Gender/Sexuality

I have been exploring my virtual world more, but still have no clue how to use it to its full potential. I walk around with nothing to do, so I wish that there were some sort of objective. I'm not even sure WHERE I am in this virtual world. To my surprise, the first day of exploration landed me with handful of friends. The people I interacted with were pretty friendly and fairly new to Second Life, aside from one guy. He criticized me a little bit for not knowing how to change my appearance, which I struggled with the entire time. For some reason, the avatar I'm currently operating with isn't the one I initially selected (*shrugs*). I wanted my avatar to reflect my true appearance as much as possible, but I think that idea has gone out the window.
On the topic of gender, though, the majority of the friends I have made on Second Life were initiated by male avatars. I didn't encounter any sexual advances or anything of that nature, but I wonder if my sex played a part in why they requested my friendship.
Something interesting that I saw during my time on Second Life one evening was the fact that there was a lot of sexual images present. I stumbled upon what looked like a shopping gallery/plaza or some sort, but there were no people in sight. It was composed of several "store fronts" or rooms with pictures of women hanging up. One, as I recall, was named "Hood Girls" and showed several African American women wearing urban and provocative clothing. Another room had mostly Caucasian women in it dressed in lingerie. o_O. I'm not for sure what the purpose of these rooms was, but it was kind of random and disturbing. I did not see one room with men half naked, unfortunately (*smile*). This brings me back to one of our class discussions about women being objects of sexual desire in a patriarchal society. Not only that, but in terms of gender, the depiction of women in one light creates a false ideal of what it means to be a woman.
Virtual worlds exist as a way to escape from the real world, but some of the same ideologies are represented in Second Life as they are in real life. Is there a way to break down some of these hegemonic ideals within a virtual world or do we just accept it for what it is?