by Randolph Hollingsworth, University of Kentucky dolph@uky

1. Gender and Women’s Bodies in Second Life:Exploration and Problem-Solving in a Virtual WorldSAWH ConferenceJune 6, 2009 by Randolph Hollingsworth,University of Kentuckydolph@uky.edu

2. What is Second Life (SL)? • MUVE = Multi User Virtual Environment • Second Life, launched in 2003, is NOT a game • 3-D virtual world, free, online, entirely built and owned by its residents • Avatars walk, run, dance, fly,chat, talk, sing • Social networking, educational,recreational, commercial, cultural

3. SL is International

4. SL and Problem-based Learning Learning 2.0: interactive, collaborative, shared, distributed, coauthored, and engaging… Requires short- and long-term goal setting The process of creating content becomes more important to learning than the act of merely consuming it…

5. Fluidity of Gender in SL

6. Gender in Second Life (SL) • SL founders (Linden Labs) offer 3 body types for avatar creation: male, female, furry (though the body shape for a furry is anthropomorphic and thus male or female) • Bodies in SL can be whatever the user imagines – and SL residents often choose a great variety of embodiments • The user’s gender can be discovered over time though many longtime SL residents don’t care

7. Gender in WoW, capitalist fairytale "World of Warcraft: Non-Fantasy Gender in a High-Fantasy World," posted by Hilde G. Corneliussen, University of Bergen, Norway, March 20, 2009, http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/article/world_warcraft_non_fantasy_gender_high_fantasy_world Gender is critical to team roles in quest-based, multi-user online games

8. Roleplaying in Quest-based Games

9. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) Using Gender Stereotypes to Draw in New Members MMORPGs rely on large numbers of players – in the hundreds or thousands playing simultaneously in one persistent world online. Players must cooperate with each other and interact meaningfully in order to compete on a large scale. Since the physical limitations of the typical female body in comparison with a typical male body are rarely evidenced in MMORPGs, there are few reasons other than an aesthetic one (or the user’s personal gender bias) to choose one gender over the other. In Evony, women are evident only in the rhetoric of the ad shown here. The game shows only male troops, machinery and fortresses.

10. Women in Age of Conan “Howard's Hyboria is nothing like our world. Not all humans are considered equal. Men and women are being subjected to slavery. Exchanging someone's liberty for money is commonplace. Prostitutes are being fully respected as citizens in some societies (this has been the case in "real" history as well, in pre-patriarchal civilizations)… The radical feminist interpretation of our western societies have been criticized since its conception, especially by women of the kind we see here: those that use sex for empowerment.” Sayvara, posted 5-15-2008, at www.massively.com/2008/05/14/new-aoc-trailer-promises-gender-equality-in-ass-kicking/

11. There.com – “everyday hangout”

12. Pangya KR and cosplay

13. Roleplay?…not really Some online worlds rely on users’ sexual fantasy and provide 3D virtual depictions of pornographic detail in the privacy of one’s own home that in the past could only be portrayed using still photography, drawings and text.

14. Bella Yan aka Randolph Hollingsworth at the University of Kentucky island in SL For more information, see the websites listed at http://www.uky.edu/TASC/IT/SecondLife/sled.htm The University of Kentucky’s presence in Second Life started in 2008 as the result of a collaboration between Office of Undergraduate Education Office of Undergraduate Admissions UK Libraries Chellgren Center for Undergraduate Excellence in Teaching WRFL (Radio Free Lexington) and many different academic departments and colleges, including Art, Music, Anatomy and Physiology, and Dentistry

15. Immersive Learning in English Literature at Univ of Louisville

16. Academic Research in Second Life Tom Boellstorff (associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine) Coming of Age in Second Life:An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human Princeton University Press, 2008 Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in Media and Cultural Studies, Association of American Publishers http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8647.html

17. SL’s thriving economy encourages fashion design and rental spaces

18. Theatre in Second Life

19. Bella at the Smithsonian in SL

20. Virtual Worldsand Learning In Second Life, students can • explore to gain knowledge and experience • retain the sense of being in the same place overlaid on the sense of being at different locations, encoding shared learning and experiences into memories even stronger than if in fact all in the same place • experiment with identity, including gender swapping (though sustaining a credible presentation of a fake self is difficult and gender deception remains a polarizing issue among SL communities) ideal for imagining and practicing gender and race

21. More on SL and Education http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/education http://collegeenglish.wikispaces.com/SecondLife http://www.simteach.com/wiki/ http://ccsl.wetpaint.com/ http://www.classroom20.com/group/secondlife http://blip.tv/file/1375957/(video tour “I am Library: an ode to self-discovery and collective creativity in Second Life)