I've always got a big cogitation going on, and my current one is trying to figure out if we are just adult-controlled pixels playing around in Second Life and may do anything, or if some things are too icky and regressive to be tolerated in any form. In SL people are what they want to be - an animal, a robot, a child, a dragon, or anything else. They may be any gender or none. They may choose to be involved in cybersex or not, in fashions that can be hetero- or homosexual as regards the gender of the avs involved and the (unknown, sometimes) gender of the pixel-pushing adult. All that is fine with me. I'm just trying to establish a base line, and pinpoint where I start to have trouble. My unease begins here: there are now, or have been in the past, people who are interested in playing a child* available for "hire," in hiring the "child" and having cyber sex, in "owning" slaves, in pretending to be a slave, and other things too I reckon. Many people respond to specific complaints by saying, "Both players are adults and it's THEIR choice, so why are you being so immature as to object as if this were something happening in real life, and not just role-playing in a game?" That's a point. It doesn't make me feel better, though. It bothers me that there is any interest in using children as sex objects, and I don't think this type of "play" is restricted to the virtual world but slops over into real life in the desires and thought-patterns of the participants. And indeed, has probably slopped FROM the real world. Also, some things are just emblematic of outdated and regressive behaviors that we should damn well have risen above by this time - or at least there should be general recognition that these behaviors are not expressive of humanity's highest potential and we ALL should be attempting to reach a greater state and not straining to regress to the level of the beasts. All right - that's my point of view. If it's all right to pretend to own slaves, then is it all right to own a private island that is set up to represent 1825 Alabama? If everyone is just role-playing? How about if the island is run by a university so that they can immerse students in that part of history? Is it any different if people just want to own slaves and be slaves for fun? What if the island makes all the slaves white? As a social experiment? What if the island is owned by the KKK so they can build a world that has the social order they would like to have in real life? What if the "slaves" aren't avs but are artificially-intelligent possessions that players can order about? And which might look like avs. Is it ok if they are humanoid and green? What if they look like robots? What's the difference?

*player removed I think due to complaints