Second Life has seen a resurgence of returning users in recent months, as a result of the imposition of social distancing policies, lockdowns, and quarantines in the face of the ongoing public health crisis that is the coronavirus pandemic.
I recently received an inquiry from someone returning to Second Life after an absence, who asked me:
You seem nice and knowledgeable here: I have been on SL 15 years ago or so, and would now like to return and find gay places, ideally catering to bears and chubs. But that’s not a mandatory at all.
I just wondered whether you know a place that’s a little busy – all places I went to were deserted.
Thank you so very much in advance!
Now, this is a puzzler for me. When I first set foot into SL fourteen years ago, I used to frequent any number of gay bars, fun places that were packed full of avatars. Over time, many of those places had closed down.
When I replied that there used to be a couple of spots for bears (i.e. chubby or overweight gay men, usually but not always bearded and/or hairy, hence the name “bears”), but that they had long since shut down, he replied:
Thank you very very much, you’re my star – not easy finding one’s way here nowadays with so many places deserted!
Are there any other places where simply a lot of gay guys go, also non-bears?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
So, I thought I would broaden the question to include spaces welcoming to all LGBTQ folks in Second Life, and throw the question out to you, my faithful readers:
Where are the places in Second Life where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people can gather and meet each other? Please note that I am not talking about the places where you go to have hookups or sex (God knows, those are easy enough to find!).
I will compile all the responses received as updates to this blogpost, and I will keep this blogpost updated as new information comes in about community spots, since they tend to change over time.
Please feel free to submit a comment. Thanks in advance for your help!
For trans people(*) it’s hard to find anything that’s not erotic places.
As far as I know there is only:
– “Transgender Resource Center”: 2 weekly scheduled meeting. Outside those it isn’t so common to meet anyone there, but it happens.
– “Transgender Hate Crime and Suicide Memorial”. Usually a lonely place. They make meetings sometimes, or clubbing-like events, better to join their group to know when.
There is also an Italian place, “Shemale Italian World” (not to be confused with “Shemale Italian Club”, an adult club with pole-dancers, although it looks like kind of hangout-friendly too, but I’m not sure). SIW is mostly a group of friends hanging out, even if there is a couple of adult things here and there.
That’s all, as far as normal places that aren’t sex or flirt oriented. At most there is some generic LGTB club, like FABGlitter.
Anything else is a bunch of erotic places.
—
* = with trans people in SL I mean the actual ones, not the multitude of folks who aren’t trans at all, but have fun in trying out in a virtual world “something different” or what they think it’s “transgressive”. I don’t mean it’s wrong: it’s called Second Life and the motto used to be “your world, your imagination”. However actual trans do exist, After many years in SL I know several and almost everyone keeps that private. SL isn’t also meant as a real life dating website, or dating at all, the profiles aren’t a dating agency for you, nobody owns you anything and “trans” isn’t another kink or porn genre. If you want to know each other better, they could give you their trust. If they give you their trust (and coming out isn’t a so simple thing anyway, it would be simpler if there wasn’t so much stigma, misunderstanding and harrassment), that’s not to be taken as a confession they are another one of the guys above. If a trans woman has a woman avatar and behaves as a woman, she isn’t pretending, nor role-playing, nor trying to deceive you: she simply honestly the woman she is and she does what comes naturally to her. And she only wishes to happily be herself without too much harassment.
I’d point this out, because too often trans people in SL are harassed and abused by some dude with confused ideas.
Thank you, T!