Posing as the opposite sex- TRY IT
 

Holy cow has anyone done this on an online forum before? I had a teacher in college who encouraged people to experiment with it at least once and observe how differently you are treated. She was big into social norms & mores and the effects of breaking them.

So I tried this experiment on IGN, which is essentially populated with 15-year old males, and it's so amusing to see how differently they act. Before I specified my sex and put up a phony profile picture I was assumed - naturally - to be a guy, but these kids' posting habits changed dramatically when they imagined me to be female.


Anyway, anybody here ever tried it for kicks? Any observations or insights to share about the nature of online posting as a certain sex in general? I wouldn't be surprised if someone here is doing it. I don't imagine this thread will be too popular, but I thought I'd see if anyone else has done this.

Edit:
I suppose I can ask this question of those females who do post at this forum: do you ever feel as though you are treated a bit different solely because others know you are a female?

It was one of those things I had thought about a lot, but never tried. My friend, who is actually really into gender studies (he attends U.C. Berkeley and is an ardent admirer of Judith Butler) does this a lot, though I notice he tends to be a man's vision of what a woman should be.

Still, the response on a forum that is really intended for a young male audience (like IGN) is bound to be a lot different than posing as a woman (assuming I'm male) on a forum where gender attendance is more or less equal and unnecessary for the discussion (for example, political forums).

It probably happens a lot more than we think.

People tend to mistake me for a woman (Dark Nation :mad:) and in some circumstances, people have offered me advice as if I were a woman. I've noticed the difference in approach. In these circumstances, the tone was a hell of a lot more gentle. It was nice.

I don't go out of my way to pretend to be a female though.

I think maybe once or twice I've been treated differently because I am female online, but never because of my looks. One of the benefits of being an unattractive female with some intelligence, I guess. You're not hated, but you're not loved either.

In fact, just today, Zeph said something completely asshole about women and I asked "SO YOU THINK THAT OF ME?" He proceeded to tell me that I don't count as a woman.

Which, in a way, is very flattering. It means that I'm regarding as a person - not as my sex. And I respect that.

I've never posed to be something I am not just for shits and giggles, though. I think it's deceitful, and I don't know how to be anything but myself. I guess I am closed minded about the opposite gender and even my own gender.

But I really don't pay much regard to gender in general. I think focusing on it makes it an issue - like anything that is used as a social divide.

I honestly don't know if I initially get treated differently or not. This is really the only forum I go to and initially many people thought I was a guy. Their attitudes didn't seem to change when they found out I was female, just a "What, you're a woman?".

I've never tried it, but boy does my vagina hurt from so much fucking.

I tried that on Gunbound once to get free stuff from a dude. It didn't work but I got a few good cyber sessions out of it :cool:

This has actually been done here before. I don't know if anyone remembers a member who posed here as a 15-year-old girl who was a complete slut. I mean, this chick was basically the "cooze" that Mr. Brown waxed lyrical about in his opening monologue of Reservoir Dogs in a teenage body and everyone (except for a few... "colorful"... personalities) pretty much railed her (verbally) for acting like a scandalous whore. Then one day she up and disappeared. Further down the line, I wanna say a year went by and a new member registered to remind us all of the whole thing, only this member was coming back to report that he had been the one posing as a young girl as research for a sociology/gender study class he was taking in college at the time. I don't remember the name of the poster himself but I'm almost positive that his slutty alter-ego was "AshlySlut". (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Naturally he got questioned to kingdom come and after he explained himself to the best of his abilities, he never came back but I thought it was interesting that he went through this whole thing like this for a good while. I do remember him mentioning to me in an IM convo that a certain member who I will not mention by name contacted him shortly before he was about done with his "research". I can't help but feeling a little bitter when I think that if his "research" had continued just a bit longer, we would've had enough evidence of creepy behavior and thus been able to ax the member who shall still not be named a hell of a lot sooner than we did.

Dude. I totally nailed that guy. I have the logs to prove it! I even made a a journal entry about it. I spent so much time. ;_;

Would you like to see, for comparative reasons?

Break off the :SASSFILEZ: woman! What good are they if you don't? :o

Man that is awesome. I would've liked to read his paper or whatever he had had to compile as a final project.

Yeah I do suppose it is deceitful in some fashion... once I walked through a Wal-mart pretending to be blind while my girlfriend led me around. It was nothing but a social experiment, but afterwards both of us felt guilty. Very odd.

The closest to acting like a female online has been in a few online games. I usually play on role playing servers and there are plenty of people that I gave no clue that I was a guy unless they got overly friendly and wouldn't leave me alone. And no I didn't do this to get free items off people, but it's amazing how different people will treat a girl sometimes.

Yessir~

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r...t/Journal1.png
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r...t/Journal2.png

I apologize for the screenshots alone. The links no longer work in the journal, as it's from the OLD old GFF (pre-first-crash). The comments don't work either. ;_;

This may not be the same person you're talking about, but I can tell you that I spoke to the man responsible for this account. In the comments, he owned up to having made a dupe, and that it was for a sociology class. He was pretty cool about it.

Ironically, he lived 3 blocks from where I once lived in Worcester.

Oh wow. I was WAY off on the name but, yes, this "Lauren7" is the exact same member that I remember. Now it's all coming back to me: the man who came back with his name was named Jake and his username was JakeD409 presumably after his email url. Too bad he never came back, he seemed like a smart enough cat but I guess this place wasn't up his alley or something.

I created a female account one time as a trap for yama. We created an aim account for her too and actually got IMs from a few male users from here. We posted a picture of an asian girl in the picture thread. Yama did view her profile a lot but for some odd reason he seemed to avoid it. My guess was it wasn't young enough for him. XD

Oh good lord, I remember that. That's back when Sass hadn't blocked me from her AIM. I remember a very long, very good chuckle over this. Also, I seem to remember most of chat running a betting pool on how long it would take for Yama and VG to befriend her. I think it took like, two minutes. Also, I said it then, and I'll say it now. Bullshit sociology research. He was trolling for teh cyberz.

I have a female undead rogue on World of Warcraft. That's about as far as I've gotten on this science experiment =( But I have noticed that I seem to get treated very nicely, so there's something to be learned ;O

"Naw you can have that mining spot."
"Here's an extra tip ;)"

No complaints =I I just say "Oh. Thanks =D" and leave it at that.

Posing, posting, wutevah~

I was told by one of my male friends that I should play WoW, just because I'd be given so much free shit. I didnt understand why I'd be given all this stuff until he explained it to me.

I guess I can say that I do notice some differences when I look through threads and such... that women are treated nicer. I hesitate to say it, but not 'dog-piled' as quickly (there are a few obvious exceptions that we wont go in to).

Although, when it all comes down to it, an idiot is still an idiot, and idiots are not entirely safe during their [usually short] stay at GFF.

As for elsewhere... well... having boobs gets me free drinks at bars. I'm not complaining. :D

I'm suddenly very tempted to get a boob job.

Just rename yourself Encephala and post in fuschia text. We'll try this out :rr:

Works for me. Get pom on the case. I need a picture of a hairchan that I can put in my profile picture and we'll begin the experiment immediately.

I've both pretended to be female and hit on males who were pretending to be females (didn't know they were bullshitting at the time).

Probably wouldn't be too hard to trick me into that sort of thing, even now, but be warned, you probably won't like what you hear~ :P

I've tried it out myself, in MMORPG style.

My FFXI character is female, and everyone just leaves it at that--assuming I'm female. Which is, under the circumstances, a fair assumption. I have to say though, I do get treated fairly differently; people are a lot nicer than when I played a male character, I find.

Back when I used to play maplestory, I made my account up as if I was a girl. In game, I got tons of free stuff. I used to have tons of guy characters coming up to me to ask if I wanted to be their maple girlfriend. And believe it or not, I kept getting told that I was 'pretty'. Sick and twisted people actually felt some form of attraction to a cartoon character. Eventually I got bored of the tirade. At one point, some boy was like 'show my your boobs' and I was like 'how 'bout I show you my dick instead'. I enjoyed all the free items though. Made leveling easier.

I always think it's odd that people automatically assume that I'm a guy on forums, including GFF. I've never tried to push that I'm one or the other, but I think my whiny journal entries often speak for themselves :(.

You're a girl?

In one of the forums I joined someone referred to me as "she" even though I'm a guy. I guess my username brought up assumptions, but I specified my sex as male. I wasn't treated any differently because other people on the forum knew me as a guy. One time I posed as a female on a forum. I got pretty lazy and posted only a few times. After awhile I just ended up disabling my account so I never really did get to see if there was a difference

I'd don't think that works for female Gnomes though.

Everyone is all like "holy crap it's one of those little people, but eww it's a girl she's ugly as shit"
Then they send aggro'ed monsters at the girl Gnome and she'd get all like "oh shit I'm gonna die becuz I'm so small and dumb and UHHHH I'm dead."

Ahaha ='D I've only seen, like, one female gnome. I've NEVER seen a female dwarf. Are they even playable? I mean good lord :(

Closest I've gotten to any of that is playing as Female characters in MMORPGs.

New members tend to assume I'm female when I have this avatar up but it's not like I encourage it. I might have used the female icon here for a bit back in 2004 or so but that was more of an in-joke than anything else. I seem to remember about the same time that a lot of people here never worked out if Lav was male or female.

To avoid having my 4th or so account at Planet Gamecube banned I pretended to be female. I really don't think I was treated much differently there, but maybe because I used an ambiguous username (18 Days) and didn't make a big deal of it. I did however get lots of helpful replies when I asked for car repair help and plaed up being a female and "not understanding cars."

Eventually when my user title was changed to "Funhouse Princess" I outed myself as RABicle and now I just get a lot of transvestite jokes and whatnot thrown my way.

Then there's Lady Serena. The guy goes by some name starting with V. Except he was dead serious and willing to kill himself over it. And of course we all knew better. Man... lets NOT ever have a crash again?

I had never really bothered in this reverse gender experiment.

I remember playing Guildwars a whiel back when it first came out, me and a few buddies of mine had female characters, typically because guild wars males looked like turkey-legged morons. It was highly interesting and amusingly how different we were treated the instant anyone found out that we were not, in fact, females. We also once amusingly pretended like we were all living together, and hinted that perhaps it was more (aka lesbians) and you should have seen the instant sudden about-face chat took. It's almost sad how often people change their reactions simply due to gender.

I've done it a few times for fun in chats while drunk tricking dirty (old) men that I'm this hot 16 year old chick that wants some action (sometimes even younger and the sick thing people still want to chat about sex with me). Then when they least expect it I expose myself and laugh at them getting either mad or scared (because by then I'd have gotten both their mobile number and full name and where they live). Sometimes these guys say the most disgusting things, even knowing that I would be something like 14-16 :gonk:

I have played as a female character on a few private servers in Ragnarok Online because the female characters in Ragnarok Online are cool. Never really experienced any difference in treatment back then though because a lot of people did it because you were free to make any kind of account. And I don't think I've ever been regarded as a female online neither, probably because of my nick pretty much giving it away.

Wouldn't that probably be when they're most expecting it? :tpg:

I've played female characters in MMORPGs, and been called a bitch. I've played female characters in MUSH/MUDs as well, and people are always surprised when I reveal I am male. GUESS I'LL TAKE A HINT. :(