Serious I will now explain the truth behind my gender.

On MCF, a user used pictures of his ex-girlfriend to convince everybody that he was a girl for about two years. It's interesting that not only does it direct attention towards you, but it also makes people less inclined to be harsh to you.
I mean, do you think you're going to have a chance with some random girl on the internet who's probably thousands of kilometres away?
 
This reminds me of the whole confusion people brought up when I did hide my gender back in TO. A majority of people which happen to be quite old TO users most likelly know of my gender, but when I started mentioning it does not matter what they refer to me as (I prefer to be considered as neutral if you haven't guessed yet), a lot of people actually started refering to me depending on the gender of my avatar. Honestly, people's idea of gender really seem to depend on what rapresents them the most looks like, avatar-wise or nickname-wise, altho as far as I have noticed, nobody seems to act differently to either gender except for really few exceptions and I believe this applies to a majority of the internet. Except youtube and 4chan where everybody believes everybody on the internet is a man, or tumblr which believes everybody on the internet is either a male abusing a woman on their daily basis or a man who's actually an abused woman.
 
The title of "Witch" does suggest that you want to be "treated" as female.

I think that so far, gender in the Terraria community has just been a tool, to facilitate the way people talk about or refer to each other: "he" or "she". I think it's just a way to be polite, since talking about someone as in the opposite of the gender they claim to be can be offensive - I think.

This brings the topic of @Suweeka, which is neither a he or a she, but a oni. Does that stem from the desire to be thought of and treated as genderless? I guess the motives to remain genderless here changes from person to person, so I won't judge further.
 
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The title of "Witch" does suggest you want to be "treated" as female.

I think that so far, gender in the Terraria community has just been a tool, to facilitate how people talk about each other: "he" or "she". I think it's just a way to be polite, since talking about someone as in the opposite of the gender they claim to be can be offensive - I think.
In which case, my avatar does also suggest the same, while it does not apply for nearly everyone. Truth be told there isn't a way you can define someone's gender over the internet as most people don't present themselves accordingly to their real gender (biological or not). I don't like to be considered ultimately either male or female, but pronoun has no relevance for me and I do accept either as long as whoever is speaking/writing is confortable with using such pronoun, altho I cannot speak for who is legitly bothered by it. Only thing that legittly bothers me are people who imply and impose my gender over someone's view of myself as there is a very specific reason I do not list my gender on my profile and I know people who feel the same.
 
It really depends on the person if they're offended by the wrong designation. I find myself sometimes called a man. It doesn't offend me but I do correct it. Strangely enough it seems the one who makes such a mistake comes out more awkward in such conversations then the one wrongly designated.
 
I see what you were trying to do, but...when you have a preconceived notion that people are going to treat you differently because you're a certain gender, you're more likely to view the results in favor of that notion. When in reality, most people probably treated you differently because your gender suddenly changed, not because you were suddenly female. You were previously established, by yourself, as a male, and then suddenly that "fact" that was previously established, changed. Behaviors can change as a result of that. Not because gender itself, because change. You might have thought they were acting nicer when they were acting just as nice as they usually do.

People do have a tendency to change present and future behaviors when a fact that had been established as true suddenly becomes false. These results can't really be used to make a statement about different genders being treated differently because without specific examples, and since the target "audience" was already led to believe you were a male, by yourself. Not saying genders are treated equally on the internet, just that this test doesn't really showcase that. If you established yourself as female from the start of your membership, then changed to male, you would probably receive a similar change in behavior. On this forum, there've been plenty of people that have been judged as one gender simply because of one's avatar.

It became "socially acceptable" to judge other users based on the gender they chose for themselves on their profile. When you decide to just change that, people are going to notice and treat you differently because that's the equivalent of "changing genders." People will either think you're trolling / messing around, that you were lying about your gender the whole time, or that you decided to change genders or physically / mentally identify as the opposite gender from then on. So yeah, people might treat you differently for 2 out of 3 of those reasons.

I don't think this website has a big stigma about treating genders differently, like other websites mentioned by W1K. But honestly, this experiment seemed to be making a bigger deal out of different genders than the point it was trying to prove, if that makes sense.

To explain each point in a bit more detail.

1: People judge genders by avatars a lot. It's more acceptable to judge genders based on the gender option as indicated at the profile. When you change this option, people notice and comment on it. This isn't a surprise.

2A: You wanted to prove this, but in the process you kind of caused a bit of contamination to the experiment itself.
2B: Will people change their behavior towards you because you were now female? Maybe. Will it change because you were now female? Probably. The bolded words are the key. You established yourself as one gender and then suddenly changed. That's what likely caused behavior changes.

3: Most people were surprised that you were now female and confused. Again, 2B. "It feels strange that people would be astonished by someone not being the gender they expected." They expected that because they were led to believe that, and it was a fact established by you. They were likely astonished that it changed, it's not like you were an unspecified gender and then suddenly came out as female. You said you were male and then suddenly you changed it to female.

3B: Yes, definitely placebo action going on. You thought they'd treat you differently if you did it, and you wanted them to treat you differently for sake of the experiment and to prove a point.'

4: Without acting differently, or acting like a girl, people changed their behaviors towards you. They changed their behaviors simply because your gender changed to a female in the profile. It's not like you were acting girly and people were treating you great because you acted girly. You acted identical, whether male or female. They weren't treating you differently because what they thought you were. They weren't treating you differently because you acted differently. They probably treated you differently because you identified yourself differently. From the people that have posted in the thread, none of them seem particularly shocked, or like they were betrayed by your experiment, leading me to believe it's not like they were trying to get your affection / special attention when they thought you were a female. (Which, again, without specific examples it's hard to judge exactly how they treated you differently.)

5: Again, I understand what you were going for and I respect that you went for it. But...you're kind of turning oranges into apple juice here. Yes, obviously "gender doesn't matter." (Should really be changed to People shouldn't be treated differently based on their gender. There are people who take gender identification very seriously and it does matter to them, even on the internet.) But you can't really draw that conclusion from this experiment. You weren't acting boyish, or girly, so how would that equate to people treating you differently based on how you act as a gender? It really only leaves that you were being treated differently because, in their eyes, you identified yourself as the opposite gender. It wasn't surprise because you were a girl, it was surprise because you changed into a girl. Which you did because you expected to be treated differently, even if you didn't act different. Again, it's kind of placebo, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not trying to be nitpicky or anything. Just saying that most people probably responded to you changing your gender, rather than the gender itself. I spent my early internet years not really "outing" my gender, and other times pretending to be a male, so I know how people can treat others based on gender. Especially when you come out in voice chat and everyone throws a fit because you were a girl the whole time, blah blah blah.

Also, I'm not saying the experiment was bad. Just saying it proved how people can respond to small details such as changing one's gender on a profile page. Even if you don't act differently, they treat you differently, however slightly. And they assume other things because you don't tell them, etc. So it's still a pretty informative experiment, it just can't really be used to adequately measure gender bias is all. Hope I didn't offend you.

(Also, yes I noticed the gender change and took interest in this situation because I enjoy to observe people to see what they do in certain situations.)
 
when i played a multiplayer game everyone called me a girl because of my name Victorles then they called me Victories, it was kind sad,then i was thinking to change my name to VictorLes to stop this confusion,some of times they laugh of my name in the games forums, but my real name is Victor and sorry i never looked you profile gender so i was quite confused :p
 
@Tsuki: I agree with everything you said. But still, I will cover some of those points, maybe to set me back on track again:


1. Yes, that reaction, as I said, was expected and understandable. It's normal to react like that when something you considered as true suddenly changed.

2. The fact is that I would have "proved" something regardless of people's reaction to the experiment. I am proving a fact regardless, in a way; People would react to something, but that something didn't really matter. But yeah, as it's obvious; the purpose was kind of defeated. I might go and edit the OP now, maybe.

3. While the opinion on that result is a little subjective, I acknowledge that in the OP.

3B. Yes, placebo. It's in the OP too. By this point I am now sure of it.

4. That seems off, since some of those things you said were not questioned or proposed in the OP. And everyone's reaction surely was very slight. Still I wanted to say sorry, since I simply can't stand to lie. That's just me being me. I lied, and now I apologize.

5. Gender truly doesn't matter in here, really. As I said to @W1K:
"I think that so far, gender in the Terraria community has just been a tool, to facilitate the way people talk about or refer to each other: "he" or "she". I think it's just a way to be polite, since talking about someone as in the opposite of the gender they claim to be can be offensive - I think." - Of course, that depends on the person. It's usually not offensive, but sometimes awkward.

And then I misused the word "Conclusion". The experiment itself did not really prove anything, or give any information. It was pretty void of anything, really. The conclusion simply stemmed from my desire to (whatever the user's reactions or thoughts were) say that gender didn't matter here, and that whatever you thought of it, you should not worry about it.
I guess it was all a null experiment, to prove a point that was not proved, and could have been stated without the experiment in question. But I like to believe that something useful did in fact come from it.

That's all.


Edit: I now edited the OP to fix everything I was wrong with. Thank you.
 
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I was in on this the whole experiment. Surprise!
I was told by Samrux himself to play along with the whole thing, and "act casual" so I don't skew any of the results by exposing myself.
This whole thing was interesting on its own. Everyone's reaction, too.
 
and this is why nowadays I prefer to just not put my gender down, even though I know that a few people on these forums know my gender, I would rather not cause a ruckus.
 
I noticed this, but didn't think it warranted a post on your profile or anything. In fact, I think once, I still referred to you as a he for that week still, so yeah.
It really doesn't matter what your gender is on here, look at Jetstream (too lazy to see if it's still Infinity or if they changed again), they set their gender to be different all the time.
 
As someone who spends a lot of time on Tumblr and watching the veritable :red:storm that is Tumblr gender politics (though I refuse to get involved), I couldn't really draw any final conclusions as to what this was about based on limited information, so I figured I'd just stay out of it.

Overall, gender really doesn't matter here in regards to how one is treated, but outside of this forum it can be a very big deal. I grew up being treated very differently for being 'boyish' IRL (often with a negative slant), which is why I tend to get a bit defensive when people automatically default to calling me a guy online. Even when gender "doesn't matter", this habit does little to reflect more than people still clinging to gender stereotypes when they first meet someone... gender stereotypes that the world would probably be way better off without.

The pronoun referral thing is more a case of the courtesy to abide by someone's wishes. If someone doesn't care, that's fine. If they do, respect that. That is all.
 
I never saw any of this go on, but even if I did I probably wouldn't have cared less. To me we're all just people that enjoy Terraria and associating, so it does not and SHOULD not matter what gender you are.

EDIT: I also read and understood why you did this but...was it really necessary? I get that gender doesn't matter but it's not like anyone on this forum has a problem with it.
 
But it's a whole different story with @Baconfry.
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