"Posing" as another gender...

[Morningsmith]

Without wanting to stir anything up, I'd like to ask about the recent episode in which a poster repeatedly self-identified as male, though was later identified by moderators as male, and banned. Several years ago, when I was a young lurker, I remember something of the same kind happening. Someone claiming to be a young female teen posted fairly ostentatious self-observations, only to confess later that he was male and that these obs's were fictional. I'm curious: what would be the appeal of doing this? I understand the desire to have one's sneezes heard and thought about, and how this might lead to "padding" one's self obses. I don't know about others, but under certain circumstances I've certainly made a bigger deal about sneezing than necessary to attract attention. But if this were the impulse, why wouldn't you want the fictional sneezer to be "you?" Could it be a transsexual/transgender thing? I don't know enough about those communities to know if that makes any sense.

Love to hear people's thoughts!

[Bondi]

I've only had it happen to me a couple of times several years ago (to the best of my knowledge, anyway ), but it has happened from time to time over the years. I don't really know what people get out of doing these things but I don't understand what they get out of making up any other bullshit stories they do online; maybe its just a game to them, I don't know. Some people just get off on doing stuff like that.

[Gruft]

I dont know what the appeal is, but it is hardly unique to us. It used to be (maybe still is, Im out of touch) a running joke thatthe internet was full of men pretending to be teenage girls and having girl-girl cyber wth each other, each dreaming about the "girl" on the other end. I certainly knew of at least one (male) friend of mine who had an "online relationship" and was pretty heartbroken to find his wonderful girlfriend was in fact some old bloke.

[wroplinski]

I think I know the (former) member you might be referring to, and if so, I almost spit out my drink laughing because the "cover" was so obvious. I mean WTF?

[Gruft]

I assume we are talking about Ami/Natsumi, the "pair of japanese girls", who were nothing of the sort.

I should add, that gender wasnt, as far as I know the reason they were banned.

[Lynne]

No, the Natsumi account was banned because it was a duplicate account (one of which was underage and the other was 18). The Ami account was banned after having given the originator a chance to represent himself honestly both in age and gender, and to explain his actions to the staff.... He refused, thus the ban.

To be clear, it was obvious from the second or third post from the Ami account that we had a fraud on our hands, and we kept an eye out until the Natsumi account started posting. That's when we contacted the e-mails submitted for both accounts, and gave them a chance to explain.

Why they do it? Who knows. Neither of these guys were fetishists in any case, so it was likely an idea of making fun of the weirdos they had found on the internet (I'm not calling anyone here a weirdo, just postulating). Who knows why people do the very strange things they do sometimes Point is, we got rid of them, and we did so to protect the integrity of the forum, and to protect our members from being exploited

[Morningsmith]

I guess it hadn't occurred to me that somebody would do that out of a desire to actually hurt people... in which case, great work, mods. It had occurred to me that the desire to be thought of as female might be part of a fetish-related scenario for some people, but I guess you guys are right that the internet is full of hecklers. Thanks for your thoughts.

[prisma]

awhile ago I aprached a member on this forum with some fun and flirty emails and he seemed about it till I showed him my burlesque website.

Then he thought I was a fraud. He thought I was a man posing as "Miss Mitzy Cream" which I thought was halarious but it kinda pissed me off cause I liked this guy and he just kept thinking I was lying.

So it can work the other way too I guess where someone REALLY IS a girl and not just a guy pretending to be one

[King_of_the_ruins]

sadly yes, it can work both ways.

IMO, i just don't understand anyone wanting to pretend to be someone they aren't

[Lynne]

heh.... well, several members of the forum can attest to the fact that I'm exactly who I say I am LOL

[Blah!?]

So that's what was going on with them. I knew something was up, but I wasn't quite sure. In the end, I still don't get it at all. I can't think of any reason why someone would want to do that. Being a dick aside, I can't think of one single thing that raiding this forum could accomplish. Do people really enjoy messing with each other that much, even when there's nothing to be gained from it?

[Lynne]

Yes, it's *possible*... but that wasn't the reason they gave We don't tend to discriminate on that basis, as Fifi can attest.

[King_of_the_ruins]

right, but when someone flat out is pretending to be female when they aren't, that's a serious issue. Even bigger when they have more than one profile, one "of" age, and one "under' age.

But as gruft said, not the first time, and won't be the last.

heh.... well, several members of the forum can attest to the fact that I'm exactly who I say I am LOL

I can definitely attest to the fact Lynne is who she says she is

[Lynne]

that reminds me, I have to get my butt to Iowa one of these days.... Haven't seen you in a really long time!

[King_of_the_ruins]

that reminds me, I have to get my butt to Iowa one of these days.... Haven't seen you in a really long time!

well, we should have our house more finished in a couple months, Jodi's Aunt that lives in kansas is planning a work week at our house. Last year was all about their cousin, so She feels Jodi deserves a family work week. With her, and Jodi's other family, and with Aunt Joan in charge, we should be able to get a lot of things done.

[Bondi]

Well, about the Ami shit, I was way too busy playing Mass Effect to notice it while it was going on and when I was looking over some of their posts later on I found them very hard to read.

[Lynne]

To be honest, the first thing that tipped us off was that the posts were written in such obviously fake broken English, and the profile was written in perfect English LOL Then there was the obvious attention whoring (which, while there's nothing wrong with it, raised another red flag and made us pay closer attention). All in all, it was just pretty obvious that "she" wasn't who she claimed to be, and that was enough to make our troll sensors go off.

[lalaland~]

Ami's a dude???

I thought something was up with Ami/Natsumi when Ami said she didn't know any of her friends with the fetish and Natsumi comes along 'hey Ami wassup? I'm your bud from Tokyo!'. I was like doubletake?

But I would never have guessed Ami was male...I guess I didn't pay close enough attention lol

I'm glad the staff has taken care of this before it got too carried away.

[KawaiiKitty]

lalaland, I noticed that too...also the "broken english" was obviously faked...anyone starting out with Japanese as their native grammatical base would be very unlikely to use the phrase "no can". If they were a native Spanish speaker, maybe...but not Japanese.

Anyway! I've run across people before who do such things and I've seen it done for different reasons.

People create a persona that acts out their fantasies. This is what I suspected in the "Ami" case. They create someone who behaves exactly as their ideal fantasy person would do, the added bonus being that they have full control over this "person". Thus they have a dream girl that always does what they want, never would dream of doing something that puts them off, and who will do whatever they want. This sounds really weird but I've seen it more than once in my life on the internet!

One time I encountered an odd situation. I made friends with and chatted with a woman I met on a site for cat lovers. I talked to her for months before she suddenly announced to me that she was a man, and had been using a female identity because he/she felt that the other predominantly female members of the community would be more accepting of another woman. Funnily enough, if she'd said "I was born a woman but wish to live as a man now, please address me as one" I wouldn't have cared one BIT, but the notion that I'd been decieved for months was too much to take and I broke off all contact.

[justmistme]

well if i was to rationally think about why i would say i was a female on this forum as opposed to a male. i would have to say it was due to the attention given, the reaction to female sneezers as compared to males, and im sure its much easier to get clips, talk to people, or flirt online if youre a female. they probably thought they could get some free clips if the guys on the other end though they were a women, or because females are often attracted to both sneezers while men tend to gravitate toward female sneezers.. just my thoughts though. i think they were trying to take advantage.

[Gruft]

I think its worth adding that actually we know who they were, pretty much age, sex, location and names. We know they do not have the fetish, they were taking the piss.

When asked to explain what they had done, they lied to the staff (logs were checked, there was no japanese access, it was all from them), but they did at least admit to not having the fetish.

This was simply a couple of kids from nebraska, who found some freaks on the web (thats us guys, we were the joke), signed up to the forum as cutie japanese schoolgirls, to have a laugh at our expense.

There is absolutely 100% no debate about it.