Virtual Spaces: Sex and the Cyber Citizen

While commercial pornography now dominates perceptions of Internet sex, this breathy report from a female participant-observer focuses on the noncommercial liaisons between netizens. Anthropologist Odzer, author of Patpong Sisters (about prostitution in Thailand), admits to an addictive personality, which perhaps explains her extreme enthusiasm for the cyberworld: ""I see the world through the eyes of a CPU."" She describes taking on different personas and interacting sexually in both text and graphical/audio cyberspaces. Some participants experience ""cyber-orgasms,"" she reports, while Odzer herself saved transcripts as future ""masturbation-fodder."" Odzer's portrayal of arousal may not convince some readers; more interesting is her attempt to delve into the psyches of participants. As with the cross-cultural affairs she observed in Thailand, she notes that online the intimate relationship ""exists mostly in your mind."" When virtual lovers meet in real life, often the affairs disintegrate. Her argument that cyberspace offers community applies, it seems, not to sex but to specific online communities she discusses, such as the New York-based Echo. While Odzer thoughtfully declares that the Net will free women from social stigma as they explore their sexuality, she doesn't comment on how the gender imbalance online might affect that exploration. It's a strange new world online, and Odzer, while not a particularly profound guide to the ways and implications of the natives' sexual rituals, proves here to be an intrepid one. (Nov.)