Cyberspace

Alvin Concha | Sociology of Development | MASOR Gender Studies | Ateneo de Davao University
Submitted to Dr Mae Ursos | 3 December 2005

My first sunrise paper tackled about indicators of human development

and the absence of component indicators that are reflective of the
scope of choices that people have in relation to gender roles and
sexuality. In this present short paper, I will attempt to situate these
concepts of gender and sexuality in the rapidly expanding virtual place
called cyberspace and briefly discuss some implications on the
"process of enabling people to have wider choices" (one possible
definition of development).

Cyberspace, or The Internet, is a virtual space which is not solely

meant for information storage, retrieval and exchange under certain
protocols. Cyberspace is also a place for communication (email, chat),
political and intellectual discussions (chats, forums, academic
websites), business transaction (online business), entertainment
(music, video, games) personality expression (personal websites,
blogs) and even "sexual intercourse" (chatroom cybersex). A whole lot
of human activities have a virtual counterpart that can be performed in
cyberspace.

The cyberspace problematic resides along the border between the

physical reality that we live in and the virtual reality that we help
create when we enter cyberspace. Is cyberspace but an extension of
the physical world complete with all its familiar sociopolitical, economic
and cultural issues? Do virtual identities carry with them the typecast
features of their corresponding physical identities? Is cyberspace also
an area for resisting hegemony in the physical world? Or is it possible
to have virtual identities that are free of the concepts of restriction,
discrimination and silencing? And, pertinent to this last case, is
cyberspace therefore a field which is more permissive of development
than the physical world?

If cyberspace is a discursive field wherein identities are constructed,

then gender and sexuality as contributors to personal identity could
also be treated as important characteristics in the virtual world. It
would be interesting to explore the gender roles and expressions of
sexuality in the virtual world, where physical bodies gain another
(possibly different) dimension with the help of human-made machines.
By virtue of its being discursive, cyberspace can be crafted by the
virtual identities that reside in it in a manner wherein everybody is
afforded the widest range of choices as they proceed to construct and
reconstruct their identities. Characteristics of cyberspace that enable
this kind of freedom and privileges include anonymity of physical
counterparts of the virtual cyberspace citizens, opportunities to change
identities across time or to even acquire multiple identities in a single
time, and capacity to hide or disregard physical attributes that are
usual sites of discrimination and oppression in the physical world such
as age, sex, race or economic status.

When seen this way, cyberspace can be a liberatory site wherein

archetypes of development can thrive or be fashioned for cyberspace
citizens to benefit from, and to demonstrate a possible model for the
consumption of the physical world.