Thursday, April 30, 2009

Gender Verification

An interesting thread on Plurk (Web) caught my attention: "Trini asks for your thoughts on this one..." with a link to a JIRA issue

Use the Age Verification system already in place to do a voluntary Gender Verification to protect against the fraudulent use of female avatars by RL males. Many lesbians regard this practice as a form of cyber rape. SL should be cutting edge on this. (Web)

I encourage you to read this issue posting but here is the response I added to it:

/me holds back an opinion one way or the other for now but has questions:

1) Sure, the proposal is for "voluntary" verification, but what sort of stigma would be placed on conscientious objectors? Could this lead to discrimination?

2) Wouldn't this infringe on the rights of a property holder to govern their land as they see fit? Age-verification is a process imposed upon SL by out-world forces and so could hardly be avoided. Gender verification is purely an in-world issue.

3) How would one verify?

4) Who would pay for the added costs?

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