It’s been a looooong time since I’ve spent this much time in vrchat. I’ve always loved being able to throw on whatever body feels right, and going to talk to random folks about whatever comes to mind. Some are chill, some… less so, but there’s a block button for a reason. This ability to pick and choose how I look has always been an ability that’s… stuck with me, I guess. There’s always the joke of the “vrchat pipeline”, turning cis men into trans girls. While it’s mostly a joke, and far from a true phenomenon, it happened to me. kinda.
I first tried vrchat yeeeears ago, sometime back in covid. This was a weird time, but an amazing period of my life. I think I’ve gone into that before, but that’s too off topic for this entry. During covid, I had the same Quest 2 headset I still use now. A headset and 2 controllers, running an android os that could get a whopping 20fps in vrchat. This was such a simple device, but trapped in my house, it was a portal to another world for me. I could go anywhere, talk to anyone, and make friends with people anywhere in the world, meeting what felt like face to face. My face, however, was something I had to make decisions on.
In vrchat, there’s an endless sea of avatars you can use, ranging from robots to furries to humans to random furniture, and everywhere in between. One of the big things you’ll notice, however, is that a lot of the humanoid avatars are female. Not all are the exaggerated, voluptuous anime girls you’d expect from a game full of weirdos, but those definitely are there. If I had to guess, there were 3 female avatars you’d find before you come across one male avi, which isn’t insane, but it means that you might struggle to find a male avi that you like. I ran into this issue early on, which I was bothered by at first. However, the more time I spent in vr, the more I realized how broken down the gender spectrum had become in the userbase. Males wore female avatars, females wore male avatars, and nobody batted an eye. This let me be comfortable enough to try on a female avatar, which… led me to something I hadn’t seen coming, and never would have come across without the platform.
Finding a female avatar, probably one with cat ears and a tail (I don’t remember which), I decided to try it out, and just continue on as usual. But putting it on, and looking in a mirror, it felt… good. I felt more comfortable, like I was actually myself instead of faking a facade. What I hadn’t realized at the time, and didn’t until a couple years ago, was that this feeling was known as gender euphoria. It’s something brought up more in queer spaces due to it’s nature, although I wouldn’t doubt that it’s experienced by cis people as well. It’s just the comforting, peaceful feeling of your body finally matching the way your mind envisions it. For 5 years, all I did was just assume it was a mix of midpubescent weirdness and lockdown messing with my head, but the past 2 or so… I’ve realized what it was. The meme wasn’t a meme for me, it was just what happened.
