Privilege & Courage 2: Digitally Transgendered

Yesterday I started a short series of posts by introducing two approaches to identity, privacy and social media. One holds that affiliating with an institution obligates a person to only display the institution’s values in crafting their online idenitity. The other doesn’t think the paycheck or affiliation buys conformity outside the job.

I’ve long supported the second, and I said I’ve lived by that. That’s true as far as it’s gone, but I don’t think it’s gone far enough. I’ve got some measure of privilege and social capital, and it’s time to start spending it.

After a year of flailing, long conversations with friends, the reading of books academic and popular, and screwing my own courage to the sticking place, it’s time for me, as a friend once said in a really good criticism of me, “to get some skin in the game.”

Hi, I’m Kas, and I’m digitally transgendered.

What does that mean?  Given a choice, I present online as a woman – and as one very particular look, that’s what I see in the mirror of my mind’s eye. I don’t *hate* wearing a male avatar in RL, but I’d sure like the choice, and I don’t get to have it. So in digital spaces, I’m usually a woman, under something like the name Kaseido Quandry, and something like this look.
It suits me, deeply, and after a year of trying, liking it too much, backlashing and then tiptoeing back again, I’m ready to be out and open about it.

A lot of you know me as Kas. I’m Kas in my guild in WoW. I’m Kas in my work with World2Worlds Inc., a virtual worlds service provider. More of my friends call me Kas than don’t these days.

I’ve done a couple presentations in class where I’ve shown my Kas identity without comment: one on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which was full of screenshots of Kas-me. Another on Fallen Earth, same thing. And you know, it’s cool. But it’s time to go beyond “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

I’m going to be chairing a conference in January live in Second Life and in the Great Hall at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU, and teaching a semester-long course on virtual worlds with a Second Life component. And I’ve been agonizing over whether to present as girl-Kas or boy-Kas, a look I’ve trotted out a few times during my backlashes (and boy-Kas has always had an odd feel of roleplay about him, in a way girl-Kas doesn’t. That tells me something).

My decision solidified when a friend who identifies as goth told me,

The (delightful) Lady of the Manners makes plain acknowledgement of the fact goths choose to look spooky and weird. While they may not do it for attention, they will get attention and so they can expect many questions. To deny yourself the chance to dress up in the first place, thus avoiding such questioning, is kind of sad. The alternative is to be the sort of person who stands up for themselves, embraces the less-than-ordinary and certainly remains memorable. When you consider the sort of people you’re going to be teaching, many of whom may play female Sin’dorei or even live their secret second life as the opposite gender, not only are you likely to get a sympathetic crowd but maybe one who’ll feel they can open up to you more!

Hell, if it raises so many questions you could even turn it round into an impromptu seminar. Discuss the issue.

I’d been unsure if I wanted to be identified professionally as “gender boy,” concerned that the course message of “law and governance of virtual worlds” would be hijacked by “teacher’s a tranny!” And of  course, generally chicken

But you know, it’s who I am. There’s a *ton* of us in SL, many in high profile corporate jobs. And while ASU is in a very conservative community, well, they can just read my social media policy

Tomorrow, part 3: thinking about the personal today and the political yesterday has synthesized into a research agenda for me, I think.

Immense thanks and gratitude to my three dear friends who’re pioneering the way. I can’t dream of paying you back for your help and support, so I’m going to try to pay it forward.

Privilege & Courage 1: Social media policy

We were chatting during a break in Alice Robison’s Videogame Studies course yesterday. More than one of us frantically switched to Facebook the moment break began, to work on our FarmVille farms, and the discussion branched from there to the university staffers in the class discussing their policies for dealing with Facebook and other social media use by their student employees.

Now, there are no clear or easy answers to these questions. The older people (all a good decade younger than me, but that’s beside the point ) all held that yes, employers should insist that employees censor their online expression to meet standards of corporate appropriateness. The younger ones kind of hoped that employers would grow out of their need to censor in time.

It got me thinking.  Last week I posted an xkcd comic on the subject, calling it my social media policy. And it always has been: my entire life is readily available on the internets, every last bit of it. I’ve lived that way since I first went online, around 1996, and I’ve never had a problem – that I’ve been made aware of.

However.

I back that attitude up with a good bit of privilege: nobody holds power over me. I’ve worked every job from busboy  to bookshelver to nonprofit director to teacher to Wall Street lawyer and back again. I won’t starve, and there’s nothing I *need* from The Man for my survival or self-esteem. And, I’m a middle aged, upper middle class, highly educated, married white man who looks kind of scary. I don’t generally get messed with in any context.

So, I can say, with the person in that comic, “fuck that shit,” when it comes to impressing corporate conformity on me. My friends who are in their first job in a bad economy, or who have families dependent on them, they don’t have my privilege. And that sucks.

I’d been talking with technosage over the weekend about privilege and its uses – and she said that the thing about privilege is, it gives people the *affordance* to speak out for others who don’t dare speak out for themselves.  Yes, “I studied the plight of the oppressed in private school and now I am their champion!” can be pretty damn annoying – but they could be making the problem worse instead of trying to help.

So, I think those of us who *can,* should fight “reasonable expectations of employers” and the notion that the paycheck is a 24/7 submission collar compelling a sanitized and flavorless life.

That’s the theory. Come back tomorrow for the application.

Me, I’m off to WoW after far too long away.

My Social Media Policy

From xkcd: