Scrolled through a few posts, thought I'd leave two cents.
The internet is an odd place to say the least. An odd enough place at that where one questions whether or not revealing, or better yet, knowing others genders is either safe or necessary. Though these are thoughts of mine with some odd subjective experience to go with it.
In the past, eight years give or take a month or so, I was involved in an online RP for one of the first times. I'd done some other characters elsewhere who were male and I decided I'd take a walk in a female characters shoes and see if I can mimic the train of thought of a woman whilst taking on this role. It was a revealing experience, in more ways than I care to admit. The RP forum was very small, maybe twelve or so active users at any given time. On weekends almost all twenty five members of the forum were online and we'd all be doing one single RP connected by numerous threads. So we had to read everyone post and keep our stories straight in the world. Well, I'd never disclosed my gender then or before then on sites (with the exception of a MySpace I'd barely even touched).
Well, after about a year with some of these people, I'd learned at one point they all were under the impression I was a female. I wasn't particularly shocked, as the primary character I controlled was a female and the only character I'd really put a massive effort into. It was then I became very aware of context clues in the way I was spoken with in OOC discussion, though I'd not picked up on it before. Things such as language in-particular, I was never responded to with vulgar language or obscene content otherwise, as I hardly posted anything of the such either. But when the others who I knew were male from their profile responded to each other in a different manner. The other thing that had come to my attention was attention. Though I'd always assumed that I received said attention because I was a moderator there and active daily.
Well, I noted I was male but didn't feel it was necessary to put in my profile. The attitude toward me changed drastically. My character in IC was even treated differently upon the realization it was a male playing a female character and I found this odd. Maybe it was my sheltered childhood or social ignorance at the time, but I really didn't understand. As experience goes, I have a better grasp as to why.
As noted in previous comments, "There are no girls on the internet." Though I know this not to be true, I can see what it symbolizes from a personal standpoint. Since then I've noted my gender on forums but have also played other female characters and in turn, there were times where I'd have some minor sexual advances on me from other males. Now I'm not sure if this was just horny teenagers I was playing with who either had sexual identity issues, truly homosexual or it was their "internet persona" of how they acted. What I do know, is that it was assumed that a male playing a female was apparently considered bisexual; but once again, this is all subjective experience and I can't speak for others.
But that's my (more than two cents) take on revealing your gender on the internet.
