I was chatting on the MUD with P, C, and E when A turned up. A, a middle-aged lady in real life, was better known to P (same order) and C, E (all imms) than I was.
P and C liked to play male characters online. I am not sure of the reason why, presumbably because they see advantages to doing so in that the largely adolescent male gaming population tends to hold them in more respect and not try to flirt with them. However, I’ve never seen them expressed inclination to consider themselves anything than female.
If any of them decided one day that they are to be considered male, henceforth you will never hear a single female pronoun escape from my lips. I’m quite capable of calling 1.8m big sturdy fellows “her” and bodaciously curvy fellows “him”. But as I said, none of them have ever expressed any inclination outwardly.
We were chatting by ourselves as players to players in the room, when A turned up. I made a comment about C, using the pronouns “she”. Immediately, A used some emotes on me and accused me, in a patronising manner, of not keeping C’s secret.
What kind of secret is it? Everyone in the room knew of C’s real life gender, and she seems quite happy and comfortable to be in that gender, and for us to refer to her in that gender.
So I typed, “I find this quite funny, because I am a real life transsexual, but you are the ones playing gender games online.”
Dead silence. Then, E went, “thanks for making everything weird.”
Why is it “weird”? P, C and E know who I am. We’ve seen each other real life. I’m quite unapologetic about who I am, really. If they know it, why make it sound as it if is a horrible thing that I must never, ever speak of to them…even though they already know?
A, the hitherto champion of gender expression, went silent. After a few moments, she made an generic excuse of needing to do something and left. No response to a tell I sent her.
No. I am quite unapologetic.
1 comment:
Heh. I suppose some of them still have some lingering discomfort with the idea of gender being flexible. Realness implies a strong committment to it, I suppose.
I've seen enough transsexuals around San Francisco and Berkeley to be quite used to the choice.
At most, if you don't know the person and don't know what gender they would like to be addressed by, you play a little guessing game of "hmm, male or female?" on the androgynous ones.
Meanwhile some of us bend online not because we don't like our RL gender, but to smooth our way online due to general preconceptions.
My only issue is with pronouns: I've gotten used to using one pronoun over the years, and it does takes a conscious effort to switch, or habit goes into play.
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