Cybersex

File:SL Amsterdam (220,127,25).jpg

Second Life avatar in a virtual Amsterdam

Cybersex, computer sex, internet sex or net sex is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via a computer network send one another sexually explicit messages describing a sexual experience. It is a form of role-playing in which the participants pretend they are having actual sexual relations. In one iteration, this fantasy sex is accomplished by the participants describing their actions and responding to their chat partners in a mostly written form designed to stimulate their own sexual feelings and fantasies. Cybersex may also be accomplished through the use of avatars in a multiuser software environment.

Cybersex sometimes includes real life masturbation. The quality of a cybersex encounter typically depends upon the participants' abilities to evoke a vivid, visceral mental picture in the minds of their partners. Imagination and suspension of disbelief are also critically important. Cybersex can occur either within the context of existing or intimate relationships, e.g. among lovers who are geographically separated, or among individuals who have no prior knowledge of one another and meet in virtual spaces or cyberspaces and may even remain anonymous to one another. In some contexts cybersex is enhanced by the use of webcams to transmit real-time video of the partners.

Cybersex is sometimes colloquially called "cybering". Channels used to initiate cybersex are not necessarily exclusively devoted to that subject, and participants in any Internet chat may suddenly receive a message with any possible variation of the text "Wanna cyber?"

Webcam

Characteristics

Cybersex is seen as an act that carries no real emotional weight or emotional repercussions. Others believe that the sexual feeling exhibited by participants in virtual intercourse is very real and can be just as emotionally significant as feelings that occur during sexual intercourse. It also can play an important role in long-distance relationships.

Cybersex is most commonly performed in Internet chat rooms (such as IRC, talkers or web chats) and on instant messaging systems.

The increasing popularity of webcams has also resulted in an increase in couples using two-way video connections to "expose" themselves to their online chat partners, enhancing the act by giving it a more visual aspect. There are a number of popular commercial websites that have taken advantage of this and allow people to openly masturbate on camera while others watch them. Couples can also perform on camera for the enjoyment of others. Usually those watching are masturbating to the arousing images. These websites often also contain videotapes that people have taken of themselves. The act of exchanging sexually explicit email or SMS messages is also sometimes considered cybersex. Such activities facilitated by webcams are often used for the purpose of enhancing masturbation or as an introduction to arranging a meeting for sex. While these activities are common, it is difficult to know just how widespread they are, and there is a paucity of statistical data on this subject.

Cybersex differs from phone sex in that it offers a greater degree of anonymity and allows participants to meet partners more easily. In fact, a good deal of cybersex takes place between strangers who have just met online, and unlike phone sex, cybersex is rarely commercial.

One approach to cybering is a simulation of "real" sex, when participants try to make the experience as close to real life as possible, with participants taking turns writing descriptive, sexually explicit passages. Alternatively, it can be considered a form of role playing that allows a couple to experience unusual sexual sensations and carry out sexual experiments they cannot try in reality. Amongst "serious" roleplayers, cybering may occur as part of a larger plot - the characters involved may be lovers or spouses, or a character could be raped to initiate a plotline. In situations like this, the people typing often consider themselves separate entities from the "people" engaging in the sexual acts, much as the author of a novel often does not completely identify with his or her characters.

Cybersex is often ridiculed because the partners frequently have little verifiable knowledge whatsoever about each other, not even their partner or partners' gender. However, since for many, the primary point of cybersex is the realistic simulation of sexual activity, this knowledge is not always desired or necessary.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

Since cybersex can satisfy some sexual desires without the risk of sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy, it is a physically safe way for young people to experiment with sexual thoughts and emotions. Additionally, people with long-term ailments (including HIV) can engage in cybersex as a way to safely achieve sexual release and gratification without putting their partners at risk.

Cybersex allows "real-life" partners who are physically separated to continue to be sexually intimate. In geographically separated relationships, it can have an important function in sustaining the sexual dimension of a relationship in which the partners see each other only infrequently face to face.

Cybersex can also enhance the role playing aspect of MUDs or MMORPGs, as it can give the characters that people are playing a more lifelike quality. It's very hard to portray a realistic relationship within a game without addressing the sexual aspects of the relationship.

It is also fairly frequent in on-line role-playing games, such as rpol, MUDs and MMORPGs, though approval of this activity varies greatly from game to game. Some online social games like Red Light Center are dedicated to cybersex and other adult behaviors. These online games are often called AMMORPGs. Cybersex is sometimes called "mudsex" in MUDs. In TinyMUD variants, particularly MUCKs, the term "TinySex", abbreviated "TS", is very common. See also yiff.

Cybersex can be used to write co-written NC-17 original fiction and fanfiction by role-playing in third person. As a direct result the fanfiction is almost always more realistic and sexually arousing, thanks to two people being involved in the process. It can also be used to gain experience for solo writers who want to write more realistic sex scenes, by exchanging ideas.

It can enable participants to act out fantasies which they would not act out (or perhaps would not even be realistically possible) in real life through roleplaying due to physical or social limitations and potential for misunderstanding, which they would not engage in real life, such as those that are risky, not possible or practical to pursue with their partner, or are activities which the person has no desire to actively participate in, such as BDSM, homosexuality, zoophilia or rape.

Cybersex has also been used in therapy to help those who are too shy or are unsure of how to (re)enter the dating and sexual scene. For example, some therapists have clients practice flirting skills and rehearse how to ask for what they want sexually in chat rooms.

Disadvantages and associated problems

Debate continues among moralists on whether cybersex is a form of infidelity. While it does not involve physical contact, critics claim that the powerful emotions involved can cause marital stress, especially when cybersex culminates in an Internet romance. In several known cases Internet adultery became the grounds for which a couple divorced.

Therapists report a growing number of patients addicted to this activity, a form of both Internet addiction and sexual addiction, with the standard problems associated with addictive behaviour.

Deviations of social norms

While the ongoing arguments between the advantages and disadvantages of cyber sex are apparent, there have been attempts to destigmatize the area of, and people who involve themselves in, acts of cyber sex. One of the first such acts to attempt this was the Cyber Sex Championship of 2004 (CSC 2004). While primarily considered a protest against the stigma associated with cyber sex, it has often been ridiculed due to the participation of "geeks", this argument was further enforced due to CSC 2004 being held on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol, on th EFnet network. Users were encouraged to break down the social norms and participate in cyber sex, not only with members of the opposing sex, but any users who felt it was appropriate to join the conversation. The cyber sex was judged by a group of independent users, and the announced winner and runner up were GUiLe` and SPiDeY^ respectively. The nicks, or handles, were permitted to be used instead of the users real names, which has further inflamed the debate of whether or not had positive influence on destigmatizing the act of cyber sex.

Sexual predators and law enforcement

The relative anonymity of Internet communication may provide encouragement to seek out underage cybersex partners. In the course of such conversations, such individuals sometimes try to send child pornography to others or arrange real-life meetings (see child grooming).

In the United States, police officers sometimes pose as minors in chat rooms in order to bait underage-sexual predators. On one occasion, an elderly man from Georgia flew into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta to meet what he thought was an underage girl he had met online with whom to have sex, only to meet sheriff's deputies instead. Another time, a teacher from Minnesota was arrested by FBI agents in Yuma, Arizona's airport, after he had arranged online to meet and have sex with what he thought were two eight-year-old girls.

This practice is sometimes somewhat controversial, and in some cases may be considered a form of entrapment, especially if the accused can prove that they were not intentionally 'grooming' their target, that the enforcer was encouraging them to meet, or that the meeting's intention was non-sexual.

The prevalence of predatory pedophiles in some forms of online communication has attracted many civilians to mislead or troll those trying to groom underaged children. One example is the vigilante group Perverted-Justice.com.

Cybering, or to cyber, is commonly defined as the role playing, or text based, sexual relations between two people over the internet. A way for one to live out and fantasies they have without the ramifications of public opinion. Normally such acts can be found on online video games or instant messengers, and even the occasional chat room on such internet services like AOL or Cox communications. A drawback to this type of act is that one can never be sure of who is on the other end, whether it be a minor, or a member of the sex you are not looking to have said "relations" with. Video games like World of Warcraft and Everquest have worked to put a cease to anything of the likes but have failed, unable to really be caught when done in private party groups or private whispers.

References

• Deuel, Nancy R. 1996. Our passionate response to virtual reality. Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, p. 129-146. Ed. by Susan C. Herring. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Philadelphia.
• Godson, Suzi 2002. The Sex Book. Cassell Illustrated, London.

See also

• Sexual addiction
• Teledildonics
• Computer-mediated communication

External links

• Dr Date's review of cyber sex