Subjectivity and Gender-Identity in Cyberspace

by: Deanna Weber

Introduction
What Is Cyberspace And Where Do Women Fit In It?
The Potential Rewards (and Potential Pitfalls) of Cyberspace
How Can We Examine Subjectivity in Cyberspace?
RL/VR Subjectivity
Conclusion

 

Preface 

By way of introduction to this paper, I will outline what prompted me to inspect subjectivity and cyberspace.  I embraced the concept of the World Wide Web and the Internet when they first became available to the public.  I learned basic programming skills from elementary school on, so the new emerging technologies were exciting and I immersed myself in them as much as I could.  Surfing the Web, Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards, and online communities all became a part of my daily existence many years ago.  In becoming a part of these online experiences, it is necessary to take on a "handle" or "alias" user name instead of using one's given name.  I graduated from a college called Whitman, so I applied for and was granted the moniker "Whitty__."  While I took on other aliases for other areas on the Web, Whitty__ has become my favorite and most-used identifying alias.

 

I developed real friendships online and tended to frequent rooms to "meet" my friends for discussion.  For a period of time, I became too busy in real life (RL) to frequent my cyber-hangouts.  Upon returning, there were a great number of new people/aliases who were not familiar with me and, therefore, knew nothing concrete about who I was except that my alias was Whitty__.  My profile (information linked to the alias-you can add as little or as much as you'd like) indicated that I was from Virginia, but that's all the identifying information I had made available to the general public at that point.  I was greeted by old friends and approached by new people.  A few of the “newbies”[i] struck up conversations with me and we chatted for a good hour or so.  Two new gender-specific textual female aliases[ii] were especially friendly with me.  During the course of the conversation, they brought up cooking.  I mentioned that I loved baking and that I had a pretty extensive collection of cookbooks.  Both of the female aliases were surprised, and one of them exclaimed something to the effect of, "No, you don't!  Men can't cook anything besides pasta!"  After a moment of surprise on my part, I related to them that I was a female.  Their reactions were astounding to me.  One of the women/aliases became horrified and accused me of "pretending" and of "betraying" her trust and left the chatroom.  The other woman/alias was suspicious and thought I was teasing.  She/It continued to prod me with test questions, to try and trip me up into admitting I was really a male.  It was only after I asked the people who "knew" my aliases' identifying gender (I'd maintained that I was a female for years to them) to confirm it that She/It subsided in her interrogation of me. 

 

I couldn't understand why they had felt I was a male...did I communicate like a male?  Was my alias “Whitty__” male-identified?  Was I "masculine/not-feminine" in my communications?  How is online text gender-oriented?  My initial confusion gave way to curiosity.  Most attention-getting gender-oriented aliases are bombarded with unsolicited advances from those interested in that particular gender.  I received very few unsolicited private messages (PMs) from people I didn't already know simply because they didn't have any presuppositions about me.  I liked it that way: I didn't have to constantly fend off advances from male, female, or neuter aliases.  I addressed whomever I chose and responded to those who were relating to me as an equal. I considered it a kind of "Idiots Need Not Apply To Converse" kind of a situation.  I had always been content with just being non-descript-gender-Whitty__.  But why, exactly, did they need to identify my gender in order to relate to me?  Is knowing gender really all that important in relating to someone?  Can you ever really know for sure what someone's gender is behind their computer monitor?  More questions than answers were being brought to light after this experience.

 

I should note that before embarking on this study, I realized I make my own judgments about gender identifiers as well.[iii]  Identity is subject to interpretation by the viewer (both textual and physical).  Can we really modify our own subjective identities to project a viable identity to others? 

 

I should also note here that I do not seek to provide comprehensive critique concerning cyberspace and women in general, nor do I address in any detail important broader issues of class, global economic disparities, or other equity issues.  My paper is necessarily limited in its examination of the topic.  In generalizing any type of feminist theory, there will always be gaps to take into consideration; the net of academia often misses catching every important issue in order to catch a few big ones. Examining cyberspace as it applies to subjective identities could be an endless task.  I merely hope to brush the subjective dust off the surface for the reader to examine in this paper.

Introduction

 

“Identity calls imagination into play--we are what others perceive us to be, and also what we perceive ourselves to be.  When we strengthen the idealistic component of identity, we transcend others' perceptions and seize our own destinies.  We become more than what others see us to be by articulating our ideals in identity.  Ideals are key means of transcending our restricted roles and limited goals.” (Hall, 138)

 

Cyberspace and women's space within it is an issue of some interest to feminists of all shades of philosophy.  Cyberfeminism is the "new" feminist branch to specialize specifically in this, the newest focus on women in this new virtual reality.  I hope to apply Second Wave feminist theory to this new medium. “The fact that women do not control … social space directly does not necessarily preclude them from being determinants of, or mediators in, the allocation of space, even the occupation of political space.” (Ardener, 17)  I would propose that women could attain ownership over their own space, and as much of it as they want—cyberspace is infinite and women are already woven into its creation and existence.  “Hardware, software, wetware--before their beginnings and beyond their ends, women have been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers …” (Plant, 36)  To focus my research, I examine the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir, Sophie Plate, Linda Alcoff, and Teresa de Lauretis.  In examining their concepts about self-identity and subjectivism I try to apply these theories to this essential “space” of cyberspace.

What Is Cyberspace And Where Do Women Fit In It?

 

There is an overwhelming acknowledgment that cyberspace is the new frontier, the new "space" to explore and inhabit.  Understanding this new space is important in examining the conjunction of human beings and technology.  The premise upon which this paper is written is that Information, Communications and Telecommunication technologies (ICTs) will definitely play a central role in determining how we relate to one another, influencing how we think, and defining who we are.  As such, it is imperative for feminists to examine this space as one that has the potential to drastically affect society's understanding of and relation with women, as well as the definitional aspect that we explore in this paper. 

 

Sadie Plant, a techno-theorist, presents us with a good picture of the increased use of the web as a form of communication in her book Zeros + Ones:

 

"In the wake of a massive expansion of the Net, the arrival of cybercafes, public terminals, falling costs, and a complex of other economic and cultural tendencies, use of the Net has grown not only in the West but in almost two hundred countries of the world.  Usenets gives readers and writers access to thousands of articles in thousands of threads in vast populations of newsgroup conversations, continually adding to themselves and fading out of use.  On-line worlds scrolled down the screens in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks, MUDs(Multi-User Dungeons, or Domains), and MOOs (MUDs Object Oriented), where softbots--software robots--and pseudonymous users interact in labyrinthing virtual worlds.  With the development of the World Wide Web, a user-friendly, interactive, multimedia interface which uses Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to map and interlink the information on the screen to another, and in principle, any other site, the Net gained both a gleaming corporate mall, and also a degree of interconnectivity which has continually drawn more computers, pages, links, users, and characters into a network which soon hosted galleries, libraries, shopping malls, company showcases, S&M dungeons, university departments, personal diaries, fanzines...every page linked to at least one other, sometimes hundreds, and always proliferating." (47)

 

The expansion of the web and the increase in the number of those who are using it has been amazing.  While the most consistently dominant set of factors associated with personal computers in the household has been tied to the socio-economic status of the household (Dutton, 239), the demographics are slowly but surely changing.  A Newsweek report indicated that African-Americans' use of the Net has risen faster than whites' in the past two years; surprisingly, more females than males use the Net and the disparity is likely to continue.[iv]  Women are the Internet in increasing numbers.  Denise Østed points out that there are plenty of footholds for women in cyberspace and that women are helping to empower others in creating even more ownership over this space:  "Women are out there in full force, trying to get funding for poor women to get online; working on demystifying the Internet for each other; holding conferences and workshops to share knowledge and skills; networking with activists all over the globe."(Østed)

 

In addition to the inroads that women are making in terms of accessing and utilizing cyberspace, Sophie Plant notes that women were and are vital and integral part of the emergence of very instrument that takes us down these inroads: the computer. 

 

"When computers were vast systems of transistors and valves which needed to be coaxed into action, it was women who turned them on.  They have not made some trifling contribution to an otherwise man-made tale: when computers became the miniaturized circuits of silicon chips, it was women who assembled them.  Theirs is not a subsidiary role which needs to be rescued for posterity, a small supplement whose inclusion would set the existing records straight: when computers were virtually real machines, women wrote the software on which they ran." (36) 

 

From an action to a being, Plant claims that machines in patriarchal culture are female because they are unpredictable and men work on them.  Women lack agency, autonomy and self-awareness, as do machines: "...when computer was a term applied to flesh and blood workers, the bodies which composed them were female."(36)  If women are such a vital part of this medium, then the fit into cyberspace is perfect for them.

The Potential Rewards (and Potential Pitfalls) of Cyberspace

 

The potential for cyberspace is exciting.  It can help overcome barriers resulting from exterior human qualities. (Van Bolhuis, 115)  This would suggest that barriers of skin color, physical handicap, social status, lack of a penis, or any other combination of barriers that have real consequences in the world have the potential to be overcome.  The representation of the participant by a digital body in a digital environment has endless possibilities.  The barriers are harder to construct when groups are not sure what virtual forms to keep in and what virtual forms to keep out of virtual spaces.  A computer monitor is blind to any physical reality except that which makes up its own being, while people outside that computer are blind to any virtual reality except that which is presented to them.

 

The Internet depends upon its users to supply and share content and to act cooperatively to aid its dispersal.  Since resource sharing and mutual aid are both traits of successful social groups, it can be argued that the medium is an extension of our "real" life...a "virtual" space within which we experience life.  Cyberspace encourages the formation of "virtual communities," without hindrance from geographic boundaries.[v]

 

While the freedoms inherent in this cyberspace would suggest a potent means of freeing personal/public discourse from the control of others, it also suggests an extension of these binaries created in real life (IRL).  As Fran Maier, a cyberspace marketing executive puts it, "On some services, simply identifying yourself as a woman is the virtual equivalent of walking into a cowboy bar wearing a Wonderbra, boots, and not much else."(Burstein, 119) 

In her book Zeros + Ones, Sadie Plant proposes that the binary male/female are equivalent to the binary 0/1 of computer codes.  She sees a direct correlation between the realities that women face IRL and those that they can only experience in Virtual Reality (VR).  She sees women as virtual reality. 

 

It must be noted that the various potential pitfalls of cyberspace for women are plentiful.  Critics have warned that electronic networks will only exaggerate disparities between the rich and the poor.  Users may withdraw into their own exclusive "cyburbias."  There are legitimate worries about violations of privacy and civil rights through the use of computer networks.  It is easy to track the spending habits, personal interests, and political beliefs of an individual.  Numerous Internet advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have called for vigorous protection of privacy rights.  Copyright is another thorny legal issue that is being examined: the very notion may not survive the advent of cyberspace.  Another debate that has not been resolved is that of existing laws and how they affect cyberspace as a public space.  If a person publishes a violent fantasy online and names a real person as victim, can that be construed as intent to do harm, or even harassment at the very least?  The debates rage on.

How Can We Examine Subjectivity in Cyberspace?

 

Ask any seasoned netizen[vi] what the most frequently asked question is online and they'll inevitably respond, "A/S/L."  This cyberslang stands for "Age/Sex/Location" and is the precursor for most communication online.  Gender is one of the first means by which people introduce themselves to others in electronic communication.  For example, one of the most frequently asked questions on bulletin board systems (BBS’s) is “Are you male or female?” (Herring 1995)  Some will include these in their aliases or profiles to forego answering questions like this.[vii]  Gender identity online seems to be more important than any other defining attribute.  Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a game for "unmasking Net imposters" called the Turing Game.[viii]  The point is to provide insight into the "cultural markers" that define a person's virtual identity.  The players are challenged to find "phonies" by "analyzing the content and style of their written communications."[ix]

 

The curious dependence and insistence on an understood subjective identity online, especially that of gender can be seen in this experience related by David Whittle:

 

"Because names usually convey the sex of the bearer, sexual prejudices may not be so easily dispelled in cyberspace as racial prejudices or class distinctions.  I found myself somewhat confused, as were many other participants, when someone named Nolly Unvala joined a series of discussions on one forum.  Eventually, the question of Nolly's gender was broached, and Nolly had fun with the rest of us as he (she?) played on the ambiguity to full effect.  When he showed up at a "Canopus Madness" party in New York, and we had the chance to see for ourselves that Nolly was very much a male with a healthy sense of self, as well as a delightfully keen-edged sense of human.  Many of us learned something from the confusion we had faced.  If men and women really do think and communicate differently, it might be argued that communications will be more effective if we are aware of the sex of those with whom we interact in cyberspace.  If, on the other hand, there are no inherent differences, then cyberspace can enable the communications by which gender-based prejudices can perhaps be eliminated, thus enhancing communications between the sexes." (271)

 

Similar experiences are repeated over and over again in countless other areas of cyberspace.  Some take on the identity of the opposite gender deliberately.  Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Sherry Turkle points out that playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender in her book, Life on the Screen.  Telling examples are the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is not frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy."(Turkle)

 

Some women refuse to be "boxed in" to a subjective identity at all--they adopt gender-neutral identities and aliases.  They become virtual hermaphrodites, ungendered beings, a virtual cyborg.  But don't think that refusing to identify yourself as gendered will satisfy those around you in cyberspace.  Helen Razer, a writer and self-defined feminist notes that, "Even as one is happily disembodied, other users will demand your extrication from the virtual." (Razer)  During online discourse, Razer related a now-familiar story about having to convince others that she was a female in reality when others questioned her.  "I couldn't believe that I had to defend my gender; it seemed so ridiculous."[x]  She then made a conscious decision to refuse to be Plant’s proverbial Empty Binary of 0.  During our discussion, she responded to my query of "How do you feel about being the Other online?" with, "But I am not the Other online.  Your very question is condescending in that you subjectify me in asking it."  Her post-structuralist response is an interesting one (and relates directly to this paper).  But just how does feminist theory look at these types of cyber-circumstances of subjectivity/identity?

 

RL/VR Subjectivity

Woman as Other in Cyberspace

 

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86), influential writer, socialist, and (eventually) feminist, wrote one of feminism's key texts, The Second Sex (1949).  It is within this text that one finds the oft quoted "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman."  De Beauvoir supposed that there is no given feminine nature, but only a feminine situation imposed upon woman.  "She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential.  He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-she is the Other." (xxii)

 

Following de Beauvoir's analysis of society, males define women as the Other or the inessential, a category set up by and indeed defining the original subject as the essential, the absolute, the One.  Woman has always been so defined and has never been able to set up herself as the essential in turn.  (Simons, 171)  She has not been able to define her own destiny/identity.  This imposed binary of gender is supported by cyber-theorist Plant, who uses Irigaray in her ideas about this 1/0/man/woman binary: 

 

"It takes two to make a binary, but all these pairs are two of a kind, and the kind is always kind of one.  1 and 0 make another 1.  Male and female add up to man.  There is not female equivalent.  No universal woman at his side.  The male is one, one is everything, and the female has "nothing you can see."(Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 47)"(Plant, 35) 

 

This impression of woman as an absence, as defined as the Other to the Essential, is reflected again and again in both RL and VR.  In supposing an identity in cyberspace as well as in real life, de Beauvoir, Plant, and Irigaray would find that this zero/Other identity is completely subjective to that of the one/Essential identity.  A woman is only definable according to how men see her.  The flashy woman splayed out on the Porsche hood while the male viewer leers at this object/woman is defined.  She is loose/hot/exciting, anything that the male wants her to be.  Text, especially, is up for interpretation.  "Female18" has her identity defined in a chatroom where the men imagine her to be a frisky nymphomaniac who only has to be propositioned to before she'll fall panting into their laps. 

 

Cyberspace, however, might just become the perfect vehicle for remaking one's subjectivity and identity.  In Processed Lives, Christine Tamblyn notes that:

 

"The Internet traffics in the encouragement of its users' utopian fantasies about accessing the power to spin out proliferating identities.  Multiple personas of whatever gender, sexual preference, age, race and ethnicity seek virtual sexual relationships with other designer identities.  Nevertheless, this vision of boundless possibilities remains grounded on whether or not a given body has access to economic equity.  Thus, the possibility of inventing oneself from scratch comes with its own inherent price tag."(42-43)

 

Does this price tag show cyberspace to be too expensive a prospect?  Simone de Beauvoir was an avowed Socialist.  She considered it impossible to attain sexual equality within a capitalistic society.  Capitalism simply wouldn't survive without sexism, and therefore, it was in the best interest of that type of society to retain inequality.  Cyberspace is tied to capitalism in a very distinct way, but is there space enough to avoid this pitfall in order to create identity?

 

Harry Cleaver would agree that there was.  He points to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation as an example.  This particular struggle began in the mountains of Chiapas and was spread internationally via e-mail, gopher, and web sites.  It created a highly effective international mobilization in support of the Zapatistas.  In Cleaver’s opinion, "One increasingly important zone on the electronic frontier has been that of the circulation of political struggles of various groups and movements fighting against exploitation. These sub-spaces provide opportunities not only for the experimentation with alternatives to current institutions but also for attacking the larger capitalist system."(Cleaver)

 

Perhaps there are distinct cyberspaces within which women could avoid capitalism and mold their own subjective identities.  There are countless feminist and women-oriented "spaces" on the Internet, where this is encouraged—perhaps this is where we should look for a de Beauvoirean haven.

 

For de Beauvoir, in order for women to escape the limits that society and men as a whole have imposed on her, woman must redefine herself as equal.  On the way to this end, there are four strategies for women to address: 1) Women must go to work, 2) Women can become intellectuals, 3) Women can work toward a socialist transformation of society, and 4) Women can refuse to internalize their otherness—to "accept the role of the other is to accept being an object." (Tong, 187-88)

 

Cyberspace is a place in which women are gaining jobs rapidly.  Academic journals, diaries, 'zines, websites, and cyberspaces are filled with intellectuals and academically-oriented women.  There are spaces within which capitalism does not exist.  Women also hold the power to recreate themselves; to refuse to be Other and an object.  Simone de Beauvoir would see the subjectivity of women within Cyberspace as something that could be molded into self-defined identity.    

 

De Beauvoir's solution to the man-woman problem is the elimination of woman as we know her—along with that we must add: and the elimination of man as we know him. (Mills, 345-346)  There would then be male and female and each would be equally free to become an independent human being.  Eliminating gender online can be as simple as the push of a few buttons—reforming one’s contextual framework.  One could argue that if Beauvoir claimed, "one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one," the woman she becomes depends quite largely on her experienced situation. (Kandal, 242)  If her RL experienced situation is removed from her VR experienced situation, could woman depart from a new perspective, a new place of departure in order to redefine herself as the Essential in cyberspace?

Positional Departure in Cyberspace

 

Are de Beauvoir and Plant examples of the only real departure points for women in cyberspace: a binary approach?  Linda Alcoff disagrees:  "A subjectivity that is fundamentally shaped by gender appears to lead irrevocably to essentialism, the posing of a male/female opposition as universal and ahistorical.” (Nicholson, 342)  On the other hand, what is the other choice that women have?  “A subjectivity that is not fundamentally shaped by gender appears to lead to the conception of a generic human subject, as if we could peel away our "cultural" layers and get to the real root of human nature, which turns out to be genderless.” (Ibid., 342) The post-structuralist critique of subjectivism is indeed very alluring.  There isn’t any predetermined gender identity as determined by women or men and it theorizes the construction of subjectivity. (Alcoff)  This is a very powerful departure point for identifying oneself on one’s own terms.  However, Alcoff doesn’t see either of these as a viable option.

 

Linda Alcoff uses Teresa de Lauretis’ theories in finding another place from which women can depart in order to redefine their identities. For Alcoff, woman is the necessary departure: “…[she] argues for a historicized subjectivity that is capable of rearticulating itself.  This view of subjectivity makes possible a type of identity politics, where identity points to real patterns and needs but is also understood as "relative to a constantly shifting context."  Thus the specific content of what a "woman" is will be relative to a given and changing context…”(Nicholson, 318)  A relative and changing context that sounds very much like the space within cyberspace, which is made up of continual fluxes of information, personas, and its very own culture.

 

De Lauretis’ theory emphasizes the way people assign meaning to their experiences by interpreting them through discursive configurations. Within language/text, woman functions as the Other against which the (male) "I" who speaks/writes (the Essential phallocentric standard) defines itself through the operation of difference.  The discursive processes involved in othering and marginalizing any group or individual are in that sense processes of feminizing.  Subjectivity, that is, what one "perceives and comprehends as subjective," is constructed through a continuous process, an ongoing constant renewal based on an interaction with the world, which she defines as experience: "And thus [subjectivity] is produced not by external ideas, values, or material causes, but by one’s personal, subjective engagement in the practices, discourses, and institutions that lend significance (value, meaning, and affect) to the events of the world." (Alcoff; de Lauretis, 159)  This is how de Lauretis understands women’s subjectivity as being gendered.  If, within cyberspace, the environment—the “lay of the cyberland” so to speak—is constantly changing, this is the experience through which woman can define and gender (or not) her subjectivity is constantly in flux.

 

Alcoff/de Lauretis differ from Plant/de Beauvoir in that they avoid the essential characterization of subjectivity.  Instead of concentrating on the binary and the oh-so-important textual Subject/Object, Alcoff notes that de Lauretis shifts “away from the belief in the totalization of language or textuality to which most antiessentialist analyses become wedded.” (Nicholson, 347)  Alcoff/de Lauretis argue that binaries and language aren’t the sole source and locus of meaning; habits and practices are the crucial acts in the construction of meaning.  This is an active rather than passive take on reassessing the subjectivity of gender.  However, both Alcoff/de Lauretis and Plant/de Beauvoir insist on self-analysis to help realize the rearticulation of female subjectivity.

 

Alcoff argues that the “very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women is constituted by women's position.  However, this view should not imply that the concept of "woman" is determined solely by external elements and that the woman herself is merely a passive recipient of an identity created by these forces.  Rather, she herself is part of the historicized, fluid movement, and she therefore actively contributes to the context within which her position can be delineated.” (Nicholson, 349)  Again, here is redefinition in an active voice.  Teresa de Lauretis' point here, is that the identity of a woman is the product of her own interpretation and reconstruction of her history, as mediated through the cultural discursive context to which she has access. (de Lauretis, 1986, 8-9)  It is from this position of departure that women can construct meaning, rather than discover meaning (identity of gender/woman).  Women can reject being “made a woman.”  Instead, they can attain de Beauvoir’s goal of rejecting this identity in order to remake it for themselves.

Conclusion

 

The work of Donna Haraway is very influential in cyberfeminism.  Her Cyborg Manifesto inspires one to see a post-gender future where existing boundaries and categories no longer structure definitions or subject people to racial or gender inequalities.  She asserts: “Social reality is lived social relations” (Haraway)  Perhaps this is the wave of future feminism, a profound anti-essentialism that embraces post-structuralism.  Or perhaps the work of Sophie Plant is the right way to go: the binaries she points out are certainly visible things in women’s reality, both online and off.  I would posit that in approaching cyberspace, we should use a combination of de Beauvoir and Alcoff to reinvent identities and redefine women’s subjectivity. 

 

Approaching de Beauvoir’s insistence of reinventing identity and understanding with her supposition that “one is not born a woman, she becomes one” would suggest that the woman she becomes depends quite largely on her experienced situation.  I would also suggest that this new cyber-experience holds many more possibilities and variations of experiences than real life ever has or will for a woman.  Social construction and subjectivity of women becomes clear in cyberspace because every identity is represented rather than real.  The possibilities of these represented identities are exponentially greater than anything we could imagine in real life.  We can manufacture a fluid identity because we’re not restrained by the visual and tangible cues that gender us.  In a sense, essentialism can be removed from the picture because it simply cannot exist except as a conscious addition to one’s identity.

 

This fluid identity necessitates incorporating Alcoff’s proposition of departure: an active redefinition of contributing to the context.  A woman’s position and very identity is created within this context through her own interpretation and reconstruction of her history.  Defining oneself from this perspective allows that women won’t be “boxed in” to any particular identity or subjectification.  The specific content of what a "woman" is, is relative to a given and changing context within which she defines and redefines herself.  She can claim creation of and ownership over her own subjectivity in cyberspace.

 

Cyberspace and women’s space within it can have a fundamental effect on the surrounding society—both virtual and real.  The “intellectual dynamic on the Net (which is strongly linked to the vast computer subculture in Western societies) is considerably higher than that of the 'outside' society.  This phenomenon can be observed in nearly every sector, from philosophy to the artificial intelligence approaches.” (Van Bolhuis, 104)  The stakes are high, and cyberspace is something feminists cannot afford to ignore or postpone participating in.  Sherry Turkle suggests that even now, a new sense of identity—as decentered and multiple is emerging from cyberspace.  She describes people's experiences within virtual environments as confirming a dramatic shift in our notions of self, other, machine, and world. (Turkle)

 

The essence of and the action of creating of virtual cyberspace is one and the same.  In reflecting upon her creation of virtual reality programs, researcher Brenda Laurel notes that she doesn’t bathe the participant in content, rather, “she invites the participant to produce content by constructing meanings, to experience the pleasure of embodied imagination.” (Cobb, 208)  It’s amazing how similar RL theory and VR existence mesh.

 

Women have always been virtual beings in the Western phallocentric world.  The word “virtual” is defined as "that is so in essence or effect, although not recognized formally, actually, or by strict definition as such; almost absolute.”  Male-centered society allows that women are “almost absolute” and phallocentric realities continue to ignore women as equals in many respects—women are the “flawed” and “almost whole” binary of gender.  Interestingly, "virtual" also has another definition: “basic and fundamental; capable of producing a certain effect or result; effective, potent, powerful."[xi]   Women need to recreate their virtuality to encompass this alternative potent definition:  therein lies their escape from repressive male-centered societal boundaries and identities subject to interpretation through that context.  This new point of departure in this new arena of cyberspace allows us to seize our own destinies and to reform our own subjective identities.