The Masses

I couldn't get this to post for some reason on botqirl's blog, so I post here.

Botqirl has up one of those blogs that the little Plurk-Jerkers and malign and mendacious like Crap Mariner think is "nailing" it. It's a very overworked theme that one finds on the forums periodically, the realization that "OMG the masses don't read our blogs". It's usually said by people who secretly imagine that in fact *they* have the insight into the masses because they are so brilliant lol. The realization of the elites that they don't know what the rest of SL thinks scares and thrills them at the same time. Scares them, because it means they are irrelevant. Thrills them, because they might find the killer app to tap into these pet-loving Zyngo-playing masses.

My post, in response to his question about what the masses are thinking, and how they "don't know Prokofy from Gwyn from Dusan from Crap".

Spoken like a typical socialist elitist, out of touch with the masses, even the liberal masses, and of course, completely estranged from the conservative masses -- which are in SL, too.

I don't suffer from that problem because I have *customers*. Do you? I have constant interactions with hundreds of people all month, constantly changing and constantly refreshing my view. These people constantly IM me and say they like my blog; they tip me; they send me hugs.

Not all of my customers in fact read my blog or even know I have a blog, but a surprising number do, and your theory that "nobody knows Prokofy" is more wishful thinking on your part than reality.

When I look at the IP addresses of the referrers coming to my blog from thousands of visitors every day, I see most of them come from fashion blogs. Imagine that. Fashion blogs! And I don't even discuss fashion hardly at all.

Quite a few are plurk and twitter accounts -- but guess what, not the plurk accounts of the main Plurk Jerkers like you.

Most people could care less that the educators were "shafted" -- they feel *they* are the ones shafted when they pay a lot, or work hard in their little businesses, but get no breaks, and the educators, who only come on and spread socialism, copyleftism, and collectivist anti-commerce ideas, get a whopping 50 percent off -- or did. Now it's over. Good!

Every day, hundreds of people click on my inworld newsletter. People who aren't even my customers, never post on the forums, and don't post on blogs. Sometimes they IM me with a comment or help. I have way more visitors to my blog than ever comment.

"Blog culture" in SL thinks I'm crazy or "hateful" merely because I push back against the sectarians that themselves are malicious. You imagine that the elitist leftists and Sluniverse Sharia Court judges are "what's right" and "politically correct".

But the vast majority of people don't think that way.

The silent majority fills up the rentals, enjoys SL to the max, until they get bored and leave, even leaving to play a Facebook game, or starts a small business and works it, until it becomes too much work, or goes back to real life after a bad romance. But many stay and tend their gardens, shop, socialize, go to live music. They don't care about mesh. They don't whine because some tab is out of place on some menu and some JIRA didn't get voted for. They just have a good time.

For an amazing number of people, Second Life is about finding an absolutely perfect or at least very enjoyable mate, an experience many haven't had in real life. A mate who isn't lying about their gender.

Burning Life, open source scrums, Lindens pulling funding of the arts -- absolutely none of this matters to them. Changes to the Marketplace matter more than anything else because they shop their on their lunch hours especially.

It's precisely because I'm very much in touch with these "masses" that you fear and loathe that I write as critically and sharply as I do of elites like you. Move over, botgirl. Here Comes Everybody.

Comments

[cube inada]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyregion/29young.html?_r=1&hp

at LEAST for today., the times has a more "balanced" article.... vs the blog that i first linked.... too bad soon all well have is the blog....

even so, with the legal facts about -under or over the age 4 being the "crux" of the ruling.....

its a case of MIPS....and the virus has infected everyone involved, except- i hope for now- the 2 4 year olds who should be doing not much but learning to ride a bike fast:)

[Saffia Widdershins]

Prok

Emerald may well have lied about numbers. All I can say was that, from my limited perception, among the active user base, it was popular.

As for why that ended - well, that was fascinating to watch. It was a great illustration of crowd panic.

Over about two weeks, when TPVs were discussed, you would find people declaring that Linden Lab would have to strip their Emerald from their cold, dead hands (that was the phrase commonly used) because they would NEVER give up their Emerald!!!

Then, as the stories began to come in thick and fast, therewere a slowly increasing number asking well, what OTHER Third Party browsers were there?

This started among the kind of builders who, after all they've been through with policy changes, tend to look to future problems. Then it was picked up by fashionista types, who were beginning to see that Emerald was no longer cool. Then you got a groundswell of what I'd call regular users moving over to other browsers. Although there were still a few clinging to Emerald and declaring LL would NEVER get rid of it (and it would be over their dead bodies).

I suspect those use Phoenix now.

Certainly the colours signifying the browsers people are using are a lot more varied.

It was an interesting study of how WoM spreads through Second Life. But it was also spread through SL Media, I think - ranging from the blogs, to the Alphaville Herald, to Paisley on Tonight Live and to the shows Phaylen hosted on Rezzed.TV. Even where these outlets weren't hostile to Emerald in themselves, the fact that they were bringing up the issues and (in some cases) giving Emerald a chance to rebut them, did make people aware that there was a problem. But I think it was like one of those graphs that climbs very slowly, then reaches a tipping point, and then zooms upward - the zoom in this case being people abandoning Emerald en masse.

[Hypatia Callisto]

sometimes a tipping point is the highest crest before a sheer cliff face... and falls off the cliff.

[Darien Caldwell]

"Catherine, if you bothered to actually research the client programs and the various data bits that they store on your PC and transmit out over a connection, you'd know that it is quite difficult to fake a positive detection of a TPV within another TPV."

That's silly. Each TPV has a UUID code that's sent to identify what viewer it is. It's incredibly simple to send the UUID of a viewer other than what you happen to be. There are many viewers out that do just that, let you choose to broadcast a wide range of 'viewer identities'.

But that doesn't mean much in terms of actual usage percentages. From my own research, it's true Emerald at it's peak achieved about 65% of the total viewer market. That is a significant amount.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

I loathe the term "mangina" and it's use makes me angry, especially by one who should know better, even if it has never been used against me.

Mr. Neva, most of the time you remind me of some of the FTM leaning butches on IRC who would go around bashing MTF's at every opportunity because they were frustrated with their own gender issues. They didn't want to admit to wanting to be masculine themselves because that would mean leaving the safe harbors of the "lesbian community" or in some cases "communities of womyn/womon/wimmin", that had supported them when they were the lauded "butch protectors"

Course some of them were a little bitter because they'd fallen in love with some pretty femme only to find out she'd had SRS some years back.

And another thing....Mr. Neva, you don't understand nerds/geeks at all...you think you do, but you don't, in part because of your own philosophies. You see hidden motives when there aren't any, for example in Botgirl Questi herself.

Someone might choose a female avatar out of curiousity and sense of experimentation and NOT any intent to cause any harm. No ulterior motives necessary, most people aren't as calculating as you think they are.

[Prokofy Neva]

CronoCloud -- fuck you.

I don't cross the street to attack transgendered men. I'd have absolutely no reason to do so.

I find the term "mangina" distasteful, too, and reserve its use as name-calling in a fight where I have been attacked, too.

What I *do* do is fight back as hard as I possibly can when certain types of transgendered men *harass me, viciously*.

They do that because of THEIR OWN insecurity and self-hatred, most likely, or perhaps merely out of a sense of anger that someone does something they think only they should get to do (that's my operating theory for what's at the root of some of it).

For example, in the years I was friends with Crap Mariner, I hardly was even conscious of him as a "female avatar". He had a robot avatar, that's how it primarily manifested. Yes, sometimes it seemed more female in some of his episodes of his blog or in his appearances, but it would never have occurred to me to call Crap "a mangina". Once a certain threshold was crossed though, and he began viciously attacking me, then I was happy to use that term on him -- and perhaps that explains part of the viciousness of his broken psyche as well.

I remember this certain gay male who was a friend of Barnubis Anubis in The Sims Online who would go out of his way to come over and piledrive me. Piledrive was really the most vicious animation in TSO -- it involved beating up and stomping on people and would drain you of energy. Mafias would often use it. This seemingly nice fellow, I think his name was Kyle, inflicted that violence on me gratuitously because he couldn't bear that I was a female appearing as a male. It really bothered him deeply. It's a certain *type* of male gay and also transgendered that has this problem. I've seen it happen enough times to mark it as a pattern. Not all do; *some do* and it is definitely a pattern.

It certainly doesn't mean that I attack all people crossing genders in SL. There are loads of them, and I don't care what they do and can only encourage them to have their freedom.

You're just tuning into this conversation with your own fucking little self-important agenda.

What I *will do* is fight back when this type of person harasses me. And I will fight back very, very hard. I will expose them and call them names as much as I can possibly muster, and "mangina" is as good as it gets.

I personally don't buy this crap about men "chosing a female avatar out of a sense of curiosity and a sense of experimentation". I just don't. Changing your gender is an instinctive thing. You do it because you want to and need to and *can* do it. It's not a light matter. When people do this, it's because they really have a different gender than their physical manifestation and they shouldn't *disown that reality* by pretending it's about "curiosity" or "experimentation".

It's like the concept of "bi-curious," when more often than not, the male simply has a preference for gay sex and shouldn't disown that. Can there be such a thing as bisexuals? Those who demand recognition of this identity claim so, and perhaps they are right. But some of us are not so convinced. Some of us sense the Big Lie back of some of the posturing on tnis, and recognize that it's also a function of cultural persecution -- that unless a male could say he was "bi," he might suffer condemnation in society.

That's why I don't like botqirl's shtick at all. I view it as part of that repertoire of pretense and dissimulation and disowning of a female transition that is all about wanting power over other people, keeping them off balance.

Oh, those who transgender in SL don't necessarily mean to cause harm. And that I *will* say is a valid position. But there is a decided, definite, documented contingent who *do* cause harm. Let's recall the infamous Rheta Shan who "died" and was brutally killed in a "car accident in her nine months of pregnancy" but who really seems to have been a male who deceived a female lesbian into an intimate partnership, and then sought a way out of it by staging the RL "death". This is very common in SL. I've seen it many times. And I will condemn it, and it's right to condemn it, and it doesn't undermine the right of people to transgender or the innocence of their doing it.

I sure do understand geeks. I've got their number. And that's why some of them hate me. Others congratulate me for being spot on.

I'm definitely not an FTM who is going around basthing MTF or who is in any sort of womyn womin whatever community. Sorry to disappoint, but it's just not my thing. Sounds to me like you're being sexist, however, by mocking their use of this term "womyn," which I suppose they do to avoid having the word "men" appear in their word. But they don't go around saying "wommin'" unless there's something I'm missing.

Nothing stirs up hatred and violence like this topic. And I fight back tooth and nail and hammer and tongue on it. I fight for my right to do what the hell I want in SL, to have a transgendered male avatar and not be harassed, or bullied or persecuted because of this choice -- which is not respected primarily by RL men who have become transgendered in RL and who loathe the idea that someone would do this "fictionally" in a virtual world and claim identity from it. Too fucking bad, big guy, deal with it. People have all kinds of ways in which they manifest their gender, in RL and SL, and it's legitimate as a premise. What I will do is fight back when I see a certain type of TG male harass and bully me, going out of their way to post spiteful, malicious and hateful posts all the time against me just because my very critical existence bothers them. Maggie Darwin is a very good example of this, and there have been others.

[Hypatia Callisto]

erm, Extropia even insinuated I was male or neuter when addressing me in a recent post, so I tend to give credence to what Prok is saying about some of the people who post here. I laughed my ass off I saw that posting... people who know me know the truth.

I've been accused of being male posing as female for years, usually by people who are insecure about or faking their own gender. I'm secure in my gender though, and I realise I'm not the most feminine person in text chat nor in my interests, but that has nothing to do with my RL gender. (though when speaking to me RL, I don't come across nearly as "guy like" as I do in text, just ask Angela Talamasca, or Stroker Serpentine, or Desmond Shang... who have all talked to me on Skype, in voice. Goes to show that text appearances are deceiving, when you don't have all the nuances of someone's speaking voice)

Sorry to disappoint some folks, but I was born with a vagina IRL :P (yes, this means I'm a bonafide cunt at times, I won't dispute that!)

I also have to agree with Prok about the (very straight, very much not transgender) guys who misrepresent themselves as lesbian women - that was one of my first experiences in a virtual world, with someone who misrepresented themselves. Guy gave the gal false picture, false stories... and when the lesbian partner was going to finally visit "her" lover IRL, he confessed that he wasn't really female. She was furious, blew up like a volcano on the forum (which I was an assistant sysop over at the time). I felt then she had every reason to feel betrayed/wronged/angry, and 14 years later, I still feel that way.

[Sean Williams]

I hate to break it to you Darien but if what you claim was true (and it isn't) then not only would it be impossible for Linden Lab to detect clients they have expressly prohibited from connecting to the grid, but the client detection systems that users are so up in arms over would not function either.

Sorry Darien - client programs do use UUIDs, but not for identification. Please do not spread that silly bit of misinformation you seem to think is true around any further.

[Extropia DaSilva]

>Extropia even insinuated I was male or neuter when addressing me in a recent post, so I tend to give credence to what Prok is saying about some of the people who post here. I laughed my ass off I saw that posting... people who know me know the truth.<

I was not implying you are male. I only know you by your screen name so I am not really in a position to say what gender you present yourself as. Hypatia does sound feminine to me but I did not want to assume you have chosen to be a woman. I suppose I should have used the gender-neutral terms that Greg Egan used in the story Diaspora ('ve' instead of 'he'/'she', vis instead of his/her and ver instead of her/him) until you informed of what gender (if any) you like to be addressed as.

[Extropia DaSilva]

>What I *do* do is fight back as hard as I possibly can when certain types of transgendered men *harass me, viciously*.<

Well, who would'nt?

But we do have to wonder what counts as 'viscious harassment' in Prok's mind. The reason I wonder is because one can write the most polite and considered reply imaginable, but if it should disagree in the slightest with Prok's position, he considers it a 'rant'. So it is not too difficult to believe one does not have to do much to have their actions interpreted as viscious harrasment.

[Cinder Roxley]

client tags in tpv's read a UUID that the viewer bakes onto your avatar from a no longer used clothing layer. (for example, imprudence's ID is cc7a030f-282f-c165-44d2-b5ee572e72bf) not all tpv's do this, and viewer2 and snowstorm don't either. it's also not 100% correct. (switch from emerald to imprudence and don't rebake, and you'll still have the emerald tag)

this is not how sl would identify a viewer, it's a vanity bag on the side of tpv's.

[Cinder Roxley]

and on giving it more thought, spoofing the unofficial tpv client tag system with other viewer's UUIDs would NOT be a TOS violation because the *Viewer Identifier* which has to remain unique is hardcoded on compile time.

as for seeing emerald tags everywhere, remember if you don't rebake, it can't change and not all viewers support it anyway so you could have a big emerald beacon above your head and not even know it.

i still see emerald from time to time on the grid. i asked someone once how they managed to login as i thought it was banned. he said something about newer versions getting around that and sl disconnecting him about every two hours when they sweep for banned viewers or something, and sure enough, his connection dropped in time. there are still diehards willing to be forcefully disconnected every two hours to stay with a banned viewer. strange folks.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Mr. Neva wrote: CronoCloud -- fuck you.
**************

Mr. Neva, I have never used such language with you, why would you do so with me.

Mr. Neva wrote: I find the term "mangina" distasteful, too,
***********

Then why choose to use it? Why not take the high ground.

Mr. Neva: and reserve its use as name-calling in a fight where I have been attacked, too.
************

Mr. Neva, by resorting to name calling in fights...you lose the fight in most persons eyes. We both know this.

Mr. Neva wrote: What I *do* do is fight back as hard as I possibly can when certain types of transgendered men *harass me, viciously*.
***************

Disagreeing with you is not harassment. And if you're referring to MTF transgendered folk as transgender "males" well that's being intentionally nasty as you well know. The term is "transwomen"

Mr. Neva: They do that because of THEIR OWN insecurity and self-hatred, most likely, or perhaps merely out of a sense of anger that someone does something they think only they should get to do (that's my operating theory for what's at the root of some of it).
******************8

Perhaps it's because you respond with unjustified extreme vitriol and nasty language at the slightest provocation and disagreement?

Mr Neva wrote: Once a certain threshold was crossed though, and he began viciously attacking me, then I was happy to use that term on him -- and perhaps that explains part of the viciousness of his broken psyche as well.
*******************

So if someone disagrees with you strongly and calls you on your insulting behavior it's okay to go all postal and start using "mangina"? Are you going to start using it on me, Mr. Neva?

Mr. Neva wrote: I think his name was Kyle, inflicted that violence on me gratuitously because he couldn't bear that I was a female appearing as a male. It really bothered him deeply. It's a certain *type* of male gay and also transgendered that has this problem. I've seen it happen enough times to mark it as a pattern. Not all do; *some do* and it is definitely a pattern.
***************

So one guy in TSO was an asshole to you and you blame it on him being gay and hating you because you have a male avatar and then tarring every other gay man and MTF transperson with the same brush? Is that really justified?

Did you ever think he was just doing it for no reason at all except boredom, or just to annoy you and not out of any hate?

Mr. Neva wrote: You're just tuning into this conversation with your own fucking little self-important agenda.
*************

Perhaps Mr. Neva, but I have been quite aware of how you refer to MTF transfolk and automatically assume they're out to get you for a VERY long time. I have just grown tired of it...and your constant bashing of nerds.

Mr. Neva wrote: What I *will do* is fight back when this type of person harasses me. And I will fight back very, very hard. I will expose them and call them names as much as I can possibly muster, and "mangina" is as good as it gets.
*********************

Have you ever heard of the concept of "proportionate response"? What you do is not proportionate. It's unjustified bullying itself. And as I said before, when you name call...you lose the argument in many people's eyes.

Mr. Neva wrote: I personally don't buy this crap about men "chosing a female avatar out of a sense of curiosity and a sense of experimentation". I just don't. Changing your gender is an instinctive thing. You do it because you want to and need to and *can* do it. It's not a light matter.
********************

You really don't understand...do you. There are plenty of people who make female avatars and characters just for fun and variety, or to experiment and who are not transgendered at all. Here's an example, from Caledon no less:

http://phineasmessmer.blogspot.com/2008/07/emergence-of-femphin.html

Mr. Neva wrote: Can there be such a thing as bisexuals? Those who demand recognition of this identity claim so, and perhaps they are right. But some of us are not so convinced. Some of us sense the Big Lie back of some of the posturing on tnis, and recognize that it's also a function of cultural persecution -- that unless a male could say he was "bi," he might suffer condemnation in society.
******************

Why doubt their identity? Would you want someone to doubt yours?

Mr. Neva wrote:That's why I don't like botqirl's shtick at all. I view it as part of that repertoire of pretense and dissimulation and disowning of a female transition that is all about wanting power over other people, keeping them off balance.
***************

And I think you're letting your prejudices and preconceptions show. You simply cannot accept that people do this thing, so you assume ulterior motives, and you're wrong.

Mr. Neva wrote: but who really seems to have been a male who deceived a female lesbian into an intimate partnership, and then sought a way out of it by staging the RL "death". This is very common in SL. I've seen it many times. And I will condemn it, and it's right to condemn it, and it doesn't undermine the right of people to transgender or the innocence of their doing it.
**************************

I have mixed feelings. I'm open myself and mention being MTF TG in my profile, as you might have seen. But I suspect that people treat me differently because of it, and that perhaps I would have been able to have some different experiences because of it. but I felt honesty was best. But I wonder if there are people who are don't say hello to me or communicate with me in SL because of it. So I understand "why" some people don't disclose, even though I did, and think it's a good idea to do so.

Mr. Neva wrote: I sure do understand geeks.
******************

I'm one, and I can assure you that you don't.

Mr Neva wrote: And that's why some of them hate me.
********************

Hate is a strong word Mr. Neva. I think strong dislike would probably be more accurate. True hate is a rare thing.

Others congratulate me for being spot on.

Mr. Neva wrote: Sounds to me like you're being sexist, however, by mocking their use of this term "womyn," which I suppose they do to avoid having the word "men" appear in their word. But they don't go around saying "wommin'" unless there's something I'm missing.
***********************
If I'm being sexist, so are the non-trans third wave and later feminists who also poke fun at the second wave separatists use of the various spellings of "womyn" I've seen about 10 or so variants of it myself.

Mr. Neva wrote: I fight for my right to do what the hell I want in SL, to have a transgendered male avatar and not be harassed, or bullied or persecuted because of this choice -- which is not respected primarily by RL men who have become transgendered in RL and who loathe the idea that someone would do this "fictionally" in a virtual world and claim identity from it.
*******************

I cannot believe you are bullied that much over your choice of avatar, because personally it's been very rare that anyone's said anything nasty to me about mine. There are some who believe you're being hypocritical using mangina, but saying that is not bullying.

Mr. Neva wrote: Too fucking bad, big guy, deal with it.
**************

Mr. Neva, I must request again, that you not use male pronouns in reference to me. Again, I have never used anything but male pronouns in reference to you.

Mr. Neva wrote: People have all kinds of ways in which they manifest their gender, in RL and SL, and it's legitimate as a premise.
************

Of course, I agree.

Mr. Neva wrote: What I will do is fight back when I see a certain type of TG male harass and bully me, going out of their way to post spiteful, malicious and hateful posts all the time against me just because my very critical existence bothers them.
********************

Perhaps you are misconstruing why they are criticizing you? Perhaps it's not your choice of avatar but your uncalled for vitriol and your excessive focus on your axes to grind in regards to things like FIC, geeks and whatnot?

Miss Callisto wrote: I also have to agree with Prok about the (very straight, very much not transgender) guys who misrepresent themselves as lesbian women - that was one of my first experiences in a virtual world, with someone who misrepresented themselves. Guy gave the gal false picture, false stories... and when the lesbian partner was going to finally visit "her" lover IRL, he confessed that he wasn't really female. She was furious, blew up like a volcano on the forum (which I was an assistant sysop over at the time). I felt then she had every reason to feel betrayed/wronged/angry, and 14 years later, I still feel that way.
****************************

As I have said, I am in opposed to such deception. I was an OP in a trans-friendly lesbian IRC channel so I know about the problem of non-trans heterosexual men sneaking in. And while I do visit lesbian spaces in SL, I try to make certain they're trans-friendly and as you know, am quite open about being trans in my profile. I have, of course, encountered trans people who don't disclose in their profile. That's their choice. I understand why they do it, even if I don't.

[Prokofy Neva]

Why do I write "fuck you"? Because that what I do to people who come to harass and heckle me because I *rightfully* criticize geeks, particularly those in SL who harass me incessantly to try to silence me. I fight back. That's what you get here when you come trying to defend your class and your agenda. I'm happy to use as offensive terms as I can muster like "mangina" precisely for that type of person that does that. I really don't care if I "lose a fight," because in fact the fight is lost when people are silenced, when bloggers like Kathy Sierra give up and withdraw because of anonymous hate comments. I don't care if the better part of valour is to ignore "trolls" -- I have my way, and that's what I'll be doing.

You're not "disagreeing with me," you're harassing me. First, you are deliberately and tendentiously trolling by claiming I'm making an attack on "all" transgendered people or that I "don't understand them properly". Bullshit. I'm attacking precisely those people out of this class who harass me, and your efforts to try to claim otherwise are transparently stupid.

As for your politically correct notion that I can't refer to male-to-female transgendered people as "males" in the context in Second Life where they most definitely remain males while using female characters -- again, fuck you. That's obviously the context, and your stupid-ass identity-politics and PC crap here are again transparent. I'm not required to use some PC term you devise for RL, either, like "transwomen". That's not even widely used. In fact, it's more often that one finds the term "person".

My blog isn't "filled with vitriol"; it's filled with candid commentary and pushbacks particularly in the comments against the few like yourself that try to mount an assault. And you get a rebuff. Deal with it.

As for your claim that there was "only one gay male in TSO" and one can't extrapolate that, it's simply wrong. There were LOTS who did this. One in particular thought it was his "duty" to expose my own RL gender simply because I persisted in trying to maintain the integrity of my male avatar -- which is my right.

I noticed how you deftly ducked around the problem of Crap Mariner. I never criticized him in my blog -- ever. He often lobbed potshots and crabby bitches at me in the past, but I didn't care. Then one day I commented on his female robot as "uncanny valley" for becoming "more human" and he began a jihad against me which still persists to this day, with the most outrageous lies and hate. You don't comment on *that fact*, of course, because it doesn't suit your theory. Instead, you try -- again -- to convert this into a "problem of someone disagreeing with you".

That's a comment decoy used by your type, trying to distract from what really happens -- and I expose it, again and again.

I don't "refer to MTF transfolk" as a whole in any way, shape, or form, negatively or positively. I discuss very specific assholes in this category who single me out and I expose what they're doing. If you can't tell the difference -- when very specific names and behaviour are mentioned -- and you feel the need for some sort of blanket PC corrective, you have the problem, not me.

Once again, I will affirm from my own deep understanding of gender: "I personally don't buy this crap about men "chosing a female avatar out of a sense of curiosity and a sense of experimentation". I just don't. Changing your gender is an instinctive thing. You do it because you want to and need to.

This idea that "I don't really understand" because I have this deep conviction based on personal experience and direct observation of others is, of course, peculiar to the aggressive band of transgendered males who think they should be able to control the discourse. They're the very ones who made the term "GLBT" with the "G" at the beginning and the "T" at the end -- for a reason. It's a cultural and a class power move and I'm not required to bow down to it. It's the oldest story in the book -- male chauvinism -- and I cry "bullshit" and "no way".

People who make female avatars "for fun" for a day or a week aren't in the category of botgirl. Botgirl deliberately made a female avatar that she tried to have as a consistent identity for a long period, and engaged in all kinds of interactions. That's fine -- but then she began to get guilty as she dealt with more mixed reality situations and refused to sustain her gender cross. That's not about "fun and experimentation". That's about deep ambivalence that one is trying to cover up with "fun and experimentation".

Why do I doubt the identity of bisexuals? Why do I sense there is a lie somewhere involved here? Because I've seen a number of cases of men who for a time claimed they were "bisexual" because they took part in a three-way or an orgy who finally then settle down and chose exclusively male partners because they finally accept that they are gay and stop fear being recognized as gay. That's all there is to it. Real life experience -- and not political correctness which you are hounding and pounding because of your own inadequacies and doubts.

I'm not required to be forced to use a pronoun with regard to someone who is trying to silence, correct, and bully me. You are he, he, he. If someone wants to display their contempt of me by referring to me as "she," it's a marker for contempt. Nothing I can do about it except point out that the few people who persistently do that and try to constantly bully me are doing one thing: trying to silence my criticism of geeks -- which is legitimate.

Uncalled for vitriol? Like I said, it's a hate bus. A few people are on it. They get a big-ass pushback from me. End of story.

[cube inada]

..hate bus.. peace train...crazy train....get on the love train...

-OJ'c cube
strange days... indeed.

this mornings Firesign on the Lawn...VW paid for it....the volks car hitler helped design sponsored the NJ jewish kids scream for sanity to a country that once stopped hilter.....

virtuality + dollars really has won...

and one humanist TREK jewish kid called out the other younger borg one.... very interesting times indeed.

join the corbomite bus.!...
and yes. gold shirt on uhura..episodes filmed and aired very differnt times...;'0