In chapter 8 called Tinysex and Gender Trouble of Sherry Turkle's book "Life on the Screen" there were many topics covered such as Gender Trouble, All the World's a Stage, Virtual Sex, Children and Netsex, Deception, and Being Digital. Each of these subsections were quite interesting in how Sherry Turkle presented the information. I feel that she mainly used the ideas and added a lot of examples to support the ideas.
    In the first subsection she talks about Gender trouble where people are dealing with gender on the internet or more so on the MUD. With gender trouble people on one level feel that it would be hard to change genders in real life because a person would have to change their clothes, makeup, and also their voice. On the web cross-dressing is a lot easier to do since the others cannot see you. The only thing that a person must work on would be speech, manner, and the interpretation of experience. Turkle views virtual cross-dressing as not simple. It can be very technically challenging, and also quite difficult psychologically. This can be quite interesting to actually look into the psychological factors which are needed and how by changing them can affect a person in real life. I feel that virtual cross-dressing is helpful to some people who cannot understand why the opposite gender does things the way they do. Such as a situation which a female in the real world would not be free to do anything she wishes thus not being able to practice assertiveness. Online though would allow her the freedom to play a males part and thus can practice her assertiveness, and move about freely.
    In the next section "All the worlds' a stage" goes into more details about virtual cross-dressing. Women posing as men allows them to deconstruct their feminity. Another interesting thing is how mudders gender swap as double agents, men paying women pretending to be a man. I wonder why a person would do such a thing as play the opposite gender playing the persons real gender. All I could figure was that they want to see how people react to a woman playing a man. I think that this is a reflection of dramaturgical theory which shows that we as people are actors playing a part. Each part may be different everytime depending on the situation and the props (environment).
    The section on virtual sex deals with the question of whether virtual sex is considered cheating or not cheating. Turkle gives both sides to the coin by giving examples which states how the women felt when they found out about their boyfriends or husbands having virtual sex. For my self I do not think that virtual sex can get to intimate where there are strong feeling for the other person. Also I think it can go the other way also where it depends on the motives of the person, is it a fun thing or is it serious and can lead to the two people actually meeting to play their parts out. Another reason why I think that it is an okay thing is because it is safer and allows a person just to turn off the computer at any time.
    A topic which I found most interesting in the topic of children and netsex. This I feel a strong need to intervention because I do not feel it health for children to be around these things. In Turkles writing though she states that "parents need to talk to children more about sex." Also she states that "the net allows children to experiment online" this was with children of the same age, something similar to what we call flirting.
    The last two sections decribed deception, and being digital. With deception the women felt hurt when they found that all their secrets were told to a man who they thought was a woman. I feel that this will always happen when people gender swap. The thing is how does it affect a person. I don't think that it affect people to much until the people take the internet seriously. This is when a person would feel hurt and touched by someone. Like the example of the a woman being raped on the mud. If she felt that it was just a game and that she could just shut down it would not have affected to the point that it did.
    I feel that the whole chapter is something which everyone needs to read to understand the complexity of the situations. I could not describe what I felt or thought while reading the chapter. It was many many mixed feeling of happy and sad that there are bad things happening to people today.

Email me