*Yawn*

I hope everyone had as enjoyable a weekend as I did.

My RL was filled with pleasant relaxation, despite pending circumstances beyond my control. My SL has been fun too, even though I haven't been around a whole ton. What time I did spend in-world was cleaning out my inventory (from 11,287 to 9,600, thankyouverymuch, and I still have a Napalm Bomb Of Death to drop on my "Objects" folder which should bring me down below the 9500 number), decorating the Lounge of Dreams for last night's luau (complete with pig-roasting-on-spit and palm trees) and a good deal of 7Seas fishing today with Daman in the front yard:

And while I bring that up -- if you're familiar with Daman, and I think a lot of you probably are, he's blogging again. I'd like to remind everybody of his *blog* at http://damantenk.wordpress.com and also direct you in particular to THIS POST, about the injustice being served to child avatars by LL.

In short, a resident-run event (SL5B, SL's fifth birthday) is being censored by LL, and child avatars will not be able to contribute to this year's art installations. They can visit, they can spend their money, they can see everyone ELSE'S contributions -- but they can't participate as contributors at this PG event.

There's also rumor of the BDSM and Gor communities being excluded from SL5B, although I've heard rumblings on both sides of the fence about that saying they're welcome to contribute if their contributions are PG, but child avies are most definitely out.

I know the child avatar "issue" is one that gets a little convoluted, what with sexual ageplay scandals and such; but I find nothing wrong with child avies. Do I want to be one? Not particularly. Do I fault someone for wanting to, occasionally or full-time, play a child avatar? Absolutely not. The child avatars I've met and have been exposed to are well-behaved, courteous, and usually amazingly creative people. Some of the most prolific and well-known SL artists, especially on Flickr, are child avatars.

Marianne McCann, for example, is such a beautiful, creative soul. Among others, her work has now been banned from SL5B -- she was, as I understand it, going to have a photo exhibition with in-world photos of SL's child avie community playing and being creative. Other artists who may have had child avies as a subject of any of their work are now subject to censorship as well, as no images OF child avatars, nor work created BY child avatars, can be exhibited.

If BDSM, Gor or any other SL communities have been slighted by being rejected the opportunity to contribute to the SL5B PG platform *at all*, then the discrimination just somersaults from there.

Daman (and many others in the SL blogosphere) make some excellent points about how completely wrong this all is. I'm not a child avie, and I don't know that anyone in the SL BDSM community would call me an identifiable member of same. I'm certainly not Gorean. But I know well enough to know that if we keep tiptoeing around the boundary of what's comfortable for people who couldn't truly give a shit less about what we are supposed to be doing in "our world," like some of the right-wing pundits and politicians here in the U.S., then any of us might be next on the chopping block.

Furries, nekos, plus-size (fat) avatars, transgendered avatars, avatars of alternate shapes, sizes, skins, pieces and prims, put yourself on notice. Any of us could be next.

For a great compiled list, and more information about this plus how to vote on Vint Falken's JIRA entry about the exclusion of these communities at SL5B, please see Vint's post here and follow along in the blogosphere or write your own opinions and get included. Click here to go straight to the JIRA and lend your vote.

I was looking forward to SL5B, but I anticipate I won't be in attendance now. To those of you whom I know and respect who are putting a lot of work into the celebration, know that I admire and value you for what you're doing for the SL community at large -- but I regret that the only way I can protest this injustice to other nonstandard avies is to blog about it here, and to not allow my traffic to register during the celebration.

It's my understanding that the SLKids community will be hosting their own SL5B celebration, and I'm sure I'll be able to go there and view Marianne's artwork and the creative, fun, whimsical contributions of other creative avatars.

To those of you that I won't be seeing at SL5B, I look forward to catching your creativity and artistic contributions elsewhere around the grid -- and I'll drag friends with me.