Engage

We have recently been involved in a couple of discussions where people have related experiences of being ‘in’ Second Life. There probably aren’t many readers of this journal don’t know what Second Life is – although it is probably a minority of you who are active there. Second Life is what is known as ‘an immersive virtual world’. That is computer simulation where ‘players’ become so engrossed that they ‘feel’ as if they are ‘present’ in the simulation – some of the papers in the recent special issue on gaming are about such environments. The discussions we have been involved with have been about the possibility or value of ‘being’ another gender in a virtual world, and  this brings up all sorts of issues about the nature of gender as we live it day to day in the ‘real’ world, and whether ‘playing’ another gender in a virtual world or even in a game, gives a valid positive insight into the experience of being a man or woman, or whether it trivialises it.

 Many feminists seem to have moved over the last 20 years from a position where men ‘playing’ or adopting female personae online was considered naïve at best and devious and dangerous at worst; to a position which argues that this kind of activity is both insightful for the person acting and a radical challenge to the social construction of gender.  This last argument effectively positions the technology of virtual reality as a feminist tool for challenging gender structures. Some of us remain to be convinced. Years ago Donna Haraway argued that we are all cyborgs now and some of us now embrace our cyborg lives.  But we also realise that we rate the material embodied aspects of that identity very highly, and remain dubious of the value of gender swapping in any virtual environment.

 We would be very interested in how others feel about such activity and such technologies as tools for change. Can we use them and how?