Cross-Gender Avatars in Games

Cross-Gender Avatars in Games(blog.amateurtopologist.com)

3 points by rhdoenges 13 years ago | 2 comments

networked 13 years ago |

Gender in online games is a well-charted territory. The linked post echoes this more in-depth article from 1999: http://tharsis-gate.org/articles/imaginary/GENDER~1.HTM.

Edit: There's also the following quote on men playing as women from a 1993 paper [1] on MUDs ("multi-user dungeons", see [2]). I find myself amused by how true its final sentence rings twenty years later [3].

>Many people, both male and female, enjoy the attention paid to female characters. Male players will often log on as female characters and behave suggestively, further encouraging sexual advances. Pavel Curtis has noted that the most promiscuous and sexually aggressive women are usually played by men. If you meet a character named "FabulousHotBabe," she is almost certainly a he in real life.

[1] http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/gender_swapping.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

[3] But don't misread it as reenforcing the tired cliche that "there are no girls on the internet". It's rather about how the "FabulousHotBabes" of the Internet are very often not its girls.

fibbery 13 years ago | |

That is fascinating in the context of camp/travestites - when men dress as women they often adopt a stylized, over-the-top presentation of femininity. same thing applies online.