"showing a little leg on the shoulder"

If you avatar shows your legs on a shoulder (your own or someone elses) that sounds pretty provocative.

Maybe I'm a prude, but that's a pretty private self-portrait to be posting online... :-)

...or I would be, if this wasn't self-evident on the face of it.

Long ago I did an experiment playing Diablo 1 on Battle.net. I played a fighter with a male-sounding name in open games. Result: I got killed by hackers, over and over.

Then just for the hell of it I tried playing a Rogue (the only female character) with a female-sounding handle. I never said that I was female, never responded to questions on the subject at all. Result: I was given all sorts of powerful (albeit duped) magic items, and wasn't even killed once. A few horny teens did make some obscene requests, though.

I guess I should have written that experience up as a study and raked in some big government grant bucks.

For a change, it would be nice to see some concern about the sexual vulnerability of teenage boys in this digital age. Surely someone out there must be similarly worried about how guys are being victimized and presented with things that they aren't ready for online.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Surely someone out there must be similarly worried about how guys are being victimized and presented with things that they aren't ready for online.

Funny you ask that, because it sure as hell isn't you.

...and you object? I'm sorry, but this is actually the kind of future I'm fighting for. The alternative, where we can't create or respond to sexy avatars (whether we are 16 y.o girls, 30 y.o. trans, 65 y.o. men, or whatever) is dismal.

The construction of an online avatar is not like getting dressed for school. Meatspace and cyberspace are different. You know that, right?

If you are a concerned parent run the open-source software Avatar2LIW on your hard drive. After a scan of your system it converts retrieved hyper-sexualized images of your daughter into a much more socially-responsible and respectable Laura Ingalls Wilder look-a-like.

Many parents have expressed wonderment over how this powerful software creates much more amenable and chaste daughters. The more modest and submissive avatar provokes a timeless desire to adhere to tradition and social norms. Without question a righteous and pure avatar WILL create the model female citizen capable of refuting attraction from even the hottest male. With chastity comes sexual purity.

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When I was a young adult (well before cyberspace), I worked the local Renaissance Faire. A lot of young women and teenage girls dressed up sexy and played very loose Elizabethans within the fantasy of the Faire. Many of them continued to play after closing when the Faire became a campground for the workers.

What you describe sounds like a 21st century version of the same normal, adolescent behavior, and probably considerably more hygienic.

"Duh" pretty much sums it up. If this is news to Tracy et.al., you essentially reinforce the dumb bimbo stereotype, and also demonstrate the triviality of so much academic "study."

but avatars having sex is NOT the same as people having it, so who fucking cares. The relationships between the people BEHIND them are real, but they aren't the same as the relations between the avatars, often WAAAAAAY not the same!

Renaissance fairs were such a magnet for poon?

But as to your point of protecting boys from the "dangers" of the internet, it's just not the same.

A heterosexual teenage boy is basically a walking penis.

you'd have to pay him NOT to look at porn.

And let's be honest, when a 15yo fucks a hot 23yo girl (GIRL. not woman--I haven't met an American woman who was under 35) it's not exactly abuse. I mean, it might be reckless in the same way that giving that same 15yo the keys to a Ferrari is reckless, but it's not abuse.

Now if the woman is 50 and the boy is 10, then it's abuse.

So, if anything it's women who should be protected from the advances of teenage boys on the Internet, not the other way around.

And really what would the boys avatar look like like--some guido tool with a sixpack? Yeah, that'll invite inappropriate comments.

"It turns out girls who choose "provocative" presentations ... are more likely to get sexual attention from fellow Web crawlers and, in turn, meet online suitors in real life."

the study showed there was a correlation between the online avatars and WHAT HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE. It goes on to describe the 'sexual attention' as being abusive.

to me the hypersexy avatars just make the real person seem insecure (and i assume that she considers herself to be unattractive in real life) but that's just me.

DUH! People fantasize and if they are real lucky sometimes they live their fantasies.

OK, Let's have everybody portray their online appearance just as their real appearance. They call it webcam chat.

How is that going to work out?

How many guys are going to make fools and jackasses out of themselves for the real thing?

Ever hear of make up?

The whole point to these avatars is to promote provocative and exciting exchange. Why do this online and not in person? Because when confronted with a real person, your fantasies are not likely to fit.

How strange is it that people interact this way and do so in real time and who can this be healthy, sane or normal? It's about stereotypes and preprogrammed roles and not humans.

This suffices for life and real human interaction?

Suppose we take this from the angle that sex is basically a good thing. (Like food, of course, it requires judgement, but it's a good thing. And some people, perfectly healthy, need it just as much.)

Some girls lack sexual confidence because they are (for instance) a shape that Rubens would have liked. A plump woman who knows what she wants and how to work with potential partners to get it is as sexy -- even in today's America -- as a skinny one, but a plump teen is discouraged from acquiring that knowledge and those skills by today's body fashions. Initial response, before she has them, is discouraging.

Put on a fashionable avatar: she can learn how confidence works, and probably transfer those skills to the face-to-face world. I would guess that she then has better sexual experiences than her sisters without confidence, who let boys use them (contemptuously) in exchange for the attention. But research which only asks "is she at risk of sex?" cannot answer that, because it ignores quality.

Sex is not a risk.

Food is not a risk.

Junk sex is a risk, like junk food, but research should focus on how people learn to handle those risks, not on whether they starve themselves successfully.