Third Post – Encounters

My encounters on second life so far have been positive for the most part. Almost everybody I have spoken to on the platform has been kind and happy to talk, while maintaining their privacy and personal details, which is what I expected and perfectly normal.
However, there is a certain stigma attached to people who use platforms like second life. Unfortunately there has been little to dispel this stereotype in this virtual world. This stigma revolves around sexism. It is present in the worldwide community to a horrendous extent: female characters are overly sexualised, often given inappropriate and revealing clothing where completely unnecessary. I find this extremely frustrating and I find it hard not to disregard games and platforms that might have great content, for the simple fact that female characters are represented as objects of sexual desire.
This stereotype has been extremely present in Second Life so far: To begin with, only one of the female avatars was wearing clothes that weren’t overly revealing. The costume design of all of the others were extremely sexual, and this angered me a lot. I find it difficult to tolerate gaming platforms that are sexist.
This was again prevalent when I went looking for more clothing for my avatar – the majority of female clothing available to users is offensively sexual. Short skirts and too much cleavage are only the beginning of what’s wrong with the clothing available. Most of the outfits are designed to be attractive to men’s sense of sexually attractive, and I have absolutely no time for such obvious sexism.