On August 17th, a JIRA concern was opened about offensive content towards transgender people in the XStreet SL adult content disclaimer. This issue has quickly spread among the SL LGBT community and within the small time that it was open, 288 SL residents had already voted their support to change the text.


The text read as follows:

...You are about to be redirected to Xstreet SL Uncensored.
The adult content within this site is intended for ADULTS ONLY (18 years of age or older). If you are not of legal age or do not wish to view materials of a sexually-explicit nature or you are offended by transgender images or topics, then please click CANCEL now. If you continue on to view any adult content within this website, you are stating the following:...

Needless to say the comments posted on the Xstreet SL forums and this JIRA page have been many, and that emotions were sometimes high as well. We could also see a difference between the talk in the XStreet forums, where apparently many found this text to be just a warning and not something directly offensive, while in the JIRA talk people were more often LGBT people coming to support the cause and found it to be very offensive.

All in all the real problem was that wether people found it clearly offensive in itself or not, the fact remained transgendered people were selected out of the many others that could have been brought up. For no valid reason that would make them more to warn about than anyone else. The problem was this form of discrimination against one single group, selected out among a multitude of others, for no valid reason.


The first Linden to respond was Siz Linden on the 18th after the issue had raised votes quickly by saying

Siz Linden wrote:Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We're looking into it right now and will have a response in the next few days.

Shortly after that Infinity Linden continued

Infinity Linden wrote:hey folks, let's take a quick breather...

the lab has a long history of supporting the transgender community. in fact, a number of lindens (like myself) publicly identify trans.

some might remember that earlier this year we had a similar event when the adults only filtering system inappropriately flagged some terms related to gender expression as being adult content.

following the discussion that came from that, we identified a process for handling inappropriate messages or filtering terms on our system. we are currently working through this process, which involves discussions with representatives from the SL community.

our process is taking longer than we would like, and clearly the delays might be sending the wrong message to the community. so i wanted to drop into the discussion and tell everyone that we DEFINITELY take this issue seriously. Linden Lab strongly values the transgender community and we want to make this right. but we want to make sure we understand how this verbiage made it to one of our production systems, and we want to make sure the replacement verbiage conveys the appropriate message.

in any event, let's please stay cordial while we're resolving the issue. i hope to come back soon with more detailed information.

And finally a little over 24h after this issue was first brought to attention in the JIRA, forums and others, people could read this comment from Infinity Linden that confirmed the issue was resolved. They turned back the sentence to be general without aiming towards any particular group or item in general anymore, also recognising their mistake and appologising for it.

Infinity Linden added a comment - 18/Aug/09 02:30 PM wrote:
Thank you everyone who brought this issue to our attention, and to all who have shared their opinions in this matter. Linden Lab recognizes that our community is enriched by Second Life's transgender residents. It was never our intention to single out a segment of our community in a negative way. We have removed the offending clause from our disclaimer and offer our sincerest apologies.

The Linden Lab Ecommerce Team

All in all it's a happy ending, however in the short 24+ hours that this has been opened, people have taken the time to contact many LGBT or just T associations all around and LL might have to answer to a few of them in case they haven't been made aware this was resolved yet, or if they won't let go of this issue, should they not accept LL's appology. Only time will tell.

You may read the full JIRA topic here : http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/XSL-17