countless conversations about this very subject with irl friends. I tend to stay away from it nowadays on the internet, because, frankly, it's the kind of subject that seems to draw all the wannabe SJWs out of their holes to attack anyone for perceived sexism. You have to tread on eggshells around those types of people because they get irrationally upset over semantics.

I don't make a big deal out of my gender identity, but I also don't have a problem talking about it when someone asks. I just don't throw it around everywhere. I don't care what gender anyone takes me for. I've had gender dysphoria for as long as I can remember, for the longest time not being able to put a name on it (thanks for keeping me so sheltered, parents /sarcasm). I had therapy, started transitioning, but ended up at a point where I decided that I don't care what gender people take me for, I'll just be myself and express myself the way I feel, without trying to fit some preconceived notion of male or female just to make people feel more comfortable. I ended up identifying as genderfluid. I don't make a big deal out of it, as I said before. People only find out about this if they post-stalk me (as I only bring it up in relevant topics like this) or if they ask me directly, because they aren't sure.

I rarely make threads, but I made one this year where I asked users about their gender expression preferences (without any judgement whatsoever, just curiosity) and had people jump me for being sexist, when I said one of my preferred styles tends to be very masculine and that I feel Gaia should have more masculine items. People get so hung up on semantics, it just pisses me off. You can't have a conversation with these wannabe social activists because any word you use can be interpreted as some form of ableist slur by them. We're all bound by language conventions and when I describe an item's style as male or female, masculine or feminine, then the vast majority of people will immediately have the same idea of what I'm talking about. Because that is simply how those words have been coded in our understanding through the society we live in. That doesn't inherently make them wrong or right. It just means that that is how they're understood. I ******** HATE being accused of being some kind of sexist scum, just for saying I like masculine items. I mean seriously? This is what you get upset about? This is a topic I could go on about for a while, because of how wrong a certain type of online activism rubs me. But I'll refrain, I don't feel like getting indigestion today.

As for the way I perceive other users based on their avatars, I would be lying if I said certain avatars didn't make me roll my eyes, but tastes differ and what matters in the end is what the person in question posts. And unless someone specifies their prefferred gender and how to address them in their sig, I'll default to whatever gender their avi is (or looks like), they're free to correct me. Seriously, if getting misgendered upsets you, then make it clear to people what you DO prefer to be addressed as where people can see it. I'm not going to check everyone's profile just to make sure lol

/disjointed rant (I just got up, have mercy)

honestly I really don't get the SJW thing and the ableist and CIS stuff, It feels like just slapping labels upon labels upon labels. I get nervous just thinking about having to talk to people with these beliefs because I feel anything I would say or do would just make them angry. It reminds me off a story I heard not that long ago about an old man who offered his seat to a woman on a train who he thought looked a bit tired and might like to sit down. She just tore into him saying "do I look disabled to you? or pregnant?" and all the old man tried to do was be nice.

as for masculine items, I feel like a lot of the "unisex" items would be received better by male base users if they made them fit the male base better. I've said it before and I'll say it again and I'm sure I'll say it in the future, a lot of items are being made with the female base in mind and then pasted on the make base resulting in atrophied looking limbs.

[Bowie-Spawan]

buncy

honestly I really don't get the SJW thing and the ableist and CIS stuff, It feels like just slapping labels upon labels upon labels. I get nervous just thinking about having to talk to people with these beliefs because I feel anything I would say or do would just make them angry. It reminds me off a story I heard not that long ago about an old man who offered his seat to a woman on a train who he thought looked a bit tired and might like to sit down. She just tore into him saying "do I look disabled to you? or pregnant?" and all the old man tried to do was be nice.

as for masculine items, I feel like a lot of the "unisex" items would be received better by male base users if they made them fit the male base better. I've said it before and I'll say it again and I'm sure I'll say it in the future, a lot of items are being made with the female base in mind and then pasted on the make base resulting in atrophied looking limbs.

That is exactly the kind of mentality I had in mind. These people seem to be outright looking for things to get offended by :/ It's detrimental to talking about real issues, yanno?

100% agreed. It just feels like they make everything for the female base only and while you can put it on the male base, it just looks uncanny valley. Tiny T-Rex arms and stick legs. If there was an effort made to align the proportions to fit more for the male base a lot of items would have seen more sales, I'm sure.

[buncy]

Bowie-Spawan

buncy

honestly I really don't get the SJW thing and the ableist and CIS stuff, It feels like just slapping labels upon labels upon labels. I get nervous just thinking about having to talk to people with these beliefs because I feel anything I would say or do would just make them angry. It reminds me off a story I heard not that long ago about an old man who offered his seat to a woman on a train who he thought looked a bit tired and might like to sit down. She just tore into him saying "do I look disabled to you? or pregnant?" and all the old man tried to do was be nice.

as for masculine items, I feel like a lot of the "unisex" items would be received better by male base users if they made them fit the male base better. I've said it before and I'll say it again and I'm sure I'll say it in the future, a lot of items are being made with the female base in mind and then pasted on the make base resulting in atrophied looking limbs.

That is exactly the kind of mentality I had in mind. These people seem to be outright looking for things to get offended by :/ It's detrimental to talking about real issues, yanno?

100% agreed. It just feels like they make everything for the female base only and while you can put it on the male base, it just looks uncanny valley. Tiny T-Rex arms and stick legs. If there was an effort made to align the proportions to fit more for the male base a lot of items would have seen more sales, I'm sure.

I'm anxious by nature, and like that post you reply to took me like 5 minutes to write then rewrite and go over, I also sometimes write replies but never hit the submit button. so like dealing with people like that just makes me feel queasy. but I am trying to be more social on gaia and lurk less.

But what really irks me is that we know that they make items that work for both bases well by looking at the Mcfly ones.

[ThanatosRising]

For me, I think the best way to describe my perception of people on Gaia is... Dittos. You are all Dittos who, by changing avatars, magically shift genders and my perception of you into a brand new Pokemonperson.

Anyway, I don't think I treat anyone different based on their avatar's gender. Truth be told, a lot of the time I don't even bother glancing at anything other than the text, entirely skipping over the avatar portion altogether.

[arcadian98]

"they/them isn't proper english" nah. if someone wants you to use neutral pronouns, whether they/them or invented ones, you ******** use it. it doesn't take any effort on your part. it doesn't hurt you. but nah you're all just whining about those "damn sjws." get a ******** life.

[Sahdomi]

I've been playing a male character since I started Gaia, back in 2004. Oftentimes I do put on my profile that I am a female in real life, because I have gotten messages before of women flirting with me, and when they find out that in the real world I am female, they become embarrassed and immediately cease speaking with me. I do not mind people using the male pronoun to address me because, well, Adrien is male. Some are offended by these things, some aren't. If I use the incorrect pronoun and they tell me, I apologize.

I see Adrien as a character in a story, and other avatars as characters in that story. Playing as the opposite sex gives me sorts of freedoms that I don't necessarily have in real life. He's merely a persona I have created, but not 100% me. Sure, there are bits and pieces here and there, but I use him to become someone beyond myself. It's been a fantastic learning experience, truth be told. I've been playing this character so long I don't believe that it would be possible for me to use a female avatar now, actually.

[Trundlebug]

I just want to say that the pronoun 'he' is actually used as the default (in American society, at least) when the gender of someone or something isn't known. 3nodding At least, that's what I was taught in public school. Infer from that what you will.

As for the topic, can you guess the gender of my current avatar? I know I've said it before, but I often use the female base just because I find it easier to mod. Though I wish I could have something that removes the boobs so I, too, could have glorious pecs now and then without swapping genders all the time. And it'd be great if the male avatars could have a boob mod!

Also, I address people by their usernames -- it's rare that I'll use a pronoun in regards to someone, actually. Though this isn't on purpose! I feel often like I grew up having very little concept of gender binaries despite my parents' best efforts. Everyone is an individual, and they are who they present themselves to me. Whatever comes along with that is wholly unique to them, regardless of society's current standards. OUO So instead of a pronoun, I'll often use a name, because I've always felt that identifies the person in a more complete way. Does that make sense? (The whole hangup on pronouns bothers me actually, and it's more distressing to me to see people get so angry at each other over what is essentially semantics. Because you are not a pronoun and are not really represented by just a single word, you are yourself. But that's a topic for another time.)

[jigo-san]

I had no idea you were a girl, omg. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just surprising!

Anyways...
From when I joined Gaia back in 2004 and all the way, up until March of this year, 2014, my Gaia Avatar has always been male. Some of the items I liked wearing looked better on the male base and I had just grown attached to having the male base as default for myself. I'm sure most of the people I talked to thought I was a male, unless the conversation got into IRL stuff. I didn't really care, since I used Gaia as an escape.

I had this avatar for a long time.

Melon prince...

I used to have all the Birthstone crowns and capes, so I would try to change them every month. I grew inactive for a while, so I just stuck with green.

Right before I grew active again, I changed my avi to match my birthstone and just went around as like... the sapphire prince.

When I found out about the new animal bases, I just ditched the male base and completely switched over to animal. I try to stay a cat mostly, as that is my favorite animal.
I'm a female irl, and I played as a male avatar throughout my Gaia life. I prefer drawing males and when I was actively drawing, I would just draw my avatar. Like so.
Since switching over the animal base, I'd just rather be called them.

[aliceloatheswonderland]

I have never been able to make good male avatars, so i have stuck with female ones.
I suck at male ones neutral
I do like androgynous avatars, if you've known me for a while, you'll know i used to rock them a lot. They were my thing for a few years. Short hair (namely the jaiden hair and the magician hair from the hidden ace), boots, jacket, tough looking face.

I don't care what gender a person uses for his or her avatar.
Which is the same for me irl. People are people and as long as they are not hurting anyone else, then i don't have an opinion or care.

[Procrastinare]

First off, forgive a social psych major for perhaps going on a bit of a tangent here... sweatdrop

It's a well supported theory that we categorize people to save energy in sorting out acceptable behaviour towards someone, for instance most of you would probably not act the same with an old lady as with a teenage guy. And unfortunately the 3 primitive categories we first use on people is gender, race and age. With those categories comes both stereotypes we pick up from society and those we've formed ourselves.

How MUCH the stereotypes of those categories influence you is up to how much energy you as a person is willing to spend on finding out the complexity of a person and how much energy you spend on trying to act "category neutral". Some people don't care if they are stereotyping, and other's don't have time to bother with changing their behaviour. Taking the process up from subconciousness takes time and energy.

I think this translates into Gaia as well. Because we have avatars to represent our accounts, some just take your avatar gender as representing your true "category" subconciously...but many here take the time to figure out the complexity, especially if they want to know you. Even though I have no good examples to give from Gaia because I lurk too much, behaviour towards me in MMOs have definately changed when the people in question realised I'm acctually female (a change in an often unwanted direction).

Myself I try to not draw conclusions too fast, especially online, and I care about not inadvertently hurting people by assuming things.

Also...something I've learned from taking psychology of influence is that...someone who is viewed as speaking against their own advantage will be taken more seriously. Which is unfortunately why men might be taken more seriously in feminist issues, as they are seen as speaking against their own power-advantage.

[Enharmonic Interval]

I am glad this topic is here. I-I don't even know where to start with a reply because this topic hits me so close to home so I'll probably ramble FOREVER. I apologize, I'll attempt to stay on topic.

I am a super masculine misfit of a man outwardly with an alpha personality in my core being. I am tall and built like a tank genetically... I have a wife, I worked in security forever...so irl people just assume I'm straight which apparently means it's okay to call people sexist, chauvinistic, idiotic, etc a lot for no apparent reason when I share opinions in any gender/equality/ feminist discussion. However as soon as people find out I'm pansexual BOOM. Suddenly it opens up this whole world of me being super accepting and... I dont even know. People treat me like I must be super nurturing and in touch with my feminine side and so forth. I have some random feminine mannerisms....when people think I'm a straight man, this translate into mockery (probably because of my appearance and amazing beard)...but when I also like other sexes....then I just have feminine mannerisms and an amazing beard. Nobody really ever writes me off as gay/bi/pan/genderly confused/etc. irl, they just think I'm a douche who likes to mock women.

SO ON GAIA at first this translated very badly. Originally I had a male avatar who I dressed like a manly man. I was treated pretty respectfully, fangirls were easy to come by, however people were just so extreme. There was like no in-between, people either loved me or couldn't stand me. I wasn't even being a jerk. I'd go into slots and say hey to people and various users would act like I was some super entitled asshat...for saying hey...to my friends. I didn't even have an extremely showy-offy-im-so-rich avatar back then. I was just a dude.

For fun I switched to a female base for a while because there were more items to work with...and people treated me so very different. I got more attention, people responded to my threads more, they seemed to start conversations with me more in general (maybe less intimidating?) but people were also super disrespectful and thought I was a loosy goosy far too often. Cybering requests went through the roof, men usually disregarded my opinions in threads, and females weren't as fanboy over me, but much more catty. In general people seemed to send more friend requests and like "me" more, so I thought that was nice. There was a lot less extreme-ness...except for the cybering and titpic requests.

When people would "find out" I was a man though they would get so upset. It isn't like I actually tried to conceal it or anything. I don't know if it is some deep level of trust I broke or something..but overall people were very negative towards the idea and they suddenly didn't know if they should call me a he or she or it. Maybe women overshared women things, or men tried to remember if they hit on me, but it was always a real heated discussion to diffuse. I really didn't care what they called me so I didn't understand why it was so upsetting...but that was pretty much the buzzkill of being a beautiful lady for a while.

On my mule after all of this; I decided I'd dress my avatar in ridiculous outfits only, which worked quite well. People didn't take me seriously, but I got along much better with people in general and when I posted in discussion threads people didn't flock to attack me for being a chauvinistic pig anymore. Now I am dressed kinda creepy, so I think people take me too seriously or think I'm mean a little too often, but I'm not a super manly man...so at least they're not judgmental up the wahzoo. I rarely bring up my security work except with friends, as otherwise the whole gender confusion sneaks in and people get judgemental about my persona...so when people ask about work here I pretty much leave it to speaking about my computer gigs, which lead me to be more geeky and friendly seeming I guess.

TLDR;;Being a female base was nice minus all the unwanted attention and disrespect...but people don't like to be confused that you're not really a female apparently, so by toning down my pixel manliness people seemed to not jump on the hatewagon right away. SO NOW I AM SCARY AND DAPPER.