News and Commentary: Of "Morphological Freedom" in Real Life and Second Life

Earlier this summer, Valkyrie McGill wrote a commentary about two people making the news at the time. Bruce Jenner had completed a series of sex-change operations and treatments, and was now known as Caitlyn Jenner. Rachel Dolezal, a leader of a chapter of the NAACP, was found to have white parents, but still insisted her identity was black. Valkyrie called both cases examples of "morphological freedom," the freedom to look like and identify yourself as what you feel you are. In Second Life, the ability to change one's appearance is taken for granted, and seldom is being of a different race or gender here than you are in real life a big issue. But is the virtual world a guide for when the ability to change one's looks on the scale of what Jenner and Dolezal have done becomes much easier, faster, and costing less (or no) money?

Read Bixyl Shuftan's commentary in Extra.