Outreach

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Permalink Reply by Rafi Santo on April 28, 2008 at 10:38am

Thanks so much for starting the group Sharon. Gender issues are something that come up all the time with the teens we work with here at Global Kids, and one of our teen interns in Second Life actually chose to do a workshop in TSL about issues related to media and body image. Ironically, the workshop had mostly male attendees.

She wrote about it here:
http://www.holymeatballs.org/2008/01/slinternteen_beauty_real_vs_pe...

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Permalink Reply by Birdie Newborn on May 6, 2008 at 8:05pm

Sharon/Ellie--

I come at this from a non-academic angle since I am a TG (M2F) in RL. I rarely stress this aspect, but recently was invited to participate in a Croning ceremony. This rite of passage is designed to celebrate a transition in the life of a woman, but I find that I must honor a double heritage and so have chosen to create a ritual to become shaman. The role of shaman, if you do the research, you will seen has historically (and pre-historically) been accorded to transgenders. True, it is a calling, yet if I look back on my own life, inklings of one or another shamanic role have emerged.

Second Life shows a high percentage of gender cross-overs, probably for fun or experimental, which is quite revealing to me. I take it to be an affirmation of my own "choice." Gender is not usually considered a matter of choice, and most people are quite happy and comfortable in the gender they have. I find that the majority of people see us as anomalous, but I know that that is a cultural fact, not a natural one. Many other cultures have afforded leniency, even honor, to us.

As for learning, Second Life allows this "choice" that in RL is not so easy to make. And as a consequence, many people are learning things about themselves that are otherwise hidden. Can it be taught in a class? What are the lessons? Very hard to put into words. Let me just say that it shifts one's point of view, how people react to you, what they expect of you. In other words, everything is the same, but everything is different through your eyes.

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Collingwood / Ellie Brewster on May 14, 2008 at 4:16pm

Birdie,

I have a student who is working on a transgender subject. How do you feel about an informal interview?

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Permalink Reply by Birdie Newborn on May 14, 2008 at 8:57pm

That'd be fine. Let me know whom to expect.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Clark (SL: JS Saltwater) on May 6, 2008 at 11:36pm

I'm lucky at the moment because I'm teaching an online course, "New Communication Technologies and Contemporary Society" and SL fits right in as both medium and subject, space and place. As a grad student in Communication, I'm looking at SL as a medium for the reproduction of culture, especially with regard to environmental issues. Environmentalism led me to ecofeminism, which led to Queer Theory, and thus here I am. Certainly SL provides a rich background for discussions about epistemology, essence, identity, etc. And its affordances for the kinds of rewarding experiences that Birdie describes are really encouraging, so it ties back into human development and social justice issues as well.

I'm polishing up a just-completed paper on gender-crossing in SL that I hope adds just a bit to a very large existing literature by viewing it from Queer Theory and by using an autoethnographic method.

By the way, two recent works of interest to the gender-in-SL discussion are "I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life" by Mark Stephen Meadows and the just-released "Coming of Age in Second Life" by Tom Boellstorff.

Thanks for setting this up, Sharon/Ellie.

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Collingwood / Ellie Brewster on May 14, 2008 at 4:31pm

Thanks for the refs, Joe, I didn't have Boellstorff. I'd love to read your paper when its done.

I'm fascinated by the opportunities that SL offers us--for example, the opportunity for my non-transgendered students to have an experience that gives them some understanding of what transgender really means.

I've been thinking a lot about how we introduce our students to these ideas. It's one thing for a student to transform themselves according to their own imagination, and another thing to be given an avatar that constrains them to a different reality. I'm toying with the idea of doing something like this for my next class.

In other words, I encourage my students to try out other identities - gender, race, culture, class, etc. But what happens they are given an identity that constrains them? After all, we don't choose our gender, sexual orientaiton, race etc. What if we simulate that lack of choice in SL?

Or is that an authoritarian approach?

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Permalink Reply by Joe Clark (SL: JS Saltwater) on May 15, 2008 at 4:26pm

I think that's a great idea--in fact it could be used with all manner of identity categories (oversimplifying). One's presented self in RL can have components that are natural "givens"--at least hard to keep others from perceiving and perhaps responding negatively to.

It doesn't seem any more coercively authoritarian than half the other things we do to the poor students. :-)

I am just wading slowly through Boellstorff because of a raft of other things, but it's thorough and engagingly written. Meanwhile I am trying to sample as much as possible of another work (not so specifically related to gender), the International Handbook of VIrtual Learning Environments (http://www.springer.com/education/learning+&+instruction/book/9...) before I have to return it to interlibrary loan. It's a massive work, 1600pp, $500 a two-volume set -- but loaded with good stuff. Hoping I can get our library to buy a copy.

I am cleaning up the paper and will definitely share it. Some of the cleanup will depend on whether my othergendered alt is ready to be outed. :-}

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Cabiria on May 17, 2008 at 11:30am

In Second Life, I am JonMedia Renegade. I am a psychology professor focused on media psychology and developmental psychology. I also have strong interests in positive psychology and appreciative inquiry.

My recently completed research (qualitative, grounded theory) looked at how the experiences of marginalized lesbian and gay people in Second Life affected their real world lives. I found that identity and social development of lesbian and gay people, often interrupted / corrupted during the adolescent stage, experienced identity development redirection / resumption. The positive benefits gained as a result of their virtual world experiences eventually transferred back into their real lives (see Fredrickson's Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions). The research also indicated the permeability between real and virtual lives.

I have other projects coming up that I would be happy to talk about later. I am glad to be part of this exciting group and look forward to hearing more about what everyone is doing. Thank you all for your warm, welcoming messages so far. They are much appreciated!

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