THE INSTANT INSIGHTS KEEP COMING!

Sometimes you blog your heart out with a multi-part, extensively-researched story, and the feedback is bupkus. (Not whining, just saying!) Sometimes you post a quick hit-and-run blurb, and the conservation never quits. That's more the case with "Instant Insights on Sex and Race", featuring the thoughts from a gay white man who played Second Life as a black lesbian. A very short entry from nearly a month ago, the comments are still coming, and they're provocative, strange, and wonderful. Some recent excerpts below:

I recently started playing SL and lost my original avatar, so experimented
with the options for female avatars and haven't gone back yet! It's really
interesting seeing how differently people react to you based on their
perceptions of your gender. This is obvious intellectually, but a lot more
visceral when someone's looking up your skirt... - Cranky Murdock

You are being deceptive [to play as a different gender.] Things like appearance can be looked right past. Race and nationality, I would never let anyone get away with saying that such things alter the way you think. However, gender goes to the very core of a human. When you talk to a black man or a white man, you're still just talking to a man. The same goes for a black or white woman, of course. However, Men and Women are two different things. They don't look the same, no, but they also do not think the same. - scorp

First off, let me say that I am male, forty, and, as society determines at the moment, I am straight in real life. That being said, in-game I play male, female and... heh... both (hermophrodite) as the mood and my girl friend's desires dictate... - Kathmandu

Go here to plunge into the insights, and to toss in some of your own.