Gender as social construction :

• Roles and Expectations shap our social relationships

Gender-Swapping in Muds A new opportutnity to explore conflicets raised by one's biological gender Objects-to-think-with for the social construction of gender -- Gender shapes our expectations A form of consciousness-raising about gender issues

Experiences of opposit gender in Muds

• Men who play women, women who play men, men who play women pretending to be men, and women who play men pretending to be women
• "The play dramatizes the power of the theater as a metaphor for life ... [and] suggests that donning a mask, adopting a personae, is a step toward reaching a deeper truth about the real ... "

Experiences of Garrett (a twenty-eight-year-old male )

• Presentation of female roles in Muds -- "feels freer to express the collaborative and helpful side of his nature Interpretation of the same behaviors dependeing on one's gender -- " as a female, he could be collaborative withought being stigmatized ... "
• e.g. help as a female taken as natural, welcome and kind. Help as male was seen unexpected and sedusive. The notion of Depaysment -- A male persona feels strange
• A term used in anthropology; "One leaves one's own culture to face something unfamiliar, and upon returning home it has become strange -- and can be seen with fresh eyes"

Experiences of Case (a male in real life)

• Gender swapping as a vehicle for self-reflection
• Being a female in Muds -- easier to be aggrassive and confrontational. " I see as a strong woman as admirable. I see as a strong man as a problem (obnoxious, a bully and a bastard) Externalization of a part of him self -- practice as a nagotiator in role playing
• " Gender-swapping has enabled his inner world of hard-bitten nagotiators to find self expression, but without compromising the values he associates with his 'whole person' " No split off from his sence of himself -- himself as a collective self, "not feeling that he must goad or repress this or that aspect of himself into conformity."
• Through Gender Swapping and Self Presentation: Experiences such as harrasments, unexpected treatments by others, and different interpretations -- Gender is socially constructed

Virtual Sex

• Consists of two or more players typing descriptions of physical actions, verbal statements, and emotional reactions for their characters
• Verious presentations of characters -- Gender-Swapping, fake-lesbians/homosexuals, and sex as nonnuman characters Various reactins of the real life partners of the players to Virtual Sex
• More like his reading an erotic novel -- not threatening to their marriage
• A feeling of destress -- " He is cheating on me" Possibilities to play out fantacies -- "Virtual reality made my girlfriend to explore what it might be like to have a sexual relationship with another women, too easy for her to experience herself as a man, too easey to avoid the social consequences of her actions." (Yet, the status of these fantasies-in-action in cyberspace is unclerar)
• New Questions of sex and fidelity -- Is it the physical action or emotional intimacy, action or desire? What constitutes violations of trust ?
• Muds offer new possibilities -- "TinySex and virtual gender-bending are part of the larger story of people using virtual spaces to construct an identity"

Other concerns

Children and Cyberspace

• Harrassment and Psychological abuse in the Internet just like any other environment
• Children's participation in online sexual acitivites
• Parental panic about dangers of cyberspace, which partly comes from their unfamiliarity with the Internet

Deception

• Presentation of oneself other than one is in the real life -- Deception?
• "Case of the electronic lover": consequenses of when the real identity is revealed -- shock and outrage
• Confusion of the real and the virtual -- real-life relationships, virtual relationships with a "real" person, and virtual relationships with a virtual other
• What is allowed to do in vertual communities -- depends on players and their communitites

Virtuality as a way of life: we need a new language for talking about the simplest things.

• Each indivieual must ask: What is the nature of my relationships? What are the limits of my responsibilities? Who and what am I? What is the connection between my physical and virtual bodies? And is it different in different cyberspaces"

Questions about a community -- What is the nature of our social ties? What kind of accountability do we have for our actions in real life and in cyberspace? What kind of society or societies are we creating, both on and off the screen?

Being Digital -- People have the ability to "move through multiple identities, and we can embrace -- or be trapped by -- cyberspace as a way of life" Technology changes us as people, changes our relationships and a sense of ourselves

Life on line -- New lenses through which to examine current complexitites