Originally Posted by
Ralph
How did you come to know the actual gender of the people behind the female avatars? There could be far more than 10% that never tell you. I've seen estimates from 10% to over 50% of Second Life female avatars are driven by men. My personal guess - and it's just a guess - is that the sex fantasy females, six feet tall with anorexic-thin waists and boobs the size of the Himalayas, are all driven by male players. But that's just because I'm an enlightened (yeah, right) guy who can't believe any self-respecting woman would want to objectify herself like that.
There have been several articles on the subject, and guys are cagey about their reasons. The most popular reason is "If I'm going to have to look at a person running around the computer screen for hours on end, I might as well look at someone attractive." I'm perfectly willing to speculate that they have more embarrassing reasons and obviously won't come right out and say "I always wanted to be a girl, so it's fun to pretend for a while" - but we're just speculating with no hard evidence of what anyone's motives are.