Cybersex

Cybersex (also known as computer sex, Internet sex, mudsex, net sex, and cybering) refers to a sexual encounter in which two or more participants who are connected via a computer network engage in sexual activity. In its most common form, participants exchange sexually explicit messages describing physical acts through Internet chat rooms or on instant messaging systems. Usually, the participants are describing acts they are performing or wish to perform with the other individual(s) involved. One of the precursors to the popularity of cybersex is phone sex, or teledildonics, although the latter is usually commercially driven and does not offer the degree of anonymity or the ease of access that cybersex possesses. Cybersex has traditionally been text based, with participants using the written word to describe the sexual activity, whether in chat rooms or through exchanging sexually explicit email or SMS (short message service). Cybersexual encounters have adapted to the technological innovations available as the Internet has evolved. Cybersex can now involve a webcam, allowing individuals to expose themselves visually to their online partners. There are a number of commercial sites that cater to this activity, allowing individuals to masturbate on camera for an audience. The most recent incarnation of cybersex takes place using avatars in multiuser software environments.

The nature of the cybersexual encounter depends on the ability of the participants to be able to describe convincingly and erotically sexual activity for those involved in the exchange. One way of understanding cybersex is as a form of largely synchronous role-playing in which the participants pretend that they are having sexual relations with one another. The only physical sexual activity that takes place, however, is [Page 179]masturbation, whether on the part of those reading/ watching the sexual activity or on the part of individuals who use webcams to film themselves masturbating for the viewing pleasure of others. While cybersex can occur within the context of existing off-line relationships or within the plotlines of online role-playing games, its most common enactment is as the sole contact between individuals who meet only in cyberspace and who often remain anonymous. Opinion is divided as to the impact of the emotional repercussions of cybersex. One view is that cybersex is an insignificant act that possesses no emotional impact in the real world. Another is that it is merely an instance of masturbation assisted by interactive pornography. Yet another is that the emotional feeling contained in a cybersexual encounter is just as significant as that which occurs during face-to-face sexual intercourse.

What is crucial to cybersex and people's attitudes to it is how the relationship between the body, embodiment, and cyberspace is understood. If one is playing a character in an online MMPORG (massive multi-player online role-playing game) and it is part of the plot that two characters have sex, for example, then is this cybersexual encounter the same as meeting someone in the real world and engaging in sexual activity? Is meeting a stranger in a chat room for a (prearranged or spontaneous) cybersexual encounter the same as picking up someone in a bar for sex? In short, is the body that is enacted (textually or through an avatar) the same as the body that is sitting in front of the computer striking keys? Questions of cyberembodiment are key to these debates. To change one's identity online is only a question of editing one's description—or multiple identities. Is that identity, then, the same as the identity we possess in real life? These are the sorts of questions at the heart of debates about cybersex. More generally, cybersex is often understood as an act of infidelity and has served as the grounds for divorce. This implies that many understand the body that takes part in cybersex as being the same as the body at the keyboard.

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