� In this diary, I record my life as a transvestite. Perhaps it will help somebody else, who finds their lifestyle doesn't quite match that endorsed by the 'tranny mafia'. Well, I've been there... and survived. The debriefing starts here.
�loves: All kinds of stuff that society thinks I shouldn't.
This isn't strictly transvestic, as such, but... guys playing with dollies? Be honest; it's a bit dodgy, isn't it? I mean, isn't the male who plays with a virtual female experimenting with a forbidden side of his character, even just a little bit?
I recently discovered an iPhone application called 'iGirl - She Obeys'. Don't worry - I didn't pay for it... but I did download the free trial. For journalistic purposes, so I could blog about it... honest...
The ridiculously pneumatic-chested iGirl appears on-screen, and you get to 'customise' her by giving her a name, choosing her hair and skin colour, and what she gets to wear. And since the iPhone's screen is touch-sensitive... so is iGirl herself. (And she's never in a bad mood.) You can also blow into the phone's microphone, to cause a 'Marilyn Monroe' effect... or shake the phone, and see her suffer an earthquake.
In fact, you know what? Have a look at her...
Kind of pathetic, non? I mean, the one thing you can't do with iGirl is practice realistic social interaction, or treating a woman like an actual human being... which is a shame, because if you think iGirl is cool, you probably need a bit of help on that front.
This isn't the first virtual female in cyberspace; merely one of the latest. You may already have encountered A.L.I.C.E., the Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity, and her talkative successor, LaurenBot. Before either of them, there was the text-based Eliza, named after Eliza Doolittle of course. Scary factoid about A.L.I.C.E.: she's learning. Visitors to her website can 'talk' to her via typed messages, and she's getting smarter as a result! Even Eliza, with her pre-programmed responses was actually a pretty good shrink. (How long before psychiatry is another industry that succumbs to automation, like manufacturing?)
There are also phone services that you can send SMS text messages to, and receive flirtatious replies... all computer-generated. Which means it's not infidelity, anyway...
Thing is... they're all female. Which is logical, given that most of the computer nerds who are interested in animation and artificial intelligence are male. And single!
Both Alice and Lauren appear as animated talking heads, and they can hold a reasonably convincing conversation. But it doesn't stop there. In Japan, a series of ever-more-lifelike robots have been unveiled. All of them female; all of them developed by male scientists.
Let's be honest here; what they're after is a robot concubine. The Cherry 2000, the Stepford Wife, the Fembots from Austin Powers... they're all over science fiction, and where science fiction leads... the world has a tendency to follow. So: menfolk (some men, anyway) anyway want compliant robot dolls. Anatomically perfect ones. Creepy, but that's the way the evidence is pointing!
But as iGirl shows, you don't have to be a robotic engineer to have an obedient woman of your very own - at least pictorially. There have been all kinds of screen-based representations available, beginning with 'Virtual Woman', which started back in 1987.
All very childish. In fact, shallow to the point where they will only appeal to the kind of people who aren't terribly good at talking to real human beings. But I'm wondering whether the ability to choose facial features and hairstyles, pick out clothes and so on... is of interest because it allows the user to stray outside the normally rigid confines of their gender role. To create a pretty, feminine object that is totally within their control. Sounds a lot like the transvestite's 'girl in the mirror', to me.
So is it really "Have your own virtual girlfriend on your iPhone for less than the price of a cup of coffee or a beer, and shake her around!" as the makers of iGirl claim... or is there something less laddish and more feminine at work here? I wonder...
But a real tranny won't stay interested in iGirl for long. She doesn't have enough shoes, dahling!
