The Sex of an Avatar

[PictureGuy]

Do you think a person's avatar should be the same as the person. In other words, if you male your avatar should be male, and if female your avatar should be female?

I feel a person's avatar should be of the same sex. You know immediately who you are talking to. But I know there is quite a bit of cross-gender avataring going on on this site. Why would you think it is or is not important?

[Vincent Valentine]

Here's my own experience regarding the matter. I'll be as succinct as I can.

Back in the day, using this site as an example since it was one of my earliest online experiences, it seemed everyone presented themselves as the gender they actually were. If it was the forum or even the chatroom, people tended to identify as the sex they were in reality – Even in roleplay, people tended to play characters matching their IRL gender.

However, as the years ticked by and I started using various roleplay chatrooms elsewhere, it seemed like a lot of people presenting themselves as female were actually a G.I.R.L – "Guy In Real Life."

I can't say I ever personally experienced or knew of someone doing this here, but on roleplay chat sites, it was fairly commonplace.

You'd get tons of guys roleplaying female/newhalf characters who all claimed to be lesbians. The irony being, it was actually a bunch of dudes using one another to fulfill their base yuri fantasies, and if someone was ever outed/outed themselves as a guy IRL, they tended to get shunned to the point they'd just be ignored by absolutely everybody.

In short: If the illusion they were female was broken? They were screwed.

This kept on evolving. Male users playing females stopped outright claiming to be lesbian and opted for stating they were bisexual, but then all the male users who identified as/played male characters on the site would end up voicing their anger in public rooms since these so-called bisexual female characters wouldn't play ball with them or even talk to them. Then people started to play less masculine male characters, opting for femboy/trap types, which most of the G.I.R.L's seemed to prefer to the prospect of playing with an identifiably masculine male.

Bringing it up to speed, nowadays I'm fairly used to guys using avatars of female characters. You see it on Twitter and Steam almost religiously, and I've even noticed it has became a phenomena around here to some extent – Probably why you made the topic!

I don't know whether it is due to feminine tendencies, or just that they find it more aesthetically pleasing to use a picture of a cute anime girl. I can definitely say that male users are more responsive to people who use a picture of a cute anime girl as opposed to those who use more masculine options. Users of MMORPG's will play as female characters, and as far as I've been told, they get more attention and a lot of in-game assistance that they simply wouldn't get if they played as a male character.

In short: Being "female" online makes you more popular ... With males.

Just to close, I have a story regarding the very first forum I ever joined – It was a Mega Man forum, of all things. Almost entirely a male userbase, but there was this one female user everyone had a crush on ... I mean, everyone.

Long story short, the "female" user actually turned out to be a male, and a lot of people were left totally embarrassed and intensely angry by the experience.

I was too young to even understand why someone would do that at the time, but now? I'm just aware that online, people can be whoever they claim to be, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are what they say they are.

[PictureGuy]

Ahh, the anonymity of the internet.

[Vincent Valentine]

Ahh, the anonymity of the internet.

See: Online Disinhibition Effect.

"It's all in my head"

Lacking any kind of visual face-to-face cues, the human mind assigns characteristics and traits to a "person" during digital interactions. Reading another person's message may insert imagined characteristics of what a person looks like or sounds like into the mind and assigns an identity to these things. The mind also assigns traits to a user according to an individual's own desires, needs, and wishes: traits that the real person might not actually have. Additionally, this allows fantasies to play out in an individual's mind because the user may construct an elaborate system of emotions, memories, and images: inserting the user and the person they are interacting with into a role-play that helps reinforce the reality of the person on the other end within the mind of the user.

[TheAsterisk!]

I feel a person's avatar should be of the same sex. You know immediately who you are talking to.

You make me want to be Margaret Thatcher again.

[PictureGuy]

You make me want to be Margaret Thatcher again.

No! Not that!

[CapnJack]

I think of an avatar as something that acts as your representative to the other members; someone that speaks for you when your face is unreachable. Think of them as the hot catgirl maid that answers the door, or the mysterious knife welding vampire butler, or a chibi, but still violent doberman.