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CyberspaceAlvin 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 developmentand the absence of component indicators that are reflective of thescope of choices that people have in relation to gender roles andsexuality. In this present short paper, I will attempt to situate theseconcepts of gender and sexuality in the rapidly expanding virtual placecalled cyberspace and briefly discuss some implications on the"process of enabling people to have wider choices" (one possibledefinition of development).

Cyberspace, or The Internet, is a virtual space which is not solelymeant for information storage, retrieval and exchange under certain

protocols. Cyberspace is also a place for communication (email, chat),political and intellectual discussions (chats, forums, academicwebsites), business transaction (online business), entertainment(music, video, games) personality expression (personal websites,blogs) and even "sexual intercourse" (chatroom cybersex). A whole lotof human activities have a virtual counterpart that can be performed incyberspace.

The cyberspace problematic resides along the border between thephysical reality that we live in and the virtual reality that we helpcreate when we enter cyberspace. Is cyberspace but an extension of

the physical world complete with all its familiar sociopolitical, economicand cultural issues? Do virtual identities carry with them the typecastfeatures of their corresponding physical identities? Is cyberspace alsoan area for resisting hegemony in the physical world? Or is it possibleto have virtual identities that are free of the concepts of restriction,discrimination and silencing? And, pertinent to this last case, iscyberspace therefore a field which is more permissive of developmentthan 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. Itwould be interesting to explore the gender roles and expressions ofsexuality 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 thevirtual identities that reside in it in a manner wherein everybody isafforded the widest range of choices as they proceed to construct andreconstruct their identities. Characteristics of cyberspace that enable

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this kind of freedom and privileges include anonymity of physicalcounterparts of the virtual cyberspace citizens, opportunities to changeidentities across time or to even acquire multiple identities in a singletime, and capacity to hide or disregard physical attributes that areusual 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 whereinarchetypes of development can thrive or be fashioned for cyberspacecitizens to benefit from, and to demonstrate a possible model for theconsumption of the physical world.