Even taking on a man's top hat is little compared to the massive extent that conventional gender is reinforced in Second Life.
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Cláudio (footballer, born 1977)
1 hour ago
Saturday 27 December 2008
Clearly defined gender identity is the unspoke Law of SL
Even taking on a man's top hat is little compared to the massive extent that conventional gender is reinforced in Second Life.
Friday 26 December 2008
Thursday 25 December 2008
Friday 19 December 2008
Official Second Life Blog: Community Gateway Program
About a year ago, we began to experiment with alternatives to the usual Second Life registration pathway, which we call the Community Gateway program. The program is designed to provide a customized initial entry experience for new Residents based on their choice of preferred language or particular interests.Official Second Life Blog
An important objective of the Community Gateway program is to give Residents a choice of registration options and initial locations, with the goal of enabling program members to attract new Residents and grow their communities. Members are committed to supporting and engaging new Residents, and their efforts are evaluated based on their success in attracting new registrations and the length of time those registrants engage in Second Life.
Today, we have 22 members of the Community Gateway program–14 non-English language specific Community Gateways including Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. The remaining members simply offer a unique experience, some created by businesses as a portal for a web community and others created by passionate individuals or groups bringing in like-minded people who share their interests.
Overall, we are pleased with how well this program is working. On average, Residents arriving inworld through a Community Gateway become actively engaged in Second Life. So, as we redesign the Second Life registration and initial user experience, we’re planning to add additional program members to expand the range of initial community experiences for new users. If starting a Community Gateway is of interest to you, watch for an upcoming blog post with more information on how to get involved.
If you’re a Second Life Resident, you may have already discovered some of these locations for the chance to practice a language, visit a foreign city, or just engage with a friendly community and participate in interesting events.
Here is the current list of Community Gateway members and where to find them (sorted by language then alphabetically):
English:
Anshe’s Dreamland - Welcome Passage/63/63/27
Avatar Island - Avatar Island/92/130/23
Azure Islands - Azure Islands Welcome/118/182/59
Big Pond - Pondessa/125/164/31
Dublin in SL - Dublin/234/146/25
Orientation Station - Scholar/112/87/26
Portuguese (Brazil):
Mainland Brasil - MLBR Copacabana /227/104/39
German:
Frankfurt - FFH LAND/127/4/25
New Berlin - New Berlin/193/184/31
Vienna Freebies - Wien/90/130/28
French
France Pittoresque - Seychelles/48/89/21
Gaia - Gaia/141/82/27
Italian:
ISN Virtual Worlds - Italy Orientation/46/140/26
Spanish:
MundoSL - SecondMind /101/138/241
Spanish Orientation Island - Spanish Orientation/61/137/35
Dutch:
NL 0031 - DNBmedia/142/232/24/
Japanese:
MagSL Net - Nozomi/128/128/22
VirtualWorld Walker (Meltingdots) - Walker Orientation/119/102/44
Mobile Factory - MobileFactory/128/86/2
Korean:
Sera Korea - Sera%20Korea%2015/35/232/32
Chinese:
3Immersions - Lenovo 133/129/28
Ansche’s Dreamland - Welcome Passage/63/63/27
We encourage Residents new and experienced to visit these Community Gateways. We hope you enjoy exploring these interesting communities.
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Saturday 13 December 2008
Friday 12 December 2008
Wednesday 3 December 2008
FORA.tv Online Personas
Online social networking sites are now among the most popular web sites on the internet. Facebook is the seventh most trafficked site in the U.S., and millions of young trendsetters have made MySpace and Second Life the most disruptive forces to hit pop culture since MTV. LinkedIn is at the forefront of an emerging networking frontier focused on business and boasting a network of more than 7 million professionals. In a world of IMers, bloggers, podcasters, burners, P2P buccaneers, mashup artists and phonecam paparazzi, people have entirely new ways of expressing and reinventing themselves, and fact can blend with fiction. The founders of the most successful and innovative web sites allowing people to interact, trade, meet and network will explore how their sites are evolving to keep up with the future of online networking.FORA.tv
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Saturday 22 November 2008
Friday 21 November 2008
Wednesday 19 November 2008
Saturday 15 November 2008
Second Life affair ends in divorce - CNN.com
But Taylor told the Western Morning News she had subsequently hired an online private detective to track his activities: "He never did anything in real life, but I had my suspicions about what he was doing in Second Life." iSecond Life affair ends in divorce - CNN.com
Pollard admitted having an online relationship with a "girl in America" but denied wrongdoing. "We weren't even having cyber sex or anything like that, we were just chatting and hanging out together," he told the Western Morning News.
Taylor is now in a new relationship with a man she met in the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft.
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Tuesday 11 November 2008
truth trainers on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
truth trainers on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
I love the name Truth Trainers.
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Friday 7 November 2008
Hanging out in Oreintation Island
I am on the horse
Notice just how conventional to social norms AVs in Second Life are becoming, almost always human and highly sexual. Just being on a horse dressed as a Queen's Gurad is starnge.
Its no secret that people in SL place massive peer pressure to assume certain identities to fit in. After a certain point, which I believe I have reached you have enough attachments and bodies to fit in. When I first came to SL actively many people kept telling me to get hair, skin, and better clothing. They tended to take it seriously, like all forms of play.
Wednesday 5 November 2008
Gender Freedom Day planning session 2
Gender Freedom Day planning session 2
Interested in running or helping out with an event for Gender Freedom Day on December 21?
Come join us in the Salon Room in Extropia, noon this Saturday, November 8, to plan and coordinate grid-wide events!
We’re particularly working for a nonprofit group working in the field of gender/sexual orientation freedom and civil rights that’s active in SL to work with us, and to be the beneficiary of our 12 hour fundraiser dance party.
If you’re affiliated with a group, or know of a group, who might be interested in sponsoring activities that day, and in getting some $Linden love in return, please post a comment with the group name *and a contact person*
So far, we’ve had a complete failure of response from the organizations we’ve contacted. We’re hoping that’s a shortcoming of our network, and not a sign of lack of commitment to fight discrimination in digital worlds.
Let’s get that turned around, get some good support from established activists, and put on a terrific day of positive, high-visibility events celebrating diversity in SL and other digital worlds!
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Tuesday 4 November 2008
Wednesday 8 October 2008
ETD Heather Boots
Notice the legs are longer than the rest of the body, this is beyond a Barbie doll, this is radical gender.
Postcard from Second Life.
Second Life photo images of lovers reminds me of people holding their babies on facebook.
Saturday 27 September 2008
A Internet Network Relationship Diagram
The circle in the center shows the Internet connectivity of the two. One has 3 connections which provide links to the various Cloud services in which a relationship between the two is established. This diagram show real time communications with solid lines and asynchronis relations with a dotted line. The top world is a Virtual World, the lower boxes could be emails or social network based communications which support and expand the relationship. One impact of using this asynchronis systems is the one of the members has more points of access to the relationship.
Tuesday 23 September 2008
Take me in your arms
Romantic play is a core element of Virtual Reality social existence, shown here. And that is to a large extent driving gender role identification, I think.
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Friday 19 September 2008
Monday 15 September 2008
Saturday 13 September 2008
An image of the female from Second Life
I find this image a bit odd. Firstly the creator Lapin Paris kicked me and a few other people out of a group for daring to talk about the status of Africa in the Internet and on Second Life. Yet the ad still comes, Capitalism.
But beyond my petty emotions the image itself is strange. I am not entirely sure where the source of the blood is suppose to be. In fact looking closely at it we can see that this is absurdest blood, impossible blood. Blood that soaks and spatters the bottom of a long dress until it is soaked like a burka in the rain, and yet leaves the shoes barely touched and does not spatter to the face or chest. This blood that spatters but not like blood spatters in a body. Perhaps it is the product of some kind of blood spattering machine, or an image of an unpleasant surgical event translated on to a gown without existing there.
Wednesday 10 September 2008
What makes a woman
What social forces and practices make a woman? How is the a woman produced through work? And, does that work start with culture or go back to mammal radical seperation of female sexual function and male?
These are the issues that keep me up at night. I really can't see how to fit biology in to a deeper question of gender discourse. I have no idea gender is contructed, but our constructions as humans often take advantage of biology. And the limits of biology have often imposed different roles to male and female. You can't tend a child and hunt at the same time and human children can't be left alone.
Perhaps this is the Greeks interest in the myth of the Amazons. They must have understood that there would be no reason for women not to fight, and women from the regions near Russia, Georgia, and Iran where nomadic tribes raised horses could produce an very deadly weapon. A female, light and yet strong (women were strong in antiquity if not in the Victorian age), with a speak and bow.
The Greeks of Homer's age were mostly infantry forces but they had horses, and the raised horses and they must have known a boy can defeat a man on a fast horse, if the boy is good. It would make sense to field an army of female calavry unites just as today it would make sense to field units of them in tanks and jets, reduction of wieght can make a major difference in a battle.
But Western Culture never tried with this. Russia used women in WWI and WWII combat but none of the Axis or Allies did so in such a major way. Women could fight but they don't, because warrior has a status in our culture women can not be allowed to tradionally hold.
Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life
Sunday 7 September 2008
Is Second Life part of Hardt and Negri's concept of Empire?
Hardt and Negri entire text of the box Empire
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/empire.pdf
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/empire.pdf
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DeeDee from Flickr and Second LIfe and posted on Flickr
Second Life residents create identities in-world and then often post particular visions of these identities in to Flickr. Photo-processing is used to highlight a kind of identity the users wish to promote. Looking at Flickr the overwhelming body images involve radical hyper assertions of gender, like this one from DeeDee.
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Keljar and Draakje... in love
Second Life in particular and the Internet in general are scenes of radical conflict in the strategic engagement of gender. In Second Life some very radical assertions as to the meaning of gender are made every day, and on Flickr the finalised "imagio" that someone is looking for, the "picture perfect" identity is presented, and is usually presented in a highly genderised image like this one.
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Saturday 6 September 2008
Is this Bondage RP sexy?
This image shows the kind of fantasy RP that is now possible with several VR systems. What will be the impact of such intense imaging of anything possible sexually?
GIMPING out a SL female in Amsterdam
This photo was taken of a female AV walking the streets of Amsterdam. The real AV is the smaller one, the very thin one. I gimmed it to make it look more real. The background picture is her image made more realistic.
She also looks way hotter I think
The woman in a political context
Protesting, libral arab female. Shill masacare, ear rings, flower in her hair, and a nice curl.
The European leftist woman refuses make-up, and takes on to herself the clothing of arab resistence, thought the scarf is most likely made in China. Postmodern identity among Europeans makes for a complex blend of fashion, politics, sexuality, and art.
And there are the women who have gone beyond Carrie in Sex in the City, they have accepted that since it is the fact that everything in sexual relations is the fault of the woman the woman must go utterly covered.
Though I respect cultural diversity, I suspect living in London that black outfits that fully cover everything but the eyes are very practicle. But then again its not likely most people are dressing well.
But whereas the European traditional citizen has a diversity of choice, a freedom which is in great part created by consumerism to promote Late Capitalism. Consumerism is the thing Marx didn't see, the way the contradictions could be resolved forever. In the context of consumerism Englightment ideas of equality and freedom become critical. And there are provided a wide set of identities to select. Nothing like this is available for the girl above.
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