Creating a Gender Identity

As I wrote in my proposal, I was a little wary and a little intrigued of becoming an online gamer, especially in a virtual world. I’d heard all the creepy stories and, to be honest, was excited to see what I would find in this taboo world. I chose Habbo Hotel because it seemed fairly easy to operate for a newcomer and it still had a lot of variety. At this point I have spent quite a few hours in Habbo Hotel since I first started my excursion into this virtual world.
My first step in becoming a member of Habbo was creating my avatar and since I figured this will probably be the one and only time in my life I can become a boy, I decided to take a spin from the male perspective of virtual reality. I created my first avatar to reflect the dominant, white hegemonic male because I wanted to see if my avatar would exist in Habbo Hotel, the same way he does in our society.
The only thing I suppose that isn’t “mainstream” about his appearance was that he does have longer hair than an average or stereotypical white male. I really didn’t mean for his hair to be any statement in particular, I just liked the hairstyle. However, when I was roaming the hotel I went into two different kissing booths and the first things the girl I went and sat down across from was that they were looking for a boy. I then had to clarify that I was a boy. Both girls were rather cold to me, one of them actually got up and walked away and told me she didn’t want to kiss a “tranny.” I told my friend about this and she said she thought my hair looked kind of girlish because I had no idea why she thought I was a girl! I felt really taken aback when I got those comments. I personally have never fell victim to mistaken gender or sex. So even though it wasn’t personally me being mistaken for my sex, it is still a bit troubling and to be honest the names and rude brush off hurt, so I can’t imagine how people who have to deal with that kind of discrimination and prejudice must feel when they face that in their day to day lives.
After using my male avatar for a while I decided to mix it up and become a female, just to see if and or how I might be treated differently and how people would respond to me as a female.
After experiencing some “people” mistaking my first avatar’s gender, I made sure that my girl avatar was especially feminine; I even dressed her in pink. While I didn’t use this avatar as much as I used my boy one, I found that guys approached me more often, especially when I went to the party rooms. I noticed throughout my time in Habbo that girls seemed to do a lot of the sitting/standing around and guys did a lot of the walking around. It was interesting to me how the gender in which has been socially constructed makes females stand around and wait to be approached by men, while men go around and approach the women. While there were plenty of exceptions to this, it seemed the same situations occurred in Habbo which are supposed to happen in public, when the pretty girl is sitting with a friend or alone, the man comes up to her and initiates interaction.
All in all, I found that gender in Habbo Hotel seems to be similar, if not an almost exact replica of the real world we interact in everyday. People can be very critical if a person does not fit the gender norm and social roles seem to play out the same ways our society does.