As a member of second life we have the opportunity to do pretty much anything that we can think of. this is were the whole fantasy life comes into play. We use these games like second life in order to live out, in a way, that experiences that normal, boring, quiet lives do not permit. But when we are interacting in such a free, no rules society, than how do we keep consistent with not only our identities and personalities, but with our genders as well? When we have to ability to live free and make choices that will in no direct way effect our lives outside the game, what will we do? Will we simply sell drugs like I tried, or does the need for more experience and the deep fantasy push us to strive for experiences that would be either impossible or looked down upon in real life? As we have discussed before, the customization of your avatar is highly deep, and allows for the creation of realistic human looking avatars or beasts that no one have ever seen before. For those of us looking for that human connection that may be missing in our real world lives, we may strive to make a avatar as realistic as possible. another important thing to not is the users ability to change appearances even after they have finalized their original avatar. So back to the issue, how do we keep consistent with the characteristics of our own live inside a virtual world, or do we? I didn't. After a few days I found myself inside a sex room, trying on different sized cocks and breasts and vagina's. At one point I even found myself with a pair of breasts attached along with a penis that appeared to be coming out of my belly button. Does this mean that I desire a pair of breasts and a penis coming out of my belly button on my own person? NO. It means that if humans have the ability to explore new horizons they will. So after sex with a few different people (with my belly button penis) I was able to come to some conclusions about gender and virtual worlds. The largest and probably the most important... i checked in the mirror after the game, and after looking deep at myself i was able to conclude that yes, I am a man, and no i do not wish to have any extra attachments on my body. Gender is something that can be 100% fucked with on a virtual world. We can attach different organs that make our avatar look like the opposite sex, and we can even change the way we interact with others, but in the end we are still the same people when we log off at night. Some people may say that the ability to explore these new frontiers could in turn give us more confusion about not only who we are but who we want to be. In my own personal opinion, the only thing that these worlds can do to us is allow for the growth of these thoughts. I do not believe that exploring different gender roles in the game can directly lead to us desiring to change our gender roles in the real world, however, if we enter the game already confused about who we are, it can have some negative effect. Exploration is good. It allows us to get different tastes of the world so that when we enter new experiences in our lives we are not surprised at the outcomes. Even if all of the choices we make in a virtual world are snippets of our unconscious desires, it does not mean that those are desires that we are willing change for. I may kill 100 people in 10 minutes on Grand Theft Auto 4, but in no way does that mean that when i turn off the xbox I am going to drive downtown and start blowing peoples heads off. Yes, games like GTA4 have been blamed for such things, but if you are the kind of person who is going to be influenced to do such a horrible thing in real life by a stupid, animated, unrealistic game, than something will be bound to set you off regardless of what you play. We use these games to explore our fantasies. We kill people in GTA4 because we know that in real life, we would be sent to hell in a hand basket if we did that. I attached breasts to my character because i knew that i would never again have that opportunity. If used properly, second life along with all other video games are means of exploration, means to try all of the things that our society and our personal abilities would never permit us to do. Do you think that you have the ability to explore without getting tricked into thinking its all real? Lets hope your not selling drugs tomorrow, or off on a killing spree with new sexual organs. Good Luck.