Gender-bending in games

When online gamers create game "selves," or avatars, of the opposite sex, they're not experimenting with sexual identity. They're gender-bending "to gain an advantage in game play," Reuters reports. Reuters cites male gamers who say they have female avatars for various reasons – because females "get more free stuff" or because they'd rather look at a female avatar for hours on end than a male one. There is a downside at times, though: They also "get unsolicited and sometimes condescending game play advice from the thousands of mostly male players who populate the MMO [massively multiplayer online] universe." Though gender-bending happens in lots of games, including World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and City of Heroes, most sexual experimentation happens in Second Life (which is more an alternate reality than a game with levels, winners, and losers), Reuters says. For parents reading this, there is a more age-appropriate Teen Second Life you can recommend to young gamers at your house. Read the Reuters article for more detail on this, and for more on the Second Life games, see "Second Life for teens," "Lively alternate lives," and "Virtual pedophilia in Net world."