{"id":497,"date":"2011-05-17T08:31:38","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=497"},"modified":"2011-05-17T08:31:38","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:31:38","slug":"the-gender-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=497","title":{"rendered":"The Gender Mask"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a modern adage which states, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”\u00a0 I am pretty sure this was originally stated by Gary Larson in the Far Side<\/em> comic strip, but I may be wrong.\u00a0 The point was, you can be anybody you want online.\u00a0 This actually predates the internet; I can remember taking on different personas in pre-internet chat room type places.\u00a0 Just for giggles, I sometimes even got people to believe I was female.<\/p>\n

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One of the running jokes in the online gaming world–EverQuest<\/em>, World of Warcraft<\/em>, Dungeons & Dragons Online<\/em>, etc.–is that the girls are really guys.\u00a0 I don’t have any actual statistics to back this up, but I think about half the time this is true.\u00a0 I personally prefer female characters, mostly because when I must go to a third-person point of view, I would rather look at a girl than a guy as I am heterosexual.\u00a0 That’s not the whole story; I admit I have a strong feminine side which enjoys expressing itself through Shakatma and my other female characters.\u00a0 I’m not gay, but I do like being a little girlish online.<\/p>\n

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This leads to the question of the day:\u00a0 What is gender, really?\u00a0 There are obvious physical attributes, but I think it goes deeper than that.\u00a0 There’s a lot of transsexuals out there who will tell you they felt “trapped” in the wrong gender’s body.\u00a0 Modern medical science allows them to express this gender identity preference better, and I envision a day where gender expression is entirely up to the individual.<\/p>\n

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I don’t think I would want to be female full time.\u00a0 I like being male.\u00a0 If I could change back and forth, that might be interesting, and maybe that interest is why I like playing female characters.\u00a0 Again, I’m not gay, although if I could turn into a female and back again I would be a lesbian as a woman.\u00a0 My romantic (and lustful) interests are all female.<\/p>\n

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So I think, in essence, gender is a mask we wear.\u00a0 It’s not one easily changed, although the online world does let us choose that mask in a virtual sort of way.\u00a0 Games like EverQuest<\/em> allow one to completely customize one’s appearance and then leave it that way.\u00a0 In the real world, we’re subject to growing fat, getting skinny, being scarred, being male or female, but in the online world one’s appearance is as static or as changing as a person chooses.\u00a0 Some games charge a fee for changing one’s appearance–and gender changes can be particularly pricey, if allowed–and others allow many changes for free.<\/p>\n

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I am sure there are studies being done on this sort of thing.\u00a0 Gender identity is a hot topic in the modern world.\u00a0 Many religious organizations reject transsexuals (along with the homosexuality usually associated with it).\u00a0 Ironically, they seem to be saying one should accept who they are born to be while at the same time rejecting the sexual preference one is born with.\u00a0 (Homosexuality has been proven to have genetic influences!)<\/p>\n

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Anyway, I find the concept of gender and gender identity interesting.\u00a0 I have been slowly working my way through the Ranma 1\/2<\/em> anime series, which is about a boy who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water and back to a boy when doused with hot water.\u00a0 Even when the title character is female, however, he thinks of himself as male.\u00a0 I am currently working on a storyline with a similar basis, except the central character uses a magic word to change.\u00a0 In my mind, the psychology of it is a little less clear than Ranma’s; they are confused by their gender-shifting ability.\u00a0 When the main character (Mark) takes on his alter ego (Molly), he is not quite so masculine.\u00a0 He still thinks of himself in male terms, but he also recognizes that Molly is a person unto herself in many ways.\u00a0 Assuming I ever go anywhere with this storyline, I think I’ll enjoy exploring the psychology of somebody with a different sort of split personality.<\/p>\n

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Psychological studies have shown before the principle of mask-wearing.\u00a0 People behave differently in different social settings, adopting sometimes radically different roles in different situations.\u00a0 I think gender can now be added to the list of masks we can wear, and the future holds some promise of demonstrating this.\u00a0 What mask do you<\/em> like to wear?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a modern adage which states, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”\u00a0 I am pretty sure this was originally stated by Gary Larson in the Far Side comic strip, but I may be wrong.\u00a0 The point was, you can be anybody you want online.\u00a0 This actually predates the internet; I can remember taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}