Twice Fair

[cyfishy]

Tanith Lee is one of my favorite writers in the history of written language. She's not particularly well-known, especially in the US, but I grew up reading and re-reading her work. She's principally known for writing science fiction and fantasy, but she writes it on more of the mythical level then the mechanical level--the details of How Technology Works or How Magic Works are simply not mentioned unless they are genuinely essential to the plot.

She wrote a series of fantasy novels known as the Flat Earth series (not to be confused, of course, with Terry Pratchett's Discworld series), set in a mystical past so far distant that it was before the world as we know it was round. In the book Death's Master, there is a character named Simmu who rather reminds me of who I have become in this world.

Simmu has no fixed gender, but is able to shift back and forth between male and female forms. Simmu is unique in this, having been conceived under, well, let's just say rather unusual circumstances, so as not to give too much of the novel away. Simmu is abandoned as an infant and adopted for a time by a pair of glamorous demons who bestow the name Simmu, meaning "Twice Fair." The demons wander the land with Simmu in tow and eventually leave the child on the doorstep of a temple to be taken in by the priesthood there.

Simmu becomes a he for a long stretch, in order to fit in with his surroundings. Then one day, he remembers how to change and this ability to change becomes essential in his quest to take revenge on Death. (It's that kind of novel.)

Simmu spends long stretches in male form, simply because the world he lives in takes men more seriously. He eventually falls in love and marries a woman, and thus doesn't change for an even longer stretch. But at one point he does, while dreaming (much to his wife's consternation) and his body is left a bit strained and sore by the shift.

I'm starting to feel a bit like that, myself.

When I first incarnated into Second Life, I picked a female body because it didn’t even occur to me to do otherwise. Indeed, when I shaped the Appearance sliders into something that looked “right” to me, I ended up with an avie who bore a subtle resemblance to my RL self.

My first experiment in crossing the gender line came when I was doing a little Appearance adjusting and noticed the little radio button for "male" or "female". I clicked it out of curiosity. My avie abruptly turned taller and broader and ended up looking a bit like an ineffective drag queen, since not only was I wearing skin with rather nice makeup, I was wearing a dress. I promptly clicked back to female and breathed a sigh of relief that the transformation hadn't made any lasting changes to my regular settings.

Still, that bloke-in-a-dress moment intrigued me and I tucked the notion in my back pocket of creating and shaping a separate male body to see how the other half lives.

grizzygriswold had posted about her first experiment with trying on a different race or gender, and while I didn't participate in it officially, I decided there was nothing stopping me from giving it a try anyway. So I did.

Upon re-reading about my first days in boyshape, it's odd to realize how detached I was, initially. I shifted back and forth more fluidly, particularly when I had to try a dress on to see if it worked.

I think there are two things in play that make me less inclined to shift back to girlshape for long stretches.

The first is obvious--I have Beginning to allow my feminine side full play. She's never shifted to male, ever, and doesn't seem terribly interested in doing so at this point. So by allowing me to express the masculine and her to express the feminine, we balance out nicely. (Though, admittedly, we have gone out as both girls before, and Beginning's adoration doesn't flag in the slightest when I'm in girlshape.)

The second is perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. When kateamdahl asked about beauty in Second Life, I noted that my take on it had changed a bit since I'd just started life as a male. I even hinted at the same in the article Hamlet wrote about Beginning and me. I like roaming in a boyshape because it allows me to stare unabashedly at the kind of guy I'd love to be with. And the more I've been refining my look, well, the more I want to look at the results!



I snapped that picture just the other day at the salon hosted by sophrosyne_sl, to celebrate the perfect indie-rock haircut that I finally managed to find and tweak to my specifications. I've also gotten quite attached to the glasses and have lately been wearing them with a tint that adds a certain rock star look.

Beginning just swoons when she sees me now. ;)

This is why I have no problem whatsoever with guys who have girl avies in the shapes of their fantasies. How can I possibly blame them?

I have quite a few more thoughts on gender in SL, but I'm sure I've rambled quite enough for one entry. But do stay tuned.