SECOND LIFE AND THE TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCE
Using the virtual world of Second Life as a tool for ethnographic research both in-world and real-world, this presentation relays the stories of individuals immersed in transgendering experiences. Combining in-world and “real world” interviews, autoethnography, photography and machinima, it focuses on the transitions, identifications and community responses that make up transgendering’s phenomenology.
Second Life can enable nuanced understandings of the transgender desire. The virtual body (an avatar) offers the transgender person the freedom to attain an imagined and desired self through in-world “body-building,” circumventing the social, economic and psychological obstacles to real-world transitioning, identification and social recognition. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate this and other liberties offered by Second Life and how they may facilitate the “concrete” realization of an imagined and desired self. Finally, attention will be paid to individual experiences of intolerance as seen through the rupture between avatar and body, imagined and actual, and in-world and real-world.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Somebody is watching you
It is perhaps the greatest fear, that someone might be watching us. But even worse, that they let you know you're being watched. Each action we take it's being recorded: the scans in the supermarket, the credit card swipes, the trips to the gym, who sends e-mail, web pages visited. What if suddenly, a list of those things were delivered at your doorstep. Even worse, what if something that you did in the past -way in the past -came to haunt you? What if you were a child and everything was a seemingly innocent prank, and it came back to you years later, like flood gates that open and deluge your entire life? That's what I get from Caché, but also (and this from Haneke’s interview) the guilt that permeates the film. A guilt that is not only personal –the boy who was sent away –but also the guilt of a whole class, social injustice committed years ago, a collective guilt of sorts, as Jason pointed out in his e-mail.
Cinematically, I like the repetition of red: in the drawing, in the boy bleeding in the dark, and the rooster being killed. Then, there is the crucial moment in the film, dramatically at least, the moment that makes the story possible: sending the boy to the orphanage. It is the most striking of Haneke's treatment. He positions the camera in a long shot. It is as if he is playing with the entire concept of peering inside, or looking in. He makes us want to see what's happening, in close-up, but he doesn't let us. Instead, we become participants of this desire to be there, close to the action, spying. We suddenly become what we have been reproaching all along. We didn't like the spying, but when it’s time to look inside others’ private life, we don’t mind to set aside our principles. We want to see it. We are as bad as the guy next door with the binoculars, or the one sending the tapes. We all want to be Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.
Cinematically, I like the repetition of red: in the drawing, in the boy bleeding in the dark, and the rooster being killed. Then, there is the crucial moment in the film, dramatically at least, the moment that makes the story possible: sending the boy to the orphanage. It is the most striking of Haneke's treatment. He positions the camera in a long shot. It is as if he is playing with the entire concept of peering inside, or looking in. He makes us want to see what's happening, in close-up, but he doesn't let us. Instead, we become participants of this desire to be there, close to the action, spying. We suddenly become what we have been reproaching all along. We didn't like the spying, but when it’s time to look inside others’ private life, we don’t mind to set aside our principles. We want to see it. We are as bad as the guy next door with the binoculars, or the one sending the tapes. We all want to be Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Kathleen Stewart - Ordinary Things
In Ordinary Affects, Stewart, writes "The notion of a totalized, of which everything is always already somehow a part, is not helpful (to say the least) in the effort to approach a weighted and reeling present" (1). She continues by setting writing her goal at bringing these 'forces' into view, and defining 'the ordinary' which for her is "a shifting assemblage of practices and practical knowledges, a scene of both liveness and exhaustion, a dream of escape or of the simple life" (1). Stewart sets to write about this ordinary affects in the 'United States caught in a present that began some time ago' (1).
Building on the work of Raymond Williams, Deleuze, Guattari, Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Leslie Stern, Sedwick, Stewart writes about encounters and of "public feelings that begin and end in broad circulation" (2), and of affects that are a "kind of contact zone where the overdetermination of ciculations, events, conditions, technologies, and flows of power literally take place" (3). Her approach is one that points towards that which cannot be easily measured, that is vague, that can't be quantified. It is, instead "a problem or question." She writes: "Models of thinking that slide over the live surface of difference at work...mis how someone's ordinary can endure or can sag defeated; how it can shift in the face of events like a shift in the kid's school schedule or the police at the door" (4).
She got me right there. I understood what she was talking about. For I have had those changes in schedule, and a knock at the door –not of the police –but of adversity, tragedy, intolerance, suffering. Those things that can't be placed in a scale, but that make experience. Events that as she writes: "They can gather themselves into what we think as stories and selves. But they can also remain, or become again, dispersed, floating, recombining –regardless of what whole or what relay of rushing signs they might find themselves in for a while" (6).
We all have those knocks at the door, but what Stewart does with them is what matters. She presents them as to leave the reader with "an embodied sense of the world as a dense network of mostly unknown links" (6).
How wonderful!
It reminds me of what Juan Rulo, a Mexican writer wrote: "In order to see reality one needs a lot of imagination."
"Para ver la realidad se necesita mucha imaginacion."
For what I wrote about Cultural Poesis, another writing by Stwewart, see
Snapshot of US culture
Building on the work of Raymond Williams, Deleuze, Guattari, Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Leslie Stern, Sedwick, Stewart writes about encounters and of "public feelings that begin and end in broad circulation" (2), and of affects that are a "kind of contact zone where the overdetermination of ciculations, events, conditions, technologies, and flows of power literally take place" (3). Her approach is one that points towards that which cannot be easily measured, that is vague, that can't be quantified. It is, instead "a problem or question." She writes: "Models of thinking that slide over the live surface of difference at work...mis how someone's ordinary can endure or can sag defeated; how it can shift in the face of events like a shift in the kid's school schedule or the police at the door" (4).
She got me right there. I understood what she was talking about. For I have had those changes in schedule, and a knock at the door –not of the police –but of adversity, tragedy, intolerance, suffering. Those things that can't be placed in a scale, but that make experience. Events that as she writes: "They can gather themselves into what we think as stories and selves. But they can also remain, or become again, dispersed, floating, recombining –regardless of what whole or what relay of rushing signs they might find themselves in for a while" (6).
We all have those knocks at the door, but what Stewart does with them is what matters. She presents them as to leave the reader with "an embodied sense of the world as a dense network of mostly unknown links" (6).
How wonderful!
It reminds me of what Juan Rulo, a Mexican writer wrote: "In order to see reality one needs a lot of imagination."
"Para ver la realidad se necesita mucha imaginacion."
For what I wrote about Cultural Poesis, another writing by Stwewart, see
Snapshot of US culture
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Mediated Reality - Transformation
“From all the different instruments of human invention, the most amazing is, without a doubt, the book. The rest are extensions of the body. The microscope, the telescope are extensions of the sight; the telephone of voice; then we have the plow and the sword, which are extensions of the arm. But the book is another matter; the book is an extension of memory and of imagination” The Book 1978, Jorge Luis Borges, Editorial Losada 1985. My translation.
Borges’s fascination with the book is a known fact, and his comparison of the library with memory is perhaps his most known metaphor. But, what about the virtual world? How could we compare virtuality with our imagination and our memory? Can we compare the world we enter with an avatar as an extension of ourselves? What possibilities this mind-body extension presents?
When entering the online world with an avatar, a spatial and time detachment takes place. However, something else happens: a closeness to one’s self also occurs. Compared to the book, in works of fiction, when a reader enters the world a protagonist inhabits, the process takes place in the space between the mind and the written word. The process of roaming the virtual world with an avatar also allows this to happen, but unlike the written word, the identification with the avatar extends beyond memory and imagination. It is more tactile. It contains more tangible features: there’s movement, communication, proximity to space and others. Inhabiting the virtual world, the connection becomes a closer metaphor to the physical world of the here and now.
The question then arises, what insights into aspects of human behavior can we discover by creating a parallel between virtual bodies and the real world? How can we best approach this analysis? More specifically, what comparisons can be made between the mediated reality of Second Life and the transgender experience? How can Second Life provide tools to learn more about transgender identities? That is the focus of my investigation.
I had to build Shields
SHIELDS
I met Jackie in Chelsea, she had to go to the pharmacy to pickup some medicine. She went to the counter and gave her name. I tried to hear the name she gave. Was it Theo? It will be ready in five minutes the clerk said. We sat waiting. “Jackie!” the clerk calls after a few minutes, and she gets up to pick it up and pay for it. We walk out and go to a café across the street. I ordered a cappuccino for her. I want to treat her. I tell her there’s a project I am working on, and I was wondering if she would be willing to be involved in it. “Yes, but before we talk about that, let me tell you about my father,” she tells me.
“I always knew my father was not who they told me he was. I grew up with my grandmother, and grew up believing that my father was black, you know, black from the islands, Garifuna, but I used to meet people that would look at me and said to me, ‘Are you Arab?’ I would be really surprised and there were a lot of people who told me that. Then one day I discovered that my father was Lebanese. He had an affair with my mother, didn’t know me until now. Is there sugar already in the coffee?”
“Oh no,” I said. “Let me get you some.”
“Equals, get me some equal.”
I got up, get the equal and come back to sit down at the table.
I met Jackie at a reading I was doing as part of an art exhibit of a friend. She was the MC. She approached me, talked to me and we exchanged numbers. Weeks later, she invited me to go on a TV shoot with her and other people. We drove to Long Island. On the way there, she sat next to me and told me her story. She was a teacher at an elementary school in Honduras. Then, she came to the States –as a he –and started her transformation. She then became Jackie. “My name is now legally, Jackie,” she told me as she put the equals in her cappuccino. “Congratulations,” I said smiling.
“Well, tell me what’s your project,” she said.
“I am doing research about transgederism. The research takes place in the virtual world,” I said. “And I wanted to see if you could participate in it.”
“You know, I think that there’s a story to tell about me. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell it. I keep a journal you know. I’ve been writing a book for a long time.”
“I am interested in your story. I think it’s a heroic. The things that you’ve done.”
“Yes, because most of the time people are interested in telling the story of transformation, but the burlesque part, not the other part, the human part.”
I interrupt.
“It should be told with respect,” I said.
“Yes, because let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I was an elementary teacher, and the head of the school system at the national level, came to supervise me. Can you imagine? Not because I was doing a bad job but because of the rumors that were spreading about me.”
“When I was a little kid –I must tell you that being who I am was not my choice –it’s not that I wanted to be this way. I was born this way. I was born with breasts, since I was a little kid, and they use to tell me to squeeze them so they wouldn’t grow but I refused. It made who I was, and I wasn’t going to destroy who I was only because others didn’t like it.”
“I’ve always missed having a father. Having a father figure it’s so important. When I was growing up, if they hit me or teased me, I couldn’t say ‘I’m going to go and tell my father.’ The others, that’s all they had to say, and nobody would bother them. I couldn’t.”
“Look, I was always afraid of walking on the street because everybody would make fun of me. I had a tiny waist. I didn’t know what it was like to walk like a boy. I was nothing like they wanted me to be. I was made into something they wanted, not what I really was. My grandmother, she wanted me to be the man of the house, and I wasn’t. I never knew what it was like to walk like a man. I bought a bicycle. I had a build a shield, to hide. I rode the bicycle to the store in the corner. I didn’t want to be seen walking. I always wore my shirts untucked to hide my waist and my breasts.”
“People treated me badly. Then I left and started my transformation. I started to send pictures and videos back home. I didn’t want it to be a shock, a total surprise. I wanted them to be prepared for when I went back. When I did go back, it was great, no one bothered me. They received me with honors, even the people that had been bad to me. They came and greeted me with respect. My niece, she told my mom, that she admired me, because no one had done what I had been able to do. I am proud of that.”
“It is what I think,” I said. “That you are brave. Well. What do you say? We meet again?”
“Yes, of course, but let me tell you something. I hate riding the subway. Sometimes, I rather take the bus, even if it takes me longer, and whenever I can, I take cabs.”
“We’ll talk and see how you feel.”
We walk outside. I was tired. She had to take the subway on Eighth Avenue. I had to walk east, to Sixth Avenue. She asked me to come with her. She almost begged. I understood, and could see why she didn’t like to ride the subway. I was happy to be there with her, even for a short time. I gave her a kiss goodbye and got off at my station. Shields, I thought.
I met Jackie in Chelsea, she had to go to the pharmacy to pickup some medicine. She went to the counter and gave her name. I tried to hear the name she gave. Was it Theo? It will be ready in five minutes the clerk said. We sat waiting. “Jackie!” the clerk calls after a few minutes, and she gets up to pick it up and pay for it. We walk out and go to a café across the street. I ordered a cappuccino for her. I want to treat her. I tell her there’s a project I am working on, and I was wondering if she would be willing to be involved in it. “Yes, but before we talk about that, let me tell you about my father,” she tells me.
“I always knew my father was not who they told me he was. I grew up with my grandmother, and grew up believing that my father was black, you know, black from the islands, Garifuna, but I used to meet people that would look at me and said to me, ‘Are you Arab?’ I would be really surprised and there were a lot of people who told me that. Then one day I discovered that my father was Lebanese. He had an affair with my mother, didn’t know me until now. Is there sugar already in the coffee?”
“Oh no,” I said. “Let me get you some.”
“Equals, get me some equal.”
I got up, get the equal and come back to sit down at the table.
I met Jackie at a reading I was doing as part of an art exhibit of a friend. She was the MC. She approached me, talked to me and we exchanged numbers. Weeks later, she invited me to go on a TV shoot with her and other people. We drove to Long Island. On the way there, she sat next to me and told me her story. She was a teacher at an elementary school in Honduras. Then, she came to the States –as a he –and started her transformation. She then became Jackie. “My name is now legally, Jackie,” she told me as she put the equals in her cappuccino. “Congratulations,” I said smiling.
“Well, tell me what’s your project,” she said.
“I am doing research about transgederism. The research takes place in the virtual world,” I said. “And I wanted to see if you could participate in it.”
“You know, I think that there’s a story to tell about me. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell it. I keep a journal you know. I’ve been writing a book for a long time.”
“I am interested in your story. I think it’s a heroic. The things that you’ve done.”
“Yes, because most of the time people are interested in telling the story of transformation, but the burlesque part, not the other part, the human part.”
I interrupt.
“It should be told with respect,” I said.
“Yes, because let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy. I was an elementary teacher, and the head of the school system at the national level, came to supervise me. Can you imagine? Not because I was doing a bad job but because of the rumors that were spreading about me.”
“When I was a little kid –I must tell you that being who I am was not my choice –it’s not that I wanted to be this way. I was born this way. I was born with breasts, since I was a little kid, and they use to tell me to squeeze them so they wouldn’t grow but I refused. It made who I was, and I wasn’t going to destroy who I was only because others didn’t like it.”
“I’ve always missed having a father. Having a father figure it’s so important. When I was growing up, if they hit me or teased me, I couldn’t say ‘I’m going to go and tell my father.’ The others, that’s all they had to say, and nobody would bother them. I couldn’t.”
“Look, I was always afraid of walking on the street because everybody would make fun of me. I had a tiny waist. I didn’t know what it was like to walk like a boy. I was nothing like they wanted me to be. I was made into something they wanted, not what I really was. My grandmother, she wanted me to be the man of the house, and I wasn’t. I never knew what it was like to walk like a man. I bought a bicycle. I had a build a shield, to hide. I rode the bicycle to the store in the corner. I didn’t want to be seen walking. I always wore my shirts untucked to hide my waist and my breasts.”
“People treated me badly. Then I left and started my transformation. I started to send pictures and videos back home. I didn’t want it to be a shock, a total surprise. I wanted them to be prepared for when I went back. When I did go back, it was great, no one bothered me. They received me with honors, even the people that had been bad to me. They came and greeted me with respect. My niece, she told my mom, that she admired me, because no one had done what I had been able to do. I am proud of that.”
“It is what I think,” I said. “That you are brave. Well. What do you say? We meet again?”
“Yes, of course, but let me tell you something. I hate riding the subway. Sometimes, I rather take the bus, even if it takes me longer, and whenever I can, I take cabs.”
“We’ll talk and see how you feel.”
We walk outside. I was tired. She had to take the subway on Eighth Avenue. I had to walk east, to Sixth Avenue. She asked me to come with her. She almost begged. I understood, and could see why she didn’t like to ride the subway. I was happy to be there with her, even for a short time. I gave her a kiss goodbye and got off at my station. Shields, I thought.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
My Own Shields
I also had to build shields. Some are clear, some are not; in Second Life, I use different avatars to shield myself from unwanted propositions. If I look like I normally do, like a voluptuous woman, I usually get all kinds of propositions, even when I don’t want to engage romantically. I got myself an avatar that is less suggestive –a shield. It has worked so far. When I wear it, I’m not approached to go on dates. The last time I was a woman, I was asked for a walk in the forest and to spend time near a waterfall. Then I was asked to cuddle and kiss. I did. After some time, Curtis –I will call him Curtis – was interested in getting to know me, and I was open to share all I could. Then the conversation became very personal. I revealed myself, and since then, no more dates with Curtis for me. Here is how the exchange went:
me: so now, what other things about my RL do u want to know
me: dont u think there's so much to know about each other that we dont know
Curtis: loads!
Curtis: ask whatever u want
Curtis: ur a woman u must have hundreds of questions lol
Curtis: come on stop typing then deleting lol
me: i do...do all women ask lots of questions
Curtis: of course its in their nature lol
me: so, what is it that u like about women then? besides the obvious of course
Curtis: lol thats gotta be the hardest question ever!
Curtis: theres lots to like and lots not to like, but at the end of the day we all need companionship, wether ur straight or gay, in my case im straight so its a woman
me: do u know gay people?
Curtis: no gays in my circle of friends at the moment but have known plenty, huge gay community in london
me: of course, what a dumb question
me: i love this song..i think this is so romantic
Curtis: surprised u know it, didnt realise paul young made it in the us
me: of course...are we listening the same tune "every time u go away"
Curtis: yes, paul young
Curtis: he had green hair when he did this, no idea why i remember that lol
me: so, how would u feel about dating a transexual woman
Curtis: never really given it much thought, u r transexual?
me: not really
Curtis: not really? yes or no r the only possible answers lol
me: well, remember when we met, and I told u I was studying behaviors in SL
Curtis: yes
me: so, i am trying to see how people react to transexuals
Curtis: an old mate of mine lived with one for years, we wasnt supposed to know but did, so i dont find them shocking and want to run away lol
Curtis: on the other hand i wouldnt see any future with one personally so wouldnt get involved
me: because, you think that they are not really like a woman
me: whats different
Curtis: diff as in they have no womb and cant ovulate or have kids
me: so, whats more important for u is to have children
Curtis: not sure i do personally, but would like the option, im not getting any younger!
me: couldnt u adopt?
Curtis: true, but its still diff from a woman who was born a woman but cant have kids for medical reasons
me: yes, i guess u want to have ur own kids
me: i mean ur genes…
Curtis: i would prefer that, but would never rule out adoption if my future mrs couldnt have them, or if i cant, ive never tried!
me: so now, what other things about my RL do u want to know
me: dont u think there's so much to know about each other that we dont know
Curtis: loads!
Curtis: ask whatever u want
Curtis: ur a woman u must have hundreds of questions lol
Curtis: come on stop typing then deleting lol
me: i do...do all women ask lots of questions
Curtis: of course its in their nature lol
me: so, what is it that u like about women then? besides the obvious of course
Curtis: lol thats gotta be the hardest question ever!
Curtis: theres lots to like and lots not to like, but at the end of the day we all need companionship, wether ur straight or gay, in my case im straight so its a woman
me: do u know gay people?
Curtis: no gays in my circle of friends at the moment but have known plenty, huge gay community in london
me: of course, what a dumb question
me: i love this song..i think this is so romantic
Curtis: surprised u know it, didnt realise paul young made it in the us
me: of course...are we listening the same tune "every time u go away"
Curtis: yes, paul young
Curtis: he had green hair when he did this, no idea why i remember that lol
me: so, how would u feel about dating a transexual woman
Curtis: never really given it much thought, u r transexual?
me: not really
Curtis: not really? yes or no r the only possible answers lol
me: well, remember when we met, and I told u I was studying behaviors in SL
Curtis: yes
me: so, i am trying to see how people react to transexuals
Curtis: an old mate of mine lived with one for years, we wasnt supposed to know but did, so i dont find them shocking and want to run away lol
Curtis: on the other hand i wouldnt see any future with one personally so wouldnt get involved
me: because, you think that they are not really like a woman
me: whats different
Curtis: diff as in they have no womb and cant ovulate or have kids
me: so, whats more important for u is to have children
Curtis: not sure i do personally, but would like the option, im not getting any younger!
me: couldnt u adopt?
Curtis: true, but its still diff from a woman who was born a woman but cant have kids for medical reasons
me: yes, i guess u want to have ur own kids
me: i mean ur genes…
Curtis: i would prefer that, but would never rule out adoption if my future mrs couldnt have them, or if i cant, ive never tried!
Thursday, November 8, 2007
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